In this episode Christopher Sommer shares the science behind building a gymnastic body, how he helps individuals perform at a world class level, and how to stop waiting for others to confirm your success. Listen in as we explore what gets him excited about a challenge and how he motivates his team and himself.
Coach Christopher Sommer is a world-renowned gymnastics instructor and long-time US Jr National Team Coach with nearly 40 years’ experience at Regional, National and Olympic level. He is known for building his athletes into some of the strongest, most powerful gymnasts in the world. Coach Sommer is the founder of Gymnastic Bodies, a hugely popular gymnastic strength training system. His book, Building the Gymnastic Body, is a groundbreaking training guide designed for non-gymnasts to improve their strength and mobility with routines used by world-class athletes.
You can learn more about his work at https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/
Episode Transcript
I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Christopher Sommer, former intelligence analyst of NSA, longtime U S national team coach and founder of gymnastic bodies, systemized advanced body weight fitness with a specific end goal of increasing performance, durability, and resilience. His methodical approach has been successfully incorporated into a variety of settings, including special operations and professional athletes. You can find out more about him.
01:24
at Christopher Somner one that’s going to be his Instagram. His areas of expertise includes physical and mental preparation for elite athletes or tactical performance, loaded mobility for longevity and resilience and the psychology of peak performance. You can find out more at gymnasticbodies.com. Christopher, thank you for letting me put a long string on that kite, but I’m honored to have you on and I’m looking forward to this conversation. There is a lot to unpack here and I think we’re going to have a fantastic conversation.
01:53
Absolutely. So I first heard about you like so many people on Tim Ferriss 2015 and then 2016 and 2018. Tim very much a lot out of you and he learned a tremendous about you. And I was in chiropractic school before I joined the military. So a lot of what you were saying about this anterior head carriage, about people that have their shoulders rounded in this kyphotic capacity, even your understanding of how low back pain was attached to pectoralis minor and the obliques.
02:23
It was so fascinating because I heard some people talking about this, but they had never put it together in such a systematic way to say, here is this problem, X, Y, and Z. Here’s this issue, X, Y, and Z. Can you tell us about how you got to that place of understanding the human body so robustly? And was it from your own experience as well that led you to some of these conclusions to find the cause and not just the symptomatology? Really great question. For me, it was everything taking place in the arena and being a national symptom.
02:55
And so how do I take the best athlete in the world and make it better? Can’t do what everybody else does. It’s already been done. So we’re just all chasing our tails. So then it’s looking through those incremental improvements. And so like to hear the obliques alone, you know, it seems so obvious when we pointed out, but I feel like an idiot that it took me like 20, 30 years to figure out the problem of the obliques for people have trouble with shoulder flexion.
03:25
And it probably took me 40 years to figure out that until I fix lats, until I fix pec minor, until I fix bicep, I can’t even work on the shoulder. I can’t work on shoulder flexion. So I’m just kind of spinning my wheels as it were until I get to the root causes. And so, you know, my last athlete who was alternate for the Tokyo Olympics, that was my great nightmare.
03:52
was what am I going to overlook mobility wise, preparation wise? So we started training at six, 12 years later, 16,000 hours plus. And honestly, it’s never about the technical skills. It’s going to be about how robust or resilient a physical framework did I build and develop that can handle having that kind of training put on it. And that’s what led to, you know, SEAL Team Six reaching out, Recon Marines reaching out.
04:21
different various pro athletes. They prefer we keep them under, of course, under cover. I’m supposed to be their secret weapon. You got to have the NDA to be able to work with them. I understand entirely. Yeah. There’s a lot of that. One thing I don’t like about the fitness world is it’s marketing driven. It drives me crazy. And we get people saying, you know, I, I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best. Quantify that. I didn’t see you at Wolves. I didn’t see you at Olympics.
04:50
You know, just because you’re saying it, but we have an uneducated general public that means well, but they kind of fall for being entertained a lot of times instead of doing their due diligence and seeing, you know, all right, did they do it themselves? If not, what have they produced? The athletes they have produced, how have they performed at a world-class level? And these can skip that. And it just literally drives me nuts. Cause if you’re a national team coach, everyone knows that you won nationals.
05:19
I’ll have to ride around saying I want nationals, I want nationals. They all know if you make world team, Olympic team, everybody knows. Fitness space though, fleet in the opposite. It’s been a blessing in that I got to work with a completely different population. So our first seminar I ever did with adults, non-national team members, I took them through a gentle warmup that I would take eight or 12 year olds through.
05:49
It should have been 10, 15 minutes, 20 if I was being mellow and chatty. Right. Took an hour and a half and they were dead. There were bodies everywhere. And I was like, okay, well, we can’t even warm up. How are we supposed to train? And that’s where we started learning, you know, their oblique problems. And it turned out the stronger they were, the more brittle they were, the more fragile they were, and so they were actually strong enough to hurt themselves.
06:18
in terms of athletic training, you know, being able to move, being able to jump, being able to absorb impact, generate force, bodybuilding was poor, prepped for it, powerlifting was poor, prepped for it, it was poor. And so, uh, that took a long time for me to unwrap that, figuring out, you know, what, what they were bringing to the table, what was broken, why was it broken? And then how to fix it. I just had a man.
06:47
I think it was this morning. He’s like, coach, I love sprinting. I’ve torn my hamstring three times. Every time he was powerlifting background, he says, I don’t know what to do. So we need to do the audit curl work. You know, that’s, that’s your low hanging fruit. We take care of that. And that’s almost certainly going to address the issue, but it’s not something they ever see. Right. And it’s not sexy either. It’s not exotic. It’s not this newest thing. As you were saying, especially after 2020, everybody went hard on.
07:16
their appearance and getting a slick funnel and all this other bullshit. And we understand that we’re, we’re smiling and laughing because we’ve been there seeing this occur, but again, you’re working with top tier athletes in every arena. And so your job many times is to de-brainwash them and to also give them the ability to understand you have to hold back, like you have to rein them back to do this sort of- I have to hold back. I had, I had three NHL players in one time.
07:46
They were just thrilled. They were thrilled. They never felt better and they wanted to throw everything away they’d ever done. And I had to get them to pump the brakes as a gentleman, your world class for reason, you’re going to throw the baby out of the bath wall and our job is to go through and find out what’s essential in your training that you’re doing right now. And then what can we add from outside to make it better?
08:13
Not for me to stand on a mountain and say my way is the only way in the best way. As the only people I see doing that, who claim to be the final answer are the wannabes. So it’s always the wannabes who say, you know, yeah, I’m God’s kiss. I know it all. I don’t, don’t dare question me. Now there’ll be times where I come down hard on people. Sometimes they’ll ask me something and say, no, I think this will work. I said, no, it won’t. And they’ll say, why? I said,
08:42
Cause I tried that multiple times over the years and it always failed. But then at the flip side, there’s other times where they’ll come to me and they’ll say, what do you think is out of the slide is glue and said, you’re about to be our test subject. And so, you know, someone’s either learning and improving and moving forward or they’re static or it’s, it’s kind of cliche, but it’s true. You know, there’s a difference between 20 years experience and one year, 20 times over.
09:11
And most people are stuck in one year, 20 times. I absolutely agree. It’s, it’s one of those things where, again, we see people that come up. I’ve done martial arts my whole life and they’ll tell me I’ve done this martial art and it’s like, well, but practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes permanent. So if they have mechanics, they’re trying to cut corners again. Okay, coach, how can I do this in six months? You can’t, you, it takes 12 months for your fascia and your body to adapt. No, but I want to do it faster. Well,
09:40
that it’s going to take you twice as long because you’re going to get injured. Right. We met Chuck Norris way back when I was still in college back in the early eighties and, uh, his mechanics. Now I, I think he’s awesome. I think Chuck Norris is awesome, but his mechanics of his movement with his knee and his hip always bothered. And I would look at it and I just, gosh, you know, maybe he’s just an outlier. He’s now had both hips down. And so, you know, eventually it comes due. You know, you can be tough or
10:08
The one who drives me crazy right now is David Goggins. You know, he’s, I love that he’s that tough. I love this story, but it bothers me when he puts up his MRI of his knee, showing the joint gum and the cartilage is gone and he’s bone on bone. And it bothers me that people are going to look at this as a good thing because David’s a tough guy, but what happens when he doesn’t have a knee? You know, maybe.
10:38
Not as sexy, but slow down a little bit. Well, that the bot, because recovery is happening. Bit as important as working hard, but that’s not sexy. That doesn’t sell. You know, they get this, you know, low is a big thing. I trained to go and explore the darkness, the depths of my soul. And they’re, they’re doing all this. I was like, there’s, there’s not an elite athlete in the world. No. And they would send me crossfitters would send me pictures of bloody hands.
11:08
You know, coach, what do you think? And I think you’re not going to train for a week or two. You know, and there’s nothing you can do in this one day and it could have offset the progress you could have made over the next week or two. So, you know, I appreciate your attitude, but it’s a bit childish, you know, to be a little harsh about it. It’s kind of immature. You know, I want to be exciting today. I want dopamine today. You know, I want the thrill today. Now I think about, you know,
11:38
It’s just another day today. It’s another day. Where am I at? I kind of like the idea of a daily training max. You know, where am I today? Maybe it’s a new PR. It was 20 hours light, but you know, it kind of is what it is because the body’s not a machine. You know, it’s got updates, it’s got down days, and it’s not today that matters. It’s almost not this week of training that matters. It’s how did this year of training go?
12:07
You know, as long as we went in and we made honest effort today. If you’re paying money a year, if we didn’t do that day in day out, a year, good gracious, good gracious. I mean, and I get it. I get it. I mean, a lot of people are like, Oh, you’re, you’re a college gymnast. After cancer, I was a newborn baby. It took me 18 months to get back to doing a single pull-up. I had, I dropped all the way down to 113 pounds.
12:37
And I personally thought I was a beautiful shade of gray, but my wife disagrees, I thought I wore it well. But, uh, you know, the treatments destroy connective tissue. And so it was, uh, it took forever just being able to hang on the bar. Now it was the hands would go, all the fingers would go, the elbows would go, the shoulders couldn’t take it. And.
13:09
I’ll put my ear in a house and no frustrating, but it was what it was. And so for a lot of people, you know, if, instead of looking at whether it’s personal, whether it’s professional, whether it’s athletic, instead of looking at things, how we would like them to be. If we would just be honest about where we are, where we’re starting right now, then we can move forward. It’s, it’s when we lie to ourselves. Oh no, I’m a stud.
13:39
Oh, I did my best. Yes. Did you really? Did you realize I did a seminar in London, probably had 35 people in the room. Half of them, I bet were having trouble. We had an exercise where you land your back. You go into posterior pelvic tilt and basically just rock. And they needed to rock for either 60 reps or 60 seconds. And they couldn’t do it. You know, and there was, you know, coach, I try, I just, you know, I’m just, I’m not built this way. Can’t do it.
14:08
I said, you know, guys, you know, I’m, we’re going to do something. And I want to teach you a lesson. What teach you some. And I said, now I’m going to work you really hard and you’re going to put your mind at ease because I know joints involved. This is just abs. It’s going to feel like you’re dying, but you’re not. I said, so the whole group were used to your pressure. The whole group is going to go at the same time. As soon as one person comes down, everyone stops.
14:37
And we’re going to start over again. Now, because you need a little recovery and I’m evil, we’re going to roll you over. And while you’re resting, you’re going to do arch rocks on your belt. If you fall on that, we’re able to back the other one. So the first time they made it 30 seconds or whatever, and they all fell. And what I told them is guys, we’re going to keep going until everyone passes. I don’t care how long it takes. I’m gotten you for seven hours today.
15:06
Okay. It was like first thing in the morning. As I have no probably say, you gotta, you gotta understand someone. Former national team coach. Your discomfort is water off my back. Okay. I can count your terms all day long. Okay. Which is why world-class athletes need that world-class coach. You need someone that is not going to let you baby yourself. It’s so old school. So I think we got two or three turns in and they started looking around at each other like, wow, he.
15:36
Who really isn’t going to let us? I wasn’t mean, you know, I’m not cursing. I’m not doing any of that. I’m laughing at him. Tell me I told you. And I said, here’s the kicker. Everyone that you below with is going to make it that much harder for the one that you finally make it. You might as well wrap your head around the fact that there are no escape. I think we got to about the sixth turn. Everyone in the group made it. And the lesson I wanted them to understand is they had been confusing.
16:06
fatigue and discomfort with being unable to perform. I said, you know, guys, comfort will destroy every dream you have. Every, if you’re going to be constable and you’re never going to be better than me, it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. So you, you have to get, you have to, and it’s easier when they have that good coach, cause that first time they have to take it on face, you know, what if he’s just insane and torturing me for no reason.
16:36
And which was possible, right? I could have been nuts, but then once it works, Oh, I didn’t know I could do that. Oh, I, I, I can look a lot harder than I ever thought. Yeah. No, and it’s some people, everyone’s psychology is a little different. You know, some you gotta be rough on, some you gotta tease, some you gotta be gentle, you know, in a group environment, they all kind of get thrown together. Right. But you gotta find that button. That’s where we learned.
17:05
peak performance psychology, because every athlete brought a different set of buttons to the table and they all have to be treated different. This guy wants to be left alone. This guy, you got to kick him the butt. This guy, gotta be nice to him. This guy, you smile once in a while, like every smile has been across you and you’re off. Yes. And so it’s never about the coach being right or wrong. It’s about helping this individual.
17:33
achieve their best performance. And so, you know, a lot of people never push themselves hard enough to figure out what their own buttons are. You know, they say, well, you know, I tried. Did you? Did you really? You know, and you have to go through things, you know, like everyone, well, a lot of my friends, you know, what’s your morning routine? You know, can I work? Well, that’s for me personally, that’s when I freshest, that’s where I’m sharpest.
18:03
I get up early, I get my best writing done then. Yes. But that’s me, right? If other people kind of need that morning to get up, reset themselves and do their, you know, if I spend time with, with Tim, right? Don’t bother Tim for two or three hours in the morning. Right. And that is what makes Tim productive. I’m exactly the opposite. And neither one is right or wrong. It’s just which works and which doesn’t work. And a lot of people never were pardoned if they ever find that.
18:34
where they’ve never had a purpose to push them to the point where they had to work in such a productive, refined, intentional manner. There’s a lot of- That’s a good point. Because they, you know, the bell curve is reality. Yes. They don’t like it. It’s not politically correct. You know, reality doesn’t care about what’s politically correct. That one slide is. Most people are average.
18:58
They’re average and most people who aren’t average are lazy. And the vast majority of super talented athletes I’ve worked with had an accomplished to down on thing because life has always been easy. It’s always easy. They always bail every single time without exception. It’s the guys who are above average in talent, who have a blue collar work ethic. They can’t stop. You can’t stop. He’s yeah, that hurt. Yeah, I’m tired. Yeah, I’m pissed. Yeah, I’m happy.
19:26
Oh, I could have done this. No, I’m not doing it. And it’s that one foot in front of the other. Well, that’s how we accrued 16,000. Imagine 16,000 hours of training with me. Well, no, no, just day in, day out. You know, no, no, no. Nice try. No, no. Finally. No, that was, that was my suffer. I liked that. You know, I’m kind of even.
19:55
Even great athletes, they need that. Especially when they get to an art, could be the arts, could be any type of celebrity, could be writers, could be podcasters, could be athletes business. If they get to the point where everyone likes what they’re doing and isn’t being critical enough on their things that are, I’m going to have a little bitch. Yes. No, that’s, that’s not going to move. So I’m going to know what it means. It’s not going to move.
20:22
Well, yeah, it’s like if we, to make national team, you have to do great year after year. You don’t get to put on national team because you did great last year. No one cares. And when it was time for Olympic team, no one said, Oh, Alan, you’ve, you’ve been national champion before. We’re going to put you on anyway. I don’t remember how that conversation never happened. And so the ones who fall in love, kind of a big, yes, along the way about it.
20:51
At first people need to have that concrete goal they achieve. You know, I became a bestselling book, a super popular podcast episode, a national championship. Okay. It’s kind of those intrinsic, but it’s external validation. Yes. And this is why we see multiple Olympians going back and going back and going back because their life has no meaning unless they’re on that Olympic team. Well.
21:21
That breaks my heart because there’s, there’s seasons and you have to be prepared to move to your next phase of life at 40 years old, you’re not as athletic as when you’re 22. Disagree all you want. It doesn’t mean you can’t be better at all the other 40 year olds around you, but you’re still going to get your ass kicked by a 22 year old nature of the beast. So the ones who are successful are the ones who finally worked their way through that, even Pressfield is the perfect example of this.
21:50
Yes. Love Stephen’s story where they now they do it because they love the process. I’m going to work hard because that’s what makes me feel. I’m not going to cut corners because I’m going to disappoint the most important person in my life. Me. I can’t live with that. Okay. That’s just too much disappointment. I expect better.
22:19
And so there, those are the ones who can’t stop these people. They take care of their business. Yeah. Maybe, maybe there’s an audience. Maybe there’s a crowd, but you know, it’s interesting. So I’ll, one of my students fell a little short going through Delta Force selection. And I’d only had seven months to do some joint prep with, with Gunny. It’s a month long. He made it through to the final Thursday before the last thing.
22:49
And a great guy and it was actually an action user. And you know, it’s all joint mobility. It’s all joy mobility because it’s all the broken trade. Yes. But when they want to select people, people miss this. We get, we get people all the time. How do I train for special operations? Guys, we can give you training. You could have done anything.
23:13
Basically, I’ll be a little flip about it, but it’s basically who’s too dumb to stop. Right? Who won’t back off? It doesn’t matter what you do to them. And that’s how they do Delta Force selection. Nobody around to clap for you, nobody to pat you on the back. Pack on your back. Here’s a map. No key. You don’t know how far it is. You don’t know what the time standard is. And you’re all alone out in the backwoods of North Carolina, which for those who have been been…
23:43
stuck and for those who are still there, I feel sorry for you. I was convinced for the longest time that all the bugs in the world were born there and migrated outward. Hey, Hey, you got, there’s this stickers everywhere. All these guys are stuck out in that and they, and they can be mad at me because I was stuck there for 11 years. So they can fuss it’d be all they want, but these guys are left all alone. Not only the know if you sit down, take a break.
24:13
feel sorry for yourself. And that’s exactly the attitude that’s necessary in order to be successful. It is no different in any other arena. In fact, that’s why me personally have interacted well with billionaire hedge fund managers, New York time bestselling authors, Olympians, special operations, business, it didn’t matter because at the top, they all have that attitude, at least the ones I’ve spent time. Yes. They all have that attitude. There, there’s no want to be attitude.
24:43
I know everything. It’s always, I don’t know. In fact, I went and did one private seminar for a billionaire hedge fund manager and a price tag was 20 grand. And I never turned in my invoice because I went and I learned so much about business without any formal lessons, just watching Mark operate, how he handled his staff, how he handled himself, how he structured his day that.
25:13
I sell, I got 20 grand worse, right? I never even turned it in. You know, that level, I’m sure you know, he doesn’t even know I didn’t turn. I got nice letters from him after his staff were handling. And I see that too, all the people that I’ve spoken with, all these people that have reached this, this pinnacle. As you say, when I interviewed Steven Prestl, he considered himself an abject failure for nearly 30 years. But in that process, when I talked to him the last time, he said that
25:42
When he let go of this ideal of what these outside vanity metrics. I like that vanity metrics is a great trace. It’s the truth where he would find his own voice. What fucking mattered to him? What made him want to write and just let that pour out of him? All of a sudden, magically, now this turns into this, the legend of Agra Vance goes completely opposite and goes to gates of fire after that. You know, his agent wants to fire him because he’s like, you already have this like brand. He’s like, that’s not my voice.
26:12
And then writing, you know, the war of art, all these, these things, it’s very much this ability to look inside ourselves, to say radically, no bullshit. Where am I at? Well, just the truth. Am I willing to accept this truth? And then am I willing to continually step into this radically honestly to figure out where I’m at, because so many times we get stuck and these people that are achieving so much, if we want to reach like excellence in anything, stop waiting for people to confirm it.
26:41
Stop waiting for a pat on the back. Stop waiting for any kind of accolades. Cause you won’t receive that until well after you need it. And by then you won’t care. Yes. Exactly right. Peterson said it well, you know, if you would follow your conscience and do what your conscience told you every day for a year, you’d be shocked at the progress she made because we know what we’re supposed to do. We know what we’re supposed to do. That’s why we feel anxiety. Right.
27:11
Why are you feeling anxious? You know when you’re procrastinating, right? There’s something that needs to be done that you’re uncomfortable with doing. It’s going to make you tired. You’re afraid you’re going to fail. When you suck, we want to play. You want to indulge yourself, whatever there’s cost involved to it, but you still feel anxious, right? And there’s, oh, it’s stress and stress. No, most of the time we create our own stress and we’re not living up to our own expectations. Be honest with yourself.
27:39
We were standing business, one of my mentors, his family had been, uh, successful for like four generations. You know, basically a family dynasty. He would, he would do business meetings with me and not the time I’m an employee. And they’re just different approaches in life to being an entrepreneur or CEO compared to being an employee. And I kept saying, sir, you can’t do that. Sir, you can’t do that. Get A’s.
28:09
Quit thinking like a wage slave. You’ve got to stop Chris. You’ve got to stop. You’re in a different arena now. And I was really having a hard time wrapping my head around. And then, um, what was the game changer is Rob said, if I asked you to make a national team athlete from scratch, how long would it take you? How would you do it? Take me five years. Is it going to be a problem? No, no, I know the process in my head. I’ve done it a gazillion times. It’ll be hard.
28:39
And it’s going to take five years, but I know the process. We said run your business. Like you were treating something for national team. And then once I did that, everything got easy. Okay. What were the standards? What is it? The standards, you know, so my staff, you know, we’d get marketing companies and we’d learn everything they had in two months. Yes. What else you got guys? Well, that’s all yet. Cause all they had was cookie cutter. Right. KPI is a metrics, but nothing else for you.
29:08
and nothing else. And that was their business model. What we learned over the years is their business model is built, is predicated upon the truth that most businesses are gone in three to four years. So they just have to provide a good enough service to get through that window and get their fee and you’re going to fall out anyway, and they’re going to move on, but businesses that are here alone, her, they’re on a good floor.
29:36
They’re going to go over it, same they went a lot of the franchises, right? The franchises, they don’t know that the people selling the franchises, they’re looking at between a four to a seven year window and they’re calling to shut the thing down. Uh, what is that? That J 45, F 45, whatever it is. Yeah. They’re having a hard time right now. And very saying where, oh, the good days will never end. Yes, they will. They absolutely will.
30:05
And if everything’s been predicated upon fluff, right? You can’t stand firm on false in any part of your life, in any part of your life. And so it’s always, my life has been trying to reduce everything as far as possible, core principles. What are the principles that can always be relied upon and that can be applied in any arena? A universal truth.
30:34
different specifics, right? But we get people who are, you know, I get special operators coming out. Cause I have no idea, you know, what I’m going to do with business. And we have the same conversation. My mentor had with me apply the same skills in this new arena with the same standards. Yes. And the front, if you change it somehow, what I don’t get is everyone wants to divide their life into these little niches. This is my personal life.
31:03
This is my physical training. This is my recreation. This is my professional life. And they have all these different things that all these separate rules and these little boxes and they’re going to behave differently. I don’t do that. I have one life and I live it one way and I approach everything I do. Same way. It’s the same way. I’m not driven on every single thing. And my wife will vouch for this. If I think something’s not important.
31:33
I literally don’t give a crap. Yeah. Don’t care. Not in the slightest, but if it’s something important, it’s all guns brought to bear, you know what? Either do it right or don’t do it at all. And that’s kind of, you know, we’ll get people in, I’m just not sure. If over and over and over, you think this is something you want to do and you never actually do it, it moves in your heart and you don’t want to do it. You like the idea of doing it. You’re in love with the dream of it.
32:03
but not enough to actually make it a goal and follow through. You need to cut it loose. You need to move on. You’ll accomplish a lot more and you’ll be a lot happier because you’re going to be honest with yourself. And there’s nothing to say that this thing that you put a pen on right now, you may be able to pick it up five years from now. True. Maybe you’ll do all this other work that you need to do, like you’re saying to get squared away. And now you have this additional bandwidth. Now you have this empty space you’ve cultivated intentionally. And now it’s like.
32:33
Wow. I have time to actually apply it. And then guess what? We’ve learned so much in those five years. We’ve applied that wisdom. So now what we create is worthy of that sort of effort. Like you said, being interested is fine. Commitment is different. And when you’re talking about these universal truths, this excellence, and you’re absolutely correct. If it’s a universal truth, it works irrespective of where you put it. Exactly. Self mastery, discipline, execution, removing.
33:01
Emotions because emotions assassinate the truth all of these things that are going to be true. I like that phrase it’s the truth whether it be a relationship or Trying to defend yourself or your family. We have to remove that because it will inhibit us, especially in the face of adversity I like that a lot. We’ll get people, you know coach. I don’t have an academic background read What do you want me to read? I literally don’t care Yes, I do not care in the slightest read read what you enjoy
33:30
Coach, I like reading science fiction. Awesome. Read science fiction. Okay. I know him there. He’s responsible, you know, basically he raised. Bad family growing up, abusive background, all that. That was my escape, but, um, it literally doesn’t matter. You want to read trashy romances, read trashy romances. Cause if you read enough, you’re going to get to the point where you outgrow it.
33:59
Now you’re going to be ready for something more challenging. Okay. And give it enough years and suddenly you’re going to be in philosophy, you’re in politics, in history and classics and perhaps pure mathematics, right? And the philosophy of mathematics is just going to, it’s going to go and it’s going to go and, but you let it go natural. You let it go naturally. You don’t, you don’t source any, yeah. By and large, I read one more political book. I’m going to jump off this balcony.
34:29
But as soon as it is premature for you, right? You’re not enjoying, so go back and do what you enjoy. But you know, there’s a difference. If we, if we do an ENG, is it electrical activity? I remember it right? Yes. We do an ENG of the brain while we’re reading. Very different from an ENG of the brain while watching TV or on social media. Yes. We look at the electrical activity in the brain. It’s almost none.
34:58
pass and being entertained. Exactly. There’s the difference between any it was. Uh, Overman the other day was saying, I think it was Overman. Might’ve been Rogan. They found out that, uh, these chess players, the grand masters kept losing weight during their tournaments. Chess masters aren’t exactly known for being robust athletes. They’re not actually going off and crushing it, but they were losing weight.
35:23
When they measured them, they were burning 6,000 calories a day. And just the cognitive process. Wow. I mean, so it kind of feed what we try to do with our people is, you know, that the two systems feed, it’s a synergistic relationship. If you’re fried from doing a lot of mental effort, go work out. You’re fried from doing physical labor. Go do something intellectual. They’re opposite recovery. One helps repair the other. This is why the Greeks.
35:53
Right? Yes. Strong mind and healthy body, you know, and they, they were on and I, I’ll share a quick story, the Greeks were spot on for development of us as human means. But of course, easy to say, right? I’ll give concrete example. I have a daughter who her entire life was in special education. So I have, I have both extremes in my family. I’ve got.
36:23
One was just under genius and one who was far under genius. Okay. And they could never in public school, teacher write a sentence. They couldn’t do it. COVID starts, not a lockdown nonsense. And for those who get upset, Attila the hunt is the right, I’m outside the right of Attila the hunt. And it’s me and the Neanderthals dragging knuckles on the ground. I’m there with you. I’m right there with you. So, you know, for all those who are upset with me, I’m sorry. It’s not my fault. It’s Jeanette.
36:52
It’s just, this is just how I am. But, uh, when they started their lockdown stuff and they were just going to do busy work with her and they’d literally wasted what we found as they’d literally wasted her entire career and her junior in high school. And they were able to write a sentence. I pulled her out. Okay. Well, I’m coast cancer and I’ve got time and we’re financially independent. I can do what I want. Wow. So we don’t want, let’s kick the tires. We did it.
37:22
Good job with phonics with her. Okay. So she was a good reader. I saw my house where the girl was growing up. If they wanted to watch, we’ve never had television in our house. We let them watch movies. And, but if they want to watch a movie, they owe me half hour reading and they couldn’t stack. They couldn’t read for two hours and then watch three movies in a row. So you can watch three movies. I don’t care.
37:49
which you’re going to read, watch, stop and go read again. So my house, literally all how many thousands of books, there’s this office with all the shelves, there’s a library outside the door. I mean, it’s not nice. I think our house is going to slowly sink into the earth. Okay. But that’s what we enjoy. So I’ve been got her and I’m like, you know what? Let’s see what I can do with this girl. Because what happens in public school, it’s all social promotion.
38:17
So they want to, the child can’t do the work. So they’ll assign when, when a kid is in special ed, that money is just going to have an assistant next to them to do their work for them. Yes. So you have no idea what’s going on, but you’re going to be in algebra too. And the teachers, the ones who were honest would agree with me, but they don’t have discretion to actually speak. They’re as trapped. Most of them are just as trapped as the kids are. So.
38:46
I spent some time over the years, I don’t know. Well, I’ll back up just a tad. The reason I implemented this with my youngest daughter in high school was because before our business took off, I had been homeschooling her older brother. And I had been preparing for med school, going to the military and do med school. And to do that, we were doing a Saxon math and a third grade Latin textbook. Wow. Now.
39:15
To back up my educational background was honors my entire life. Advanced placement classes, my entire life. Honors in college, military intelligence, NSA analyst took the ASVAB score to 98. And if you score a 92, you’re going to be a nuclear engineer for it. Okay. I’m a 98. They do all our things. They do all other things. This is 10 or 12 years after the military and doing the studying.
39:43
And in order to do my medical scholarship, right, for the military, I have to take it again. Now I’ve done no formal education except for the Saxon math for a few months. And this Latin, I scored a 99. I was pissed. I was furious. Furious. Not because of the result of getting the 99. I was furious that here’s a tool that is this.
40:12
effective and isn’t implemented in the school system. Because those who have done Latin know every sentence, every phrase is like doing an evidence-based science experiment in the lab. Yes. And without boring everyone to pieces, predicates are wrong. The tense is wrong. The gender is wrong. The case is wrong. One little ending wrong and everything falls apart. So in the back of my head, I know this. And so I got this darn.
40:43
I’m a tree. So now I’ve got to look at spending months going through Latin textbooks, most of which are pathetic. Most of them are written by scholars who have really never been teachers. And they’re trying to give you eight different things at one time. Instead of when I’m a national team coach, I do one thing at a time. You get it right, I go to the next thing. You did that right.
41:13
I go to the next thing I don’t do eight things at once, all half-assed doing for a little bit of time, and then move on to eight more things, half-assed. Move on, do eight more things half-assed. And then the end of the semester say, okay, we’re going to have an exam on all these half-assed things and get, of course it’s going to be meaningless. So I finally found a good land textbook called getting started with Latin by a really in a little mini wonderful book. Wonderful book.
41:42
One thing at a time. I should have brought my daughter, Kiana’s stuff up so that you could see what she’s doing now. Two and a half years of Latin. Mastery based. Okay. Review of basics every single day. Translating from land to English. And then I added for her from Latin back to English. I just added all these other exercises that aren’t required because I want mastery inside and out.
42:11
No stress, no carrying on. If we have trouble on something, it’s and we need to redo it again. And the way I approach it whether as if you had trouble with it, it means it’s not ready to move forward. So we start over again. Go forward now two and a half years, pages and pages and pages of Latin translations, essays, stories, you name it. Okay. Because I went back,
42:39
And I take fundamental core principles with the development of length. That’s not done with our students in schools today. It’s not done. And I just approach it the same way I would national team. Or we’re going to do this until it’s right. That’s exactly it. And what do we find? There are no advanced techniques. There are only fundamentals that we can do in succession while under pressure or adversity or whatever it is, and back to what you’re saying, you’re teaching logic. When I was in chiropractic school, I was pissed that I had to take
43:08
three years of biochemistry. And I remember coming to my biochem instructor and I was like, doc, why do I have to do this? This is bullshit. I can’t even, this is not in my scope of practice. He doesn’t even look up. He goes, you know what this is? This keeps stupid people out of your profession. He said, this is logic based. You’re learning how to apply it. And if you can’t figure that out now as a doctor, you’re going to hurt people. And he just kept writing and I turned up and it was absolutely.
43:37
In the old days, the entrance exam to get into Harvard was to be able to read Greek, was to read, write and translate Latin and do math. With those three things, you can learn anything. And I would add history in there for context. Of course. So without history, you’re a child. Now we’re seeing that today. We are. Yeah. We learn from history that we don’t learn. With bested intentions, because they’re unaware of their own history, they think
44:06
These are new things and they’re not, they could read Solzhenitsyn. They’re not. It’s right there. They can go back, read Marx. There’s a reason he was kept right and sponsored by someone who had money. Right. He wasn’t a self-sufficient individual. I mean, wait, we can go back and you can actually see, but because they’ve never studied history, anything that means there, because they’re childish, they take everything’s true.
44:34
They don’t have the background to be able to critically evaluate what they’re being told. Now we, we, we could go into some reasons. So like with the cancer, if I had done what the medical establishment wanted me to do, I would be dead today. I’d be dead today. My particular cancer was throat cancer. I had a tumor the size of my fist. Whoa. Size of my fist. When it was stage four, wrapping around up my brain, this year was gone.
45:04
death, all healed. I’m not supposed to be able to speak. I’m not supposed to be able to drink, eat. I’m supposed to have this huge crater inside my throat, all healed. Right. That would never have had the opportunity to occur if I hadn’t taken control and then my own best advocate. People don’t understand. We mentioned the bell curve before. That means most doctors are.
45:32
average and they’re mediocre. And that means then the majority of doctors, don’t forget, that’s just the middle. What about the ones at the other end? They’re terrible. Then with most doctors are mediocre, bad. And people are just going to blindly trust them to take care of them. Why are you aware? You get my first doc, we walked in, in front of my wife, this SOP does this. He says, yep.
46:02
cancer, if I don’t operate next Wednesday, basically wanted to carve out half my throat. If I don’t operate next Wednesday, you’ll be dead in six weeks. Oh my God. Now, wives wean the best for us. She’s like, you know, hey, whatever, sweetie. And he did not like my attitude at all. He actually got up and walked out of the room because I was asking questions. How dare you, sir? It’s exactly what he did. How dare you question me?
46:32
I said, last time I checked, you worked for me. And it’s not your throat going to get carved on it’s mind. So we’re going to answer questions to my satisfaction, not yours. And if that means your butt hurt about it, too damn bad. They’re smooth in my feathers a little bit. And I said, well, I want to talk to patients who’ve gone through this treatment. Sure. We can do that. So I speak to some of them. Horror show. Nightmare.
47:00
When I’d ran the suicide rate for this type of cancer after being treated is astronomical. With good reason. There was one of my best friends had a neighbor who had it who didn’t question the dog and actually cut his entire lower jawbone. And now he was upset. I found out about it after the fact. And you know, he’s a young man. It’s one thing to have his senile will be like me.
47:29
someone who’s 20, late 20s and 30s. Wow. Seriously? That’s, that’s, that’s a different ballgame. And now him and his wife are like, now what do we do? I’m like, what did you think it was going to be? Cause there are sometimes where the cure is worse than the problem. You know what? This is it. It’s time to check out this. If you do a research on doctors, it’s amazing how many doctors will refuse.
47:58
their own treatments, if they themselves come down with it. Everyone touch it. No way. I’m out of here. Yep. I’m out of here. So, you know, we, we went through, we went through and then, uh, grow from stage two to stage four. You know, I’m a tough guy. I’m a tough guy. And, um, I guess it was after about three months of, I mean, basically, you know, you’re dying because your head is in the wrong place. I mean, to put it in a really gross fashion. Right. And.
48:28
There’s a lot of pain with that and I wouldn’t touch anything. I did not want to get addicted. But once it’s terminal, well, you know, my, mine was after about three months. I was like, okay, fine. I think in my highest, I was doing my five milligrams of Oxycontin and they were like, we can’t even tell it, we got to be 30 to know Zane. Well, I was fine for me. But what upset me is that what eventually we ended up doing was immunotherapy and immunotherapy is.
48:58
One third get nothing and he has on type of cancer. One third get nothing, one third get moderate and one third get good. Well, that wasn’t mine. Mine was a fairy tale. Mine was a fairy tale and they don’t know that no explanation. It was just gone. Cause my tumor was so huge. You could see it. Everyone else you got to wonder what’s going on. So it called her.
49:28
You’re going to think I’m lost my mind. It’s very stuff cold. So we go ahead and get our scans gone. It’s just gone. And then there’s supposed to be all this residual damage. You know, it was supposed to have a hole like this in my throat. No, you know, this ear was deaf. Well, during treatment, developed glass lung. So I’ll do, you go to a doctor’s office and they take your oxygen and.
49:57
You’re at 92, they lose their shit. Yeah. They lose their shit. I was 72, 113 pounds, wonderful shade of gray. My wife used to, she’d go, what are you going to do? I said, sweetie, I rolled with this. It’s going to be my next book. She said, I don’t even want to know. I said, I’m going to do a, what was it? The death diet, making the most of cancer for fun and profit. I told her, I told her I was going to market it.
50:27
to, uh, celebrity chefs and New York runway models. She’s like, you’re just wrong. But we just had my, my during things, right. And always question and requiring, you know, then to stand up. So like I knew I learned the hard way because it got so big. I couldn’t open my jaw at all. And when the jaw was all frozen, well, there, there was time.
50:55
Longest was a month where I couldn’t eat. So Rob Wolf actually kept me alive by coming all these crazy smoothies that, uh, kept me going. I still have bad feelings about coconut milk cause I did so much. But if I did carbs, the tumor would become extremely active and I apologize for you, bro, but I, over that course of that year was buckets of blood being thrown up.
51:24
Just buckets, just buckets. There was a chocot. Excuse me, guys. Carbs would make it even worse. Absolutely. So high fat, couldn’t tolerate much protein. Right. But the high fat kept it going. And then when it healed, it was a very gradual of everything, just repairing instead of all this permanent damage, the lungs healed. Wow.
51:53
And it’s not supposed to be, there was, uh, that the immunotherapy and then as corny and new agey as it sounds, uh, some breathing protocols from, uh, wasn’t anything that James Nestor I saw on James on a Rogan podcast and his book, I think the breaths are breathing. I put a protocol, I put a protocol together where it was a four second in because I can’t breathe.
52:21
But to my mind, it makes sense to when Hoff stuff’s going, you know, and when, but when’s my problem with when is that I’m an intellectual and who’s not. Right. And so some of his explanations rang hollowed. Yeah. And so it’s really, let’s just feel a little bit used car sales. You know, that was that very first cancer doc. Yeah. If you don’t do this, you’ll be dead. We’re all red flags. Really? What turns out? So we need to go on vacation. There it is.
52:52
I was all right. Someday he’ll be riding in hell and I’ll be up above just laughing my ass off looking down at it. So it’ll all be good. Revenge shall be mine. But, uh, the breeder was the breathing protocol that healed the lungs. And then from the chemo stuff, and then you get this really bad, dead skin on your arms. And, uh, all of a sudden, after a month of the chemo, the lungs, he.
53:20
Uh, I want to say they got up to 93, nine 72 at a 93 around four in that month. Wow. The, uh, skin cancer on the forehead fell off. It wasn’t a big one. It was all, you know, tipping my finger, but just fell off. Amazing. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it was like a sunburn on my arms, crinkled up, fell off. And still old skin.
53:49
But it’s nothing compared to Kemoski. And that was often the breathing protocol. And no one knows, no one has any idea why. So there’s all these kind of miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle, and one, it drove the lesson home of always question, always require validation in anything. If it can’t be validated, it doesn’t exist.
54:17
You’re welcome to have your opinion. You’re welcome to have your express your feelings, but neither I nor the universe cares in treating that as far as a fact, I don’t care. Can you approve it? Well, this is the best workout protocol I’ve ever seen in the world. All right. Show me the results. Cause I always want to see what did you predict? Show me. Oh, you’re a great businessman. Show me. Exactly. Show me your great writer. Where is it?
54:48
Where is it? So after Ryan, Ryan Holliday had asked me to speak with New York Times. We’re going to do a review of his very first, was it obstacle is the way. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, New York Times calls and they say, tell me how this has changed your life. Said it hasn’t changed my life at all. Not in the slightest. She said, well, I’m confused. I’m confused. Raya said to give you a call. I don’t understand.
55:17
I said, because this is important for people to see this because as national team coaches, we’ve learned this every day, day in, day out. There’s a reason the military loves it. There’s a reason people like Schwarzenegger go, this is my life. Okay. This is what it is. It’s not that it changed my life. He just articulated what we already know better than we can. Okay. That’s why this book is important. This is why you’re picking it up because the people who have accomplished
55:46
We use this process, improve it. And in the military that stoicism is a natural, as you say, we may not be able to. Like my great uncle was in Vietnam. He was a green beret. When he took hunting, he was the first one to really introduce me to this idea of. We’re out there freezing, shivering, dear honey. And I look up at him and he looks down at me. He’s like, are you cold? I see I am. Aren’t you cold? He says, I am. He says, but I’m going to give you a secret. He said.
56:16
Do you think the cold gives a shit about you?
56:20
And even at 12, it’s like, no. He said, yeah. So you’re worried about the cold, the hardship. What you should be focused on is the purpose, the hunt. He says, even now, because you’re cold, even if you see a deer, you’re going to be a step behind. Your hands are going to be freezing. You’re going to quiver. You’re going to miss the shot. And all of this will be for not. But if you focus on the purpose, you’ll scan the wood line.
56:49
You’ll think about what you’re going to do next. You’ll drink your hot tea and stay warm. And now you’ll already be a step ahead if this happens. But if you don’t, all this adversity was for not. So again, he didn’t articulate it like Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, but it was so true. And again, we don’t have to let it, we just have to do it. Embrace the suck, whatever you want to say. But it’s this understanding of just this resolute idea of what’s real. What are you going to do? Take your emotions out, take your preferences out.
57:18
Let go of what you think it should be. See what the reality is and now move forward. Yes. I took it a step further where I got to love that it was so hard. Yes. Because it being so hard meant that other people were going to give up. And I just loved it. Cause it, I looked at it. This is how we thin the herd. This is how we separate the wheat from the chaff.
57:46
who is really serious and going to do it anyway, and who is just giving it lip service. And a lot of lip service is not a matter of talent a lot of times, they could have, if it comes an issue of character or more accurately, lack of character. When I got out of gymnastics, I thought it was me that I was just a stud, right? I was just as natural get as I worked out, I was 130 pounds.
58:15
And I worked out with the guys who weighed two 30, because we use the same weights. And they just thought that was hysterical. They thought it was hysterical. You know, we’d be doing risk curls. I’d have 135 pounds on the bar and these big guys would do 75. You know, I didn’t know they could stack shit that high. Amazing. I’ve never seen a pussy that big before. I’m I was young and just trash talking like crazy, having a good time. But.
58:43
What it was, was all the plyometric effects from gymnastics. The problem is, so like if we do, we’re swinging that rings. Imagine, so they’ll say, you know, there’s, there’s no greater forces in athletic training than Olympic lifting. There’s studs, there’s studs. And I watched a guy from Columbia who was currently competing for ball frame, I don’t see 97 kilos.
59:13
Yeah. I watched him, uh, jerking. I watched in military press in 50. Geez. Oh, it was nothing. And then I watched him jerk. We’re just a little partial squat. 340. Wow. Well, I just, but even that pales compared to when we do a giant on rings from handstand to handstand, depending on technique, we’re hitting seven to 10 times body weight at the bar. Wow.
59:43
Well, 150 pound athlete will take 10 just for the math. 1500 pounds of pressure. I’m going to grab, it wasn’t that I was doing 135 pound risk curls because I was God’s gift. It’s just 135 pounds with nothing compared to 1500 pounds of pressure. Or if we tumbled, there were years where I spelt like, I’m sure it’s not true. It felt like I spent more time in an electric training center at team camps than I did. Right. I don’t even know. Good. So many years.
01:00:13
But one of the times we were there is we had pressure plates on the floor. Athletes wired up and we know that tumbling generates 14 times body weight. Think about that. So that’s why running was nothing. I never, I never trained to run in my life, but it went ran five and a half minute miles, ran 10 miles in an hour with the track team when ran a marathon. Didn’t even notice it. Because if I’m running and hitting.
01:00:44
two and three times body weight per step. Right. Compared to 14 times body weight. Whatever. I remember doing that 10 mile run in six minute miles, just feeling like I was flying, it was just, it was just no effort. It was just light. Hey, but that was because of that strength is where people get confused in their training back in the day, I was your igneous, nasty stacker cross fit. And.
01:01:11
Greg and I parted ways because Greg started going towards the 80% slump where that was okay. And I was like, uh, no, we do think, or no, I’m sorry. It was 20% slump. So I was 80% right. And no, it’s 20% wrong. Yes. And I always found it interesting that they would be so meticulous with their lifting and then their other stuff. So half-assed, it made any sense because Greg was never a gymnast despite
01:01:41
His claims to the contrary, you know, very one time said, yeah, I was big ring guy, UCLA back when, and I, I’m an actual team coach. I called friends who were on the team then. It was a very glass man hanging out. They never heard about me. Wow. So look at that. But if you’re not in that arena, who’s going to call them? They’re not going to know. And so Greg didn’t understand that there are things that have to conduct right. On the ring. This is why.
01:02:09
They’ve got some very respectable Olympic lifters nowadays, but they still can’t do anything on the rings. No crosses, no planches, there’s no mulch. There’s nothing because everything they’ve done has been wrong. They do kipping muscle ups. The whole point of a muscle up is to build strength through the transition. When I kip, I start bouncing below the transition and I finish above. I skipped everything that’s important. And then they don’t lock and turn their arms at the top.
01:02:39
That means I didn’t build any brachialis strength or elbow and range strength is all about the bicep. With extended, with the long head of the bicep, they didn’t condition any of them. So then, okay, well, I’m going to do some more advanced stuff. No, you’re not. It was like someone, I’m going to go to calculus now. Yeah, but you don’t have your multiplication tables. Right. Yeah, but I’m really special. If I try really hard, I think I can. Okay. Well, good luck with that. But.
01:03:09
Where we get pushed out from some people is I’m very methodical. You need to do this in a row. I’m not these guys kind of, I look at them a lot of times where they approach some of their body weight training the same way if they were just going to load a bar with 315 pounds, and I’m going to bench it right from the beginning, no scaling, no building up, no recovery, there’s going right for the 315. Like guys, you would never do that.
01:03:39
As well as just body weight. Now we can get into liver, what links to the limbs and pork and all that stuff on our cross organ thousands of pounds of torque and the longer your arm. The harder, the more torque you’re going to generate. So basically it’s half body weight times the length of the lever times two. That’s how much torque that you’re holding for an iron cross. So a guy with short arms, interesting guy with short arms.
01:04:07
He’s going to be much stronger on rings, but same as a power lifter with short arms, but where they, where they mess up is that. The only time that short arms are good athletically aren’t Olympic lifting on marine strengths and power lifting. There’s not another single sport or short little T-Rex arms aren’t at an advantage on the field of play. It just isn’t. Right. It just isn’t. It doesn’t, it doesn’t work that way.
01:04:35
And so a lot of their, their physical prep fails to take. So like everyone’s in a hurry. I want it right now. Okay. Well, it’s going to take you three years, three to four years. If you really work hard, you’re kind of done for most people. You’re going to hit maybe about 75% of your potential. Your body can be very comfortable at 75% or whatever its potential is.
01:05:04
And you can maintain that without a lot of carrying on. What we learned from national team is that it’s going to take another three to four years to go from that 75 or 80 to 90%. Yes. And it’s going to take another three to four years to go from 90 to 95. And as soon as we ease up, the body wants to slide back down to that 75% because that’s where the body feels safe, because it has an optimal surplus of strength.
01:05:34
You have to protect yourself so you can’t pull yourself apart. So someone will just train hard and intelligent. Looking at three to four years of working hard, boom, done, move on. When we get these people that, you know, I’ve been training for 12 years. What do you bench? I bench bodyweight. I’m 12 years. Okay. Well, basically that was a year. So what’d you do the other 11 years? I don’t understand. You know, they were, they were just kind of treading water.
01:06:03
And then it’s interesting. So we, we looked at gymnastics as maybe it gets old after a while. Right. But I want to think, I’m sorry guys, that Olympics is just another and an Olympic medal is just another medal. Okay. Because what, what the people don’t understand is one, they think it’ll change their life. No, it’s going to make me a better person. No, it won’t.
01:06:34
If you were a schmuck before you got the medal, you’re a schmuck after the medal. I’m sorry. If everything happened, you had the right look, you’re eloquent, it was the right sport that was popular in media, maybe you’ll get a little bit of run with it. Maybe not, probably. So you have to be doing it for other reasons. Okay. But if you enjoy the process and you learn to do your best, then you do your work. Thanks. Okay.
01:07:03
Now what am I going to do? I found that fascinating watching Kobe Bryant where his last three to four years before he was going to retire. It was all business prep. It was up hassling billionaires. It’s for me in the morning. Explain this to me, explain that to me. Cause he didn’t want to be the guy who retired and was only going to be betting on goals and drinking, with on drugs, girlfriends everywhere. You didn’t want anything to do with that. He wanted to.
01:07:33
apply this same drive for life to be successful in a new arena. And so again, kind of the same, what we’ve noticed is people who train hard have the potential to do well in other areas of their life. But I personally think the flip side of that applies as well. You’re a slacker in one area of your life. I would bet a lot of money that you’re a slacker in other areas of your life also.
01:08:04
I feel pretty good about that bet. Those are good. And we, and we have, you know, we all have things that we don’t care and need to honor, certainly not putting myself here as a paramount, okay. But this is a one shot deal. Yes. It’s not a video game. It’s not a reset button. So to my mind, just what is it we think we’re waiting for? That was part one of my interview with Christopher Summer.
01:08:31
former national team coach for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team, where we talk about kicking cancer’s ass, logic, building gymnastic bodies, and the momentum of excellence. You can hear part two of our interview on the next episode of OctononBurba, where we talk about how language impacts logic, the biggest complaints with CrossFit and athletes, and how to understand what you actually control in your life. You can learn more about Chris and his new book at gymnasticbodies.com. Until next time.
