Zak Woodward: ATG, Athleticism, Injury Recovery and Personal Life - Progress Guaranteed #2

Intro about 50% of people who ever tear their ACL only half of them will ever make it back to their previous level of sports performance so if you're a college athlete only half of you are going to play college again of that half another half ret or injure their other leg within 2 years so we have one in four not failure rate success rate hyper competitive world where we miss this the base where kids used to play they used to play multiple Sports they used to do all of these different things so that by the time they went and specialized they had such a higher base of movement skill getting more sleep will make you smarter more athletic prettier like more attractive and so the opposite is also true like getting less sleep will make you dumber more injured uglier I don't know if we could have any more research on it what is the mental side of injury recovery the first things that I do with my athletes and one of the things that I think very few other people do is um what do you tell yourself when you first get injured I think that's that's a very important component of for athletes and anyone who gets injured yes so I had a little uh a little snowboarding fall like just landed on my shoulder like separated the joint just like a little bit first like 24 hours I kind of try not to rather than like even if you think about just like a plane trying to fly a long distance and stuff like that if you're constantly all over the place like you're going to be all over the map and just recognize like recognizing okay you're over here let's just start to come back and just being a little bit more like accepting a little bit more tolerant and not thinking I have to kind of uproot and change my entire life all right welcome to episode two of the progress guarantee podcast where we interview interesting people about their expertise learn how they make progress and discover the space of how careers are changing my guest is Zach Woodward did I get your last name correct I feel like I did yes sir all right and he's one of the top online fitness coaches for soccer I say football um Ben Patrick the creator of the famous atg asag grass system or knees over toes system said that Zach is a freak athlete the top coach for atg soccer and one of the best for healing ACL injuries um Zach is the host of the athletic transformation project podcast atpp and um definitely give it a listen and in today's conversation I hope you discover better ways to become more athletic especially if you're a desk Warrior like myself Zach excited to have you on the show ah thanks for being here man looking forward to it fantastic so before we jump in I wanted to state that I'm not here to debate I'm here to absorb okay I have um I think in my own fitness journey just trying to explore as many systems as possible so but I I've seen you debate different folks so I I kind of want to get into that as well I think that's always interesting um so it'll be fun yeah absolutely now it's a little bit of that that Bruce Le yeah always happy to kind of learn and explore and kind of take the stuff that sticks and leave the stuff that's uh that that doesn't I've been fairly nice to people in debate so far so even if we did okay cool cool so what is your current ATG Protocol approach to Fitness and athleticism and what is the atg protocol so the the atg protocol it's really a a system of strength training that's designed to fill in the gaps or kind of build a foundation for people so I almost think of it as being a little bit more foundational than traditional strength training it can help enhance everything that we're doing with regular strength training with speed training with all of these different things it's an idea of one of the big key Concepts is an idea called structural balance where we want to make sure that the body is balanced we have certain ratios of strength from different muscle groups to different joints and things like that and one of the things that we see in the way that people train is that we will kind of build strength disproportionately we'll hit some areas very very hard other areas not so much we'll train maybe more of like the the muscular skeletal system more than we will the joints and tendons and things like that and so over time these kind of discrepancies these imbalances lead to either kind of plateaus and performance or also injuries as well and so we just are taking a look at the body and saying look if we never if we never weit trained if we never touch the body it's built up in these specific proportions it develops this kind of way and so we want to make sure that if we're going to try and enhance that we do that systematically we're not kind of leaving we're not ignoring pieces because that's where we kind of run into issues is when we're doing some things but not the other so that's where we yeah we just kind of look at it it really as that that Foundation of this is the the kind of the basic um expectations or standards you need to be able to to get to that then everything else you build on top of it will be more successful H interesting and when you did first discovered atg how much of that system did you actually cover with your own training with your own athleticism let's say yeah very very little I came from more of a traditional like strength and conditioning background um like kind of a University educated bachelor's master's degree and Kinesiology all of that good stuff I've spent time in three different Collegiate weight rooms I've coached division one national champions like I've come that was my original kind of background um and from that experience both coaching and then also as an athlete um I was a college athlete played soccer and like really got into the strength training side of things early to try and enhance my my own performance to try and get that bigger faster stronger become a better athlete and the the issue that I ran into that it seems like a lot of people in this space run into is I got the the the acronym or the moniker is like bigger faster stronger that's the goal that we try and get for a lot of people and what it ends up becoming is bigger stronger slower that's like a very common just kind of way as we get into this more of like kind of bodybuilding powerlifting Centric like that's where some of this like traditional strength and conditioning route comes from um and so that was kind of the experience that I had as well became bigger became stronger not necessarily more athletic in the the ways that I'd hoped um and then getting into the coaching space just started to see some of the the gaps that were going on that some some of the things that we were just overlooking that we were missing in there so that's where I started looking for just different approaches people that were doing different things different ways of looking at this this training concept um and so came across Ben fairly early um in like late 2018 early 2019 before he'd kind of blown up on social media when he still had his um his gym in clear waterer Florida that he was training people out of in person um and so he was actually very gracious enough I was just some kid in the internet that dm'd him was like yo love your stuff can I come like hang out for the day see what you're doing and like he had he' never met me before or anything like that I was very gracious enough to like invite me out um so drove across the state to go hang out there and getting into the gym and seeing like what was actually being done like the results that these guys were getting like with the this himself his own story is outrageous like his athletes like it was just all these guys that were formerly broken guys like oh you talk to anyone in the gym like I had an ACL this guy had an MCL I had a miniscus I had knee pain for 12 years i' given up on basketball and then all of these guys are just throwing it's looking like a dunk show in there all these guys are just throwing down these crazy dunks and it's it's kind of eye opening it's like oh like there's there's something to this for sure and so then as I got into that myself started applying it with myself had a very big um impact on my own athletic ability so my freshman year as like an actual College athlete right playing soccer I got timed is running a a 5240 yard dash um which for people outside the states that aren't familiar 40 times it's not the not something to write write home about I'll put it like that it's not the quickest Time in the World um and getting into more of this side of things like I've run in the four sixes the four FS like and this is five years past my like athletic career athletic Prime like that sort of thing so it's become it's had a very powerful athletic impact on me personally and then as I've started to apply that with my athletes and my coaching business um working independently now getting out of the the strength and conditioning space had a very profound impact on those guys as well so that's the the kind of the story of how I got involved like why I've been using it at the end of the day for me what I'm the most interested in is results like who's who's getting the actual Transformations the results that you're looking for and then try and dig into some of the methods of why that may be and that's what attracted to me the to to ban into that approach in the first place of like literally walking in the gym like something something's going on here so like that's that results based approach and then having those results myself with my own abilities and with my athletes that's what's kind of led me to make this a a Cornerstone of My Philosophy up to up to now very cool how long did it take you to adopt that system because often times for instance How long does it take to adopt ATG system like I was a trainer myself so you you see a system you have your own grounding you know what works for you but what um yeah what was that length of time that it took you to be like hm this this really is working so I'd say I probably dove into it kind of Allin fairly early just to like give it an honest go that is one of things too it's I could try in if you see something new or something that you're going to try like do it verbatim for a period of time before you start trying to mix in your own stuff um and so that that initial period um when he was still like a little bit more like kind of underground and having a little bit different style of programming that that he does now um went into that very hard and then over over time just started to kind of tinker and explore with stuff and and things like that add in little variations add in some of the other things of my other influences and things like that but I'd I'd say I went into it pretty quickly just to yeah like just to give it a go see what would happen and was was pretty decent cool what was it like training with him early on was I What was it like training with Ben Patrick know he's like super rockar now but was like seeing him before he became Ben Patrick it it was crazy it was crazy it's U it's cool because he's one of I would say the the very few people in this this entire space like especially in the let's we say like the fitness like counterculture slightly outside the mainstream there's tons of people in this space promoting their own theories philosophies Training Systems all of these different things but he's one of the only and definitely the best that I've seen at actually living the system himself of like being able to get results that it's just like it's just hard to deny of like seeing the the transformation that he's had the athletic ability that he has the fact that he's continuing to to 8 n 10 years in still perform higher still jump higher as a in his early 30s with a couple of kids and still being able to improve his performance using that stuff like there's tons of systems and people out there who I would say even in theory like a lot of their stuff makes a ton of sense maybe even makes more like logical sense just from like a theoretical or philosophical point of view than some of the atg stuff but I haven't seen people that live it to the same degree that get the same results either with themselves or with their athletes not to say that other people aren't getting good results but to the same degree and so he was someone that that really lived it the the passion was something that you could really kind of see very early on um for what he was doing the yeah it's just the the real like kind of commitment to the goal that he had and then the embodiment of that system as a way that's helped him spread it undeniably it's like that's something of when you can see somebody like dunk and do the splits it's one of those things that it's it's very um it's it's deniable in that sense and so that was probably the biggest thing of like the the intensity of training the quality of training just the the focus and the expectation on execution and things like that those were some of the the biggest things and just that that environment that culture when you actually get in it versus seeing it online those were some of the the biggest things and I think one of the things that I benefited from getting kind of getting in there early Challenges and Mistakes while adopting ATG system on well congrats on the shout out from him by the way because I've as I've observed you over the years I I would put you in that category of freak athlete and in prepping for this interview I was looking at your running form um I had explored the I didn't really exploited but the goter greatest of all time athletes movement and I I see you know how how you sort of align or not align there on certain trains of thought but I was just watching your form and it was just it looked perfect it looked powerful you you were rebounding and I was like oh this is cool um what was some of the challenges that you had adopting the atg system in addition what are some common mistakes you see people make when they try to adopt this protocol yeah the the shout out was definitely something that was that was very special I very much appreciated that um he's a he's a a good dude and the go to stuff stuff that's interesting too I've actually been to the their facility and trained with them as well so I've got some um that was also kind of early on so I know their philosophy is a little bit different now but I've seen at least a decent amount of of that at least from what it what it used to be um in terms of application the hardest the hardest thing that I would say is and it's getting it's getting better now is the acceptance piece so like back when I was doing stuff in a when I wasn't working independently when I was working at a um like the strength and conditioning settings and when I was working in the kind of private Sports Performance settings but under the roof or under the umbrella of kind of different people or they had a little bit like you had to kind of appease or you didn't have free reign basically um and not that wanted to just kind of throw everything that you've always done previously out out and just kind of change everything and do this whole new system but there especially it was getting earlier in those days for him as well the stuff that we were doing was looked on with a lot more skepticism and so it was just the the ability to even do that be allowed to do that like get away you had to kind of like sneak it in when you when you could that was probably the the biggest challenge um and what was the second part of that question um how what what are some CH what are some common mistakes you see people make when they actually try you know cuz everyone will see knees over toes and like let me go try this thing out and um I think there's value in coaching that's what I've learned yeah yeah for sure and so I think that's probably the biggest mistake that I would see is simply the the execution um of just like the standard that gets held to in his own training and people in the gym versus what people will see online especially um maybe a few years ago when he was proning like the standards that he has a little bit more people would be very quick to like okay these are the standards this body weight da d d d da and they would kind of Chase that and try and knock that out just as quickly as they could and maybe they could get to like close to the weights and stuff but the the intent to detail the intent the the quality and the execution of that was maybe not as high and so they're like look I can do all of these and I'm still not jumping the way the Ben is like this stuff doesn't work everything like that and it's more of trying to chase the like what's the intent behind each exercise what are we trying to get out of each one um and so that would probably be a big thing of the way that we do things what we're trying to get out of it is we're doing all these exercises to get an adaptation so like let's say I'm trying to squat my body weight on a slant board or something for for x and number reps like it's cool to be able to do that but that's not the end goal right I want to be the person that can squat that kind of weight because I want the adaptation that that gives me so people will be like if I can do this weight no matter how that I do it like no matter what intent I'm putting behind it I'll get that that goal that achievement that outcome on the the back end that results that transformation and it's not necessarily the case it's much more of can I be the person that could do that standard can I make that look easy could I do that cold without a warmup like really Mastery of these specific movements one of the the really unique things about the the atg methodology and coming back to that structural balance piece is the exercise selection itself so it's a very unique set of exercises set of movements that have very specific adaptations that we're trying to get out of them and so really honing in on the execution of that to maybe a greater degree when we live in more of a kind of CrossFit world of its completion completion completion rather than the way like for time like just more more faster rather than the way that that is being done um that's the the biggest thing that I've seen kind of make it the biggest mistake that I see people that are looking in and trying to copy it from the from the outside like it's subtle but it makes all the difference in the world yeah I can second that I I think I was trying his stuff before I you know saw that you were a big proponent of it and then I had a training session with you and I I saw all of the little fine pointers that you were pushing me through and how much more depth and range to each exercise that they had and um probably how much how much more painful it could be with just little simple tweaks um so I I do recommend to people if you are trying the atg system like do a coaching session with someone who's who's a certified coach in it I think it'll pay dividends cuz now it's given me a new reference point in my mind even when I continue to try things on my own I'm like uh I think there's a fine point that I'm missing I need to probably go call Zach that I never end up calling you until now um you mentioned something about Cold Baths cold without a warmup and I think in I saw you do something in Indonesia where you did some C bass before you went running can you talk about that yeah yeah yeah so that was just that was a little different that was just a little experiment there for fun um but yeah that was the idea with that we hopped in the the ice bath but for a very short period of time so not like the three to five minutes that people will normally do I think it was more like 60 seconds maybe something like that just to get that um like kind of CNS stimulus you know you first jump in everything like it's that big kind of wake up and then jump out before we like physically got cold um to to try Sprint um so that was just kind of just messing around seeing what that was like um but the idea of being able to perform without a warm-up is something that I I very much like people are talking about more and more these days as well um and it's not to say that warm-ups are bad and you shouldn't do them in training like it will enhance your performance but if you the idea is that if you need to spend 20 minutes warming up stretching foam rolling doing whatever it is before you can go and do something powerful or something athletic maybe not hit like your absolute Peak um in terms of just numbers on a on a jump or on a Sprint but you should be able to perform that way you should be able to roll while I think even Louis Simmons like 20 30 years ago had a quote that he should you should be able to go and like bang pots and pans in the the bedroom of one of his like wide receivers and he should be able to get up and go run a mile like just like that and so that that quality goes back to that attributes idea um that we were talking about with the the standards and things like that like the the standards aren't the goal being the person who can do the standards is the goal and that's where that's um that idea comes in as well just being able to show up and perform like that's something that's I think is is valuable from a performance standpoint from an athletic skill standpoint um of like if you're a basketball player can you just roll up to an LA Fitness and can you perform or do you need to have your whole pregame ritual with the headphones and the doing whatever it is like it's just it's it's a more it's a more powerful athlete it's a more powerful individual that can show up and do that compared to somebody who needs all of those things that's the biggest thing it's not that these are bad and you don't want to use those to perform at your best but if if you need those then it's a crutch that's just the the idea Everything is about the Adaptation behind that interesting you mentioned adaptation a lot what's your how do you view adaptation cuz it seems like you're viewing it across these different Realms this is one factor like roll out can I test you cold um any other feature Dimensions that you see around adaptation adaptation is really like the idea behind it is just like that's everything that we're going for in the gym in training in general everything is about the the adaptation and so we've gotten a little bit like with the the Advent of of sports science and everything like that a little bit myopic where to a certain point the the gym has become the end goal and like we're looking to measure performance in the gym when we really need to remember like unless we're coming from like an Olympic weightlifting a bodybuilding which is where also like Olympic weightlifting in particular like all the Russian stuff that's where a lot of our science and educ comes from so it's easy to understand why but like that was the the actual metric they were performing for where for 99% of us like whether we're athletes or not whether we're just training for General life whether we're training to Sprint faster whether we're training to be better athletes the gym is simply a tool to enhance everything else out here so the adap so like the the gym and the the training stuff that is what I would consider like the stimulus we are trying to stimulate the body in some kind of way to to get an adaptation where I'm better on the other end um so like the that's just trying to basically remember what's the the end goal is like what we're actually training for because it's very easy to get sucked into of just chasing numbers in the gym numbers in the gym like and that becomes the performance in and of itself um and just we can lose sight sometimes of what we're actually doing this for when I keep saying that that's the that's what I mean that's the mindset that's the philosophy of like we're doing this to be better outside of here if you're getting better in here and not out there we're doing something wrong and that's one of the one of the common things and one of the early criticisms that I have some of like the strength and conditioning space is best athletes in the gym little playing time on the field best athletes on the field mediocre in the gym and so if that's the case like there's a disconnect like whatever we're doing in here isn't having as much of a translation or as much of a result as we want to see out there or our measures like what we're measuring and comparing in here is not translating as much to everything that we're doing out on the field um and so just always having that as kind of the the North Star what we're looking towards the most is something that I can be I think can be helpful for people to keep in the back of their mind makes sense makes sense talking about Nuances of Athleticism athleticism there are many different I think Dimensions atticism so if you look at us bolt His function is to go sort of in a straight line we look at Messi Messi has to go many different lines many different speeds um can you talk about how athleticism is sort of that that definition is different across different sports and maybe what is athletic is I mean for a desk Warrior like the traditional person who sits their ass on a chair eight hours a day like myself U well I would think that a from that sense athleticism is Task specific so I don't even say sport specific but it's your ability to complete whatever task you want to complete so do you want to run a 5k do you want to run 100 meters do you want to be a rock climber um but if we were going to kind of Zoom like kind of zoom out a little bit um because that has a skill component to and so I want to kind of separate those two just a little bit if I would think about athleticism I think about that more as like raw ability ability to run jump change direction things like that like I think about like an NFL combine um like that is athleticism that's just pure like meat fact for lack of a better term like it is your ability to um perform at whatever kind of markers we're we're looking at can you be fast powerful do you have endurance like those are the markers of athleticism um and then as that translates into skill is your ability to complete a task so like what is your that's more of like the neuromuscular side of things or your again skill development side of things that I can be more athletic than a rock climber but not climb as well as them because I don't have the actual like skill and that same same with like the the messy thing it's your ability to like kind of perceive space make decisions all of that sort of thing um and you could say that that's you could you could lump that into athleticism as well and maybe you should I think it's just a little bit easier to Define them kind of in the in those camps um and at least when people say athleticism that's more of what they mean um versus the ability to problem solve essentially that's kind of what people talk about like jiu-jitsu and that sort of thing that idea of like human chests and like solving problems and being able to execute a skill under duress or under these different things those are the two kind of buckets that I would look at when like what you need to be to perform as an athlete you need this but you also need this like you need the ability to actually physically move run do all these different things but you also need the highest degree possible of skill refinement Nuance in your chosen task but I leave that out I put that separate because tasks are going to be so different um you could be a climber you could be a footballer you could be a sprinter and so like the perception and skill base needed for that is different um but that ability to solve problems is something that's is universal just what problems you're trying to solve makes sense what how many different sports do you dabble in I think you do snowboarding yeah I'm curious actually yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't think I've counted them all before uh soccer football is the the biggest one for sure um I also have a decent little training experience in like kind of combat stuff particularly like Muay Thai um so like after I left Indo actually did a month in in Thailand at Tiger okay cool just yeah get my ass kicked by a bunch of five dud for for a month that was a good time um and then kind of Surfing snowboarding are ones that I uh consider myself more of a dabbler snowboarding we got a little bit more experience surfing I'm still trying to figure out that that one's a little bit harder um those are those are probably the big on I can I can crush a game of of spike ball when when needed but that's more okay kind of recreational one h no tennis any racket Sports climbing I've play I've played them from time to time but not with any consistency enough to to consider that something that i' I'd put in my wheelhouse makes sense makes sense so you know we've discussed the structural imbalance mindset about um when you go to train What's missing in Bodybuilding Protocols, Exposure to Injuries you you should actively try to get rid of those things to a degree or at least measure them and be aware of them um there is this notion of adaptation what else is sort of missing from the current bodybuilding protocol for both recreational and practicing athletes because I I do think that style of training affects those two populations quite differently I feel like the athletes have much more exposure to well I don't know do do regular athletes have much more exposure to injury or does the couch potato recreate ational athlete um have more exposure to injury yeah like the weekend warrior um i' have to I have to check the stats on that I would say they're probably not amazing in either camp at this point both have a little bit going on but I'd say it's a coin toss on on who's worse um in terms of just limitations of more of that kind of bodybuilding style approach I'd say some of the biggest ones are movement quality or like movement capacity like ability to move like it's it's very static and muscular focused um of like can you like look like looking good without performance essentially um in in a nutshell but even just like basic qualities like flexibility range of motion things like that are typically kind of afterthoughts in that in that style of training and then also like the joint tendon side of things would probably the be the biggest one to kind of round that out so yeah that range of motion flexibility piece joint tendon side of things and then even just movement quality elasticity like ability to to run be fluid be mildly athletic those are the those are I'd say the biggest things if you take that too far and it's not to say that's like that's something that has no value in any sense to either of those camps um like body composition is something that's very important for every sport and especially even more so like the weekend warrior so if you're like 20 pounds overweight 30 pounds overweight and talking about how that's not functional it's like you're you kind of miss the boat a little bit either like that expression of like kind of fat don't fly right so it's the it's not that we can we can never touch a weight and bicep curls are going to make you spontaneously combust it's that they exclusive um kind of focus on that style of training at the expense of everything else that's where it starts to become more more detrimental because there is almost now that like kind of counterculture now of all like bodybuilding's evil strength is terrible everything in the gym is bad bad bad and it's like well let's maybe pump the brakes a little bit like there are still plenty of good quality to it um most notably being that strength and body composition and like hormone profile all of those benefits that you get from that style of training just recognizing that it's a it's a piece of the puzzle and the people in that space who make it their own profession obviously take it much much farther and that's not our goal but that doesn't mean that we can't take the valuable pieces of that and apply that to whatever our goal is what's your thoughts on you are known ACL Injury as The Well you shed up by Ben as one of the top people for repairing ACL injuries or ACL recovery post surgery and I guess probably pre uh pre-injury or pre-surgery I imagine um why is that injury so common in sports players and what can people do to prevent it yeah the unfortunate thing with that and with most common like strength and conditioning questions in general is the the answer to everything is it depends it depends um and so I would also say that I'd say it's injuries in general that are becoming more systemic the the ACL we're seeing more of for sure but it's not the only one um and I'd say like I'd say it depends because it's it's a combination of things um there's the poor lifestyle poor development from a athletic or even Sports skill standpoint and a greater frequency and intensity those are probably the the biggest ones so in terms of Lifestyle we eat worse we sleep worse we're distracted more like where it's like kind of the technolog is in every kind of marker of of just basic physiology like we can look around rates of obesity all these different things like systemically that's getting worse so that's going to make us more susceptible to to getting hurt from a just human being athletic motor learning even um skill development side of things I'd say that's also getting worse as well we have no recess for kids we have no multisport athletes anymore there's even like in the the development that we have now especially here in the US I'm going to talk about that a little bit more but like we it's not it's not fun it's not play and it's honestly not even skill development anymore it's like everyone cares about The U10 championship of the of the city you've got the kind of moms and dads like losing their on the side of like a u8 soccer game like so it's not there's no focus on just like being a kid or even just developing like it's all about this like hyper competitive where you're like you're fixed into a position like if you're a center back at eight years old the these days you're going to be a center back at 18 like and you're never going to explore another position and so it's this hyper specialized um hyper competitive world where we miss this the bass where kids used to play they used to play multiple Sports they used to do all of these different things so that by the time they went and specialized they had such a higher just base of movement skill um they just have a higher Library higher like access to different qualities different attributes and then within that all of these sports are now not only are they hyperco competitive but it's also 365 there's no off season you're not playing a different sport and so like by the time you're 12 you've got five years of Hardcore repetitive soccer like under under your belt and so all of those just combine to like wear kids down and then be less resistance to all of the the injury development that we have and then even then that trickles up because it's interesting because you see it at the highest level but you also see it at the Youth Level of like NBA Premier League NFL more injuries than ever before U10 u12 U14 same thing and so that's why to me it's more of this like systemic thing and then at the highest level I would even say that some of the training stuff's not great that we're that we're doing um like on top of all of this like kind of hyper competitive like year round schedule like a lot of the the training work that we're doing from our profession like I don't know if you see some of the videos coming out of like Barcelona and Real Madrid of like the the strength training that they're doing it's like Jesus Christ like what are we doing like it's just so far from just like basic Common Sense stuff and yeah just at the highest level like these guys are getting training that's not always but in a lot of s like in a lot of circumstances just like garbage on top of the like the poor lifestyle and everything like that the higher intensity and so I think all of that contributes to the what you're seeing at at that level as well I heard you had a interesting conversation I forget the gentleman's name you're talking a lot about sleep and I hadn't Importance of Sleep in Injury necessarily paid attention to to sleep and how that sort of plays into injury cuz it seems like a very it's a very subtle thing that probably accumulates over time um how many of the athletes and this is a general theme I think in this interview is a lot of people focus on the research but what I've found and I think you know Ben and yourself for good candidates of this is that in your lab with your clients like you're testing and you're seeing things and and you're pushing the boundaries of of academic knowledge into Real World Knowledge out of the athletes that you work with that have been injured how many of them had maybe not so good sleep habits just curious actually I'd say all of them I mean you go go walk go walk into a high school these days get the entire High School in the auditorium ask them how many of you consistently get quality sleep 7 to 8 hours in bed before 10 10:30 and you do that consistently you're going to get what three hands in a class like in like I'll give you $100 if you could find more than like a 2% like successor you so you know what I mean like it's it's so it's so systemic we don't even think about it anymore it's just like it's just normal to have terrible sleep hygiene terrible consistency with it and it's like it's one of those things that we've now almost kind of gotten to the point of just being numb to of like hearing about it if everyone's like yeah yeah I got to sleep it's it's so it's so common we don't even see it it's like the kind of fish being in water of like do they like you don't actually know just because it's your environment kind of thing um and it's it's also just one of those boring things that sleep better like yeah yeah okay like it's not sexy it's not there's it's it's it's a hard cell um and even just like a high school kid's lifestyle is not set up for that as well like you have to be in class at what 7:30 in the morning like 5 days a week and like the buses are coming by in my neighborhood at 5:30 6: in the morning for these kids that are in their window where they need more sleep than any other time in their life and they're like developing growing puberty and so a lot of it's not even their fault um but yeah if you got to be up at 5: in the morning like unless these kids are going to bed at 10: which we know they're not then they're they're going to be really really behind in that and it's I mean there's tons of research on the the amount of the direct correlation between lack of sleep and not just increased injury risk but poor performance across any marker you want to look at cognitive Performance Physical performance speed power IQ like everything like literally like getting more sleep will make you smarter more athletic prettier like more attractive like and so the opposite is also true like getting less sleep will make you dumber more injured uglier like we have like there's I don't know if we could have any more research on it and so it's not about it's not a knowledge thing it's a it's an application thing it's like a buy and like actually getting these guys to to understand and to value that um and I mean also like from from our end like the top downside of things how many coaches in the Sports World or in the strength conditioning world like actually actually care versus more of just like pay you give it like the the token two cents of like oh yeah get some good sleep but like how many of them actually like do that themselves how many of that actually kind of follow up with that and so it's until we value it they're not going to for sure when it comes to to injury there's a big part of it that's mental so I've had some injuries that for whatever reason when I Mental aspect of Injuries get injured it tends to be like these multi-year things that I'm working through but for me it's been a process of deep introspection so I for instance like with my my most recent ankle injury like now I've explored so much depth between the hips and understanding oh my ankle pain actually comes from it's rooted in the hips and then there's that symbiotic relationship can you talk about the mentality of or what what is the mental side of injury recovery because there's a big Fair component especially when we go play sports versus like I guess weightlifting is a spot you hurt your back with a huge squat like that's that's pretty scary too yeah 100% I'm glad that you asked that cuz I feel like it's just as important as the physical side and talked about significantly less um for me I had a similar experience my one kind of big injury that got me started with this is I broke my ankle going into my freshman year at College like trying to be College athlete yeah had um and I had an interesting recovery too it was kind of rough um but surgery all that good stuff and like took me about a year to like physically come back be good to go it took me at least another year on top of that before I actually felt like myself and so that was one of the things like out like could I could play physically but I didn't feel sharp I didn't feel ready I wasn't confident like I literally just didn't feel like myself again and that's a huge thing that I think people don't talk about one of the the first things that I do with with my athletes and one of the things that I think very few other people do is from when they come in whether it's kind of remote in person whatever it is like trying to set the expectation of I have two goals for you I don't care how long it takes but I want us physically to come back better than we were previous viously we need to be stronger more athletic than we were previously if we got injured at our previous 100% especially if that was a non-con injury that needs to be our minimum threshold our Baseline that we should look to exceed if we are going to come back and be able to do that safely confidently like actually believe in oursel again that just seems like common sense to me and I'll get into in a second but like that's one of my biggest issues with the PT medical world is that's a not not the standard I'll talk about that in a second but that is not the not the expectation and so that's a huge piece one it's just like physically like most of a lot of the times your lack of confidence comes from you know you're not ready you know like physically you don't feel the same you feel like you're not as strong and your body is smart your brain is smart you're intuitive you can just tell that you're not the same that you were before until so you have that kind of neurological you have that fear you have that neurological handbreak going on there and so when we can remove that when we can get you stronger so much of that will just click into place they go and play they're like o yeah like it's it's and so that's where I think the majority of it comes from and then also getting them back to the other side of the coin is I want you physically here but I also want you we'll talk about from the beginning mentally to not have to worry about this again to be able to like we're not done until you can go and play and some of the favorite things that how people say is like oh like I played for the first time last night and I didn't think about my knee or I forgot about it or I had this hard cut and it felt really good or I got tackled hard and like it my knee fell fine I po right back up and that's when like okay that's when you're good even more than like the stuff that we're going to do in the gym of wanting you to be able to perform certain things when I hear that I'm like okay now we're now we're where we want to be and so part of that as well is um drip feeding the sport performance and the return to sports stuff more the same way that we do in the gym so like when we're doing like the rehab stuff in the gym we have ways to like just the smallest incremental progressions with everything we do can break it down into a hundred different layers a thousand different levels and with the return to sports stuff A lot of times it's much bigger jumps it's not broken down that same way you get cleared to jog you get cleared to train you get cleared to play and it's like there's no real like kind of oversight it's like all right good luck and you just like so no wonder they're they're skittish and so like with with footballers I I have a very specific return to sport protocol you can do it for any sport but that's mine um obviously like kind of backgrounding who I work with the most but with we break down the game into different pieces just like we do in the gym so can you just go do some technical stuff purely on your own nobody else around just go out there with the ball very light very low energy move around some con drill whatever it is can you go out with a partner can we start to pass a ball a little bit a little stuff that's a little bit more Dynamic open that up a little bit longer range shoot a little bit whatever you want to do can we then go into like rondos so like it's live but like not really it's a little bit smaller still can we then go into possession into small-sided keeping everything within the full sided within the team full sided within like another team like so just having those little steps each time you do one you get that little win that little win that little win and the jump from one to the next is so much more manageable that you're not like overwhelmed of like o like I don't know like honestly most of my athletes they're doing this stuff without me I I find out about it the next day they're like hey like I played yesterday I'm like okay like how did it feel like oh pretty good like okay cool so like that's I actually will lean on them and rely on them a lot of times to lead that even more than I do um just because again like there's you have an intuitive sense of when you feel ready um and that I I would trust that feeling and I trust them to lead that I'm still there to kind of direct and Pull and stuff like that but I'll lean on them a little bit more and give them that little confidence of their push if they need um and I think that's just so different from the the standard that that is set the majority of time so like the the threshold to get cleared from like traditional physical therapy and everything like that is 85 is it 80 to 95% of your non-injured leg if we can get your injured leg to 85 to 90% or 95% of your non-injured leg you're good to go on a couple of different strength tests hop tests whatever it is and even just the the efficacy or the reliability of those tests I'm not a huge fan of either um but that's wild to me like we you're you're worst s than you were when you got hurt and we're going to send you back out and say you're good to go and not only that most of the time they really haven't been training this leg that intense the good one for the past six months so that leg's detrained and even that we're still not matching not exceeding we're not even matching that level and so that's the the physical strength so of course they go back and they're like I don't know like I don't feel ready like you're not and so then the even just from the from the beginning like how much of the the medical community how much of the stuff are you hearing from your doctor is you'll never do this again you'll never do this again you'll never do this again there's a good chance you're going to hurt this one or do this and so like that's the like that's what they're hearing from day one these are the standards that are being set um and I talked about on the LA the last podcast like some of it's out of like some of it's out of their hands as well like there's lots of limitations from the medical community and the pts like what they're able to do the timelines the facilities the resources that they have so it's not to say that they're they're bad it's just that the understanding that that level that they get you to is not where you need to be and so there's a there's a big gap in the space this is why I do what I do between like people that are in the more like medical Physical Therapy like space a little bit more like conservative we'll say and then there's like trainers performance guys who just like don't want to don't want to touch that leave that alone and it's the athletes that are falling through the crack because the issue is that they get left in the worst possible situation you get almost all the way back where you can kind of play but you're not yourself again so like if they just got halfway back and were told you'd never play again they'd be better off because you wouldn't like you wouldn't be you wouldn't hurt yourself again yeah but they're getting like they become just dangerous enough to go and do it all over again and that's why the reinjury rates are so so awful like we talked about this it's complicated of why the injury rates in general are are so high there's so many factors but I talked about in the last podcast like you can look at different stats depending on where you go but as a general rule about 50 % of people who ever tear their ACL like athletes will only half of them will ever make it back to their previous Level Sports Performance so if you're a college athlete only half of you are going to play college again some of you might go play wck and or mural but only half are going to play college again of that half another half are going to tear retar or injure their other leg within two years so we have one in four success rate not failure rate success rate that will actually get back to their level of performance and be healthy again be not be not be injured again and so that's a stat that I focus on even more so than the the injury rate in the first place is because that's one that we have so much more direct influence over of like we're going through you're going to tell me that we're going to go through six months nine months 12 months of this agonizing terrible boring demoralizing rehab process and after all that you have a you only have a one in four chance of being successful like that's awful that's like that's that's not good enough to me and that's and that's why I do this and again it's not to like harp on saying it's this person's fault it's these people whatever like I'm just saying that's the reality and so like the reason that I do this stuff that I do is just because there's because of that like and there's and there's direct stuff that we can do like so to to counter that like not to be like I'm the Messiah I've done all these things but I've worked with over probably 60 guys at this point I don't have the exact number they're coming off of very various injuries ACL MCL miniscus lots of times it's a combination of that lots of time it's their second or third one I kind of jokingly call the guys that I work with the the problem children because like I've got I've gotten a reputation now where people start to come to me but before it was like people are only coming to me after they've exhausted everything else so it's like they've been through the game they've been through all the experts they've had done all these different things of those guys that I've worked with every I've so of those 60 of the ones that have completed the entire thing that be been able to go through from kind of start to finish zero reinjuries to dat like zero and so it's not to say that that'll never happen it's not to say that once I have one this whole system is or whatever but it's just like compare that to like compare that to the like the standards and it's just like what what are we doing and to be honest like the stuff that I'm doing is not mindblowing like it's almost like it's almost common sense like and so it's this the that's the the kind of the state the State of Affairs around all of this stuff that's the the thought process and the foundation that's that I kind of think about that's why I do all of this that's the very long-winded answer to um getting back to 100% And and everything like that that's where that's where it all goes in my head and that's just I kind of put all that together because to me it's all connected and so that's where like it kind of explains the whole situation it kind of comes full circle that's what's that's the whole deal yeah that that was good and and to me this is a very important topic because I think one thing I've come up with I'm sure there's a technical definition for it in the literature is that you adopt an injured identity and and and I I think i' that's what I've personally struggled with in the past where you you don't do enough physical work to come back Beyond 100% because I I think that is important because if you do come back to just 100% what's your reference there you got injured at that 100% your previous 100% so now we need to raise is what your 100% is so like so it's interesting that um I think for myself I haven't put in all of the work just because sometimes as you're saying it depends injuries are can be so nuanced that a standard protocol might not get you as an individual feeling that physical level of confidence there's always that little this isn't feel right here and and I think ankles are very interesting um they're they're very subtle and everything depends on it versus shoulder lots of things depend on a shoulder but you don't stand on your shoulder every day um and there's so many other joints that trickle up from your ankle can you talk about the hip complex to to ankle Hip to Ankle Relationship relationship cuz I think there's a hip epidemic a hip I want even say imbalance a hip weakness epidemic in the world cuz we all sit especially in the western world and I battle that every day what's your thoughts around that whole dynamic so in terms of there's definitely issues between hip that contributes a ton to lower back okay I say a lot of times the lower back issues stem from like issues with the hip but what's interesting so with you you mentioned earlier the um issue in the ankle because of kind of stuff going on with the hip I think that relationship's actually flipped okay I think for me like the the ankle the foot like that is the foundation that will then affect a lot of stuff Upstream not that it's in not that the inverse is not true but being again like the the base level like the floor the foundation of the house like that affects the stuff on top of it more than vice versa the same way the shoulder doesn't affect doesn't have as big of an effect on the hip as the hip might on the shoulder you can't rotate you're G to over do whatever and so that's where like a lot of issues definitely come and where like there's that's where the rage with all the stuff around like barefoot shoes and all these different things like the that's definitely there's lack of fun function everywhere in terms of Lifestyle performance everything like that and so of course like the foot and ankle is going to be a big is going to be one that's gets hit by that as well um and so I think that definitely contributes to a lot of issues with the hip most people are the most common thing is that people are just extremely tight through the hips just because of how much we sit all day that hip flexor is extremely shortened and that's where just stuff like the the atg split squat the couch stretch um it's not a a catch all fix everything but it hits it checks a lot of those those bases um and so that's just like a very simple one that can start to get some some improvement there and then also at the low back stuff like people are just scared to touch it like people are scared to train it um like directly you're not allowed to bend your spine everything has to be perfectly brace neutral all of the time um and so it's yeah we can get into some specifics if you want to but I think that's like kind of an overview of of that sort of thing makes sense I I see you doing some very heavy um seated what do you call it good mornings love you do that with very aggressive weight talk to us about you Seated Good Mornings know first of all explain that exercise cuz I guess not many people do that what are the benefits of that basically you're you're sitting on a Ben like you're straddling a bench with a bar on your back like you're going to squat it and you kind of hinge forward so you're trying to touch the the the goal SK you're actually trying to maintain extension through the spine um rather than letting it like the weight wants to like wants to round you over it wants to break your posture so your your idea with that movement is to stay extended and so you can start it with dumbbells like most people should start it with dumbbells not with a bar um but that we trying to touch your belly button to the bench without letting your chest touch so you're folding forward until like your stomach basically touches the bench and comes back up and so there's a lot of load through the lower back but also through the glutes that's actually like if you when you get the most people struggle with this at first because of the mobility because there's a big Mobility component Big Stretch to the groin through the Addam and so this one really complements that split squat very well um like these are the two that I'll prescribe your like if your hips are super super tight especially as an athlete um loading stuff more than just stretching stuff is very very effective for create for improving Mobility creating more of that structural change as opposed to just passive range of motion but the combo there of like split squat will get a lot of hip flexor and then good morning gets a lot of groin adductor so you get the front to back and the side to side so just those two as a super set can do a ton things for kind of hip low back um and so once you get the the mobility to the groin what will restrict people with the good morning to start off with um more so than just like the strength piece or any or anything like that but then as that improves then you can really start to load load this a little bit more and it can become a strength exercise more than a Mobility exercise um and it's awesome for building that lower back strength for sure but also like I said really building strength through the through the glutes you get such a good hip extension through there that once you you know you're starting to do it right when your glut start to feel sore the next day like the back actually almost Works a little bit more isometrically like you won't feel it sore the next day compared to the glutes I'll feel more muscular work in the in the glutes and so a couple of cute I really like focusing on as you're going into the bottom taking your weight through your feet as well so you almost push you the feet to really drive through the the hips on the way back up um and so from like a strength and Mobility perspective does a ton of things for for that lower back but then also from an athletic perspective again coming back to that idea of structural balance that's a range of motion that people almost have never touched before that um is very unique to this there's very few other exercises that will work through that so if you think the the sticking point where is it the hardest it's where your torso and your thigh are basically parallel so they're almost touching almost every low back or even just strength exercise you're going to do it's going to be at 90 degrees your legs are here and your your torso is parallel to the floor and so it's that mid-range but we have so much um so lack of development through that that end range down here where they're touching that you can get that's one of the cool things with the atg stuff is you can get so many even people that are welldeveloped so many newbie gains through this because there's just little ranges of motion little kind of hacks little spots that you unlock that you just haven't touched before and so you can develop so so so quickly and so that one in particular has big correlation to acceleration your ability to explode its ability to start because if you think about like the position of a swimmer when they're like on the blocks or a sprinter coming out of the blocks or even like yeah D linan think about the position like the how close the Torso and the thigh are to each other when you're all wound up and then your ability to explode out of that and so has great that zero to five has great great carryover to to that one from an athletic standpoint so you got tons great for hiip low back stuff just like Health maintenance and then also that athletic side abil like the athletic side of things the ability to explode um and accelerate does big things as well well that's super interesting so I'm a I'm a big what's the wood I'm looking for I don't I don't think zeelot a wood but I I pay very attention to the details so that's why I enjoyed coaching with you and I think the more knowledge you have the more um you end up seeing or questioning all these little details so here's an interesting detail I notice when you do c good mornings you do are on a weit but um your mouth is always open on the way up tell me about that is that just your style of combating how much weight is on your back or yeah not not int not conscious at all I have I have noticed that as well it just it it doesn't it feels natural and so I do it it's yeah it's like that's it's weirdly almost it might be a way of like bracing and making pressure actually even though it's kind of counterintuitive because it's like this like it's still like it's tight through the when we're coming back out um but I have noticed that and I actually get comments in that in almost every video of like because it's like it's just wide open it's kind of funny but yeah not not intentional just happens on its own very but I do think just to that same point of I've heard other people it's not something that I've explored a ton um but people talk about like Kobe and Jordan and that sort of thing there's like they're both exactly exactly so like yeah the posture with the tongue and that sort of thing and so it's an it's an interesting thing I've heard some people explore it um a little bit but it's not something I'm quite as well versed in okay what do you tell yourself so you recently got I I won't I won't claim injury on you you recently had a little tweak right um Injury Experience what do you tell yourself when you first get injured I think that's that's a very important component of for athletes and anyone who gets injured yeah um yes so I had a little a little snowboarding fall like there's a landed on my shoulder like separated the joint just like a little bit [Music] um first thing I don't know like I actually first like 24 hours I kind of try not to analyze it too much honestly if anything I try more to just like feel of like let's just just kind of notice what's going on like just try and sit like let things settle and then we'll we'll kind of feel it out um and so then the the next day went to the um er just because there was one there got a little x-ray like nothing's broken it's just that you got like this little this little separation here um but then also so the the two days after that this I still had two more days in the snowboarding trip so it's like you should probably let a chill but at the same time like we've got a few more days so we're going to have to like ride that out still so it was definitely a little bit more conservative but we are back out on the out on the slopes the next two days so just trying to um I mean I guess with that it's like not letting it affect what I was going to do and then just kind of listening okay so this is kind of the the protocol you need to let it chill for a few days but then after that like just get it moving get it working so then that's kind of the the the goal or the thought process now is just like giving it as much of that stimulus again as as we can in as many different ways as possible explore what hurts explore what feels good explore what feels weak try and not aggravate it too much from the pain side of things and try and hit those things that feel weak as hard as you can until that comes back it's like range of motions good everything like that it's not quite as strong as the the other one just yet um but yeah just seeing it as an I mean seeing as an opportunity to improve is a little bit cliche um but there is there is that that element of it but just thinking of like okay like I just need to do as many things as possible until this feels it should again um use it as much as I can as frequently as I can as many different ways as I can um it's not something to hurt like to avoid and not touch maybe in those beginning stages when it just needs to calm down um but then once you get the green light the more you need to do as much as possible the more you do the better as long as you're not making things worse um so that I think is probably the one thing that's the kind of guiding principle with all of the injury stuff that we do whatever whatever it is whatever injury that you have and that's even another thing is that the diagnosis is something that's really not that important um to me at least like it's some it tells us some stuff and like there's maybe some Nuance but like shoulders to shoulder or knees and knee like you need to be able to do these different things and the body is what's going to to heal you you just need to give it a stimulus to do so and so using it in as many different ways as we can as often as we can at the greatest intensity that we can without again overdoing it without making things uncomfortable without making things worse that going to be the the trick that's going to help whatever injury you have heal faster come back better I like what you said that the body will heal you you just need to give it um the stimulus that it needs so I that's I'm going to keep keep that cuz in this interview silently I'm picking up things from you to to go back and and get on the me get on the the pitch because I I do miss it you know what I mean and and I think the longer that I go I stay away from the pitch I think to a degree the more I lose that sense of identity of an athlete being able to compete in those you know unknown environments because it's different to the gym like you go to the gym all day you do that and you get bored but coming into a a dynamic sport environment versus like a climbing climbing you just up and down on the wall um but versus like football there's so many different joints that I think it's one of those complex sports similar similar to basketball as well um I think you jump a lot more and you could hurt you could definitely up your ankles pretty bad in basketball um H this is I'm excited by this and you talked about barefoot shoes so I'm I've Barefoot Shoes fully converted to a degree to many different types of barefoot shoes uh what's your take on it I noticed when I trained with you you had me train Barefoot and most of your athletes do train bare feet what's the mindset behind that yeah definitely like getting out of your shoes as often as you can I think is something that is is very very valuable um if we think about like the feet have close to as many if not as many um kind of sensors proi receptors as our hands and so we think about like the fine motor skills of the hands how many different things that they can do um like just the easiest example is if like you wouldn't try and play the piano with oven mitts on and like just all like something that's just going to cover up and just take away again that stimulus that sensory perception is one of the biggest things in terms of balance in terms of touch tactile feel all of these different things um and so not to say that like you should throw your shoes away but it's definitely something that we should just be mindful of that's that that connection between the foot and the Brain all these different things like with our current lifestyle of being in shoes on perfectly flat ground all of the time I just think the more that we can get out of that the better because it's not something that we're really going to it's not something we're going to overdo in our current like lifestyle so the more that we can get the better um I'm a big fan of getting kind of outside and Barefoot as well again like the grass is something that's massive you get a little bit of the benefits of grounding you get some of the Sun um slightly more uneven or softer posture or like um terrain like grounds that you're you're walking on as well so the barefoot shoes are great it's a good place to start um but also just being mindful that's so like especially some of like the I really like Vios and that sort of thing I've got some I've got some of those or something that I wear a lot um but also just being mindful of the the thickness because like the common explain the the common um addage is that like we're not we're not designed to wear shoes which is true but we're also not designed to walk on concrete so like if you start like throwing off your shoes like the impact it can be almost like too too much too intense um so just making sure that the the the cushion is something that's not horrible as long as it's not gigantic um but the wide toe box is very big the zero drop is very big but yeah there's there's tons of benefits from just being barefoot in general um it's something that again it's it's one of those just like the atg stuff it's just low hanging fruit it's something that most people have done so little that your feet are very underdeveloped I'm a huge fan especially before I was in the gym that um you and I trained at when I I was training guys out of the park um and so we would do a lot of sprinting Barefoot um like long and like 80 yards just open up real top speed stuff and every time guys would come back like the next couple of days and like my feet my feet my feet like they're so sore and it's just because it's it's a different level of stimulus and it's something that most guys have done very very little of um and so yeah sprinting Barefoot in the grass I think is awesome um lifting in in bare bare fooot shoes and everything like that's fine I don't think it's going to give you as much of the stimulus as you think it is because it's really not that different um in so like you're still flat footed it's more of stuff that's stuff that's plyometric stuff that's Bouncy Stuff that's moving where you can get that um stretch reflex with stuff in the foot or you can get that sensory motor side of things with the with the foot um those would be the biggest things and so yeah if I had to pick one either walking daily um outside in the grass I think is massive or sprinting like once or twice a week out in the grass if you can get Barefoot and stuff like that as well but the more you can do that stuff the better for sure what's your thoughts on the beach cuz I I live I live near the beach and I run on the beach but what I've noticed is that um while the surface is very uneven Beach I think it also compensates for your own weight distribution so you don't get the reverse I guess the reverse stimulus that you need to react against any thoughts on that so running on the beach I I don't like like sport stuff like all the cone drills and the sand like I love it for the natural element getting in the water getting the sun like all of that good stuff um but yeah it's it's too soft and it will it will change your biomechanics um and so you'll just tend to collapse at the arch a lot more you pronate way way too much um and so yeah it's definitely not something I would do too much of um if you can get down to like the harder sand that's that's better for sure than the than the soft stuff okay um that's interesting yeah not it's not one that I'm that I'm a big fan of because of the the way that it will mess with your your foot and ankle and with your biomechanics cool so you talked the the name of the show is progress guaranteed and I'm very interested in um I look at this entire space as Grounding we're all exploring to a degree the true animal that we were that we actually are now coming into a new environment I'm so you mentioned grounding you know what's your thoughts on grounding what's been your experiences and you know what advice we have f on on grounding yeah I I mean I love it I think the stuff anything that we can do to get back um and kind of reconnect with nature more whether that's kind of being outside whether it's eating kind of real foods like all of these things I think are are infinitely valuable and the more of that you can do the better um this podcast was going to be in my backyard with my feet in the grass I just lost my like wired headphones so I didn't want like the neighbors making too much noise or anything like that um but I'll go out there with my laptop and that's where I'll do work most days when I'm when I'm working from home um again I think it's something that's it just logically makes sense right of like we're not meant to be indoors in a box under fluorescent light all all the time um and so like is it going to like you can argue the degree of of impact that it's going to have on like Health different things like that but there is like there's there's plenty of science coming out on things like grounding things like sunlights is very very big probably even more than grounding for like circadian rhythms when you talked about sleep and stuff like that morning sunlight and avoiding light uh nighttime lights like Tech in particular two the biggest things you can do for for health and for sleep and everything like that it resets your circadian rhythm which affects your hormone production things of like melatonin and things like that make sure you actually feel sleepy when it's time to go to bed um so that's that stuff's massive and it's what's cool about it too is like it's a with all of this stuff you get kind of compounding benefits if you get like a few things at once of you get grounding you get sunlight you get fresh air like all at one time and so it's one of those things that yeah it's like just taking your your laptop outside to work if you're if you're working like the it's one of these things that's there's there's science on it for sure there's the woow woo side of it of just like being in nature all of these different things but I definitely think it's something that I try and do a ton myself personally um and even it's something that I'm trying to emphasize more with my athletes as well so especially for like the recovery side of things you look at from any side of the performance side of things recovery side of things but we want to put our we want to optimize our physiology as best we can so like the environment in here that is us we want this to be in a healthy State a state to perform a state to heal if we're trying to come back from an injury we need to heal recover we need to be in as optimal a physiological State as we possibly can if we're inside all day sitting all day eating like crap it's not just like that's just going to diminish the effectiveness of all of the training that we do um and so that's just like if our goal is to to speed that up to be as effective as we can as come back as fast as we can whatever it is perform better that's only going to be enhanced by all of these things which are the easiest way to think about it is just that of like we're optimizing our physiology we are putting our body in its most natural state possible so that everything else that we do whether it's cognitive stuff L just working creativity athletic stuff whatever it is like all of that's the rising tide that lifts All Ships all of that stuff is going to be better the more that we have the more that we're doing those kind of things basically yep yep I see more people exploring um rotation now so i' I've also been exploring that as well just as a new I want to call it a new form of Fitness Rotation in Training but my own education and that Dimension what's your thoughts on incorporating rotation into your training or have you explored that effectively yeah yeah I definitely think it's great I think it's interesting um that's like it comes from a lot of like the common criticism of again back to the gym stuff and what is the reason why it's not maybe so ideal for for movement quality it is because it is just so static and sagittal and straight line as opposed to the the way that we move which does definitely have this this rotational element to it the the spinal engine stuff from grety like all of that stuff is M makes a lot of sense and is is very very interesting and you do see it show up in um nature in high level athletes all of these different things um and so I think it's worth dabbling and exploring and I think there's people doing good stuff in this space um I think as with with anything with like a counter movement like it definitely probably swings too far of like they make these criticisms of traditional training traditional strength training of all of this stuff it's it's unnatural they never do any rotation like it's all it's all terrible it's only focused on strength and muscle mass and everything like that so we're going to only do this rotational stuff and then like you swing too far where you've got guys just like swinging and clubs and like they're all like 150 lbs and like would get run over by an average guy in the NFL and so it's like there's it's like the throwing the baby out with the bath water of like it's it seems it seems like you're either in one of these two camps and they're starting to come together just a little bit more but there's definitely like there's definitely good stuff to be had here um but it's just like becomes its own like identity and fad just like the the stuff over here so the concepts I like a lot and make a lot of sense to me the training I'm seeing um I'm less convinced by so far I'm seeing some guys that do good stuff but it's one of those that so far at least I makes more sense to me in theory rather than application um again coming back to the Ben Patrick thing of like put any of those guys up up against him in a Sprint in a dunk contest anything like that like who and so it's that that results side of things there's some people doing good work here getting good results like everything like that but it still needs more for me to be like totally bought in by it I need to see more results more transformations to the same degree that is happening in some of these these other spaces these more traditional methods and so you have that integration of the two of the the movement quality the rotational side of things even the fal side of things if we want to get into that but with the strength and power you got to have both if we want to be optimal um and there's like for the most part there's like a little bit of like ignoring that strength and power side of things um or at least they're not developing it to the same and so that's what I would like to see a little bit more of that mix of both gotcha gotcha a lot of people are interested in research or or what I've noticed so I I don't come from America so one of the things I've noticed in I won't even call it we say Western tradition or ideology is the the scientification of the natural world right and and and looking at it from this explainable lens whereas like if we watch football players who play from Brazil versus the African players like their their ability to move on the pitch just defies like structural science to a degree um so there's an environmental component there is a emotional component a cultural component and and all research you know as an academic you know the traditional publishing process is kind of you know there's a game to it as well um but all research all published research research comes from a hypothesis and is proven with a certain set of observations so with that in mind what's something that's not proven in literature yet that you're observing or you're curious about trying to to prove I mean the like just to come back to the the fasal and the rotational stuff like that stuff is stuff that's still very new that is like there's a lot it makes a lot of sense um there's not as much hard science around it yet um but again just coming back to the idea of like yet or even like some of the the atg stuff some of the knees over toes stuff like all of that stuff a lot of this is kind of cherry-picking from history past training methods past people that have been successful and kind of looking at some of the unique things that these people have been doing and trying to piece together some of some of this stuff um yeah that's it's always recognizing that the the research side of things the research base stuff is is valuable but again just like the gym it's like a tool as well um and so there can be you kind of hint at that the in the Western World the western side of things and an over Reliance on it to a certain degree like an LA a lack of ability to or a fear to like think critically um and to just like if it's not in like a peer- reviewed paper then that's like stay away don't touch it all all of these different things you're going to get like trolled on the internet um so there there is an element to that and it's like the the combination of the two Western medicine versus Chinese medicine like the like the value to both um yeah in terms of specific topics um I don't know that's that stuff is stuff that that I'm interested in but more of even just that that thought process and that philosophy using that to to guide you rather than using that to be the I guess the end all be all yep gotcha yeah I think for myself I'd love to I'm on the experiments for for the mental side of things right how does an athlete or a person in general just developed mentally and how that interfaces with the body um recurring thoughts on all of these different types of things to that point too like that's another thing is just recognizing that there are intangibles like there are things that you can't like that you can't quantify in a laboratory and stuff like that and so like that doesn't mean that they're not valuable I think that would probably be be one of the the criticisms of like mental toughness will to win drive like it's one of this is like it's it's situational it's contextual it's different from person to person situation to situation it's hard if not impossible to measure so we don't measure it so we don't think about it and it's one of those things like the the expression like what gets what is it what gets measured gets managed or things like there gets all these different things and so we have a tendency to overvalue things that we can measure just because we can measure them and so that's some of the stuff coming back to the the strength and conditioning side of things of like why we can get sucked into the weight room a little bit is because it's it's very it's is very measurable and so like it gives us a sense of a feeling of control and progress that then coming back to the playing time thing of like doesn't always transfer over to the the pitch that we the way that we want it to but we can very clearly see increases in weight and size and muscle mass and body composition all these different things in speed and power that that we can quantify but again yeah recognizing that there's always this element of like creativity within the game of of football like fluidity skill all these all of these different things that are much harder to to quantify but doesn't mean they are not important um and so that's just one of the the pieces with that do you have fun when you're training I don't typically so I I'm I'm searching for that it it depends for sure um I think the the most fun and the best training sessions are typically like group sessions like when you talk about that environment and stuff like that um the I would say some of the solo sessions that I have aren't necessarily as fun more like I'll come at it more from a place of curiosity or growth or exploration or things like that or even like competition to like compete with myself compete with past numbers um but one of the things that the like strength and conditioning World probably does very well that they don't get enough credit for is that like that environment that culture piece um and just like the ability to get guy a group of guys together and get them to compete and push themselves and grow like that's the sort of thing that they don't get enough credit for that they'll just get hammered on by like that they'll just get hammered on their training methodologies by the the counterculture space and people outside of that but then yeah they're their their training sessions look like they're boring they're people are barely breaking a sweat like all the and so it's just the yeah like the the two different worlds I guess but that is I think the sessions that I've seen to be the most fun also the most productive as well that was one of the things that coming back to like Ben and the knees over toes guy was so interesting when I first went there and saw him training uh guys in the gym he had a group of guys like younger like basketball guys that all trained together in the gym were working hard getting stronger all of these different things and proving and then they also all got together once or twice a week and played like pickup basketball and it was like compe like one V On's like King of the court to like 50 and then like hardcore like full court five aside like it was a real like energy and atmosphere and environment around that that I think definitely think contributed to to the result that they got and again that's one of those intangibles that's harder to measure and gets overlooked some but that environment piece is usually what I would say is has the biggest contributor to how much fun you're having in the in the weight room yeah that's that's an interesting point as a as a data scientist I've been very curious about all of these intangible factors like it and I I hope that more coaches like yourself um at when I say at your level meaning at within your scope right so you're not part of the The Big Box you're you're an independent you're pushing the boundaries you're getting results it' be interesting to measure like hey did you masturbate or jaac the night before right um number sleep what was your self talk like that morning what was your self talk like before your game um did you have a scare in that game all of these little things are you playing someone that you think that's much better than you all of these little Nuance factors um I think there's an opportunity in the space of Fitness or human movement to Define more variables with which to categorize people um like what what's the ethnicity bone Den like so much weird things like for instance I don't like to lift as heavy in squats cuz I've just never felt like my frame I've done the cross it my body just doesn't care to lift insanely heavy weight and I think that's also condition on me getting long-term injuries like three or four years in in excruciating shoulder pain so I'm also very cautious so it's interesting in my own Journey observing why I don't do certain things and looking deeper into those factors I think there's there's an interesting opportunity for for coaches to define a new level in the field and to publish their own independent studies outside of the big box um entities yeah and like you said it's just that expanding into some of like starting to quantify some of those like intangibles that happen traditionally and seeing if we can draw some some some better conclusions for that that stuff's definitely super interesting so I'd be curious to hear how that uh how that gets on yeah okay so we're calling this thing progress guaranteed how do you define success and how do you measure progress I think you'd have to so in what domain cuz I think there's like you have to this is just you you know like I I want to get to know you like how how are you charting This Thing Called Life okay and what do you define as success CU I think something that gets pushed on us is go become a billionaire that's success and then y shape etc etc what's your definition of success I would say success actually ties into the second part I would say success is mostly related to progress um in like a in a chosen field a sense that I'm actually feels very to me at least um when I feel when I have much greater um not selfworth but when I'm just happy with myself versus when I think I'm being a piece of um it's usually when I like I have a sense of prog press towards something of like just knowing like I'm doing something to the best or near the best of my ability to feeling like I'm am kind of growing I think is that is that thing it's really that's that's the biggest one and you can pick any of your different fields you want that's what's kind of cool about it if you can yeah take away some of the pressure of like that outcome based thing that you're talking about and flip it to just that that Pete there's a hundred different domains I could to pick from it could be like my my weight my fitness my business my social media all these different things but just feeling like I'm doing something I'm working towards something that's probably the the biggest um I like the single biggest biggest thing around that that's super interesting definition um so what rituals or habits do you practice to make sure that you continue to make progress you could choose a domain if that helps yeah yeah yeah um I mean the biggest thing with anything for me at Le is just trying to be consistent okay that's what's I think has been the the biggest thing that has helped me throughout my entire life and every domain is like even when I maybe haven't been as worked to the same intensity as as other people I've always I've always been very very consistent when I was a footballer growing up trying to make it into college like just always doing stuff always playing and like I think I remember throwing up from training like twice in my entire career so it's like not of like just going and busting a gut absolutely killing myself but just continuing to show up continuing to show up um kind of day in and day out and same thing from now like a business and a training perspective and stuff like just continually trying to find new things and so almost that idea of like the the atomic habits book of like what's the the smallest thing that you can start but then start to do consistently um because I think where I've fallen into traps before and potentially other people do as well is that roller coaster of kind of intensity and Slack where like I'm not doing enough I got to do more more more more more more more just do everything I'm gonna have the perfectly outlined day and then a week in I'm like I'm dead I hate this none of this matters D and then you slide slide slide slide slide and you're do it and you've let go of everything I'm watching I'm watching two hours on Netflix I'm playing video games I'm eating like all that stuff you do that for a week and you're like God damn it I'm a piece of and then you Snap the Whip and then you come up up up up up and so just what's the smallest thing that you can start doing and start doing that consistently and then just like again try trying to make the smallest incremental improvements you possibly can but the ones that you can stick to um because that I think is when I've been the most productive and the most even fulfilled too it's not when I'm doing 18,000 different things a day it's when I'm like okay like I I I know I did something good today I know I did what I thought I was going to do what I said I was going to do like keeping your own promises that's a big one U but part of keeping your own promises is not prom promising yourself you're going to do something in insane um so like doing like that that manageability piece and then like being able to actually stick with that that combination is I think what's been felt the most um selfworth and like the best about myself the most but like I'm progressing all all of those good things beautiful beautiful what what's your selft talk like when you're not making progress like do you beat yourself up are you talk I'm I'm my worst CR for sure like 12 rounds in the boxing ring like just be the like it's um it's yeah yeah yeah it's definitely much worse than it probably could be we being the most healthy person that we we possibly could [Music] um this is also very interesting yeah no just to see how different people mentally coach themselves right and how they respond to like the military style you're a piece of says all right made a mistake you can do it yeah and see yeah I I do that a lot un willingly like I don't respond well to that but it's just what happens anyway it's not like it's a productive way of like whipping me back into shape okay and so that's where like what's has tend to be the most successful for me is um recognizing trying to be a little bit more accepting as well um and not not feeling like I then have to compensate and bounce back and that's where I just keep coming back to that having smaller adjustments or like smaller Corrections rather than like even if you think about just like a plane trying to fly a long distance and stuff like that if you're constantly all over the place like you're going to be all over the map and just recognize like recognizing okay you're over here let's just start to come back and just being a little bit more like accepting a little bit more tolerant and not thinking I have to kind of uproot and change my entire life and do all of these different things in order to get back on track um that's been much more helpful for me gotcha yeah one thing that works that I found out work for me when I was almost over a decade is replacement or brainwashing so I would record what I want my mental thoughts to be and I'll just drown it with reps I'll listen to this thing for like 10 hours straight on repeat it sounds like it whatever but my brain is going to accept it at some point and um so that's my hypothesis that I'm testing with different people uh and and there's very interesting difference in how you get motivated by hearing other people motivate you versus hearing yourself tell you how you should be lot of different guilts that come up um yeah different times of day so I just share that with you you know um as a Daya Point yeah it's very interesting you're a freak athlete right so freak athletes make look easy okay but what are two things that you tell yourself when you want to quit usually just trying the biggest one is just trying to reconnect with why I'm doing it in the first place um CU at least for me the the most common voice that comes up whenever I don't want to do anything hard whether it's wake up in the morning whether it's take the goddamn cold shower whether it's like a hard workout in the gym like the the voice for me the criticism always tries to diminish its value like oh it's not it doesn't actually matter that much it's not actually that important it's like it's not going to help you do whatever like it's not a big deal that's always at least for me that's always like my out from that that like kind of just the Joe Rogan mental side of things like that voice that's always where it goes it tries to make it seem less significant um and so then the the opposite of that of trying to reconnect with that that purpose of why I'm doing of whatever it's whatever why I'm doing whatever it is that I'm doing that's usually the the most helpful thing for me it's like okay yep come on and then also if anything almost trying to diminish the or trying to relax almost of like if there's this thing that is that is hard a lot of times not only am I trying to mentally diminish the value of it or the significance of it but in my mind I'm also playing up the difficulty of it as well like it's this giant thing for this little reward and so just like kind of taking a breath of like there's a reason you're doing this and it's really not that like it's not that bad just like like going being a little bit calmer like of of all of that stuff just like when you're in the moment it seems like this gigantic thing and then literally 5 minutes later you're like all right and so just starting to to recognize that bit of like yeah just trying to recognize the truth of the matter of it's not as big it's not as cruel or it's not as horrible as I'm making it out to be and it does actually have some worth that you've decided previously when you weren't like in the middle of it um and so kind of trying to remember that as well that over ification of that difficulty is that a CNS response that happens when a certain stimulus hits your body um probably like it's it's just that like that overwhelmed feeling and stuff like that like maybe I'm doing I'm feeling a little bit tired when I'm like at my laptop or doing some work and stuff like that oh my God I'm so fatigued I'm so tired I should do whatever I should take a break I should take a nap and then like you just keep going for five minutes you're like yeah you're actually okay and it's just the I really like the the Joo willing thing where he's talked about um taking the the next day it's like if you're if you wake up in the morning you're like God I just feel like I'm so tired all of this stuff like I genuinely feel like I need a break he was like take that break the next day it's because it's like ra when you're in the moment a lot of times it is just that voice and so if you get up and get through it then all of a sudden you realize like oh you're not actually that bad and so it's just the idea of not like caving to that weaker not self but like that that inner weakness yes so yeah just like giving up to that like not caving to that in the moment and then if you do genuinely need a rest today just take it tomorrow yeah you'll be you'll be good to go I like I like that idea of like if you're deciding that you don't want to do something because it's hard in the moment that's usually a bad read nine times out of 10 99 times out of 100 it's it's a bad reason to quit and you're going to feel like about it later it's a good one do you nap um yeah de inconsistently but yes usually short ones like 10 12 um stuff stuff like that yeah I notice Americans have a hard time napping like I'm from the Caribbean I na like that like really oh yeah how do you do it normally dude 10 you give me five minutes on the ground I I wake up refreshed it doesn't matter like I literally going into dream states within about 2 or 3 minutes instantly wow um so that's just an iar thing I think I I might have some uh chem issues maybe I think I have low iron sometimes so I do sort of get that fatigue well I think that's more common in other parts of the world like even in like Europe and stuff like that they have the it's not like the Siesta I guess the Siesta is more like that's a Spain that's a Spain thing but dude throughout the Caribbean like I grew up seeing my grandfather eat lunch take a nap after like for years so that's programmed into my brain um yeah it's just like it's that it's that the toxic side of that like hustle culture of like oh you're napping you're like sleep yeah s for the week all the stuff so yeah yeah i' you know Tim F kind of open my eyes to like you know how all the different experiments that he did was like taking nap small naps versus the big um the big chunks you I noticed you eat really clean to a degree so you eat like really good milk really good meat talk to us about um what led you down that path yeah so I'm definitely a big fan of the more like kind of animal based style nutritions like not like full-on carnivore that sort of thing but just having that as like the the the kind of foundation um but I do think that whatever style you're eating like carnivore vegan vegetarian pescatarian like I do think we undervalue the quality of food and just nowadays I think it's it's a little bit of a fad but it's also more important than than ever just because of how processed and refined and essentially shitty every everything is um that it becomes that much more important to like it really does matter from a nutritional point of view um of just the stuff that you're putting in your body like it's POS it's people always get hung up over the the expense and it is a little bit more expensive it's really like the way that I eat it's really not that bad um but it's also there was a stat that I heard that's I don't know if the exact numbers are accurate but it's like back in the the 70s or the 80s maybe even earlier than that um a family's nutrition budget was like 30% of their income or 20% of their income was a very high number um their medical budget was like three or like four or five wow and so now it's like flipped of like so it's the same amount of money spending it in a different place like now it's we spend a little on food and a ton on Healthcare and you could make the argument like the same money but like quality of life and all these different things so to me that is one of the most important places I could spend spend my money um so I I definitely just think about it more as like a priority you could even think about as an investment of like if you are the magic maker the rain maker and whatever um field whatever it is that you do it's just coming back to that optimizing your physiology idea of like there's going to be nothing that you can do that is going to be more even make sense monetarily than investing in yourself like the Alex horos has like the SNB 500 idea when he talks about like learning instead of like investing in the stock market when you're so instead ofing the S&P you invest in like the smm like learning skills because how much more valuable that is like you learn how to sell and you can get you can make infinitely more money than the 10% return you can make in the stock market and so like same kind of idea of like that same concept just applied to health um and yeah just thinking of of how important it is like it's just something that it's something that is makes all the sense in the world to me and to not do honestly I think is head scratching I'll put it like that yeah are you a super clean eater or you eat some um for the for the most part I'm pretty like I cook the majority of my meals um really try and focus on like grass-fed beef pasture raised eggs um organic produce I know organic doesn't make the biggest difference in the world these days um but that when I say quality that's usually what I mean of like eating like real food and like being very aware of the sourcing of it um so it's a very good book called an anti-act Farm um that's really it's very it's very short and it's really more of a like checklist or like a catalog rather than like an actual book but it basically explains like what all of the labels in the grocery store mean because nowadays we have so many different kind of labels that all are just really just trying to branding just to make you think that it means something and which ones actually mean stuff and which ones mean next to nothing and so like eggs are the easiest one you've got like the store bot you've got the cage you got the cage free you got the free range and then You' got the pasture Rays um and if you go into that like store bought like Kate there's very very little difference between free range cage free and just like traditional like store bought like they're all kind of terrible from an ethical standpoint from a nutritional standpoint but ones like that means pasture raise that's like the difference in what that actually means in terms of how the chickens are raised and stuff like that makes a makes a huge difference and so it's just those little nuances like that that most of us don't really know about it's just a very quick guide um or easy explanation of how to decipher all of that stuff so that's one that I recommend a lot oh yeah have you seen some of the videos where um you'll have fake food like sponge food so someone will cut a piece of fish and it looks like a piece of fish but it's really like a sponge that that you're eating and like it Cooks the same there's crazy stuff like fake eggs and and now I oh yeah and then dying food so I I like chemical engine is my background so I'm super fascinated with like how you can fake things um I don't know I go down different rabbit holes so that that gets interesting sometimes definitely trying to go down that rabbit hole with all the fake meat and all that stuff but I'll I'll stay away from that as long as I can all right so last couple of questions um what's your career optimization function so is it finances work life balance is it Freedom what what is it for you how have you chosen to architect your quote unquote career H um I'd say it's probably a little bit more balanced of like I don't know I do like I do work a lot and I guess I would say people that would know me say that I work quite a bit um are you workoholic no no definitely not to that that same like I'm very um mindful about like again it's like I'm consistent but I wouldn't say I'm like Allin intense hardcore this is all I do like don't talk to me so it's um like I think I'm I'm focused more than I am intense at this stage like I am very like I would say I'm putting extra in towards building the the business towards building Financial Freedom like it does feel like I'm still in that being younger like those younger years it's like that investment stage right where I'm just investing the the time into learning into production everything like to get to a point where that then gives me a little bit more like freedom of opportunity kind of later on and still feeling like in that grow grow stage where like the more you put in now like you get exponential returns down the road um but even with that like again I wouldn't say I'm like super 100% like that's all I do like I am still very mindful of like lifestyle more than anything like I don't need to go and like party and do all these things all the time but just like the optimizing lifestyle honestly from like that physiology standpoint so like as soon as we're done out here like Lally the sun just came out like I'm going out back we're going to get some sun like we're everything like that and so it's more from that standpoint I'm moving to Colorado in like two weeks um and a big part of that my brother and I are going like gonna teach his ass a snowboard and so we're going to do like stuff like that um so I like to I like to have both but that's probably my biggest thing like I do feel like even right now I'm at I'm close to a not a Tipping Point but whatever that that's kind of like a Tipping Point business-wise of like it feels like things are on the verge of kind of growing like I made a lot of progress got a lot of track like had a lot of um big athletes big people who like follow me and are interested in me so if like keep doing the things that I'm doing for x amount of time that things are going to kind of grow to a new level very soon um and with with that with with everything in life with performance stuff with business stuff with all these different things I feel like there's levels and it takes a lot of work and time and energy to hit a certain level but then once you do it's much easier to maintain and then to go to the next level is you got to work work work work work work work and then it's kind of that maintenance thing and I think a lot of people will work work work work work and stop before they hit that next level and so they fall back down to the next one and so I think about that the easiest way to think about that is with like Fitness stuff and business stuff of like compared to somebody has un like how easy it is for me to maintain a reasonably healthy physique and athletic performance standpoint to maintain where I'm at very very very easy um doesn't take that much work to hit the next level would be would be especially athletically it be very very hard would take like lot of work a lot of time like a lot of focus um but from people who's much below where I'm at to get to where I'm at takes a lot of work but again it's just like yeah once you hit that threshold it's much easier to stay there and so I'm getting close I feel like to hitting that next one in terms of like business and financial stuff so I'm willing to to kind of continue to do the extra things to get there um and then once you get there reevaluate can do all sorts of things but yeah feels like we're close to that so that's the biggest priority at the moment I'm very excited for you I you know I studied your progress I think over the years you know I knew you from school as well so I I knew I knew Zach before he became Zach and before he will become the Zach in in the world and I think in training with you you are already at that point I think the marketplace just hasn't accepted it and and and applauded it yet to be honest I just want to remind you like um as a coach like I was a coach as well well so I I specifically dissect coaches on how well their attention to detail is how well they they drive a client to push themselves in that client's own uniqueness and I think you you have that intensity and commitment to Excellence that um I have no doubt you'll achieve all the the cool you that you want to achieve so I'm very excited um oh thank you dude very much appreciate that that's very means a lot for sure okay so any books you recommend folks read are you a big redo by the way not as much as I would like to be so actually it's weird I've I think I have the bad habit of that like productivity like consumption thing like I've got a whole bookshelf of books that I've consumed cover to cover that I could probably tell you one sentence from each one from each one so it's one of those like and if like on a te like it's almost comes back to me to like School of like I'm good if you put me on a multiple choice test where like I can see it I can like recognize it but just recall of like tell me what this book mean like actually like really absorbing it and understanding it not to the same degree and so I think that's uh I have a bad habit of that and it's like the adage of like it's better to read five good books 10 times than it is to read like a hundred books once and I'm working on getting to that category I've traditionally been to that 100 books a single time um one that I'm reading right now that I've had recommended a lot that I do like is the atomic habits one okay because that idea there something I even just touched on in here I think that's one that's that's really really big um Mastery by who's Mastery by robber green I think Robert Green yes thank you that's one that I've I've was always stuck out to me too that one just really resonated especially like the age that I was and I read when I read that I felt like I was in the middle of that um and so those like developments like that idea um the AG is the concept of like a Mastery of like a craft or a profession that entire like that approach to business into life into career I think is um it's it's something that resonates with me a lot that I like a lot more than the idea of like having a job or having a career but like having a craft just that word is something that that I like a lot um those are the first two that that come to mind I like those two a lot very cool um what's one piece of advice you have for a high schooler a college student and a professional in that order in athletic like to be in athletics or sure let's let's go Athletics and then go live that's that's all good um the Athletics to all of them but especially the high schooler um to focus on your to play your sport more as much as possible to think about it like we just talked about like a craft like the reason that I think I went as far as I did as an athlete and probably like overachieved compared to what I maybe should have as an athlete is that um it's not that I trained all the time it's that I played all the time I played with my team I played with the older team I played pickup with some college guys on the weekend um like I was it was always and it waser footballers specifically it was a lot of small-sided it was a lot of possession it was a lot of small goals like it wasn't a lot of like training and so I think that is is very very valuable and you're developing um to like play as much as you can in as many different environments as you can like specifically like small-sided stuff is in particular my um our director for our club was from was from Trinidad play with the national teams like we had that culture that VI that influence a little bit more and that was that was a very big influence on me um and definitely one of the ways that like I has shaped how I look at the game um I would say that to the the college athlete too it's just a little bit harder um your your life is so regimented um at that point and like in the football World at least like the soccer World it's there's so little opportunities to actually do that outside of your stuff like you have this very intense very short season and then like six to eight months of this like weird limbo or like it's not it's a competitive season you have a game here and there it's a lot of like strength conditioning like all of this all of these different things so doing your best to still create that environment um or to find that or to create that with your with your boys with your team that I think would be something that would be immensely valuable with the professional guy at that stage honestly more of the the atg type stuff um to maximize your health and performance potential basically of like so just like staying out there on the pitch um and removing some of those inhibitions to allow you to express yourself to your to your greatest degree um especially with some of the training that goes on on that level like sneaking in some of the stuff as as much as you can that would be probably the the biggest one um um for the life stuff the thing that has served me the best is really just trying continuing to show up um and so that's idea from like a playing that's like what that that playing perspect perspective for like the high school and college guy like I just kept showing up to different things different things different things and if you just show up enough like you're going to get halfway good at it and then even when I transitioned then into the coaching world the strength and conditioning world I've interned at God F probably five or six different places like all this stuff for free like just as any time like being around the environment that you want to be in the people that you want to be like the skill that you want to develop beg borrow steal give away your time for free like Shadow learn like as much of that as you can um you're going to get 10 times more out of the environment than you will out of the the learning like I've got a Bachelor's and a master's degree and i' would say that contributes to 1% of my like actual kind of knowledge exper experience like use like it's just it it looks nice for for people on the on the wall that's that's what it's good for more than anything else that being in those environments being around the people that you want to be like and even if they're far away like we have social media and stuff like that now so then doing everything you can to study those people that would be my my biggest thing that's that's solid man okay last two questions so you're stuck on an island with a specialized Chef he could cook anything okay but you only get two meals and you're stuck on this island what two meals would you choose anything that you want oh there's steak in there for sure that's that's that's not even a doubt I'm gonna go steak and eggs one meal steak and salmon the next meal maybe some sweet potatoes interesting little surf little surf and turf it doesn't get any better we could throw in some some sweet potatoes and some fruit cuz I do love like I'm a fiend for like berries and fruit and stuff like that so some strawberries some blackberries and then got to have some raw milk to wash it down oh yeah I I saw your post on the raw milk there day so I'm like I I need to I need to get into that um okay it's an last interesting question U what do you want people to remember about you this doesn't have to be unique to be famous or anything but just you know folks who've been who you've come in contact with it's funny it feels weird to like think about or reflect on like a question like that as being like being so young it feels like an old person question but it's like it's something that's that's good to to think about because it's something that shapes how you show up in the world like character and things like that um I think the it's more of like a compliment that you don't hear nowadays anywhere that's a little bit older but just the idea of if you ask like your parents about somebody that they knew and they say like oh he's like he's genuinely like a like a good person a good man like as like as simple as as that is um and maybe like it's lost some of the meaning that it has today but that's like um I love that lard and skard song of like being like a simple man of like that's just it's it's yeah that like kind of classic like American male like role model of a dude it's like he's very like strong and regimented almost right yeah you kind you know what you're going to get but he's very he's very consistent he continues to show up he like provides for the people that he cares about like he's a he's a respected guy um throughout like the even by like friends and enemies kind of thing of like that that sort of thing that's something that's that's an idea that I like a lot that I'm fa happy with like live up to to to a certain degree that was beautiful man well I I wanted to you know officially thank you than you for spending the time I as I reflect on what a podcast means I think in the game we get distracted by the Numbers oh is this going to have a certain amount of views blah blah blah blah but I I've switched to measuring did Zach enjoy the interview or did I get to Showcase who Zach was how the trajectory that he's on and one day uh when you pass and all of your family takes in this interview you know would they remember hey he was a good dude um so I I thank you for the time that you spent today uh appreciate you coming on it's been my pleasure dude I appreciate you reaching out I think that's a much better um more wholesome more fulfilling way to to think about this endeavor in general um so yeah I appreciate taking the taking the time the interest um to to learn and ask about all the stuff that I do and it's it's been my pleasure man so I appreciate you fantastic