2025-07-24 22:24:15
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这篇博文总结了Tim Ferriss Show播客中对生物医学科学家Rhonda Patrick博士的采访。访谈涵盖了广泛的健康和长寿主题，包括：
一、延缓衰老和降低痴呆风险的策略：
二、关键健康概念和术语：
三、补充剂、化合物和产品：
访谈中提到了多种补充剂，包括：Centrum Silver 多维维生素，维生素D，欧米伽-3鱼油，泛醌(辅酶Q10)，萝卜硫素，肌酸一水合物，姜黄素，镁，叶黄素和玉米黄质，外源酮体，裸盖菇素等，并推荐了部分品牌的特定产品。
四、食物和饮料：
西兰花芽，沙丁鱼和鲑鱼卵，木糖醇口香糖/薄荷糖等。
五、其他重要内容：
访谈还讨论了酒精摄入与健康的关系，“病态戒酒者假说”，微塑料污染，以及改善认知功能和长寿的策略。
总结: 该访谈提供了许多基于科学证据的健康和长寿策略，涵盖了饮食、运动、补充剂和生活方式等多个方面，为听众提供了改善健康和延缓衰老的实用建议。 但需注意，文中提及的许多建议和补充剂的使用，最好在专业人士的指导下进行。
Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. (@foundmyfitness) is a biomedical scientist and the founder of FoundMyFitness, a platform dedicated to delivering rigorous, evidence-based insights on improving healthspan and mitigating age-related diseases. Through her podcast, website, and YouTube channel, reaching millions globally, she translates complex science into actionable strategies for metabolic health, brain aging, and overall improved healthspan.
Dr. Patrick’s research explores genetic determinants of nutritional response, metabolic health, micronutrient deficiencies, sleep biology, and hormetic stressors, such as exercise, heat, cold exposure, fasting, and phytochemicals. She is an associate scientist and board member at the Fatty Acid Research Institute, where her work focuses on the role of omega-3 fatty acids in metabolic health and brain aging. Her peer-reviewed publications have appeared in top-tier journals, including Nature Cell Biology, The FASEB Journal, and Experimental Gerontology.
By uniting scientific integrity with protocol-driven precision, Dr. Patrick equips individuals and organizations alike with practical, scientifically sound strategies for optimizing health and longevity.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch my interview with Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. on YouTube.
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Want to hear the last time Rhonda Patrick was on the podcast? Listen to our conversation here in which we discussed simple methods for extending a healthy lifespan, minimizing cancer risks, the dangers of some common supplements, dietary effects on genetics, and much more.
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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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“After two years of taking the multivitamin, they had improved cognition on a battery of different tests that equated to reducing global cognitive aging by about two years. And on top of that, they reduced their episodic aging by five years. Almost five years. It was 4.8 years.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“A 70-year-old makes about four times less vitamin D than their former 20-year-old self.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“There have now been enough studies that have come out looking at cardiorespiratory fitness in the sense of VO2 max and how people with a higher cardiorespiratory fitness have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low cardiorespiratory fitness.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“People end up eating about 200 fewer calories per day when they’re doing some form of intermittent fasting.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“If you have a low cardiorespiratory fitness and you go anywhere above that from low to low normal, it’s associated with a two-year increased life expectancy. And people with a low cardiorespiratory fitness actually have a higher all-cause mortality that’s comparable or worse than people with known diseases like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease or smokers, for example. So in other words, being sedentary is a disease and we need to think about it as a disease and we should be trying to train to improve our VO2 max.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“Over the last few years, intermittent fasting has kind of gotten a bad rap because people now equate it with, ‘Oh, loss of muscle mass. I’m going to be catabolic.’ Well, in order to be in a repair mode, you actually do need to be in a catabolic mode.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“50 percent of the US population has insufficient levels of magnesium. So you’re talking about a coin toss here, right? One out of two.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
“A woman has a lifetime risk of one in eight of getting breast cancer. So if you have a room with eight people, one of those women, if you’re at a dinner party, and eight women are there, then one of those women will come down and be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. So when you add alcohol consumption on top of that, if you’re talking about moderate alcohol consumption, that risk can go to one in six, which is very significant for lifetime risk.”
— Dr. Rhonda Patrick
The post Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter (#819) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-07-02 10:31:32
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本期节目由粉丝喜爱的嘉宾彼得·阿提亚博士主持，他采访了传奇交易员约翰·阿诺德，被广泛认为是有史以来最伟大的能源交易员。阿诺德通过其基金会Arnold Ventures，将严谨的思维应用于美国最棘手的社会挑战，包括刑事司法改革、医疗政策和K-12教育等。
访谈节目录制于彼得的播客《The Drive》。节目涵盖了阿诺德的背景、在安然公司的工作经历、创立对冲基金的成功、以及最终转型为全职慈善家的历程。阿诺德分享了他作为交易员的成功秘诀，以及这些技能如何转化为他的慈善工作。他还讨论了Arnold Ventures基金会的工作重点，包括教育改革、刑事司法改革和医疗政策改革，以及他对气候变化的看法。
节目还包括对年轻一代从事慈善事业的建议，以及对美国医疗保健系统和药物定价问题的深入探讨。阿诺德强调了战略性慈善的重要性，即通过解决根本原因和创造结构性变革来预防问题，而不是仅仅提供短期援助。 访谈最后，阿诺德表达了他对未来变革的乐观态度，即使改变的过程缓慢而充满挑战。
节目笔记还提供了详细的时间轴，方便听众快速定位感兴趣的内容。 节目由Vanta、Eight Sleep和Wealthfront赞助。
In this special episode, my friend—and fan-favorite guest—Dr. Peter Attia takes the mic as guest host. Peter sits down with legendary trader John Arnold, widely considered the greatest energy trader of all time. Today, through his foundation Arnold Ventures, John applies the same rigorous thinking to some of America’s toughest social challenges—criminal justice reform, healthcare policy, and K–12 education, to name just a few.
This interview originally aired on Peter’s excellent podcast The Drive. You can check it out at PeterAttiaMD.com, or subscribe to The Drive wherever you get your podcasts.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
[00:00:00] Start.
[00:05:37] Peter Attia’s intro: who is John Arnold?
[00:08:38] John’s background, upbringing, and early entrepreneurial tendencies.
[00:21:16] John’s time and rise at Enron.
[00:33:40] Characteristics that made John an exceptional natural gas trader and how they translate to his philanthropic work.
[00:41:10] The collapse of Enron.
[00:46:46] The success of John’s hedge fund, and his early interest in philanthropy.
[01:02:03] The infamous 2006 trade that brought down Amaranth Advisors.
[01:08:28] John’s analytical prowess and emphasis on fundamentals.
[01:15:13] The decision to become a full-time philanthropist and the founding of Arnold Ventures.
[01:25:03] Education — John’s quest to fundamentally change K-12 education.
[01:30:36] Strategic philanthropy — preventing problems by attacking root causes and creating structural change.
[01:37:50] The criminal justice system — structural changes needed to address mass incarceration, policing practices, and recidivism.
[01:55:07] Re-imagining prisons to reduce recidivism.
[02:02:27] US health care policy — John’s focus on drug prices, and the severe consequences of not making system changes.
[02:20:00] Climate change — the bipartisan role of John’s foundation.
[02:23:52] Advice for young adults interested in philanthropy.
[02:30:52] Parting thoughts.
Who is John?
Arnold Ventures
“Our philanthropic intent is to give away the vast majority of our money during our lifetime.”
An entrepreneur from a young age
“I ended up spending a couple summers just full time on this baseball card, really geographic arbitrage and information arbitrage, that I would have a sense of who the best buyer was for every product.”
Defining arbitrage—
What he wanted to do after college
“I was the guy that was trying to get out of there and into the game as quickly as possible. Every day I was at college, it was one less day that I had to be in the game.”
What that meant to the industry:
In 1995, there were 2 aspects to Enron’s business:
1 – The historical pipeline business
2 – A new “investment bank” side
John first job at Enron
“I found the perfect job for my skill set as my first job. And I think that’s pretty rare, and it happened by accident. I could have very easily ended up a mergers and acquisition investment banker at Merrill Lynch, but I ended up trading commodities at a relative upstart of a company that was just the perfect spot for my skill set.”
How John rose so quickly through Enron
Winter of 1996—“A whole new game”
“I think it ended up being the downfall of the company as well, as there just wasn’t the controls on people who were given too much responsibility, too much of the company’s balance sheet to use without their adequate controls on it.”
“The stress level was intense. I think I’m very good at handling stress, but the stress level was intense to a point of not being healthy.”
How do many traders destress?
Did John experience an “addiction” to the “high” of trading?
What made John such an exceptional trader?
Regarding emotional detachment—
⇒ There’s a saying in the investment world, “Fear and greed drives a lot of price trends in financial assets.”
The confidence spectrum—
How did these traits translate into John’s philanthropy work?
“Everything we’re doing in the foundation is evidence-based, but the evidence is never perfect.”
Book about the fall of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Preceding Enron’s collapse…
Bad decisions—
When did John realize his career at Enron was going to be cut short?
When John was still at Enron…
How John grew Centaurus so successfully
The synergy of market arbitrage plus speculative trading:
The two strands of John’s hedge fund—
1) Providing liquidity and getting paid for the service of warehousing some risks, and
2) Speculative trading – Trying to make a call on where natural gas prices were going next
The moment John realized he’d never have to worry about money again:
When did John first start thinking about philanthropy?
“I always recognized the limited social value of trading. I think there is a need for someone to provide risk warehousing and liquidity to markets, but trying to tell the story about how I was adding value or contributing to society was hard. And that always bothered me.”
When John’s hedge fund started gaining major attention:
John business was all about return (not fees from investors)—
Background
After 2005, two things happened in the industry—
Amaranth’s position in 2006—
So what happened in 2006?
How John thought about the situation:
John has a “third superpower”—an insatiable, bordering on pathological, obsession for knowing everything
In his trading days…
How did John make up for this informational disadvantage?
“Our advantage was that we’re going to invest in the fundamentals more than anybody else is and then overlay that with some good trading.”
3 main reasons why trading natural gas was “easier” than oil:
1) It was this closed system —the molecules, for the most part, just stayed in North America
2) Deregulation got the pipelines out of the business of trading
3) Twice a year, there was a mechanism to get you back close to fair value
Deciding to focus on philanthropy
“I started thinking more about giving the money away than making more of it. That was really the signal to me that I want to be spending my time on the other side of the table and I’m physically and mentally, emotionally exhausted with trading natural gas.”
A hard decision
“When you’ve been playing in Vegas with the $25 table to go back down to the $5 table. It’s just not as emotionally interesting.”
Summary of factors leading to the shutdown of his hedge fund—
“These things came together and it still took me two years to make that call, that it’s time, it’s time to close this up and go find happiness somewhere else.”
Skills in trading that translated to philanthropy:
1-Emotional temperament—not letting your feelings get in the way of what you’re doing
2-Having the right amount of confidence
3-An ability to become an expert in something in a relatively short period of time
K-12 education — the first problem the foundation looked at deeply
The questions John had about K-12 education:
“[K-12] is just the most fundamental issue facing long-term health and viability of this country.”
The theory of change that drives John’s work in K-12:
The theory: Strong and robust systems of any kind have the attributes of biological evolution
In public education—
Arnold Foundation’s theory is that…
If this theory works…
What’s the role of philanthropy?
Role for “strategic” philanthropy
How challenging is doing this kind of strategic philanthropy?
Example, the topic like preschool:
In every area that John has researched, he finds the same thing—
*One main insight from doing the deep digging:
The question for the foundation became: What’s our role? Where could our dollars be most helpful?
John’s frustration with trying to find the “right program” to fund really led him and the foundation down the path of—How do you change and improve the system and the incentives and the rules of a system rather than what’s the next program we can fund?
When the criminal justice system got on John’s radar:
“There is this natural impatience. But I think we’ve been smart enough to realize that it’s smarter to invest wisely tomorrow than do something that’s unlikely to have an impact today.”
How criminal justice system is broken:
John’s take on how we got to the current state of the criminal just system:
Fast forward to today—
Speculating on what accounted for the reduction is crime starting in the mid-90s
What other factors could have accounted for the reduction in crime if not the increase in incarceration?
Of all the mechanisms or tactics that would lead to an increase in incarceration, which of those were perhaps the most responsible for mass incarceration?
How do we solve this problem?
Is the role for philanthropy to try to address the questions of racism within law enforcement?
For a long time, the focus has been on reducing crime rates with no regard for the secondary effects that the criminal justice system causes on these communities and families
A big dilemma: Minority communities have felt both over-policed and under policed at the same time.
Addressing the problem:
Peter’s take on the prison system:
John’s response:
“The nature of prisons has to change. If you wait until the days someone’s released, that’s way too late.”
The foundation’s work on re-imagining prisons
The ROI case
The values case
How is John thinking about health policy in America?
So where is John trying to apply his resources?
The first area John wants to address is drug prices because it’s a topic with:
The foundation is focused on creating a more rational system to price pharmaceuticals that—
The political window:
For politicians to consider health care policies—
Peter’s rant on the US health care:
⇒ For more on the health care system and issues with drugs, see Peter’s interviews with Marty Makary and Katherine Eban
Enormous health care spending—how can we change this?
Without the greatest sovereign default on debt, what is it going to take to change this?
The severe consequences of inflation
“I want to help the world, I want to solve problems, but if the answer is just shovel more money at it, that’s not a sustainable answer in my mind.”
John’s foundation is working on: How do we improve the system without spending more money?
Optimistic about the future — Change happens slowly, then very quickly
“You just don’t have that feedback mechanism in this work that you had in the [natural gas] market and the complete opposite end of the spectrum”
John’s high level thoughts on climate change
How will John’s foundation work on climate change?
Where John thinks they can add value:
Regarding his own kids—
“Whenever you have that checkbook, people look at you differently, and treat you differently. . .because there is always something that they want funded. . .If somebody’s growing up in their teens and their 20s, and is looked at by the rest of the world as a checkbook first, I think that’s a very damaging way to grow up.”
Advice to young adults with an interest in philanthropy:
The post John Arnold with Dr. Peter Attia — The Greatest Energy Trader of All Time on Lessons Learned, Walking Away from Wall Street, and Reinventing Philanthropy (#818) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-06-26 05:03:09
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本文档总结了蒂姆·费里斯秀对魅力掌控者（Charisma on Command）联合创始人Charlie Houpert的访谈记录。
Charlie Houpert的创业历程：
关键的创业决策和经验教训：
推荐书籍：
访谈中，Charlie还分享了他对以下问题的看法：
总而言之，Charlie Houpert的创业故事充满了挑战和机遇，他通过不断学习、调整和坚持，最终取得了巨大的成功。他的经验对于所有想要创业的人来说都具有重要的借鉴意义。
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Charlie Houpert (@charliehoupert), co-founder of Charisma on Command, a company that helps people develop confidence, charisma, and strong social skills. Originally launched as a 4-Hour Workweek-inspired “muse,” it has since grown into one of the largest platforms for social skills and confidence training, with more than 10 million YouTube subscribers worldwide and more than a billion views across its content in six languages. His flagship course, Charisma University, has guided more than 30,000 members through practical steps to become more magnetic.
Charlie was once voted “Most Likely to Break Out of His Shell” and began studying charisma to overcome his own social anxiety. He now explores the deeper roots of confidence through archetypal psychology, embodiment practices, and more.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Tim Ferriss: Charlie, welcome to the show. Nice to be spending some time together.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I thought we would start, as you suggested, since I do not have much memory of this — and that is not to say that I am too big for my britches. I think it was quite a while ago, but how did we first meet in person? This is not our first time meeting.
Charlie Houpert: No, it was a much larger moment in my life than in yours, I think. This is 2011, 2012. I’m working as a management consultant in Washington, DC and I have been a 4-Hour Workweek acolyte for probably six months, like evangelical. “Everyone needs to read this book. We’re all entrepreneurs.” I’ve sold nothing at this point. I’ve got no product, but everybody has to do this.
And I’m out to dinner with my company. We’ve just completed this contract. And sitting there facing the door and Tim Ferriss walks in, and the blood drains from my body. I go cold. I’m working on being more gregarious. My boss sees. He goes, “What’s wrong?” I said, “It’s Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss is here,” like the boogeyman walked in. I’ve told him, and he goes, “The 4-Hour guy?” It’s like, “It’s him. Yeah, it’s him.”
So I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, walked over to your table. This is on H Street in DC. And I didn’t know what — I just said, “Hey, Tim, Mr. Tim, I read your book, and it’s changed my life.” And this is even before it really changed my life. And I love your blog, and it was so great.
And you turned and faced me and were very kind. You gave me far more attention than I had anticipated that I would get and asked some questions about what I was doing. And at the time, I was like, “Fuck, I haven’t actually made anything happen.” So I was like, “I’m working on this, that, and the other thing,” and then excuse myself to go to the bathroom where I was like, “Fuck. You fucking ruined it.” And came back out and didn’t have an ask. This is an interesting learning for me, and was just like, “Do you want to get coffee tomorrow?” I don’t even drink coffee. You’re like, “Sorry, I’m in town. I’m just doing The 4-Hour Body. I’ve got some meetings tomorrow, so I can’t do it,” and politely excuse yourself.
But for me, that was — it was a number of things. One, it was like, “Man, I wish that I was able to have that conversation in a way that created more connection between he and I.” And it was also — it’s funny to be sitting here now because at the time I had this projected belief that if you would just feature my business in The Muse, if you would just write about it on your blog, everything would be solved. Units would start flying off the shelf and I’d be taken care of forever. So it’s really cool to be sitting here on the other side of that projection and get to chat.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, okay. DC. Yeah, I very rarely go to DC. So, I mean, in the multiverse of other infinite possibilities, it is pretty incredible that we met at all because I so rarely go to DC. And I think you can also probably cut yourself some slack in the sense that in those conditions, it’s pretty hard to establish very quick rapport and connection.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know. Was I by myself or in a group?
Charlie Houpert: You were by yourself. It was offered up on a silver platter. No, not to say — I reflect and it’s like you’re in town for one day, but the idea that maybe there was something that could have been said to create that connection was like — it was the Inception seed that just kept spinning in my internal safe for the next 10 years.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So let’s double click on the management consulting and then how you became an ex-management consultant —
Charlie Houpert: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: — or just the path itself. Because I have seen interviews with you, and you talk about, of course, various different things, Charisma on Command, Charisma University. You have this topic area expertise. And we’ll probably touch on some of that, but for a lot of my audience, and for my own personal curiosity, I want to hear about your journey, your personal journey, not necessarily focusing on the content that you’re best at showcasing. And I suspect we’ll probably get to some of that.
But looking back at the early chronology is always fun for me because I remember, for instance — and I want to not make this the Tim Ferriss retrospective show, but that exact experience that you had with me, I have had many times with other people where I’ll just like fumble out some accidental pig Latin. And then I go to the bathroom. I’m just like, “You idiot. That could have been the sentence that changed your life, and you fucked it up.” Not to say that’s what you said yourself, but certainly I have had those types of experiences.
So let’s go back to management consulting. What was that experience like? Just paint a picture. And then I know this might seem like a lazy question, but just take us forward from there.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, every day it felt like a self-betrayal. So I read The 4-Hour Workweek when I was in grad school. And I was in grad school because I was a philosophy major as an undergrad and graduated in 2009 where not only were they not hiring philosophy majors, they weren’t hiring anybody.
So hid out in business school for a year, wound up as a consultant because that’s what you do when you don’t know what you’re supposed to do with your life. And every day putting on that suit felt like a betrayal of myself, especially having read The 4-Hour Workweek at that point.
And so there were these minor rebellions that I would stage. I had a faux-hawk, and I wouldn’t cut it, and I would put it down. There were these subtle passive-aggressive — I let my shoes fall apart. I had my business shoes, but I wouldn’t get new ones. They were ratty and crappy. And it was just these ways of like, “This is not me. This is not right.” And then I would come home from that after sort of sneaking out as early as I could, and I would write in just my own little journal about like, “This is not what I want. I don’t want this life. I don’t want to be the guy who is my boss or the guy who is his boss.”
And so it was in this period of time that I was noticing and experimenting with coming out of my shell at the same time. So I was able to make friends with not just my boss or his boss, but I got close with the president of the company. And it was through just talking about the bars and clubs I was going to at Saturdays, and he was vicariously — we’d meet Monday morning, be like, “So what’d you get into this weekend?” And we had a little rapport there of I-remember-the-good-old-days type of a thing.
And so had that job, wasn’t right, had our fruitful encounter, which didn’t wind up selling anything. And at the time, my first business was a parkour training DVD. I think I even used a service that you’d listed in The 4-Hour Workweek to try to do it and was trying to get that off the ground, selling it through Google Adwords, very step by step, 4-Hour Workweek. It could have been a chapter had it worked. And it was starting to go, but it wasn’t something I loved. And I was struggling with it because my co-founder and best friend was in New York, I was in Washington, DC.
Tim Ferriss: How did you choose parkour at the time? How did you decide on that? And were there any other candidates where it’s like, “Okay, here are the top four. We’re going to strike these out. We’re going with parkour”?
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, there was. I did the little Venn diagram of what do I want that other people might be interested in. I just wrote all of my interests. I hadn’t done parkour, but I liked Casino Royale. That was my level of exposure to parkour.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. One of the best intro sequences of any James Bond.
Charlie Houpert: Yes. So the idea was, “Oh, wow, there’s no parkour gyms. If there are, they’re expensive. Maybe people would want to learn this. I would want to take a class.” And so went out, hired a guy that had done it. Never shot anything before. I mean, there’s so many funny little stories.
He chips his tooth the day before the shoot, so he’s got this lisp before the shoot, and he can’t remember more than a line. So we’re saying lines to him as he’s trying to teach parkour, chopped this footage up into 35 or 40 minutes of how to do a wall run, how to do a Kong, how to do all these things, and made a DVD out of it from TrepStar.
The other things, I mean, I can’t remember what was on there, but it was very much — I was a little bit outside of myself and thinking, “What do other people want?” I hadn’t gotten to the scratch-your-own-itch experience. And what I experienced was that, “Oh, wow. We’re actually selling enough DVDs to break even on Adwords and even a little bit of profit.” Which means if we did a follow-up, we’d be totally in the black.
Tim Ferriss: Follow-up meaning you’re selling to pre-existing customers?
Charlie Houpert: Correct. If we’d made the advanced course or, “Do you want personal coaching,” or something, and I was completely deflated. I was like, “I can’t do this other thing in addition to my job that I don’t love in order to get free of the job. So there was this recursive 4-Hour Workweek mentality, which is like, “Stop doing the thing that you don’t want to do in order to get to the place that you want to be. Just do the thing that you want to do.”
Tim Ferriss: Although, at the same time, just to play with that for a second, the approach of moonlighting just to dip your toe in the water, get a taste of the blood, whatever metaphor you want to use, I think is actually pretty helpful in the sense that you don’t have to act out of desperation. You still have a safety net of some type, but then you can make an informed decision about whether or not you want to burn the ships, so to speak. So just my two cents.
Charlie Houpert: It was an integral step. I very much agree with you. I needed the experience of disliking consulting and then the experience of disliking my side gig to go, “Okay, the next side gig has to be something that I would do for free or I’m paying to do.” And so then it was, “Okay, what am I spending money on?” It’s like, “Well, I go out to these bars, not to drink, to talk to women and try to get them to like me and to make friends.” And I put way more time, effort, attention into studying how our interaction went. I can’t tell you how many times I chatted with my best friend about like, “What if I said this?” We were putting far too much energy, relative to others, into understanding people and how to connect better.
So there was a transition of — my best friend and co-founder was in New York. He was an investment banker. I was in DC. I was a consultant. We would talk every day after work for an hour about the interactions we had, and I was just aching. I didn’t have other friends in DC.
So I went to this president who I had been close to, and there was this moment where I was trying to get the side gig and trying to get a job in New York, and I — I went to Skillshare, and they didn’t want to hire me. And I went to all these companies. They wouldn’t hire me. I was taking weekend trips. And eventually my friend was like, “Why don’t you just quit and go to New York and figure it out there?”
So having settled with that and done the fear-setting exercises and what’s the worst thing that can happen, I came in and I made a pitch to my president, which was, I mean, a lot of 4-Hour Workweek things, which is once it’s already done, people get out of your way. Internally, I was like, “This is done. We’re not talking about if I’m going to New York.”
So I sat down. I said, “Hey, you guys have been really good to me. I appreciate it. I just cannot be in DC any longer. I feel socially like I’m missing something. I want to be with my friends in New York, but I want to transition in a way that is really good for you to repay the kindness that you guys have showed me,” which was true. And we sat there, and he’s like, “You know what? Let’s work something out.” So he winds up saying, “Instead of being an analyst, let’s make you a contractor. Except if you’re a contractor, the base rate that we pay contractors is twice as much as we pay analysts. So we’d have to give you basically a 90 percent raise increase in order to do it, but you’d have no job security and no healthcare. Month to month, you could get fired.”
So I’m like, “Wait a second, I get to go to New York, double my pay, and no healthcare? This is incredible.” So it worked out really well, and I wound up keeping that job working remotely from New York and making one trip every two weeks for a few months as I did this.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a pretty sweet bridge. Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: And it was incredible.
Tim Ferriss: At least for a while.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, it was magical. And it was this showing up with, “Hey, I love you, but here’s what I have to do. And I’m open to something that works for both of us.” Was really powerful.
Tim Ferriss: So let me ask you this. For people who are listening and they might be thinking to themselves like, “That’s a really interesting bridge,” or just improvement quality of life. Also, you got the income increase. How did you plan for that meeting, basically the pitch/delivery that ended up in a remote work agreement?
Charlie Houpert: Step one was to get clear that it was happening, and I wasn’t there to make him do anything. I wasn’t trying to convince him to force it. So I was able to really come in with the mentality of, “I want to show love to you. I want to support you guys and take care of you, and I’m willing to be flexible. And I can stay another two weeks, but this is happening.”
So it was making sure that, first and foremost, I wasn’t asking him to meet in need of mine. It’s like, “I’m going to meet my needs. How can we work together?” Then it was literally rehearsing it. I ran through the conversation. This was not an outcome that I had ever planned. I thought it was like, “Yes, I’d be willing to stay on for three more weeks, and then come down and do touch points here and there. And I’m happy to get on the phone and talk to the person you have replacing me.”
But I really think it was the pre-established relationship that we had, plus me taking care of my needs, and then saying, “What is best for you? Genuinely, within these bounds, I want to do what’s best for you.” And he came up with that solution. I didn’t suggest it, which was powerful. And I’ve seen that same sort of dynamic play out many, many times in my life
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. And I think employees, I know, oftentimes — it’s been a few eons, but I’ve been an employee underestimate their own value or position, and as a result sometimes feel like they need to go hat in hand and expect maybe the outcome to always fall in the boss’ favor. But the fact of the matter is, in the boss’ favor, if you actually work hard and are a decent, let alone a very good performer, it is a huge pain in the ass to replace someone. It is. And for that reason, I think many people are surprised when they have some of these conversations how often they’re like, “Wasn’t even going to ask for that, and look what ended up coming my way.”
Charlie Houpert: You had all that money just lying around. Why don’t you tell me?
Tim Ferriss: Let me open up this chest full of gold coins.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So then what happens — you move to New York?
Charlie Houpert: So I go to New York, and I am splitting time now between what is this new business, which is called KickAss Academy. And this is my brilliant idea. I think we’re going to do — it’s an academy, an online academy where you learn how to live a kick-ass life. And it’s about going out — and it’s heavily Game-influenced at this point. I’ve read Neil Strauss’ The Game.
Tim Ferriss: By Neil Strauss, yeah?
Charlie Houpert: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Great book. I mean, controversial on a number —
Charlie Houpert: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: — of levels, but a really compelling — it’s a compelling underdog sort of hero’s journey story, and it’s well written. Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: And to a 23-year-old guy who has been socially restrained and — I won the award for most likely to break out of the shell in college, which is like, “You’re the shyest boy in our 500-person class. Congratulations.” To learn that there was something that I could say or do that would change the receptivity that I got from people, that was so powerful to see in The Game.
So those two books, 4-Hour Workweek, The Game, are really deeply influencing me. I start sharing some of these blog posts. Well, actually, first what happens is the government shuts down, and that sweet contractor gig that I have disappears overnight. So I had four-ish months of gravy and where I’ve been saving twice as much, and then that happens. So I’m in a 396-square-foot apartment, two bedroom in the Lower East Side, bathroom door hits the toilet when you open.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I was going to say. If we do the math on that square footage, it’s not a whole lot of space.
Charlie Houpert: No, no. I’m sleeping literally on a blow-up mattress to save money. I’m eating Chipotle and learning how to persuade them to give me more scoops in order to save money. I’m frugal beyond frugal at this point in my life, start Airbnb-ing my own bedroom and then sleeping in, literally — God bless him. My co-founder shares his queen size beds with me so that I can take some nights and make a hundred bucks a night Airbnb-ing my bedroom.
And in the meantime, the beautiful thing is that everything that was taken from me pushes me to the next level of putting myself out there. So I had had all of these writings that I’d been doing in DC about what I believed and what I thought and what I was learning about speaking with women and people, but I was too afraid to really share them.
Tim Ferriss: So were any of those coping strategies that you ended up using, were any of those initially in the fear-setting exercise?
Charlie Houpert: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: Those and others. I mean, I had to play guitar and ask for dollars. That was farther down the list. It was learn how to make a basic drink and bartend, Airbnb the bedroom. I had a list of things.
Tim Ferriss: So for people who have no context on this, just to set the table a little bit, fear-setting, it’s named that because it’s a play on goal-setting, but it’s an exercise. You can find it at tim.blog/ted. I also did a TED Talk on it. So you don’t have to buy anything. You can find it.
But the basic gist is that you have something you’re considering doing right, quitting your job, moving to New York, getting married, getting divorced, whatever it is. Then you write down all of your fears in as much detail as possible. Because the more detailed, the more actionable and preventable, and it’s sort of the nebulous misty fears that we never put on paper, define that tend to be the most problematic. So you make this list in excruciating detail of the worst things that could happen.
Then there’s another column, the next column. You write down ways that you could try to prevent those things from happening. And then in the sort of damage control/mitigation column, which is yet another column, you ask yourself, “If each of these things happened, what could I do to limit the damage or get back on my feet, even if it takes me a while?” And there’s more to the exercise. There are other things. But in the mitigation/damage control column, you have something like “Airbnb my own bed.”
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, Airbnb my own bed, sign up for a ton of credit cards to get the credit card miles and then convert to cash. But I did a lot of things for 50, 60 bucks. Get a job at Chipotle so that you can eat the food there, and that takes care of food and money. So I had a lot of these, and I ran through quite a few. Zeroed out my 401k and IRA and took the penalty at one point a little bit later down the line. So I was doing all of that.
But as things got more and more dire, and I’m going through my fear-setting mitigation strategies, I am confronted with the fears that I have not written down, which is, “Okay, it’s time to put your writing out there.” So, okay.
God, it’s so funny. One of the big mistakes that I’ve made with people that I’ve loved is I’ve tried to prevent and hide from them and support them in not having to confront those horrible, harrowing, entrepreneurial moments of, “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. This isn’t working.” Because it is in those moments of tension and pressure that something pops and you go, “Fine, I’ll be honest and share what’s on my heart.” Because up until then, you’re not going to do it, or I wasn’t going to do it.
Tim Ferriss: So what was the first prototype version of post-parkour entrepreneurship? What was the V1?
Charlie Houpert: It’s kickassacademy.com. And we are here to live a kick-ass life, and no one can stop us, and we will not be average. It’s a 23-year-old manifesto about how all the people don’t know how to do it, and I do. I know the way to do it. It’s a regurgitated 4-Hour Workweek, plus my own iteration of The Game thing.
So I write my blog post, and I haven’t shared any posts. And I remember being in this tiny apartment with my hand hovering over publish, and I published it on this blog post, and I have to run out of the apartment and go down the street and just get away from the computer that, I don’t know, houses the blog post now that it’s on the internet. And of course, I come back and nobody’s read it. And a month later, nobody’s read it.
Tim Ferriss: What was the first blog post?
Charlie Houpert: Oh, gosh. I wish I knew.
Tim Ferriss: Do you recall?
Charlie Houpert: I do not recall. I should have checked before this.
Tim Ferriss: That’s all right. But it’s some kind of how-to thing? It’s like seven rules for et cetera, or —
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, it might’ve been how-to. It might’ve been a declaration of one of my feelings when I was quitting the job and like, “This isn’t what I want.” It was not profound, but it was personal and tender to me, so it was very tough to receive criticism.
Tim Ferriss: And I guess it is maybe — I mean, we’ll get there. Maybe not in terms of readership, but in terms of crossing the Rubicon from not publishing to publishing, hitting that button is a big deal.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, my gosh.
Tim Ferriss: Right? Psychologically.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I’m willing to be seen is the emotional thing that is, I think, for me, has been the challenge endlessly in entrepreneurship the way that I’ve chosen to do it. So we got that post out, and then nobody, of course, read it.
And then the next step was, “Okay, I’m going to promote this. I’m going to go to Reddit. I’m going to go to the forums that are most related. Every man should know.” There was a seduction subreddit. There was a New York City-related subreddit, and I started posting my own things. And now comments start coming in. And so it’s, “Thank you. I like this,” or “Don’t promote your own stuff here,” or — now I’m actually dealing with feedback.
But the next stage was posting, posting. I wrote a little, short pamphlet book, but the real thing that actually started, I think, early — I think you probably know him. I hired Neville Medhora for a day of copywriting to help me design the website and wound up with the first actionable real thing that I did was, “Okay, I’ve got people that read my blog. There’s like 30 recurring viewers. And I want to host an in-person class that will talk about how to talk to a woman in the park in New York City,” which is something that I’m doing with my friend, going out. We’re breaking it down and, “How did it go?” And all that kind of stuff.
So we rent out a room in one of these office buildings for like 60 bucks for an hour, an hour and a half, or something like that. I go to the New York City subreddit. I give away five tickets. They are sold. Sold. People accept them. They accept the five free seats. And then I sell the remaining five seats for five or 10 bucks. I think I might’ve sold it for 10 bucks each. And like an hour before the class, we sold the last one. So we had 10 people in this class, made 50, lost 60 plus cab fare, down 15 bucks, whatever. Go in and give an hour-and-a-half presentation with a PowerPoint on, “This is what to wear, say, do, stand. Here’s how to deal with the fear that’s going to come up. If she rejects you, here’s how to address that feeling.” All of that sort of stuff.
It was just thrilling to do it. But afterwards, four of the 10 people stayed after and were like, “Do you do coaching? Do you guys do this?” And the answer was, “Now we do.”
Tim Ferriss: “Funny you should ask.”
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, “Funny you should ask.” So really had no intention of a — there was not a business idea of there to be an upsell, but there was enough asking. So then it evolved into, “Oh, now we’re doing traditional,” what was around at the time, “dating coaching in New York City,” and we’re finding our rates as we did that. And that was tough. That’s a gig where you’re going out with a dude who’s having the most fearful experience of his life, and he’s paid you to encourage him and support him in facing that fear, which is, “I’m going to go speak to that woman that I’m attracted to at the bar, in the park,” wherever.
And it’s not fun to push someone to do something that they say they want to do, but they’re really grappling with. And then you go out and you show them, “It could look like this. It could look like that.” So we did that for a while and were charging, I don’t know, a hundred bucks an hour as we did.
But again, something else that crept in, same thing with the parkour, was this wasn’t the dream. When I’d sat down and I’d done the fear-setting, there’s another piece of it, which is you write the 10-out-of-10 upside.
Tim Ferriss: You assess the upside. If it works —
Charlie Houpert: If it works.
Tim Ferriss: — what’s the one-to-10 impact? Positively, if it fails, what’s the transient, most likely not permanent impact, right?
Charlie Houpert: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: And so as we’d sat there and written in detail the 10-out-of-10 upside, it was never “You have a dating coaching business that is stressful in New York City.” It was “You get to live on the beach with your friends, do work that you like, when you like.” There was this idea which was silly, that you would have a laptop as you sat on the beach. That’s ridiculous. It’s just like a photo op, but it’s not a good way to work. But I had that idea. I would drink Caipirinhas and I’d do it in Rio. That was the romantic vision. And so again, I found myself having this thing that was working that wasn’t the 10-out-of-10 upside.
Tim Ferriss: So I just want to pause for a second and just say that’s where a lot of people get into trouble, right?
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Because they find something that is maybe not even 30 percent of the way to where they want to be, but it has a seductive traction. And there are certain financial realities. It’s like, “Hey, if you need to pay your rent, you need to pay your rent.” But it’s very easy for that to then become something that is a monster you feel you need to feed that you can’t step away from. And in that case, with coaching, you’re still trading time for money, right?
Charlie Houpert: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: At a per-hour rate.
Charlie Houpert: And in person, in a place that isn’t the most fun with guys that are having a challenging time. You know?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. If people want to get a really good laugh, you can find it on my YouTube channel, but the Tim Ferriss Experiment TV show episodes are all up there for free. And there’s one, I think it’s just called The Dating Episode, where, a small world, Neil Strauss is sitting in a van with an earpiece trying to give me advice at the farmer’s market in San Francisco as I’m doing cold approaches. Horrible, horrible, and horrifying, beyond terrible. If people want to see what that looks like, knock yourselves out.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So you decide that the one-on-one coaching in person, this is not the 10-out-of-10 that you’d hope for.
Charlie Houpert: Yes. Yeah. And I think the experience — it’s not a great model. It’s really challenging, high intensity, doesn’t create the level of transformation with reliability that you might hope, and people walk away feeling sometimes very stressed about it. And so it was, “Okay. I don’t know what it is, but I said Brazil, with my friends, et cetera.” So again, I’m evangelical. I’m telling everybody I meet, “Have you read the gospel of Tim? There’s this book, The 4-Hour Workweek. You need to do it. Everyone’s an entrepreneur.” That was a mistake and learning it’s not for everybody. I got that in time. So I’m telling everybody, and what happens is one of the guys that attended that first class becomes a friend. It’s probably the most magnetic period of my life where I’m just talking about this ambition. And what happens is not just my co-founder and I, but six people, many of whom I’d met in the last two months, quit their jobs, quit their schools, and agreed they were going to move to Brazil in August of 2013.
Tim Ferriss: How did Brazil specifically become the dream?
Charlie Houpert: So there was one, it’s got great PR, right? It had never been, there’s just this sense that Rio is this romantic, beautiful beach city vibe. And I had, when my company let me go from that contractor role, I immediately said, “Okay, what’s the upside of this?” So I booked a flight to Brazil and met a friend who was traveling. And I spent five weeks in Floripa and one week in Rio. And in that week in Rio, my friend had gone home. I was alone. And it was these experiences of being alone in a hostel, not knowing anybody, that uncomfortable feeling of like, “I want to go home. I want my friends, I want my thus,” whatever. But I stepped outside of myself, went to a co-working space, met a guy, he invited me to stay with him. And I had one of those travel, magical adventures that culminated in meeting a beautiful Brazilian girl and having this fling that lasted few days. And she came and visited and —
Tim Ferriss: I knew that had to figure in somehow. Yeah, all right.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. So had that romantic experience of I showed up feeling empty, and then I walked away with abundance and feeling wonderful.
Tim Ferriss: Whirlwind transformation of a trip.
Charlie Houpert: Yes. So I was like, “That’s where I want to be.”
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So six other people to quit all their stuff, school, job, whatever it might be, okay?
Charlie Houpert: Well there’s 10 total, six who lived together and then four who lived in other places in the same city.
Tim Ferriss: And then what happens?
Charlie Houpert: So we get there. Nobody speaks Portuguese. I speak Spanish. And I’m negotiating rent for looking for a four-bedroom where I can take, they have maids quarters in a lot of these places. So I have the tiny room because that’s what I can afford. But anyway, we settle into a life in Brazil, and my Spanish is converting to Portuguese as quickly as I can. And we are living it. We’re there. It is the thing. We are going to the beach, throwing the American football, making friends.
We’ve got a whiteboard. Every day there’s four questions. Did you do the social stretch that you wanted to do? Whether that’s make a friend speak to a woman you’re attracted to. Just say, be kinder to the guy who serves you acai, whatever it is. There was a social stretch. Did you do your business stretch? Did you do your health stretch? And there was one more thing, which is like, did you do your own personal thing? For some people it was reach out to a family member. For some people it was learn the guitar. So it was like four things. We had this running whiteboard of who had done their growth thing that they need to do.
Tim Ferriss: That’s cool. I like that.
Charlie Houpert: And it was a really encouraging growth, everyone, it was like if you tried and failed, it was high-fives all around for that year was just amazing. “She didn’t want to talk to you. So cool. Welcome back into the fold. You are welcome here.”
So we’re doing that and from a business perspective, so now all my income is gone because it was all the thing and it was in-person coaching. One or two people agree to switch to online coaching, but it’s not enough. And so for a period, the blog becomes online coaching, which is actually nicer because now instead of just going to a bar and speaking about, did you talk to the girl and what to say, it’s people that are calling in with questions about workplace scenarios. And so I’m speaking to guys older than me using Tony Robbins’ principles essentially to answer questions about experiences that I’ve only barely had. But it’s helpful because there’s this Tony Robbins transformation process that I’m helping with and using. So that becomes a thing. And after months of doing in-person coaching and there’s a whole learning the sales process and being able to ask for money, these are all intermediate steps that had to happen.
I’ll tell you a story about Tucker Max in here as well. But I’ll tell it now.
Tim Ferriss: Almost never boring.
Charlie Houpert: — no time like the present.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, never boring.
Charlie Houpert: So at the time, there’s this program, I think it was called Clarity or something where you could pay people per minute for advice and they would get on the phone with you. And I don’t know what, Tucker was $15 or $22 per minute or something like that. I don’t remember exactly. And so said, I had no money. I was like, “Okay, 200 bucks, let’s get this done in whatever, eight minutes, 12 minutes.” So call him up, say, “Hey, can you help? We’re having trouble getting customers. Can you take a look at our business? What do you recommend?” And he goes, and he goes on to our home page, it’s called Kickassacademy.com. It’s me and my co-founder. He’s got hair down to his shoulders and he’s wearing a pink tank top, and I’ve got a neon green pink top and frizzy hair. And he says, “You guys look like douchebags. No one over the age of 26 is going to want to associate with this.”
And it was so true. It wasn’t packaged in a very digestible way, but in time, as I started to get other points of feedback, I was able to integrate that and there was a transition from, “Oh, wow.” What I realized is all the guys who had come with me, they were one of the captains of the Princeton football team when he was at Princeton. These were successful, cool dudes, but they all had this thing where it’s like they didn’t really want it to be public, that they were learning this kind of a thing.
And so we talked to them, we’re like, “You like us, but you don’t want anyone to know that you, like what’s going on?” We learned that, “Yeah, I do want to get better in my relationships and learn how to talk to women, but I don’t want to broadcast it that way essentially. And I also care about work and I also care about friendships.” And so we did a bunch of interviews and I started tracking what word are you comfortable with? What’s the 10-out-of-10 word that you’re down for? And I had a long list. It was lifestyle design, confidence and charisma came back as like a nine or a 9.5 out of 10. And so I’m going through this marketing course, Eben Pagan’s Marketing Step-by-Step, oldie, but a greatie. Excellent.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Eben’s a smart fella. For a long time has been a smart fella.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, yeah. And he’s got this line that the name of your company is the most important marketing decision you will ever make. And I realize that when I say Kickass Academy to people, they think it’s a dojo where you’re going to learn how to fight. And so through this process, Eben also says you want an alliteration that sticks in the head.
Tim Ferriss: He loves alliteration.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: David DeAngelo, Double Your Dating.
Charlie Houpert: David DeAngelo, Double Your Dating, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. He loves alliteration.
Charlie Houpert: I’ve got alliteration, charisma, and the thing that they want is they want to walk into a room and feel like they do with their best friends. They want to feel comfortable, calm, collected. They want to just be able to turn it on. And so we’re brainstorming and Charisma on Command comes in. Switch the name of the blog, screw up the redirect, so we lose all of our Google juice, whatever. But very quickly conversions, just nothing has changed. And we start converting way better as a result of this.
Tim Ferriss: And this is converting to online coaching?
Charlie Houpert: This is at this point, I forget exactly where we are, but there’s just more interest. People are commenting. Every metric of engagement is up. And the type of person —
Tim Ferriss: Just with the rebrand.
Charlie Houpert: Just with the rebrand, and we took the long hair down a little bit and made it a little bit just, okay, here we are, but we put on a tee-shirt instead of a tank top.
Tim Ferriss: Got rid of the 1980s Miami Vice —
Charlie Houpert: Exactly. Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: — tank tops. So let me sprinkle in just a little context on a few things you’ve said. So one is Tucker Max, for people who don’t know the name, he wrote a number of books. I believe his first mega bestseller was, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. And he was the first person, actually, I would say the only person in early 2007. I approached Tucker Max who was part of a panel at South by Southwest, and I was like, okay, there’s this long line of people. I already know Tucker’s pretty prickly, can be, and very direct. And I somehow heard through the grapevine that he was interested in jiu-jitsu or something like that. And at the time, I had been doing a lot of training.
So when I got up there, I was like, “Oh, have you ever trained with so-an-so or so-and-so.” And I used that as a wedge in, and he agreed to have coffee or lunch. I can’t remember what it was, one of the two. And I gave him an early galley copy of The 4-Hour Workweek. And a day later, or two days later, whenever we actually met up in person, he came in and he had a research assistant who was named Ryan Holiday later went on to become a mega bestselling author. Actually one of his books behind me, somewhere here, Tucker said, “Okay, let me explain what’s going to happen.” And he is like, “I can’t prepare you for it because nobody can prepare you for it.” And he just went step by step and basically predicted the next year of my life.
Charlie Houpert: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: He’s the only one who did that. Now, Tucker at the time also was, I think rightly considered a marketing genius and very good at promotion and positioning. Had at the time a massive community, which I believe was based on vBulletin or something like that. So his vote of confidence, maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy on some level, but that’s just a snapshot of Tucker. Then you also mentioned interviewing people, and I want to emphasize that. Interviewing various folks, because the thing that doesn’t scale in the beginning often helps you to scale later. And for people interested in how, for instance, like Brian Chesky and the founders of Airbnb applied that one of the very early Masters of Scale podcast episodes has one talking about doing the things that don’t scale. And that led to the rebrand, at least on some level, right?
Charlie Houpert: Oh, a hundred percent, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So you change the positioning and the branding, Charisma on Command, and everything improves, all the metrics of the website improve. And in the meantime though, you are still in the servants’ quarters in Brazil.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, I’m in the servants’ quarters. I am, at this point, I take out, I contact the HR lady at my old company. I go, “Hey, we had a 401k, right?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Can you drain that for me?” She’s like, “That’s going to come with a penalty.” I was like, “Don’t worry, I have no income. My taxes won’t be too much. I’ll just pay the penalty.” So I hit zero, and then I get a little infusion of cash and I’m about to hit zero again. I’m going to broke. I am Airbnb-ing my bedroom, sleeping on a horrible couch. I am teaching SAT tutoring to Brazilian high schoolers. I’m still doing the mitigation strategies in order to make things work.
Tim Ferriss: And in your mind at that time, if you remember, what is your goal?
Charlie Houpert: I have it. I’m living it. This is the beautiful thing as I was reflecting, it was really wonderful. Thank you for having me. It was such a cool opportunity to reflect on this. And I was like, I had it. It was it. That was it. I was broke and I was living it. And I got a tattoo right before this, it’s a paraphrase. It’s right here. I don’t need to flash the audience, but there’s a paraphrase of Thucydides that is, “The secret to freedom is courage.” And he also says, “The secret to happiness is freedom.” That’s a paraphrase, essentially of I think a quote in The Peloponnesian War.
And I was so happy, so broke, so unable to feed myself. And I have tried to remind myself of that is the secret. It’s just like when you step into it and you’re living it, nothing more needed to happen. I would’ve liked the business to do well, and it eventually did, but I was there. So at this time, I’m getting everything that I want in a degree, but also I’m running out of money and I’m planning airline points to get back home.
So what happens is we get this course, it’s from Clay Collins, and it’s about pre-selling an online course. And at the point I’ve done so much coaching that I’m actually getting tired of saying the same types of things over and over again now. Now it’s just happening via Skype at the time.
Tim Ferriss: At the same time, you got to workshop your material.
Charlie Houpert: Yes, and I start to dial — so each stage is important. So I’m dialing it in until I get bored of like, okay, this is what works. This is what creates transformation. But now my role is just robotic at this point. It’s not as dynamic as I’d like it to be. So given that I can do it once and be done, maybe I should just make an online course. Thank God for this pre-selling thing though, because it runs you through this process. At this time, I’ve been posting on the blog, I think we have 5,000 people on the email list, and I follow this template, which is something like, “Hey guys, I was about to go into a cave and make this online course, and I remembered that that’s stupid because I’m making it for you. So before I sit down to record it, I just want to know what is the biggest problem you’re facing related to charisma? If you reply to me, I’m going to make the whole course, but I’m going to make a piece of it for free that I’m just going to give everyone who replies.”
So they come in, they give me all their answers. Step two, you take all of those things, you bucket them and categorize them, and you put them into radio buttons ranking things in one of those survey monkeys, whatever you want. Say, “Hey guys, thank you so much for writing in. I think I have the top things. If you would just vote on which one you most want me to actually make the free piece on that would help me to decide which piece to make for you.” So then I get back, and the first thing it was how to make an amazing first impression, how to feel unshakably confident, how to have a conversation that flows effortlessly, how to tell great stories, how to have body language that’s magnetic and how to be a good leader. And in that order is what they ranked them like number one, first impression, number two, confidence.
So I get this, and they just gave me the outline of my course in addition to all of the specific phrases, questions, things that well need to be answered. So I say, “Hey guys, I’m making a course. It’s going to cover these things. First impressions, how to be unshakably competent, effortless,” all this stuff. “It’s going to sell for eventually, I think I started it at $800. We lowered it to $600, but it’s going to sell for 800 bucks. You can get it for $500, but here’s the catch one. You’re going to have to do a one-on-one call with me,” which is exactly what they want to do. “Two, there’s going to be group interaction throughout the whole time. And three, I really want your feedback throughout the course so that I’m building it exactly to be what you want.”
And so we offer 25 seats like this, and holy, that’s the most money, we make $12,500. We sell out. People are stoked. And for us, “Oh, wow, I was going to make this course.” And what I learned now, each week I get on a call, I talk to several people, and I develop the content that I then send to them, and they give their questions, and it’s this iterative, interactive thing over six weeks. And they, with their questions completely reshape the course I thought I was going to make. I thought I was going to make a course about all these advanced tips and tricks. And of course, where if you’ve done something for a while, you always overlook the beginning phases. You overlook the fear, you overlook all of those things. So we focus way more on getting through that.
And the course as a result is tailored to where my average audience member is, right? The guys that I wanted to work with that I started filtering by calling the company Charisma on Command. And I have all these surveys that have language that then become the sales page on the back end. So do you want to walk into a room and be the guy that people instantly notice and that they’re drawn to magnetically? That’s phrases that they wrote in their descriptions of what they were asking for and wanted. So on the back end of this, I have my outline, I have my course, I’ve gone through it.
And so now I can go record this thing and offer it on the website. So all of a sudden, these blog posts, which had nothing to sell to, have something to sell to. So now actual money can start coming into the business while I sleep. So we’re selling this course, we’re getting one a day or one every other day.
Tim Ferriss: That’s going to pay for your servants’ quarters rent at the very least, right?
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. Yes, correct.
Tim Ferriss: For sure. And much more even at that rate, right?
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. So my $450-a-month rent becomes affordable. I don’t have to Airbnb my bed. And at this point, we pop back, we go to Las Vegas, we’re flipping when summer hits the Northern Hemisphere, we go home. When it hits Brazil, we go back to Brazil. And so we’re just chasing summer basically in six-to-eight-month increments. Vegas, Brazil, Vancouver, Brazil, Columbia.
Tim Ferriss: Where are you from originally?
Charlie Houpert: Pennsylvania. Didn’t go back there.
Tim Ferriss: Pennsylvania. Okay. So how did you choose Vegas? How was Vegas chosen?
Charlie Houpert: We exit Brazil the first time right before the World Cup. Great opportunity to Airbnb the last month of rent. Gets some money coming in.
Tim Ferriss: For sure.
Charlie Houpert: It was great. And so I go back to Pennsylvania because I need a car. That’s where I’ve left my car. And plan to drive out to Los Angeles. Drive across the country in three days, spend one night in Vegas. That was a lot of fun. Avicii played at XS. Let’s try it again. Stay two nights, say three nights. Stayed there for 10 months, I don’t know, a year. It was good food. It was really fun. We were, at the time, really enjoying going out. We were able to meet and talk to people and do the whole song and dance. And so we wound up getting off campus student housing, which is the only place that had four cheap bedrooms in Vegas for a year outside of UNLV and were in Vegas for that period. So just stayed.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing. So I’m curious, what was the durability of that first course or the learnings in that first course? In other words, how much of an annuity has that been, whether it’s, or was it, in revenue or just in terms of core pieces of curriculum?
Charlie Houpert: Numbers over 10 million for sure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: So I’ve rerecorded it and I’ve gotten a little bit better background. I fixed the sound, and one time I was traveling, and so there was a new place every time. So I’ve rerecorded it four times and I’ve tried to change pieces that I didn’t like, but that structure remains. The sales page remains with minor tweaks. It’s not great, but it has been almost 10 years, if not 10 years at this point.
Tim Ferriss: That’s incredible. Yeah. Amazing.
Charlie Houpert: And because the problems are very similar, people have questions about Zoom or texting, but it was built off of core human problems that are durable and addressable. And interestingly, the refund rate has not changed over the time, it doesn’t seem to be working less for the people who buy it and apply it. There’s still a sizable refund rate because it’s a go-at-your-own-pace online course, and we have a very flexible refund policy, but it hasn’t increased. So I’d like to rerecord again.
Tim Ferriss: That’s amazing.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, I’d love to do one more rerecording, but same thing. Keep it going is how I feel.
Tim Ferriss: This might seem like a small detail, but I’m sure folks will be interested. What platform or software do you use to serve the course?
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: How do people, what’s the back end? Or maybe it’s very explicitly through some type of platform that provides this?
Charlie Houpert: I am sure there’s better options now, but we’ve kind of got on, and so there’s inertia. It’s just a WordPress with some plugins. There was a WishList Member plugin, which was hot at the time and since sort of been depreciated, and so we’re rolling off of that. SamCart is the cart. It was one of the only carts at the time that let you do payment plans. Now it’s like everybody will let you do a payment plan, but for our needs, those were the two. So it was a SamCart cart to a WordPress site with a gated content thing that hooked into SamCart.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Makes sense.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So the course starts working, right. Well, at least to the extent that you just described it, which was selling one a day or every other day, you then get to Las Vegas. When do things really start to ramp or when do things start to change?
Charlie Houpert: So I can afford not Main City, US rent at this point. I can live in Vegas. I can’t live in New York. I can’t live in L.A. That’s where we’re at at one point. I think it’s when I’m in Colombia. I had a list of, “Try LinkedIn?” “Try Twitter?” and the third was “Try YouTube?” And I have that piece of paper somewhere. It has a question mark, YouTube, question mark.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, man, people would love to see that. Given the size of your YouTube presence. YouTube, question mark.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. And so I had no idea. So I post on LinkedIn. I post on Twitter, and I put a video on YouTube. Now, to be fair, I put several videos on one YouTube channel that was me on the beach in Rio with the wind whipping past the lapel mic, and just that didn’t get any views. But I do one video on YouTube that is me analyzing a Bill Clinton debate, and it was one of those community debates where he approaches an audience member. And I talked about the power of his eye contact in that video.
And I didn’t look at it for six months, and I was, one day I found that piece of paper. I was like, “I should review to see how these things did.” I go to LinkedIn and nobody’s followed me, and I go to Twitter, nobody cares. And on YouTube there’s a hundred thousand views and I have 7,000 subscribers or something on this YouTube channel, and I haven’t even looked at it. So that was mind-bending, and I had no call to action. So it had no way to hit me other than I had to log into the YouTube platform, which I hadn’t done.
So I think it was 2016. I did a few videos at the end of 2015, but by 2016, I made the commitment that once a week, every week, I would release one YouTube video, and the first ones, this was, I’d read Essentialism, and it was like, “Just do the thing.”
Tim Ferriss: Great book.
Charlie Houpert: Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Greg McKeown.
Charlie Houpert: So good. So good. Read it. Read it four times. Need to read it again.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I have a piece of artwork downstairs in this house that Greg McKeown recommended to me called “The Listener.” People can check it out. It’s a great reminder. But not to interrupt. So you read Essentialism. Excellent book I recommended as well.
Charlie Houpert: He’s got one story about Herbie, which stuck with me so long. I’m setting up to do these YouTube videos once a week, and they’re tedious and I don’t like doing them and I don’t want to. And I read Essentialism, and he tells a story about a Boy Scout troop that was taking a hike. And they’re trying to get to their destination, but they’ve got one, a little bit of a pudgy guy named Herbie, and he’s having a hard time with his pack, and they’re falling behind schedule, so they don’t know what to do.
Tim Ferriss: Herbie’s slow. He’s holding up the whole line.
Charlie Houpert: He’s slow, and so nobody can go. So they realize that if they take Herbie’s pack and they redistribute it amongst some of the adults and the kids that can handle it, the whole troop is able to go double time and get to where they need to do and get back on time. So the question is, is there one friction point in your process that makes the thing un-fun or miserable? And can you spend whatever money or do whatever you need to do to stop this? So the breakthrough was, I hated setting up the camera, and so I didn’t do it immediately, but the next place that we got, I said, “It must have an extra bedroom. I don’t care. I will pay for the extra bedroom. I need to be able to leave this camera up.” And oh, my God, that changed it. It was like being able to walk in, press play and do it was versus 15 minutes of focus. Oh, my God, it was terrible. So that was a breakthrough.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the Herbie Parable, I believe, originated in manufacturing specifically when you have a serial or a linear production process where if there’s a machine in the middle or a lack of inventory at point X that causes that type of slowdown, you need to figure it out, a.k.a. Herbie. But it can be applied to so many different things. And in your case, video production.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. Well, I love watching your work because you so often remind me that there’s emotional Herbies of like, “I don’t enjoy this, so I don’t want to do it.” And so the question of “What if this were 10 times enjoyable? What if I had to have fun doing this?” Those are always the Herbies for me. It’s always, “I don’t like this thing.” “It’s okay, what if you were only allowed to do the thing that you like?” It’s like, “Oh, well then I’d do a lot more of it and I could see some results.”
So we start making these YouTube videos. I do a big one at the beginning that is in January of maybe 2016. I do a video that says, “I think Donald Trump’s going to be the President. Here’s why.” I’m watching his debates. Scott Adams is before me on this, but I’m watching debates. I see the same thing that starts to pick up. Other videos are going, I’m analyzing Conor McGregor. And I think it was from, was January or February or March of that year, the business tripled, and then I think it tripled again within two months.
Tim Ferriss: Is that due to the success of that video, would you say?
Charlie Houpert: Of the videos.
Tim Ferriss: I got it. The cumulative videos.
Charlie Houpert: Yes. So I’m doing Donald Trump, Conor McGregor, taking Game of Thrones characters. We can talk about fame-jacking if you want.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s talk about it.
Charlie Houpert: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: Let me ask you an intermediate question. Just to interrupt my own train of questioning, which is how did your call to action or flow change? Did the funnel change now that people are finding you on YouTube?
Charlie Houpert: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Was it just a link in a description or how did the actual business funnel function?
Charlie Houpert: So it’s evolved, and I’m going to take you up to present day to answer the question. So at first it was, “Hey guys, if you like this, leave a comment, subscribe.” I wasn’t thinking about it. So subscribers, which was, okay, fine. Then it was, okay, you need a tripwire. And the idea in online marketing is that there’s this low cost product that you want to get people onto your email list, give them a taste of something, and then they can buy your low cost product and then they’ll buy your larger product. So we set up this online funnel that was, “By the way, if you like that video and you want to know how to make a great first impression, here’s a free piece of content that’s like four minutes long on the basics of how to do it.” And you get that content. It’s four minutes of how to do it. And then it’s one minute of, “Hey, do you want help implementing this? Buy a section of this larger Charisma University course.”
And then when you’re in that, at the end of that, “Okay, so now you know how to make a great first impression. Do you want to know all this other stuff?” So it’s standard online marketing. Give them a piece, offer them more. Give them another piece, offer them more, solve a problem, offer them help with the next problem.
Tim Ferriss: And for those astute listeners, you may remember that how to make a first impression was straight from the interviews and then the Survey Monkey rankings, right?
Charlie Houpert: Yes, correct.
Tim Ferriss: Which is, for instance, even after writing five books, I have one in my mind that I would like to work on sometime soon. But I think the way I’m going to approach it is actually going back to the origins of The 4-Hour Workweek. And I will maybe, at a place like UT Austin in an entrepreneurship or business class, to workshop it, right?
Charlie Houpert: Hm.
Tim Ferriss: Teach it for a semester.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And you learn really quickly what works and what does not work.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: When you have an audience, whether it’s the one-on-one interviews or in something that you collate and then rank or having an audience who’s unlikely to give you kind of courtesy claps. So TBD. But all right. So I asked you about the funnel, but what else would you like to say about that, if anything? I didn’t mean to interrupt before.
Charlie Houpert: No, no. Well, the funnel has evolved. I think it’s worth saying that there’s so many sacred cows of everything online marketing. This is how you do it. What I’ve since seen is that these videos, without intending to be, they’re mini webinars. They’re 10 minutes of content. I don’t need to take everybody through this multi-step funnel. Here’s a small thing. So what we started doing, a breakthrough a few years later was just, “Do you want to buy our $600 course? Here’s some testimonials.”
And so that was a four X in conversions of just being everyone who’s watched their videos has at this point watched 10 of them and they don’t need to be drip fed this thing, they need to be offered “Jab, jab, jab” that Gary Vaynerchuk calls it, “hook.” Is like, “Dude, we’ve been jabbing for years at this point.” Offer them the product. Don’t offer them the email list. So that was a huge, huge increase to our thing was when I realized, oh, we’ve been just giving value consistently. We don’t need to do the same game that somebody who’s doing paid ads would do, who is just totally cold traffic and you don’t know them at all.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, if they walk into the Ferrari dealership, you’re allowed to sell them a Ferrari.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Walk out with a Porsche.
Charlie Houpert: Yes. Yeah. Yes, please. Look, we’ve got them on our email. These are great leads. Call them back. So that was that. The fame-jacking was something that is worth mentioning, it’s since changed. But in order to get traction on some of these social media platforms, you need something that hooks people, and my face in front of a white wall ain’t it. That’s not going to fly for me.
So what we found was, if I can comment on somebody that is known, Conor McGregor, Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, how does Tyrion Lannister, what sort of principles is he applying? Even though it’s a work of fiction. We were able to take a Game of Thrones fan and by the end of it make them a Charisma on Command fan. And so we were able to start fishing in all of these pools that I was interested.
We were doing breakdowns of the Marvel actors and why their interviews were so fun or how come this viral moment where Robert Downey Jr. gets in a tiff with an interviewer as what can you learn about it? So called that fame-jacking, which is basically, look, there’s someone else who was famous, you start with them on the thumbnail, you speak to a broad problem, “How to deal with a rude person,” and by the end they’ve become not just a Robert Jr. fan, but a Charisma on Command fan. That was sort of the goal and that helped a tremendous amount of growth.
Tim Ferriss: You said it’s changed. Is that an algorithmic change? Because I see that playbook being used a fair amount still on YouTube, but how has the game changed?
Charlie Houpert: What I see is that in short-form content, there isn’t the decision to click. There is only what captures attention. And so there’s many things that capture attention. One is Robert Downey Jr. a guy who you know, but another is, can you walk up these sticky stairs on Mr. Beast thing on what it looks like to run with $10,000? So you actually don’t have to sell the click on the short-form content in the same way. And just the Meta people have realized. I think this is what’s beautiful about YouTube.
There’s these incredible titles that are like, “I went to every state’s Airbnb,” or “I sat in a circle for 36 hours,” or “I gave a homeless man 10k.” At the time in YouTube there was this sacred cow belief that it had to look like what you titled a blog article, “How to do something in seven steps,” six things, listicle blog titles. And I think YouTube has started to really find its own formatting identity, which is not what had traditionally worked with blogs. And maybe blogs will start picking it up from YouTube, but I see that you don’t need to do fame-jacking in order to succeed in the same way. There’s many other avenues in order to do it.
Tim Ferriss: I’d love to touch on maybe a few expansions of that just briefly for folks. So you might recall back in the day, this is, let’s just say maybe even pre-Eben Pagan and so on. If you were to look at different types of online marketing, a standard operating procedure was long sales letters with lots of yellow highlights. And that was how you did it. Period. That was the scripture of online marketing. But lo and behold, that isn’t the only way to do things.
And in fact, you can approach it completely differently. Now, if you go through almost any website that sells software as a service, you’ll see somewhere on the product comparison or on the checkout portion when you’re selecting features or plans, they’ll have three options. The middle will say most popular, there’s a very cheap one with half the features you need, there’s a super expensive one that only two percent are ever going to consider, and then there’s most popular in the middle. And while the presentation changes, I would say there are a few takeaways.
Number one is you can always experiment and break the rules. Number two is there’s certain things that don’t tend to change that much. So you can still look at Caples on advertising for copy editing. You can look at old print advertisements from Ogilvy. You can read, for instance, Influence. So there are certain things you can study.
And like if drawing is learning how to see, sure, you might have a crayon, a pencil, a paintbrush, a piece of charcoal, but those are tools that can be adapted based on certain base principles. And then you can feel free. Once you have an understanding of some of these core fundamental concepts, then you can experiment to your heart’s content and you can start to break stuff. I don’t know. I mean, a lot of it because platforms have so much value capture and are so powerful now, I mean, if they do decide they want to promote X, Y, or Z, and they have a template for making you conform to that, then I would imagine there’s a decent amount of pressure to be pushed in that direction.
Last year videos or tweets, whatever tweet is called on X, or whatever it might be, doesn’t get the distribution that you would like. Now, you mentioned shorts or shorter clips not needing maybe the type of cell to be watched ostensibly because there’s shorter duration.
Do you see much of a conversion from shorter clips to viewing of longer clips or subscribers? I don’t know which metric is the one that matters, but I’m curious.
Charlie Houpert: We ran a little experiment. I have not put a lot of energy into shorts because the answer was there’s a couple of things. To your first point, I’m going to come to shorts with all of those Ogilvys, whatever what I have found is that if you take the tried and true ways of doing it and you run it through your own value system and you don’t allow for things that don’t align with yourself, so I’ll just give you a for instance. We used to do discounts because that’s what you do. You do a discount.
And I got an email from a guy who was like, “Hey, I love your stuff, but last week my friend who didn’t buy your thing and was on your email list for 30 days got offered this thing for $400 and I bought it immediately for 600.” And I realized that in a way, we were penalizing our most strident, ardent, willing customers for not sitting on the fence and offering discounts down the line. So I made the decision to chop off discounts. It hurt the business by 20 percent.
But you get an audience of people that has a different degree of trust with you. And so all of these rules, you can win short-term by doing a lot of different things. You can do clickbait titles, you do all sorts of things, but you’re establishing a relationship with every business decision. So I find that running all of those things through the center is helpful. So when it comes to shorts, one of them is I don’t really like shorts.
I’ve never really gotten tremendous amount of value from a short, I’ve gotten value from YouTube videos, blog posts, videos, all sorts of things, but I don’t connect with them. So I haven’t pushed shorts. We did a few experiments, and what I found for the way that we do things is no, that we didn’t see. We got a ton of subscribers, but we didn’t see a strong connection between long-form and short-form and purchases. I’m sure that somebody else could make that happen, but even though that was the way the wave was going, that’s not the way that my wave breaks. I don’t know. That was not a particular trend I was interested in.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I think to date I would say, and I’m sure my team would have additional thoughts, but I don’t think we’ve seen any correlation next to no impact whatsoever on short-form success. And by success, I mean some of our shorts have had 100 million views. And then the impact on the long-form interview that it was cut from literally imperceptible. You could not see an impact.
And yet it’s like, “Well, is that now a necessary survival/distribution tactic?” I’m not qualified to say, but also do not feel compelled to focus on clips. We do surface clips from longer interviews, but I do sometimes wonder if it’s to the detriment of the audience that I most like to cultivate, which is an audience who recognizes you cannot achieve any level of mastery nor can you retain anything effectively if all of your information is consumed in ten second increments.
Charlie Houpert: Totally. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Not evolved to do it. It doesn’t work that way.
Charlie Houpert: I totally agree. I’m so curious for you. What do you want from the podcast these days? Because it seems to me, and I’m sure you’ve had this many times like, “Look, I’ve done it. I’m safe. I can survive with the money that I have.” What is success for you at this point?
Tim Ferriss: Well, the podcast, I’ve thought, especially with the 10-year anniversary not too long ago and hitting some major milestones in terms of total downloads and listens and so on, I thought, well, if I were going to pack up my tent and move on, this would be a decent time to do it. However, I suppose for myself I just realized, well, even if I weren’t recording conversations, I would still be having these conversations.
And therefore, for the cost of a microphone and using an service to record a podcast with some basic, I mean, it’s not fancy lighting as anyone can tell if they’re watching me right now, but for the minimal cost of production, especially when you consider that a lot of these conversations I would be having would be via Zoom or FaceTime video. I might be walking around outside having this conversation, but I could also have a headset on where I’m recording. So the lifestyle inconvenience to me of recording the conversations I would have otherwise is close to zero.
And I would say success is having thought-provoking conversations. Ideally, I learn something or feel something from those conversations, maybe both, and then I get to share them. Because the origin of the podcast, I mean, it’s easier for me to forget, but I mean, there are a lot of factors that contributed to it in 2014. But one of them was I was living in the Bay Area in San Francisco at the time and I was having the most incredible conversations with brilliant people. At least people I thought were brilliant. The density of intelligence there is so high.
I mean, there are a lot of issues as well, but it just seemed like such a shame, not too dissimilar. I mean, it’s slightly different, but it’s closer than people might realize where it’s like you’re doing the one-on-one coaching. It’s yeah, it’s good to help one person, but then if I want to convey this to a second person, let alone 200 people, I have to repeat it. And for me, these conversations were sand through the fingers, that I could not in any way convey to someone else.
And I was like, “Well, let me just try to record some of these.” Which is why the first 10 to 15 were with friends of mine also, to make the lift as light as possible. And I feel like I probably, it’s not a probable, I would definitely miss recording because let’s just say I quit the podcast today, next week I would’ve an amazing conversation with someone. I’d be like, “God dammit.” It’s so selfish of me not to just record on an iPhone with a half decent headset to record this thing because fuck, it’s a real privilege to have access to the network that I have access to.
Which doesn’t mean by the way that, I mean, everyone’s going to know every person I talk to, I prefer strongly if they don’t. But success to me right now it’s honestly scratching my own itch. So for instance, I mean, I’m thinking of potentially compiling a whole lot of 4-Hour Workweek-related case studies because very early, very early in my entrepreneurial journey, and I’m not recommending people go buy this book. I think it’s out of print anyway, but Entrepreneur Magazine had this book called Young Millionaires, and it was two to three pages profile of each young millionaire, which meant somewhere between 20 and 35, I suppose.
And it was like, how much cost to start the business? $200. How much they made last year in revenue, next year estimated revenue, type of business. And it ranged from pest control to crime scene clean up to —
Charlie Houpert: Oh, God.
Tim Ferriss: — yeah, pretty gnarly, to cosmetics, to forestry. It was like the range and scope was so inspiring to me. The magic of that and the impact that it had on my psyche I didn’t take it and apply it right away, I was too young, but seeing that it was possible has made me think about assembling effectively a book that would be the [REDACTED].
Charlie Houpert: Wow. Oh, I love that. I love that. I got chills. I love that. Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Because with The 4-Hour Workweek it’s like in the beginning, and even now, understandably with a title like that, people are like, “Yeah, bullshit. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You work more than four hours a week.” I’m like, “Well, I’m not just going to lay outside staring at at the grass rubbing cocoa butter on my stomach.” I like building things and I like having these kinds of conversations, but there are so many other types of pushback in the early stages, keeping in mind, I’ve revised The 4-Hour Workweek, but the last time I did it was 2009.
And the principles really apply. The frameworks still all apply. The technology, forget about it, almost all outdated, but that doesn’t matter. If you grasp the principles, then you can find the methods. But a lot of the types of pushback that people would say, “Oh, well, it’s easy for a single guy than on a single mom.” Or “I have four kids.” Or “I’m in a different country.” Or “I’m in this struggling economy.” Or fill in the blank. For every possible excuse that I have heard, I have received a case study from someone who fits that exact profile who figured it out.
So the idea that I could collect those in some fashion in a compendium just seems A, it would be so much fun and so gratifying for me after almost 20 years of this book being out. And therefore, as always, us having this conversation is a way for me to feel into that and to be like, “Okay, what aspects of this?” Like you said when I mentioned the book, like chills like, “Okay, what pieces of it?” I’m like, “Okay.” I get an extra big smile, so big that my earpiece keeps falling out. Also, I have swimmer’s ear, so my canals are fucked —
Charlie Houpert: Oh, no.
Tim Ferriss: — on my right ear. So it just keeps falling out. But that’s a very long answer to your question. But success for me with the podcast is just recording conversations that I would want to have anyway, which for a successful podcast is maybe harder than people would realize. So hard. Because if you want to protect traction, distribution, and audience size, and ideally grow it, that is more and more every day being dictated by platforms with priorities that are not the same as your priorities.
And if you really double click on that, look at it, study audience capture as well almost every financial incentive would push you to break that rule and choose guests based on the number of Oprah moments or salacious clips you can pull from an interview that you can then use on the platforms to drive some type of growth engine. Although growth for what end is an open question. A lot of people make YouTube work, but in my particular case, I’m just not really video first. So it’s never been particularly strong performing compared to audio. It’s very difficult or I shouldn’t say it’s difficult. It requires constant revisitation to instill the habit of me only having conversations with people I would want to have a conversation with, right?
Charlie Houpert: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: Because if I could have on some completely off-the-wall lawmaker or I could have on, who knows? I could step on a bunch of third rails politically speaking. I could pull from current events and light off some audio and video dynamite with talking about the Middle East. There are many things that I could do, which would get a lot more attention than me finding a Japanese sword maker who no one has ever heard of.
But when you start to put on a mask, adopting practices that are not of your own invention, but because you’re complying with incentives, the concern is not that it just ends up hollowing you out inside, because that can happen, the risk is that you actually become the mask you’re wearing and that those behaviors change how you think and change your own beliefs, which I think is inevitable on some level. So in any case, that’s probably more than either of us bargained for.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, goodness. I’ve wrestled with this endlessly. And I absolutely hit a period where I felt like to a degree I allowed that audience. So at first it was, I wanted to make this video. I think what Bill Clinton does with his eyes is so fascinating. I think it’s so interesting that Donald Trump is probably going to be President. And I love Game of Thrones. And then it was, well, you guys want more Game of Thrones videos, let me do another Game of Thrones — well, you guys really like that one. And what you’re describing to me is not just a business struggle.
It is a legitimate emotional, spiritual struggle to be like, “Do I choose myself in the face of the world offering me all of this temptation to be something else?” And there were periods where the answer to that is I compromised. And it’s like I didn’t kill anyone or do any, but I made the video that I didn’t really want to make and it did really well and then, okay, well, I’ve got to make another one. And I burned out. I had to step away for years and didn’t make videos for years because I believed that I hated making videos. And what I learned was that no, I hated losing my creative well as I chased approval and views and more.
Tim Ferriss: So let’s talk about the timeline on that. Let’s see. Let me see if these are lining up. So you’re in Vegas, you begin to make these videos, which you enjoyed making, about Bill Clinton. I suppose Bill Clinton came maybe even prior to that, but to use your term fame-jacking, so Jon Snow, real characters or otherwise, Keanu Reeves. Maybe Keanu Reeves came later.
But in any case, those videos start to do very well. You realize that you can offer the higher priced products upfront or reasonably soon with testimonials, and you get conversion. You don’t have to lead someone through a 12-step process. And I suppose what I’m wondering is what does the trajectory look like from there? And how long was it before you decided, “I just can’t do this. I need to take a break?”
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. It’s so funny, this. There’s two lines. There’s the line of when you’ve created the value, which is I created the value sleeping on the couch in Brazil, and then there’s the line of when the money starts coming in, and so there’s a delay. So you’re creating the value and then the money comes in later. But there’s also a delay on the backside, which is you stop creating the value, but the money keeps going up.
And this is every cash cow business that starts cannibalizing itself and not treating customers well, but is still when Marvel makes the next sequel to Marvel movie and it does well, and they don’t realize that they’re eating their own future. So I would say the flip for me was 2018 to when it shifted from I personally want to make these videos and I’m excited and I’m learning something in every video to, oh, I’ve learned what makes them clap, and now I want more claps. I want more clapping. And the money was secondary, but it’s like, “Oh, they like it. They love me.” Every video bigger.
Tim Ferriss: So that was a few years after starting the channel at that point?
Charlie Houpert: Yes. And I’d been doing it weekly. And there was an authentic drive to do it weekly that’s then slowly shifted and it became, “I don’t want to do this.” And then it was, “I definitely can’t do this.” And I, at the time, so many other things were going on in my life, we can go into it or not, but there was a moment probably in 2018 where I needed to have a conversation with my co-founder that said, “Hey, I think we’re no longer in alignment with this business. I’ve been driving the growth with these videos. Your projects have not succeeded in the same way, not for the sake of money, but for the sake of honesty, we have to have a talk about our 50/50 split.”
But money was never the drive. The drive was always be with my friends in Brazil. And so I didn’t care. But as my own inability to have sincere, authentic conflict crept into the business, it cascaded downwards. So I’m avoiding having a difficult conversation with my co-founder. We hire somebody else to cover that up. Turns out years later that we hire somebody who fabricated a bunch of stuff and stole money from the business and all of it was just from this core pattern of not wanting to face the problem and just wanting to squint at it and say, “Everything’s good. The money’s coming in. People like it,” et cetera.
And so what happened was, and again, I was so happy, broke in Brazil, sleeping on the ground, unable to afford food, and then I had the experience, the cliched one of I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made. Everybody wants more, they think it’s all great, and I feel like, I feel awful.
And then I have a breakup, right before my 30th birthday and I’m going to collapse some things. We can go into anything. I am invited to an ayahuasca retreat, I have been having these issues that have not surfaced. I don’t smoke weed, I don’t drink.
I am a straight edge, but fuck it I’ll give it a try. I go headfirst into this ayahuasca experience with no idea what’s coming and that starts what has now been a seven-year process of completely turning my life upside down and having to face everything that I hadn’t looked at, which was, of course, these things in the business, but even more importantly, the patterns of avoidance and people pleasing and seeking that had been birthed in my childhood. And so, hey, happy to touch on all of that. I know it’s broad spanning.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. No, we could spend probably two hours on six different facets of that. Let’s start with coming back to the secret of freedom is courage. Was there a catalyzing event? Was there a book you read? How did you go from squinting at the problem? Because this is, I would say shockingly calm, but it’s not shocking because I see it so often. Co-founder challenges, co-founder splits, these happen all the time. And it’s particularly challenging in a situation where you have some accepted 50/50 division because there’s no real tiebreaker. It gets even more complicated when you have governance and board of directors and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, almost no relationship is 50/50.
Charlie Houpert: It would be weird if it was. It’d be so weird.
Tim Ferriss: Actually, that clip I mentioned that got 100 million plus views, it was Brené Brown talking about how marriage is never 50/50. And I would say the question for me that I’m sure people are wondering is how did you go from the conflict avoidant kind of people pleasing, maybe fear-based, who knows, squinting at the problem, hiring people to try to paper it over, et cetera, et cetera, to having whatever come-to-Jesus conversation presumably you guys had? How did that happen?
Charlie Houpert: It took years. And the catalyst was not the business because the sacred center of it for me was never money. It was the friendship. And I was acting out a pattern to try to keep things good with us and he was doing his half of that pattern to keep things good in the way that we thought to do it, which was, let’s not address this. And it was on me to address it because I was the one that was beginning to be frustrated, resentful, subtly trying to influence change, encourage, coach everything other than say, “This isn’t working for me.”
And how did I do that? It was a multi-year process of facing brick by brick those familial patterns of I’m afraid you won’t love me if I say that I’m upset with you. I’m afraid that you won’t love me if I take what I think is my fair share. I’m afraid that I’ll be alone. And I hear it in my voice. I still carry that in me. And if you look at the business, Charisma on Command, even how to make Tim like you in a conversation, how to make somebody like there was this founding belief that, “If I could just communicate clearly enough, do more, say more, be more, that connection would just happen,”
Tim Ferriss: How did you decide it was time? What did it look like to go from doing the work with all these modalities to, “All right, game time — “
Charlie Houpert: Oh, God.
Tim Ferriss: — to have the conversation?
Charlie Houpert: Again, it was pieces. First, it was oblique conversations like, “Hey, I’m not feeling — this isn’t feeling great,” and then seeing what I got back. And then it was more confrontational. And the essential problem was I did not know how to have a boundary and tried to negotiate boundaries endlessly with people that I loved, instead of saying, “I love you,” but pass this line, “It’s not okay with me and I will not comply.” It was, “Well, can you see why that would be fair for me to have this perspective?” So if there was a shift, the big thing that happened was, over these years, I had started to develop a therapeutic relationship with a therapist and a number of friendships where I was being met in ways that I did not think were possible, and to not use therapy language, I felt that people wanted to hear the ways in which I was upset with them or angry and wanted to repair in ways that actually didn’t just paper over the problem but felt good.
And when I brought that possibility, I was like, “Holy shit, this can happen? Let me bring myself,” that was not the result of my conversation with my co-founder. It did not go that way. And knowing that it existed now and then not getting it there made it like, “Okay, this is no longer working. We need to separate.” And so what happened was, first, it was with the friendship, but secondarily with the business, it was tough for me to come back to to say, “I don’t want you to make videos anymore for the business. I don’t feel that they’re aligned with what I want to say.” I made videos for, I don’t know, the first three-ish years and then got burned out. I was like, “Will you please step in?” and always didn’t want to look at the videos.
Whatever, the money’s coming in, I don’t want to see. I actually had to sit down and literally watch them, and not that there’s anything objectively wrong with them, but they’re aligned with what felt right for me. And I had completely abdicated that responsibility of saying, “This doesn’t feel good.” So confronting that I felt so evil and awful and bad for having that perspective. I was being too cruel or too mean, but I had become more grounded in, “Not saying that you shouldn’t make videos ever. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do this, but this doesn’t work for me.”
So we just paused literally making videos on the channel for one year. Business starts to nosedive, right? Not immediately, but the videos don’t get views forever. Business falls off 20 percent, 30 percent, 50 percent. And it was again a question of which — it wasn’t a game. It was, “I just don’t feel good about that.”
And so through that process, we were talking about the future of the business and what I buy, what he sells, we couldn’t find an agreement on who would do what. And I can talk about the negotiation if you want, but we finally settled on, “I’m going to buy the business all out. I’ll pay you for the piece and you’ll have no restrictions. You can make any sort of content that you want on any other channel, but this was going to go, I’m going to take this, I’m going to give you cash.”
And honestly, it’s what both of us wanted. I think the thing that we didn’t acknowledge is that we had fundamentally different drives, whereas mine was more creative expression and his was more financial security. And that split, it’s very tough. It just doesn’t align well, especially what you said. I did not feel he has a different opinion, that we were equally contributing to the financial success of the business. So yeah, it was harrowing more importantly than the business split was that he was my best friend and we’re not that anymore. And so it was going through the wringer. It was Dark Night of the Soul-type challenges. So grateful for it and it was painful as hell to experience.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m sorry you guys experienced that. I would say that, in theory, sometimes in practice, if everything’s going perfectly, 50/50 informally agreed upon sounds great, right? But in practice, it can be very challenging. And if you were to do this again, right? If you were to partner with someone else, let’s just say that it actually made sense, someone came to you with a channel with an equal number of subscribers. They’re like, “Hey, let’s join forces. I think we can 3x,” and let’s just say that conformed with your artistic expression and what you want to do. I would imagine you would have some type of partnership agreement that can function as a prenup in the sense that you would have termination clause, where it spells out what happens in case of a split, which is an area where also conflict avoidant folks get themselves into long-term trouble, not saying you, but in general.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, 100 percent me.
Tim Ferriss: Right? They get themselves into long-term trouble because they want to avoid the short-term discomfort of talking about the ingredients that would go into such an agreement, and man, oh, man, yeah, it can get really, really, really messy. A prenup is always cleaner than a postnup in business and in life. Where do things stand now with the business?
Charlie Houpert: So I’m making monthly payments to him. We agreed on a fixed sum that I would pay over a period of time. I am sole owner and it’s great. It’s exactly what I want. The business for me always has been the crucible of emotional growth. From the moment where, “Am I going to press publish on this thing?” to, “Am I going to do private coaching or am I going to move to Brazil?” and it’s always been the question of, “Can you hold your center in the face of temptation not to?” And there’s a long period where with my relationship with him, I lost it. I lost my center and that’s not his fault. But God, it’s so amazing, I come back and I step into this audience-capture moment where I want to prove myself that I’ve still got it, that I can do it, except I don’t want to make the old bangers that I used to. I don’t want to throw fastballs down the middle to the fat part of the bell curve any longer.
And so I’m facing continually the challenges of letting go of my ego of the guy who did it and having the business that is authentic to me. And I have not sorted through it. Even in preparation for this conversation, half of me wants to sit and dial in my story, so that I’m perfect and I nail it and it hit that punchline. And the other half of me is like, “Dude, go in empty. Go in empty.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I like rough draft.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, rough draft, right?
Tim Ferriss: More than finished 60-minute comedy special on Netflix.
Charlie Houpert: Exactly, yeah, TED Talk.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I appreciate the vulnerability and the candor and I am going to ask you at some point, I’m just going to plant the seed because I’ll let it germinate a bit, which is other critical decisions that you made in your entrepreneurial journey. Could be anything. Could be a tiny detail that ended up making a big difference. Could be anything at all like other decisions or milestones that were really important. I’ll buy some time though.
Charlie Houpert: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: So do you still recommend, I’ve actually never read book, but Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden?
Charlie Houpert: Amazing. So good. Now I haven’t read it in maybe seven or eight years, maybe longer, but if you do read it and you’re crunched for time, you can skip to the chapters on the pillars. He’s got some preparation on what self-esteem is and the history of it. But if you haven’t worked on your self-esteem at all, it’s the first stop to go to. If you have more experience, you might be more familiar with it.
Tim Ferriss: And what should people expect to gain from this? How did you find this book in the first place? Do you remember?
Charlie Houpert: Goodness, that Tucker Max message board was a lot of the books — that was where I found The Game and it might’ve been Six Pillars of Self-Esteem as well. I think it was through something like that, yeah, and I got into, it’s like a 1970s psychology personal development book, but it’s perennial. What people can expect, there’s these exercises that people are discovering the power of, which is sentence completions exercise. So it’ll run you through each chapter and talk about how personal responsibility is a critical element of self-esteem or whatever, but then it adds at the end it’s got these sentence stems, “If I took five percent more responsibility for myself today,” blank.
And the idea is that you can write or speak, just free like, “If I took five percent more responsibility for myself today, I would eat healthy. If I took five percent more responsibility for myself today, I would call my parents and tell them that I love them,” whatever it is that is honest for you in that thing. And if you go through these, usually the fifth, sixth one, you’re just like, “Oh, damn.” And so some of them were, “I would have talked to that girl at Whole Foods,” and it was, “Oh, crap.” And so there was one, there was a woman who I dated who I had seen her and then I went back and then I did my pillars of self-esteem and I went, “Oh, crap,” and I walked back to Whole Foods and I said, “I had to talk to you. I went home and wrote my sentences and it was, ‘If I had more courage, if I had five percent more courage, I would’ve asked you on a date,'” and that became a relationship.
Tim Ferriss: It’s amazing.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, it’s that sort of stuff.
Tim Ferriss: She’s a slow shopper.
Charlie Houpert: No, no, she worked at Whole Foods. She was at the counter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I was like, “She wearing leg braces?”
Charlie Houpert: No, she was identifiable. She was easily trackable.
Tim Ferriss: Got it. Okay. Amazing. All right, so we will link to that in the show notes. This is what I was curious about. What was The Last Psychiatrist blog?
Charlie Houpert: Oh, my gosh, you don’t know this?
Tim Ferriss: No, never heard of it.
Charlie Houpert: To me, he is the secret godfather of bloggers on the internet. A lot of the people that you might’ve liked from cracked.com or whatever, he wrote. It was a pseudonym. People think they know who he is. He’s likely a psychologist or psychiatrist and he has incredibly thought-provoking stuff. Now if you read it, you’re going to go, “Well, that doesn’t make sense and that’s kind of a leap,” but it is very thought-provoking in reading it. And at the time, he stopped writing in like 2013 or something.
Tim Ferriss: But the old posts are still up?
Charlie Houpert: Somebody’s cataloged them because there’s an internet fandom around it, but if I could give you some basic things, I’ll give you one story that I remember.
Tim Ferriss: I think “The Maintenance of Certification Exam as Fetish,” “Ten Extra Seconds Would Have Saved True Detective‘s Finale.” Okay, he’s got all sorts of random stuff.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, he’s all over the place.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, 2014 looks like the last post.
Charlie Houpert: He discusses how advertising doesn’t just condition you [to] what you want, it conditions how you learn what to want. So as an example, people will watch a Lexus commercial and they’ll think, “I didn’t fall for that. I don’t want to buy a Lexus,” and his point is, “Yeah, but you think that that’s what a pretty woman looks like, the woman who moves towards the Lexus.” And so he’s got a couple of maxims which are interesting, which is, “If you see it, it’s for you,” meaning if you’re consuming a piece of advertising and you think it’s not impacting you, it’s been split test to make it to your eyeballs. And yes, technically there’s a chance that you’re resisting, but it is teaching you that a watch is a status symbol. And maybe you don’t think you need a Patek Philippe, but you learned that this is what money looks like because the background has a bookshelf. And now you think that books are what make people want things.
So he talks about how two things have happened. We’ve, one, lost the ability to self-reference internally our desires, which is exactly in line with what we were talking about. It’s all mimetic desire, right? “What do you want that you want that you want that I can’t find my own wanting in it?” And he talks about how we have become deeply narcissistic. Just collectively as a society, we see our own reflection and image everywhere and many people do not have the capacity to genuinely love and encounter another, “It’s just what my wife says about me, what my kids say about me,” that sort of a thing.
Tim Ferriss: All right, so that is just thelastpsychiatrist.com. All right, let’s come back to critical decisions or they don’t have to be critical, important decisions. If you were basically teaching a class about your entrepreneurial journey, a seminar, and you were highlighting some of the things that actually really made a difference, maybe they looked small at the time, maybe they looked really big at the time, anything else come to mind that we have not yet discussed?
Charlie Houpert: So a lot of them we have. So allow me to run through the ones because maybe I’ll find something new. So if I really go to critical decisions, there were all of the early ones about, “This isn’t my 10-out-of-10 and I’m willing to let it go.” That was repeated throughout the business. There was this phase of making videos where I had read Essentialism and it became, “Get everything out of my way so that I can do this thing,” and that was rocket ship growth. It was like, “Let shit go awry. Problems are arising. Do not come to me.” And there’s a balance there that I haven’t quite figured out because what happens is a lot of little things go wrong, but the net of me making these videos absolutely obliterates and cancels them out.
And there comes a compounding bill when you’ve just hired that person and just let that culture persist and it becomes — it, at some point, needs to be addressed, which is what eventually did need to happen with the company. But there was a period of just rocket ship growth by letting small problems accrue. There was, getting that extra room was really big, so that I could film the video.
Tim Ferriss: Handling the Herbie.
Charlie Houpert: Handling my Herbies.
Tim Ferriss: That there was the rebranding, of course.
Charlie Houpert: Rebranding early. Yeah, then building the course. Here’s one. There was between V3 and V4, I went to Jay Abraham. He had a private coaching thing. He’s one of these old-school business coaches.
Tim Ferriss: He’s super old school. He has a great book on joint ventures. I haven’t read it in more than a decade, but all the myriad forms that joint partnerships and joint ventures can take. Pretty wild. Some of the negotiating gambits and kind of guerrilla marketing and partnership approaches. Jay Abraham.
Charlie Houpert: So I have private coaching with Jay Abraham. And he asks me, “Who’s the person you most want to take your course?” I say, “Tim Ferriss or Tony Robbins.” And he says, “If Tim Ferriss found your course and took it right now, how would you feel?” I went, “I don’t want him to,” and he said, “That’s a problem.” I said, “Well, it’s not good enough.” He said, “Make it good enough.”
Tim Ferriss: That’s a cool exercise.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. So I went back and filmed it and I still have insecurities and this and that, but I did my best effort to make it okay for Tim, for you. And when it was done, the next video that I made, I spoke about it, and at the end of the video I said, “This is the best I can do. This is the greatest thing that I can possibly make for you guys on this topic,” and conversions exploded. And every ad read after that had a significantly higher like 2x or more lift in conversions and we started getting more testimonials. And it was this, “If you don’t believe in it fully, you’re going to sell it with hesitancy, right?”
So being able to tell the truth and the truth was not, “This is the greatest thing in the world,” is, “This is my absolute best. If you like this blog, this is the best I can offer you.” And at this point, the truth is it’s now longer true. I feel like I can do something better now. So I need to go back, do it again and then be able to honestly say, “This is the best I can do and I’m sure that will have the same impact because I subtly shy away from selling, from offering the thing that I don’t fully believe in,” so that was a big one. It’s tough.
I don’t know how to parse it out, but this plus adding testimonials was a 4x conversion lift when we started adding those at the end.
So we used to have our call to action, it was a 10-minute video and then like, “Hey, if you want to buy Charisma University, it does this, it does this, it does this. It’s got all this in it. Here’s what’s in it.” And then it became, “Hey, do you want to buy Charisma University? Here’s what somebody said about it, ‘This helped me get a promotion. It did this.’ Here’s what somebody else said about it, ‘I got a girlfriend.’ Here’s what somebody else said about it.” And they were just literally photo comments that people had left in the comment section or emails that they sent in and that combined with the, “I care about this more,” was a 4x total conversion lift, which was huge.
There was — the avoidance was something that I had to pay for on the backend, the avoidance of conflict, and not — I think this is one, I didn’t know how to just allow people to know that I was disappointed or upset or hurt or angry. I had to fix everything very, very quickly, a lot of people-please-y tendencies, compounding over time, created a lot of issues.
There was not firing the person who wound up stealing. I knew that I needed to. There was a lot of not firings that were huge.
And then there was the walking away and the returning, which was really, really important and they were both honest. One was like, “I’d rather not have this thing send me money than post videos that I don’t feel aligned with,” which made me like, “Oh, my God.”
When you do stuff that isn’t aligned for money, it signals such a lack of self-belief and self-love. And this is in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem book. When you start trading your beliefs for cash or approval, you’re just sending a signal that, “I can’t be relied on to be myself and be safe and earn.” But when you do things that are detrimental to income, not offering a discount, like saying, “I don’t want these videos to go up,” not to punish anyone, but just because it doesn’t feel aligned, I have felt every time where I’ve dropped into that this power arises in me. And so that was like, “Oh, holy shit.” I felt like a beggar in a weird way. I’m making all this money, but I’m feeling unsafe that I need to beg for more and ride the coattails of this thing that I built that I can no longer do. And as soon as I said, “I don’t want this,” I felt a surge of like, “Oh, fuck, I have more to say. I have more to contribute.” So that was huge.
And then in the negotiation, the big moment was two things. We’d been at deadlock for two years. I made him an offer. It was nowhere near what he wanted. We were just not able to meet. There were two things that happened. One was we’re starting to get into these circular spirals of, “Things aren’t working,” and I paused and I said, “Hey, it sounds like you’re really scared,” and we just talked about our feelings and the fallout of the friendship and the fears that we both had. And acknowledging the emotional intensity of this, that was essential. Pretending that this was a business transaction, that’s a lie. That’s not what was going on here. We were both really afraid. And speaking to that and bringing it to light moves things tremendously.
And then the second one was honestly going to him and saying, “I’m willing to sell the business. I’m willing to sell it, but I need one thing, which is I need no noncompete. I need the ability to go and make anything that I want anywhere.” And that moved us from “I’m trying to buy from him, he wants more money, I don’t want to give him the money,” to, “Make me an offer.” He made me an offer then for that. And I said, “I’ll give you 20 percent more than that,” and it was done deal over and it was that.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Was there anything in particular that led to those two, call it breakthroughs?
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t think they’re, after a two-year impasse, I think that wording is appropriate.
Charlie Houpert: Oh, totally.
Tim Ferriss: What contributed to those two things?
Charlie Houpert: Joe Hudson, I have to give a huge shout-out. Have you spoken to Joe?
Tim Ferriss: I have spoken to Joe. Joe. I actually just featured a tweet storm about emotional intelligence that Sam Altman had retweeted at one point. Just shared that in my newsletter I think one week ago, maybe two weeks ago. Yeah, so Joe Hudson, you should explain, though, to folks who don’t know the name, who he is.
Charlie Houpert: Joe’s awesome. It’s funny, I have to admit this. It was Father’s Day last Sunday and I was making the joke. I’m like, “I’m meeting all my dads in one week. It’s my dad and Tim Ferriss and Joe Hudson is going to be here in two days.” And for me, it’s a significant thing because the truth is, and I told you, I had a ton of projections onto you like, “If Tim helps me, it will save me.” And I had the same thing with Joe because Joe’s work was also deeply important to me. And so it’s just really cool to drop some of the projections and meet the people.
So all my dads. Joe Hudson is my third dad. He’s great. He has a thing called Art of Accomplishment and he acknowledges the emotional aspect of business and not only acknowledges it, but points to the fact that, if you ignore it, you will either not do as well as you could or you will do is exceedingly well and feel that empty burnt-out thing that awaits everybody who trades the inner asset for the external one. So his work was extremely helpful. I’d gone through his courses and he offered me, because we’d been in contact, a private coaching session because I’d helped him with some YouTube stuff. And on that, he literally suggested, he said, “Offer to sell. Are you willing to sell?” And he was like, “Then make the offer. Do a shotgun deal where you guys both write a number on a piece of paper and the person who is willing to spend more will take it.”
So just knowing that I had that, I brought that to my co-founder and said, “Look, I’m willing to make a binding agreement about this where I’m genuinely willing to buy or sell.” But it was that shift of, when I needed to buy, he was like, “Well, give me more.” And when it’s like, “Look, I don’t need to buy, but let’s get our way out of this thing,” his number came down essentially is what happened. And there was one final thing that was — I based on loving advice from people who were supporting me, had wanted to buy the business out of net revenue, which is to say, with safety valves on, “If it doesn’t perform, I don’t have to pay you.” And that, we couldn’t find a number for. It just didn’t feel good.
And I had a number come through, a literal number that came to me and I was like, “That’s way more than I’ve been offering him and he said no.” And the next followup was, “Yeah, because you’re going to take all the risk,” and I felt a surge of fear and then that self-belief energy come back and like, “Oh, my God, yes, I want the risk. I don’t want this. If it works, I want this through rain or shine, good or bad. Let me pay the price for not succeeding.” And I’ll take you back to one. It was the burning the boats that finally made the business work at every stage. It was taking the steps that got me to not have the contracting job, to move to Brazil. I’m committed. I care about this enough to suffer and hurt if this doesn’t work out, right?” And so that was also huge in that and it was huge at the beginning of the business.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, what a story. I’m consistently amazed, it happens to me all the time in my own life too, but how a single conversation or a dream, literally this has happened to me when I’ve had a fever and I’ve just been sick in bed where you’re looking at something and then suddenly say a Joe Hudson’s like, “Well, why don’t you just do the opposite of what you’re considering?” and you’re just like, “Oh, shit. Yeah, why don’t I do that?” It’s this revelatory experience of an off menu option suddenly seeming obviously available and viable, right? And it’s like when someone offers you A or B, look for C type of situation. And it’s so easy to say that and it sounds trite and cliched, and even as I would like to think at least how much practice I have at trying to test assumptions or I am testing assumptions, testing assumptions and always looking for side entrances and these off menu options, still there are these moments where you’re blind to what is hiding in plain sight. And it’s fun to hear that Joe was one of the unlocks for part of that.
Charlie Houpert: And by the way, I have to say, if you’re here watching this, I can’t imagine you have it, but if you haven’t read The 4-Hour Workweek, that’s the entire thing. It’s that energy. And I actually think what people are buying from me is that energy in the social realm, “There’s a third option, which is connect. The magic is available,” and I think 4-Hour Workweek is like, magic is available in your career.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. I’ve been asked so many times, as you would imagine, by publishers to go back and kind of fine tune, rewrite that book. And I don’t want to touch it.
Charlie Houpert: It’s too good.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, I appreciate you saying that. It somehow captured lightning in a bottle, and I’m like, “Look, I’m 47 right now. I wrote that when I was 29.” And sure, if I read it now, there’s a little bit of chest puffing, and there’s shit in it where I’m like, “Oh, my God.” It makes me facepalm a little bit. But for whatever reason, that book has just stood the test of time, at least over 20 years or close to it, and resonated with people from so many different age brackets. Going from 15 all the way up to retiree. I don’t want to touch it.
And to your point though, fundamentally, it’s about calling into question all the basic assumptions of career, retirement, slave, save, retire. The deferred life plan. And looking for alternatives that you can effectively prove are, if not realistic, at least possible vis-a-vis these case studies that are already in the book. And the vast majority of those case studies predated the publication of the book. I mean, I think that’s a byproduct of enjoying books that do that on some level.
Let My People Go Surfing, I think, is the title of the book by Yvonne Chouinard. I remember reading books by Ricardo Semler, and Branson, Losing My Virginity. Where it’s like, “Okay.” Everyone says an airline is suicide. He workshopped it, in a sense, because a flight got canceled. He walked around with a sign at an airport offering charters. And then once he had people booked for a charter, he chartered a flight somewhere. And then figured out how to work with, I think it was a Boeing at the time, to effectively cap his downside so that his losses were contained.
But the upside was attractive. And you look at how he structured some of these deals, and it’s like, “Oh, yeah. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that that was possible.” But of course, when you have someone like that who’s scrappy, and also had the life experience of having to pick himself up by his bootstraps, and work with next to no money. It’s like, “Oh, wow.” You just had to ask, and you had to know the right way to ask. And these apparent miracles can happen. It’s just wild. So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll put together that book of case studies. I think it’d be fun.
Charlie Houpert: Can I ask a question about that?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: So I ask because I have a conflicting relationship with my earlier work. This course is 10 years old. This is exactly what you said. That braggadocious ass. He’s not caveating it enough. There’s this boldness that you can only have in your 20s of, “This is how the world works.” Right?
You haven’t been smashed before, but there’s something beautiful about that as well. That only a 29-year-old can write this book with this much punch, and pizzazz, and clarity. So I’m curious what your relationship is with that version of yourself. And I’m also curious, what is it like when you are to receive gratitude for that? Do you feel that it’s able to land? Does it hit? Does it matter? I struggle with some of this as well.
Tim Ferriss: I have never been particularly skilled or natural at receiving praise, or compliments, or anything like that. And who knows all the reasons? I mean, there are probably many I’m not even aware of. But I think in part, there were certain things that I adopted really early on as core beliefs like, “Look, the good stuff takes care of itself. You just have to fix what’s not working.”
Which, by the way, is not true in a lot of cases. It can be true in a limited sense for certain things, but it’s a very Faustian bargain of a philosophy to live with. But I believe that for a long time. So in sports, if coach wanted to give me a pat on the back, I would be like, “Yeah, that’s great, but that’s already working. So help me fix the stuff that’s not working.” Which is not to say that I never responded to positive reinforcement. But little Scooby Snacks, tiny bits of positive reinforcement, and say language learning. It was very important.
But I often got that reinforcement through the process itself. Not from anyone else. That being receiving praise. So I would say I’m very grateful. I do practice gratitude, and I journal a lot on things I am grateful for. And I basically have run through some type of gratitude list, and also asking myself, “Is this a good day to die?”
When I take off in planes — take off, and land in planes — just as an exercise, I’m kind of like, “Okay. If this is the last rodeo as far as travel goes, how do I feel about what I’m doing right now?” And then assuming that it’s positive, then — and even if not, running through some level of gratitude. So I would like to think of myself as a very grateful person, but I still struggle with receiving compliments and praise.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. What about other people grateful for you?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I can be really deeply appreciative. I think there’s also a deep-rooted fear of becoming self-absorbed, or arrogant, or over-weighting my importance in the large-scale cosmic order of things. Which is, effectively, zero. I would like to remind myself. Which I don’t think is a real risk, but nonetheless, that fear is there. So I think that’s also maybe a byproduct. The allowing it to glance off of me, but maybe not fully land is, I think, a consequence of that as well.
Charlie Houpert: I relate. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s like, God, you don’t have to go very far. Open your laptop, and go anywhere online. And 99 percent of people out there, I don’t think it’s that much of an exaggeration, but are just saying things with the utmost confidence and self-importance. And it doesn’t seem to help them, and it doesn’t seem to help anyone else, ultimately.
It tends to end in tears. So I love to say I don’t know.
And that would be another reason why I like having these conversations because there’s a lot more that I don’t know than what I know. That was a long riff on the gratitude piece.
In terms of relating to my earlier self, I think it’s probably harder for you with video.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: You know what I mean?
Charlie Houpert: I know what you mean.
Tim Ferriss: I think it’s probably a lot harder for you in video. Video is incredibly unforgiving, and video also has so many different components that feed into the end product. You’ve got camera, you’ve got framing, you’ve got lighting, you’ve got editing, you’ve got your stage presence, so to speak, and performance. You have body language. There’s so many different elements on top of the scripting, or not scripting. But the actual delivery of whatever the content happens to be. Set design, depending on what you’re doing.
I mean, there’s so much that goes into it. Whereas, with print on a page, I would say, I still feel very proud of the writing in The 4-Hour Workweek. I mean, I killed myself over that book, and took the writing itself very, very, very seriously. I mean, I hate to say this, but it may even be crisper and tighter than my writing now. So I feel good about the writing, and the presentation.
The teaching of the concepts, which was based largely on many, many, many, many guest lectures at Princeton when I was invited back by one of my professors to speak to an entrepreneurship class. So that’s how I workshopped that particular book. There are small pieces where I’m just like, “Oh, God.” Just the kind of chest-beating confidence, and flamboyance, maybe, of some of the examples. And at the same time, I think that some of that irrational, maybe, exuberance is really effectively infectious within the context of that book.
Charlie Houpert: I think so.
Tim Ferriss: Right? Keep in mind that was however many years. Not that many, really. I mean, we’re talking five or six years after for my purposes in lifestyle design. Cracking the code, or at least figuring out elimination and automation, and all these various things. To an extent that seemed very unusual at the time. I was still really high on that experience. And you can’t be a lukewarm evangelist, or a lukewarm teacher.
I didn’t really view myself as an evangelist. The harder the subject is, the more enthusiastic you better be, or at least enthusiastic and effective as a teacher. If the subject matter takes care of itself, then there are lots of ways that you can perhaps compromise, or not be up to snuff. But entrepreneurship is a full-contact sport, as you know.
And the chapter that I think gets the least attention, if I were to expand something that I would expand, is the “Filling the Void” chapter at the end. People miss that, and it’s so important.
It’s like, look, if you just create a lot of empty space in terms of time, humans are not really designed just to be idle. And I mean, go spend some time with any reasonably intact hunter-gatherer society that might have some plantains and cassava, or something like that. And you’ll see, yes, they do rest quite a bit, but they’re also, by and large, very active. It might be just household stuff, it might be chores, it might be any number of duties, church, et cetera. Especially these days. But idle hands are the Devil’s workshop applies to the mind as well.
So for mental health, I think that that chapter is particularly important, and maybe could have been positioned a little bit differently to underscore it. But that’s the type of chapter, also, that, number one, most readers don’t assume they’re going to have to deal with. They’re like, “Well, that’s once you’ve won the race.” I’ll worry about that once I’ve won the race. Unfortunately, if you build a business, and a machine-to-serve lifestyle, but then it becomes inverted, it’s not exactly straightforward, or it’s certainly not pain-free to fix it at the 11th hour after the fact. So I relate to the book well. It is funny to me when I look back at some of the tech recommendations, and I’m like, “Oh, my God. This is just going to the Natural History Museum and seeing dinosaur bones. Most of these are completely extinct.”
Charlie Houpert: Yeah, I’m wrestling with that. It’s an ability to look back at myself, have all the thoughts that you said, which is, “Ugh. Ugh.” But also, love that part. Like, holy shit, that guy brought me here. You know?
Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. On the entrepreneurial journey, are there any other books that you would recommend to the mini Charlie, or someone out there? It doesn’t have to be YouTube specific. But if you could only recommend a handful of books. They don’t need to be business books, per se, but they can be.
Charlie Houpert: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Are there any other books that stick out to you?
Charlie Houpert: Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, is excellent.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: Excellent.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I have that. Have that downstairs.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: That was easy to read. You can read it in small segments.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Why that book for you?
Charlie Houpert: It’s been a minute since I’ve read it, but I’m in that zone of what moved me. I was like, “Oh, that book brought me to tears many, many times.” There were just deep truths about life. Increasingly, I’m into that archetypal, mythic, pseudo religious stuff. Not because of any doctrine, but because of the way that it moves me. So that’s just an example of a 20th century classic tome — not even a tome, it’s a pamphlet, essentially. It’s not that long.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. It’s like a hundred pages, maybe.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: 120 at most.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Charlie Houpert: Running Lean helped a lot with the interviews. It’s not the most fun read, but it helped me set up those interviews that I did that identified the stuff in the business.
Tim Ferriss: Running Lean?
Charlie Houpert: Running Lean. You could probably find many books on the topic, but it’s a lean startup thing. And it just has two sections. Here’s the big takeaway. There’s two interviews that you do. You do one interview that is about the customer, and one interview that is about your product. So the first interview is not, “Do you like this? Do you want this?”
It’s, “What are you bothered by? What are you trying to make happen? What isn’t working for you? Where are you hanging out?” And then the second one is, “Hey, I’ve got this idea for you. Does that solve the problems that you identified?” And it helps you run through those. So that was really important back in the day. What were the other ones? Back in the day, Influence by Cialdini was huge.
Tim Ferriss: Outstanding book still.
Charlie Houpert: Classic. Still Dale Carnegie. Still classic.
Tim Ferriss: Which Dale Carnegie?
Charlie Houpert: For me, it was How to Win Friends and Influence People was the one. There’s ways in which I go to it.
I’ve got poetry by Hafez, which again, that hits the part of me that is coming more active today. I love Martha Beck. I saw your interview with her. She’s got several books. Her interview with you is honestly great though. I think it does a lot of the work that you might want to take from some of her books. So I’d recommend that. Let me see real quick. Brandon Sanderson’s in here. I know he was on. That was a great interview as well.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, he was fun.
Charlie Houpert: So good. Yeah, I’ll leave it there. And Essentialism. Yeah, let’s not drown people.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. That’s plenty to start with. And Essentialism, I’ll reiterate. It is a really good read. And if you combine that with Richard Koch’s book, The 80/20 Principle. Those two will take you a long way. A really, really long way.
Well, Charlie, we have covered a hell of a lot of ground here.
Charlie Houpert: We did it. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Is there anything else that you would like to mention, or point people to? Where can people find all things Charlie online?
Charlie Houpert: Charisma on Command YouTube channel. If you’re interested in the course, it’s Charisma University. You should be able to just type it in, and it’ll take you to our sales page. I know it didn’t hit, but I spent a lot of time and money. I made a D&D show on YouTube. I dressed up. I wore a cape. I got my friend who does a Trump impression to be a character that is named Tumpy. He’s great. That’s called Improv & Dragons. Don’t expect it to explode. But if that’s your thing, and you want to have a quick laugh, you could check that out as well.
Tim Ferriss: What is your character?
Charlie Houpert: So my character, I called him Sigmund because I was doing a riff on Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung. So Sigmund, and his brother Carl. He was a druid. Was he an elf? I forget exactly what his race was. Oh, no, he was a Kalashtar, which is one of those weird ones.
Tim Ferriss: Kalashtar? That must be a new one.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah. They have these dream lives. And so, for me, I was having dreams, and I was like, “Okay. I want to just infuse this with psychoanalysis, and I’m going to give him a German accent, and I’m going to lean into this.” So we had a good time with that. And one day, I hope to actually get people to watch it.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right, man. Well, I think we can begin to wind to a close here. Any last comments, or remarks, recommendations? Anything at all you’d like share with my audience?
Charlie Houpert: Anything else? If I had a billboard. I have to answer my Tim Ferriss question.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, let’s do it.
Charlie Houpert: I thought about this. I was like, in the moment I’ll find it. What is it? “Don’t think, feel.” And I know that’s counterintuitive to a lot of people, but lately, that’s been my guiding principle is feel my heart, feel my gut, think from my mind, and try to find some union of the three to move forward.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, dig it. I dig it. I’m sure Joe would like that. And I’ll give a shameless plug. Diana Chapman interview on The Tim Ferriss Show for people who want —
Charlie Houpert: Oh, I’ll check it out.
Tim Ferriss: — maybe a framework or two to try to calibrate. To learn how to do that. She’s a very good teacher, and I suppose we’ll cap it there, man.
Charlie Houpert: Beautiful.
Tim Ferriss: Thanks so much for taking the time.
Charlie Houpert: Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: Really had a lot of fun.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And for everybody listening, as always, we’ll link to everything in the show notes at tim.blog/Podcast. Not too many Charlies on the podcasts. So if you just search Charlie —
Charlie Houpert: Charlie Hoehn.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Charlie Hoehn.
Charlie Houpert: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Charlie Hoehn might pop up on the blog, but otherwise, Charlie Houpert will be the one and only. And until next time, as always, be just a bit kinder than necessary. Not just to others, but to yourself. And thanks for tuning in.
The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom (#817) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-06-25 21:44:26
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这篇博文总结了蒂姆·费里斯播客对查理·侯珀特的访谈。查理是“魅力指挥官”（Charisma on Command）的联合创始人，这是一个拥有超过1000万YouTube订阅者，内容总浏览量超过10亿次的个人发展公司，致力于帮助人们提升自信、魅力和社交技巧。
访谈中，查理分享了他从克服社交焦虑，到创办“魅力指挥官”，最终获得巨大成功的历程。他最初的创业尝试是制作搏击DVD，后来转向个人发展领域，创建了在线课程“魅力大学”（Charisma University）。
查理的成功并非一帆风顺，他经历了财务困境，也曾质疑自己的选择。他提到，在面对外界的诱惑时，选择忠于自我至关重要。他强调了坚持个人信念、创造有价值的内容以及利用社交媒体平台的重要性。
访谈还涵盖了以下主题：
访谈中，查理分享了许多宝贵的经验和教训，并推荐了一些书籍和资源，例如《每周工作4小时》、《六大自尊支柱》以及《本质主义》等。 最后，他留下了一句发人深省的话：“我是否能在世界向我抛出各种诱惑，让我成为其他人的时候，选择做我自己？”
总而言之，这篇访谈记录了查理·侯珀特从一个社交焦虑者到成功企业家的非凡旅程，为那些渴望提升自我和追求事业成功的人们提供了宝贵的启示。
“Do I choose myself in the face of the world offering me all of this temptation to be something else?”
— Charlie Houpert
Charlie Houpert (@charliehoupert) is the co-founder of Charisma on Command, a company that helps people develop confidence, charisma, and strong social skills. Originally launched as a 4-Hour Workweek-inspired “muse,” it has since grown into one of the largest platforms for social skills and confidence training, with more than 10 million YouTube subscribers worldwide and more than a billion views across its content in six languages. His flagship course, Charisma University, has guided more than 30,000 members through practical steps to become more magnetic.
Charlie was once voted “Most Likely to Break Out of His Shell” and began studying charisma to overcome his own social anxiety. He now explores the deeper roots of confidence through archetypal psychology, embodiment practices, and more.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube here. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
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Want to hear another episode with someone who understands social dynamics and influenced Charlie’s entrepreneurial path? Listen to my conversation with bestselling author Neil Strauss, in which we discussed his creative process, conducting engaging interviews, overcoming writer’s block, maximizing creative output, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
“Do I choose myself in the face of the world offering me all of this temptation to be something else?”
— Charlie Houpert
“If you don’t believe in it fully, you’re going to sell it with hesitancy.”
— Charlie Houpert
“Don’t think, feel. I know that’s counterintuitive to a lot of people, but lately, that’s been my guiding principle is feel my heart, feel my gut, think from my mind, and try to find some union of the three to move forward.”
— Charlie Houpert
“When you start trading your beliefs for cash or approval, you’re just sending a signal that, ‘I can’t be relied on to be myself and be safe and earn.'”
— Charlie Houpert
The post 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom (#817) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-06-20 12:13:48
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这篇访谈记录是蒂姆·费里斯对力量型运动员、动作教练、以及全球顶级健身播客《马克·贝尔力量计划》联合主持人的Nsima Inyang的采访。Nsima Inyang拥有巴西柔术黑带、职业自然健美运动员（世界前五名）以及精英级力量举运动员（深蹲超过622磅，卧推超过396磅，硬拉超过755磅）等多重身份。他独特的训练方法融合了传统力量训练和非传统器械（壶铃、战锤、沙袋、绳流等）。
访谈中，Nsima Inyang 阐述了他对传统力量训练的批判性观点，认为过度关注矢状面运动和中立脊柱会限制人体运动能力。他推荐了绳流（Rope Flow）等训练方式，强调通过多平面运动来提升身体协调性和灵活性，并改善身体姿态。他还分享了如何通过调整呼吸方式来提升力量训练的效率和安全性，以及如何利用沙袋、箱式深蹲等训练方法来针对性地强化下肢力量，并避免背部损伤。
此外，Nsima Inyang 还强调了“微剂量运动”（microdosing movement）的概念，建议人们在日常生活中融入少量、高频率的运动，例如使用绳流、壶铃摆动、沙袋训练等，以提高身体的整体机能和灵活性。他还分享了一些软组织放松技巧，例如使用泡沫轴、按摩球、刮痧工具等，并建议人们学习如何进行自我按摩，以缓解肌肉紧张和疼痛。最后，他还提到了提升骨密度的重要性，并推荐了跳跃、负重训练等方法。
总而言之，Nsima Inyang 提倡一种更全面、更注重功能性和可持续性的训练方法，强调在力量训练的同时，也要关注身体的灵活性、协调性和恢复能力，以实现长期健康和运动能力的提升。 他鼓励人们根据自身情况调整训练计划，并通过“微剂量运动”和自我软组织放松来改善身体状态。
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Nsima Inyang (@nsimainyang), a strength athlete and movement coach and co-host of Mark Bell’s Power Project, one of the top fitness podcasts in the world. He is also one of the most freakishly athletic humans I’ve ever met. He’s a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a professional natural bodybuilder (placed top five in the world), and an elite-level powerlifter (750-plus-pound deadlift, etc.)—but what sets him apart is how he blends all those worlds with unconventional training tools like kettlebells, maces, sandbags, and rope flow. After nearly 20 years of lifting and martial arts, Nsima has developed a unique way of helping people build muscle, move better, and stay pain-free for life.
Nsima is also the founder of The Stronger Human, a growing online community focused on strength, movement, and resilience. With hundreds of thousands following his YouTube content, Nsima’s mission is simple: help people feel powerful in their bodies again—without relying solely on machines, cookie-cutter workouts, or the fitness industry’s outdated rules.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube.
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Tim Ferriss: Nsima, nice to see you.
Nsima Inyang: You too, man.
Tim Ferriss: Thanks for being here in Austin.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, thank you.
Tim Ferriss: And I thought we would start with a little setting of the table, defining of terms. What on earth is powerlifting? You are an elite-level powerlifter. What does that mean? What is the sport of powerlifting, and what are your totals, and what does that even mean?
Nsima Inyang: So the sport of powerlifting is concentrated above the three big lifts, the squat, bench, and deadlift, right? The holy grail of traditional lifts. In a meet, you have three attempts at a squat, three attempts at a bench, three attempts at a deadlift in that order. Ideally you’re aiming for a nine out of nine. There’s a geared powerlifting where you have suits, but that’s not as popular nowadays. I did raw powerlifting. Mark Bell, who’s the host of the Mark Bell’s Power Project, he was a big geared lifter and then he did some raw at the end of his career.
For what I managed to get, I think I got eight out of nine at my last meet. I got a 622 squat, a 396 bench. I wasn’t credited at 405, and I never got 405. And a 755-pound deadlift. So my total was 1,758. Not on record, but my gym lifts for powerlifting, still never got the 405 bench, but I managed to squat 645 a little bit after that meet, and I believe I deadlift 775 after that meet.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Nsima Inyang: So, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So you lift.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I lift. And I still like lifting, contrary to popular belief and some of the things that I’ve put out. People think I don’t think lifting is good for you and I don’t like lifting. Lifting is good for you. You just be careful.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. I was surprised how much jazzercise you do and how many celery sticks you ate at lunch. I’m kidding.
All right, so you have some bona fides, and actually I was joking earlier, it’s not so much joking, reminiscing that the first time I went to Super Training Gym with Mark Bell, who’s an old friend, I’ve known Mark for a long time, amazing character —
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: — in Sacramento, I saw you doing deadlift workout, and I was just like, “What the hell is happening over there?” For people who may have gone to a gym before, maybe even have put on 45-pound plates, what are we talking in terms of numbers of plates? What does it look like when you’re deadlifting your current personal best?
Nsima Inyang: So at that time, I was probably deadlifting in the 700 type of realm, so working sets would be maybe five, six plates. So that’s 495, 585 above for sets of triples, doubles, some singles here and there. It’s a lot of weight. Not weight I’m working with right now, but it’s a lot of weight you’re working with when you’re focused on powerlifting. You’re focused on moving as much weight as possible on a barbell. So yeah, it’s a load.
Tim Ferriss: Now, the way that I found you was through a video on YouTube. You have an excellent channel, and very thought-provoking content, and that’s what grabbed me. So what was the headline of this video?
Nsima Inyang: The LIE of Traditional Strength Training: Why I Moved On.
Tim Ferriss: The LIE of Traditional Strength Training: Why I Moved On. And I was like, “Well, that guy looks pretty jacked. I wish I had those abs, and I wish I could tan as easily, but boy can dream. Let me at least find out what the lies are,” and clicked through. It was actually sent to me by my friend Kevin Rose, and I certainly owe him a debt of gratitude for that. Maybe you can describe for listeners a video that grabbed my attention, and it was video of a man, I believe it was, with no arms and legs?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. What is this video?
Nsima Inyang: So Serge Gracovetsky is the guy who wrote The Spinal Engine, which is a book that I referenced in that video. It’s a video that he showed of a man that’s moving through space with no arms and no legs. And when most people think about typical human locomotion, it’s thought that the arms and legs are the driver’s locomotion. You swing your arms, you swing your legs forward, you move forward through space. Well, this pretty much torso is rotating through space without arms and legs, and you can see the rotation —
Tim Ferriss: And he’s sort of “walking,” right? I mean, he’s moving forward in space.
Nsima Inyang: Yes. Yes, yes. But you see that natural figure eight rotation of the spine that’s moving him through space. So in that book, The Spinal Engine, and Serge’s theory of locomotion is that the spine is the driver of movement and locomotion. The rotation of the spine helps swing the arms and swing the legs through space, and for efficient human movement, you want to maintain access to that spinal engine.
And what I was getting at at that video wasn’t that we shouldn’t train with barbells or we shouldn’t train in a neutral spine, but with the focus of traditional lifting being in the sagittal plane, usually forward and backwards or within that one plane, we are always training the neutral spine and maintaining that neutral spine through everything we do.
So when you’re doing that all the time in the gym, and there’s also a lack of breathing, which we’ll probably get into later, but you train this system, when you want to potentially go and transfer it into something else, you might not have as much access to that spinal engine as you used to. Over time, that can potentially degrade if you actually, maybe you never really had that, and it gets worse by training in the gym. And the examples I gave in that video is examples from sports that you see this type of training a lot in. It’s powerlifting, bodybuilding, Olympic lifting.
Tim Ferriss: You’re talking about the sagittal plane stuff?
Nsima Inyang: The sagittal plane.
Tim Ferriss: Now, can you just help people visualize what that means? Sagittal being like, let’s just say you’re standing in a very narrow hallway with walls on either side, and you’re bending forward, you can extend backwards.
Nsima Inyang: Divide your body in half, like in half here from the nose, right?
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So you’ve got a line going from your forehead down your nose, splitting your body in half.
Nsima Inyang: That is the sagittal plane.
Tim Ferriss: Got it.
Nsima Inyang: Right? So when we think of a squat, when we think of a deadlift, when we think of — a forward lunge is also still in the sagittal plane even though it’s a unilateral movement, right? These are all done in a sagittal plane with a neutral spine, and these are, most of the movements you think about doing a pull-up, a push-up, right? The frontal plane divides the body in halves from front and back, so we would imagine from the head to the toe on the side of the body. That would be something like a Cossack squat, lunging to the side, a lateral lunge. Those would be the frontal plane. And the transverse plane of movement would divide the body in half from our torso, our legs down, torso up. So that would have this rotation of the spine.
Those would be those three planes, but then we can get into other ideas of rotation, which is the things you get into with rope, et cetera. But gym movements are primarily done when people are training in the sagittal plane with a neutral spine. There isn’t much flexion or rotation of the spine. You’re strengthening this neutral spine, which is good, but overdoing that can degrade the ways that you want to be able to move as a human being.
Tim Ferriss: And the way that can show up, I mean, this is very personal for me, and part of the reason it was very attention-grabbing is, as we’ve discussed earlier today — if people want to get a good laugh, you can watch me trying rope flow and throwing around a pink kettlebell in a giant sombrero. We may link to that.
Nsima Inyang: I wish they made the pink kettlebell another color, because I was like, “Man, this doesn’t — yeah.”
Tim Ferriss: It was kind of perfect. It was kind of perfect. So if people want a good laugh, we’ll link to that as well as our earlier movement practice. But the story that I shared with you is three years of chronic back pain. And pretty localized to low back. Who knows? I’m sure there’s some referral happening. But by and large, lumbar, this sort of grand central station of musculature called the quadratus lumborum, the QL, and external obliques and all this stuff. I basically get locked and spasmed in the low back, and that can be triggered in any number of ways.
Now, on top of that, when I watched this video, it made me think back to when I was much younger and actually ran cross country, and you have that contralateral movement, right? It’s like if you walk, it’s like, okay, your left shoulder moves forward as your right leg and, I guess, probably hip move forward at the same time, that contralateral movement. And to emphasize that, you had video in your video, so footage in your video, showing what everyone has seen, which is someone who’s done a lot of lifting who’s walking down the street and they have no contralateral movement, or I shouldn’t say they have no contralateral movement, but it looks like their upper bodies are frozen.
Nsima Inyang: It’s a block.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a block. And you could potentially say, well, that person is muscle-bound, but that’s not totally accurate in the sense that, correct me if I’m oversimplifying this, but it seems like they are plane-bound because their movement patterns are so limited that — of course, what you train for, you’re going to get more of. So they have done one piece that is maybe, let’s call it necessary but not sufficient if you want athletic movement.
And you talked about also resurrecting or improving your own running, right? And just seeing the difference and not having the expectation that I’m going to become a competitive cross country runner. But for a very, very long time, and this goes back to even like 2004, 2005, when I was in Argentina doing tango. Trust me, there’s a tie-in here. And a bunch of people would laugh at me and they would be like, “You have cintura de pollo,” or “cinta de pollo,” which would be like “You have the waist of a chicken,” which if you try to think of a chicken, doesn’t rotate, doesn’t rotate, and in tango they want you to disassociate the upper and lower body, and I had a lot of trouble with that. So they were like, “You have the waist of a chicken.”
Now, I would like to overcome this waist of a chicken situation — and watch the video. One of the exercises you have in that video is rope flow, which I want you to talk about, but I’ll give people just a teaser, which is, saw the video. I was like, “Logically, this makes a lot of sense to me. Biomechanically, it makes a lot of sense.” It’s addressing a deficit that I have, but it’s a scary deficit because when I have tried to really embrace rotation before and the sheer forces involved, very often I either overdo it even with very low dosing, and in some cases the back spasms, I’m out of commission for a week or two, like I really can’t sleep. And so I’ve really stayed away from it.
But you showed this rope flow, and I was actually visiting Jake Muise, who’s been on this podcast. He’s the CEO of Maui Nui Venison. And we went to this outdoor gym in Hawaii that they’d put together for the team over there, and there was a rope. I was like, “Huh, look at that. Okay, let me try it.” And I felt so good after training. I mean, training’s a bit of an exaggeration. After playing around with the rope. And I was like, “Okay, I want to pay attention to this,” right? Because when I was really young, it’s like, “Okay, let’s do some metabolic conditioning,” like if I’m not puking into a bucket, I didn’t train properly or hard enough. But then I started training with people like Jerzy Gregorek, who we spoke about, amazing world record holder in Olympic weightlifting, at least he was, masters, and other folks where you actually can feel better after the workout than you did beforehand.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So what is this rope flow as an example, and how does it demonstrate or develop the kind of stuff that we’re alluding to?
Nsima Inyang: I’m really happy that David Weck, he’s the guy who started, invented rope flow. He has —
Tim Ferriss: The progenitor.
Nsima Inyang: The progenitor. That’s on air, David. Go in and clip that, David. He’s going to love that. He’s the one who developed, popularized, that got the moves going. I mean, he came onto our show and he showed these videos back in like these 2006, 2005-style videos of him doing rope flow on like a roof in, I don’t know, San Jose or something, or San Diego, and he came and he showed it to us maybe —
Tim Ferriss: On a roof.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll bookmark that for later, yeah.
Nsima Inyang: I’ve got to send it to you. David’s a character. He’s great. And I’ve learned so much from him, by the way. I love that guy. Continuing to learn from him, too. But back to rope flow. He came and showed it to us maybe four years ago. And when he mentioned it initially, I think sometimes when you have a certain amount of experience in training or whatever, you hear something new and you’re like, “Okay, trendy,” or, “What’s swinging a rope through space really going to do for you?” But through having so many people and talking to and learning from so many people that have changed the way I move and have affected me positively —
Tim Ferriss: Can I pause for one second?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Don’t lose your train of thought. Because you do a lot outside of the gym, or I should say outside of the weight training gym, a very, very serious dedicated jiu-jitsu practitioner, which is not purely in the sagittal plane, right?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: There’s a lot more going on.
Nsima Inyang: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: Jiu-jitsu for me was really fun to start. We could talk about that later. But that’s the sport I started doing because I realized that all the lifting I was doing had me feeling very stiff and unathletic. So I got into jiu-jitsu about nine or 10, almost 10 years back to try to see if I could combat the way my body was feeling, which had its own issues. But rope flow, when David told me about it initially, I was apprehensive. I got a rope, I started doing it, got frustrated, dropped it, kind of like the girl in the park that we met today. You get a rope, you do it for a little bit, you don’t know what to do, you drop it.
Tim Ferriss: How did he sell it to you? Do you remember what the pitch was?
Nsima Inyang: He talked about all the benefits and he showed it. He even showed me some in the gym, him and his head coach, Chris Chamberlin. But it didn’t necessarily stick because I didn’t have a structure to it. So what I ended up doing was I ended up just looking at a bunch of people that I could see on YouTube, I went through some of the videos that David sent me, and I just tried to practice it a little bit each day. Frustration would set in though because the flow wasn’t happening. It’s called rope flow because I think people ask, “Are there sets, reps, et cetera?” No, you just go, you rotate, you move, you put the rope away, you go do what you do, right? It’s not like a workout. It’s play.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s closer to, like, slacklining.
Nsima Inyang: Exactly. It’s play. It’s a flow practice. But once things started clicking and I started seeing how it was affecting my jiu-jitsu, and in my jiu-jitsu, it’s inherently an asymmetrical practice, the martial art. You have a dominant side and a non-dominant side, so you’ll tend to do things, whether it’s sweeps, whether it’s takedowns, et cetera —
Tim Ferriss: Guard pass.
Nsima Inyang: Guard passing. You go that one direction, you grease that dominant groove, and your non-dominant side ends up being just this goofy mess, right? But I started realizing that —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s just your non-dominant side? No, I’m kidding. I was saying that about myself. I’m not going to spar you, no, no.
Nsima Inyang: No, but seriously, but what slowly started happening was I started noticing like a scissor sweep I would really do to my right side, I’m now, “Ooh, that left side rotation felt pretty powerful. I don’t usually drill that. What happened there?” Passes to my left side started feeling better. And the reason that was happening was because when doing rope flow, it’s a symmetrical practice.
You learn to rotate using your spine on your dominant side, but you get that rotation on your other side, and what happens is, as you do this back and forth, naturally you want to make your non-dominant side feel as good as your dominant. So now your rotation with your spine to the left side of your body or your non-dominant side starts to feel just as good as you’re dominant and you’re moving with more symmetry through everything that you do.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And let me add something just with kind of beginner’s eyes, now that I have a PhD in rope flow after our workout this morning.
Nsima Inyang: Let’s go.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I would just say that one of the benefits of something like rope flow from a development of symmetrical abilities perspective is that you get a lot of reps, right? Because you could do something in the gym that’s aimed at symmetry, but how many reps and how many steps are you actually going to do if you’re programming properly, right? And at what point is your technique going to degrade, where you might be doing more harm than good? Whereas with the rope flow, it’s like it doesn’t feel good, you’re going to know because it’s going to be janky. You might whack yourself in the ankle, whack yourself in the back of the head like I did, whereas if it feels fluid, you’re going to know it feels fluid and you get a lot of reps.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So you have the benefit of volume on your side in developing that water fuel.
Nsima Inyang: Mm-hmm. So there’s that benefit of volume, but at its most basic level, you learn to navigate that rope, move it through space while using your spine as the main mover. You learn to do that. Initially, it’s a very handsy thing, you’re using your hands a lot, but then you learn to follow the weight of the rope and use your spine both sides, right? You notice if you walk after, you now have this natural swagger that starts to happen when you’re walking. You’re moving through space with that spinal engine.
Tim Ferriss: And I’m going to try to just paint a visual for people when they’re imagining rope flow, because some people, I imagine, are not going to really have a video in their mind as we’re talking. This is going to age me, but I’ll try it anyway. So if you imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Barbarian, iconic scene with the sword, with the sword, swinging it on either side, okay, you’ve got it, you’ve got a sword in front, now he’s swinging it to either side. Okay, now imagine instead of the sword, you have a rope that is whatever this is, an, I don’t know, inch and a half, two inches thick, something like that, like a heavy-ish rope. And so now imagine you’re swinging this rope around, but instead of just using your hands, let’s just say you bring your hands in closer to your chest, and now you’re creating that figure eight with your shoulders, and that is then swinging the blade aka the rope, right? So just imagine that kind of movement. Is that fair enough?
Nsima Inyang: Yes, that’s fair, that’s fair. And along with that, it’s not just the spine, it’s the weight shift of the feet, because now you’re shifting from one side to the other, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, right? And one of the reasons why I believe it’s helped so much with my jiu-jitsu, because jiu-jitsu, it’s a very rotational practice when you’re trying to leverage an opponent from one side or the other, is because my weight shift on both sides of my body has improved from my feet.
So this is one of the reason why when you start to do more rope flow and you start to get more of the underhand side, the underhand practice — you’ve hit a boxing bag before, right? You’ve done that type of work. Go do that type of work again and do some uppercuts, do some hooks, but remember the things that you’ve learned. You’re learning how to generate power and rotation from the ground through your fists. There’s so many people that I’ve seen now that have literally said, “It’s improved my punching,” or, “I actually know how to throw a punch because I’ve learned how to swing this rope through space.”
Tim Ferriss: But also like you were explaining and the underhand — oh, boy. Okay, so guys, we’re talking about the Conan and the Barbarian thing. We won’t belabor this. We’ll obviously have some video linked if you’re listening to audio. But imagine that you have the sword kind of — forget the sword. You have the rope. It is behind you, right? You’re dragging a rope, let’s just say, with two hands on one side. It’s a thick rope. And then you pull it up and the rope is taking this sort of upward trajectory, like a diagonal. That would be, I know it’s not the best description, but that would be like the underhand, whereas if you’re bringing it over your shoulder like a whip or something, that would be the overhand.
Nsima Inyang: You went to the whip again, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: What was that?
Nsima Inyang: You went to the whip again, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: You know? You know? Yeah, it’s — yeah, you know. This is why you don’t go to your BDSM dungeon the night before your podcast. It just bleeds over, guys. I’m sorry. All right, guilty as charged.
So what appeals to me, and I mean, this is my enthusiasm, is outstripping my experience, that’s probably the story of my life, but what the little that I’ve seen of say rope flow as one tool in the toolkit, part of what appeals to me about it is that like my experience early on with Pavel and kettlebells, there is this weird like what-the-fuck transfer where people who, let’s say, do a bunch of kettlebell work suddenly have better running times, and they’re like, “What? What do you mean? What the hell is going on?” Right? Or because of the thicker diameter, over time they don’t even realize it, but suddenly the limiting factor, which was their grip on the deadlift, has been not entirely removed, but improved dramatically, right?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And when I looked at the rope flow and I’m like, “Okay.” Forget about the rope, right? It’s a tool for engaging these other planes of movement. And if done in, we were talking about this earlier today as well, not necessarily as an hour-long workout where you’re just like dying inside, but rather like flossing your teeth or getting up and taking a shower, it’s like, okay, you take a shower once a day, like rope flow once a day, and over time the adaptations that would take place. And one thing I didn’t tell you, because I did confess that this is very self-serving as a meeting because I was like, “I really want to dial in my programming,” recognizing there are things I want to do in the future, which are not breaking powerlifting records, ain’t going to happen, it’s definitely not beating you in jiu-jitsu, because I’ll get all of my appendages snapped off, don’t need that, but —
Nsima Inyang: I would never do that to you.
Tim Ferriss: Unless — I appreciate that. It wouldn’t take very much. But there are things I would really like to do. I would like to compete in more sports, even if it’s just in a club capacity. I would love to get back on the tennis courts and get back to playing tennis. And this might require some elbow surgery, but get back to rock climbing. And also, one thing I didn’t mention, but probably is the thing that I would tie most directly to the rope flow, I love working on pads in Muay Thai. And it is such a good workout. I’m not going to get yet another goddamn concussion, I don’t need any more of those, and I would really like to get to the point again where I can train on pads hard for lots of rounds with a really, really skilled trainer. I just love that experience. And I’m so bored of stationary biking for my endurance work. So bored. I mean, God bless these tools, but still, it’s pretty boring.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So where should we go? There are lots of tools in the toolkit. Let me ask you this for people who might be wondering, and guys, I’m not getting an affiliate commission on rope sales here, like I have no dog in this fight, but it seems to be a very versatile tool, and there are lots of versatile tools, but it is also a tool that is very hard to injure yourself with. And for me, it’s like weightlifting, and a lot of training, number one, unless it’s a sport, is about injury minimization first and foremost.
Nsima Inyang: It should be.
Tim Ferriss: So if I add in strength training that increases the likelihood or endurance training, that increases the likelihood of me getting injured, scratch it, it’s out. And then I’ll take my risks where I need and want to take my risks, like skiing, but I don’t want to take it in the weight room. How long does it take for people to see some benefits from something like rope flow? And what have you seen in students and people who try this and stick with it for a couple of weeks?
Nsima Inyang: Mm-hmm. Literally, I’ve had people that are in the Stronger Human community that literally after day one they’re finding that they have better balance walking up the steps, right? And these were people in their fifties and sixties. They’re like, “I’m walking upstairs and I feel more balanced.” Why? Because you’re shifting your weight from one side to the other in a more efficient manner, because the rope has taught you how to do that. You’ll feel better rather immediately. Now, the question is like how deep do you want to take it, how many of these movements do you want to learn, because I think that as a — Kelly, I’ve seen Kelly Starrett start posting more about rope flow, and he’s been talking about it in the form is just being a warm-up before you do any of your lifting movements, as a good rotational warm up, and that’s great. So it can just be used for that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: But I think there is a power that comes with the practice. When today we linked around four movements together, the overhand, the propeller, the dragon, and the underhand —
Tim Ferriss: What was it called when I donkey punched myself in the back of the head with the rope? We should give that one a name. That’s the Ferriss.
Nsima Inyang: That should be called Ferriss. But the one thing I want to mention about this too is this. Honestly, I look at rope flow as kind of like its own internal martial art. Do you know internal martial arts?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nsima Inyang: So when it comes to internal martial arts, like I think tai chi would be considered one, bagua would be considered an internal martial art, when it comes to these martial arts, they’re not necessarily external martial arts like jiu-jitsu, boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai that’s based on the output, based on the damage you’re going to give to an opponent. The focus is more so on breathing, mastering the movement, linking the movements together. You’re more focused on what’s going on internally and what your body is doing through space. Now, there are forms, like aspects of tai chi that can be applied to combat, but when you see a lot of older people doing tai chi, it’s this flowing movement practice that gets the body feeling better afterwards than when it began.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: And the reason why I see rope —
Tim Ferriss: In a lot of ways, just having spent a good amount of time, like in early mornings in China and so on, it’s kind of like, people are going to crucify me for this, but it’s kind of like Chinese yoga in a sense, like they are moving through all of these different planes of movement, they’re doing it every day, and even the kind of rotational like kidney slapping stuff, there are some similarities —
Nsima Inyang: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: — when you look at rope flow and then you look at what these 80, 90-year-olds are doing in China in the park every morning.
Nsima Inyang: And they’re 80 and 90, dude. That’s the thing that’s so amazing to me, like you’re still moving like that at 80 and 90. You’re independent. I would even assume that a lot of these people probably feel minimal amounts of pain. They feel a level of freedom in their bodies at that age, right? And that’s kind of how I look at rope flow when you learn to link things together. So we learned a few movements today, but there are so many more movements that you learn.
And the cool thing is that you do some of this stuff this week, Tim, you’re going to wake up and it’s just going to be there. You don’t have to think about the movement now. You just go outside, you do it, it’s no thought, right? It turns into a flow. It turns into a flow state practice, right? That’s where I think the strength is. Because that feels like play. It no longer feels like a frustrating rope flow practice, although when you start learning new moves, there’s a level of frustration. I still hit myself. That eye hit you did today where you knocked your eye, I do that all the time when I’m learning new shit. The rope will still do that to me. Because the rope teaches you how to rotate. You’ll learn how to follow its weight and it’ll teach you how to rotate better by hitting you by not rotating cleanly. When you clean that up, then it rotates cleanly to the left and cleanly to the right. And then again, when you link all this stuff together, it’s play. It’s a flow state play that always feels better afterwards.
Tim Ferriss: Now, for people listening, and for me, oftentimes when I say for people listening, it’s just because I want to ask the question for myself, I am the type of person, I know myself well enough at this point, I am almost certainly not going to become the Muhammad Ali of rope flow or the Fred Astaire of rope flow. It’s just not going to happen, right? What are the bread-and-butter minimum effective dose, maybe people can find this, you can point them to where they can find these things, but are there two or three movements where you’re like, okay, if you were just going to do five minutes a day or 10 minutes a day, maybe it’s two times five, to start your day and to end your day, what are the bread-and-butter moves where it’s like, if you only did this, there would be a lot of upside?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: What are those?
Nsima Inyang: That would be, first off, I have a full foundations rope flow course that is free. It’s like 50-plus videos of it. It’s at skool.com/thestrongerhuman. It is free, okay? Now, overhand race and chase, underhand race and chase, propeller or dragon, which is what we did today.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Did I do race and chase or no?
Nsima Inyang: You did, yeah. The overhand race and chase, you did the underhand race and chase.
Tim Ferriss: Race and chase is walking while you’re doing?
Nsima Inyang: It’s not walking. You can just stand there. But you added walking into it, you added a gait pattern into it, right? So overhand race and chase, underhand race and chase, propeller, link those three together, you have a flow from side to side, right? And that’s the basics, right? You learn to link those together, you’ll feel better.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, okay.
Nsima Inyang: But again, I think that — you mentioned you’re not going to become the Muhammad Ali of rope floor or whatever. But one thing that I think is good to understand is we’ve got decades for this, bro. What is three to five or 10 minutes a day for a few years? How good are you going to be at this a year from now, just for five minutes? You’re going to look pretty fucking good. My mom’s probably listening, she didn’t want me to curse.
Tim Ferriss: Sorry, Mom. I’m going to forget and I’m going to curse myself. You can blame it on my bad influence.
Nsima Inyang: But five years from now doing it, five minutes, you’ll probably do it longer because you’re going to naturally just get better at it, you’re going to just be moving really well with this from this minimal input. Again, it can be a practice that beats you up, especially because you can get a workout from it. It doesn’t have to be that. It doesn’t have to be something that beats you up, but if you want to go intense with it, use a heavier rope. You can.
Tim Ferriss: How much do ropes cost, for people listening, because I haven’t even asked that? I should have asked that. To get something you can use for this, because I do find a little bit of heft to be helpful. We started with a very lightweight, light rope, which was almost like a lariat, like a lasso. It was very small in diameter. How much does it cost to get the Magna XL?
Nsima Inyang: Magnum. The Magnum XL, it’s not [inaudible 00:32:16].
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. How much does one of those cost?
Nsima Inyang: I think the Magma XL is —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it’s Magma.
Nsima Inyang: Magma, not Magnum. No, it’s Magma. Your mind wants a Magnum.
Tim Ferriss: I know, I know, I know. It’s like [inaudible 00:32:27].
Nsima Inyang: It’s Magma. It’s red, Magma.
Tim Ferriss: Some people can’t be saved. I got it, Magma. Okay, God, I screwed that up twice. Okay, Magma XL, and this probably, we were bouncing around. So probably the rope itself probably weighs like two pounds, two, three pounds.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Maybe less, all right. And how much does that cost?
Nsima Inyang: That one’s like $80, I think.
Tim Ferriss: $80.
Nsima Inyang: This is the thing though. If you want to just get yourself a rope from Home Depot and cut it and make a rope, that’s fine. You can work that. You can even work with an exercise band you might have at home. You can mess with some of this using a belt if you don’t want to get anything, if you just want to do the bare bones stuff. But certain ropes, like the Magma XL, the RMT rope, which I think is like 40 or $45, there’s a feedback that you get from the rope because it’s very smooth when you’re rotating it. That feels better than a Home Depot rope. Doesn’t mean you can’t use a Home Depot rope, or a rope from a boating store. Boating store ropes are actually pretty good quality.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I bet.
Nsima Inyang: Boating stores are really good quality rope, so you could get something from there, cut it up, make your rope, you’re good. So that’s the thing. It’s a practice that if you don’t want to spend anything on it, you don’t have to. Or if you want to spend nothing or very minimal amounts of money, you can do that. But then all you need is your rope, some sunlight, or you can do it indoors if you want to, and you’re going to feel better.
And one thing I want to stress is this. I got this from, do you know who Bill Maeda is, out of Hawaii? Have you seen his —
Tim Ferriss: I have seen his videos.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, Bill’s the man, man. I love Bill. And we had him on a show a few years back, and people have probably been saying this forever, but when he told me and when he started speaking this way, it really resonated with me, where he calls his workout each day, he calls it a practice. It’s his practice.
Tim Ferriss: For people who don’t know who this is, how would you describe Bill?
Nsima Inyang: He’s a lifting samurai. That’s how I would personally describe Bill.
Tim Ferriss: How old is Bill at this point?
Nsima Inyang: 55 or 56.
Tim Ferriss: And that guy is unbelievably shredded and strong.
Nsima Inyang: I think he will be 56 this year. Strong, shredded, Bill has a level of also curiosity that I admire. Because Bill has had so much fitness experience through the years, he’s done so much. He’s had a lot of positive and negative experiences, but he’s also someone that as much as he knows, he’s continuously open to learning more and refining his knowledge and what he teaches his clients and the people he works with. And that’s one thing I really admire about him because he’s 50-something years old. He looks amazing. He does well, but he’s also a sponge.
And that’s something that I want to, ideally, I hope when I’m 55 or 56, I want to remain a sponge. I don’t want to lose that. But he calls his movement, his workouts a practice, because he changes it up each day. He does like 5, 10, 15 minutes of movement, and that’s his daily practice. And that’s the way I look at my movement practice. When I go into a gym, I have in my Notes app, I have just certain things that I might be doing during that day. Or I’ll know what I did last week, so I’ll be, okay, let’s maybe add this in or do something else. But I keep things around so that I get a general daily minimum amount of movement in no matter what.
So I have certain flow movement that I’ll get in. I have a club by my desk. I have a sandbag by my workstation. I have a sandbag in my garage. I have rings in my kitchen. I have things spent throughout the house and throughout my space, so that when I go by them, I’m encouraged to lift them. I’m encouraged to lift the bag. I’m encouraged to swing the rope. I’m encouraged to swing the club. I do all these things on a daily basis, that has my body feeling better and better as I continue to progress at the meat and potatoes of what I’m really trying to push forward.
So I have these daily minimums, which is just my practice, these are just things I do. And then I’ll have certain things that might be the workout, whether it’s the jiu-jitsu or the thing I do in the gym or my garage, or maybe I go out to the field and I do some stuff, some extra work. But I have those daily minimums that are just part of my practice that just make sure that I’m always making progress, so that the only time that I do something isn’t just in my workout, I want my body to be able to do these things at any time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. And I mean that underscores also some of the stuff that I saw and you explained in the video, and you have a lot of videos, this just happens to be the one that initially caught my attention. But if someone let’s just say is training the big three lifts or whatever they happen to do, and they’re hitting them once a week, or who knows? And then they’re not getting really any movement practice between those. It’s like of course they’re going to be very constrained to a certain plane of movement, certain types of movements.
Well, let me bring this back to me. I’ve been watching Conan O’Brien Must Go. If people haven’t seen that travel show, you should watch it, because that’s basically Conan’s move. So I’ll copy Conan here. We were talking about this back issue that’s been plaguing me, and how I am actually back to a point now as of just a few days ago where I’m loading more in terms of, let’s just say back squat, which is a very open question as to whether to include it or not, and other things, making a lot of progress ever since really surgically trying to focus on glute exercises, which seems self-evident.
But I could give people a long list of stories about why that’s been a challenge over the last three years, but have made progress and want to get back to, let’s just say, doing five rounds of heavy work on Thai pads. And who knows, maybe even doing some jiu-jitsu, although I have a lot of PTSD from my joint injuries. So what are some of the things you would potentially suggest if you were getting me started with programming, and I’m sure you’d have to do an assessment and so on, but there are some of the things we talked about over lunch. We don’t have to talk about these, but sandbag, box squat, recognizing that I’m very apprehensive about the low back, because if I have to sit for instance on a hardwood bench for 30 minutes and I don’t have any padding, my back could be seized up for a week, which means basically no sleep.
So I’m scared of having that experience, and I recognize that if I don’t load and work on my body, not just the low back in isolation, it’s never going to be fixed or improve. So how would you think about training with respect to this?
Nsima Inyang: Okay, so I’d have to rewind it, and we talked a little bit about this earlier, but I’d have to rewind things back to first off, the way someone breathes through the way that they move daily, every single day. Because when you injure something initially, you injure your lower back, which has happened to me many a time in the past. When something happens that aggravates the area, you tend to hold your breath. So when you bend to grab something, you’ll [breathe in and hold your breath]. And then when you feel safe enough, you’ll exhale and start breathing again. Some people do this without even realizing. They’ll go down to tie their shoes and they have breath holds without realizing they have breath holds. It’s just an ingrained movement pattern, that they bend, hold their breath, come up, boom. They get out of their car, they’re holding their breath.
Many people have instances through their day that the breath is being held. And the problem with that, the reason why that’s a really big issue is because when you hold your breath, your tissues will seize up to keep everything in place. The Valsalva maneuver, when lifters lift heavy loads and sometimes not heavy loads, is meant to increase that intra-abdominal pressure so that there is no movement of the spine when you’re dealing with the load. That’s what it’s meant to do. But also there’s limited movement when you’re holding your breath. So the thing that I would want to get you doing is first to make sure that you learn how to breathe while doing everything.
That doesn’t mean just breathe when you’re doing everything through the house, et cetera. Even when you’re going to go pick something up and you find, “Okay, I’m going to hold my breath when I do this.” Can you slow that movement down in a way that you can try to breathe while doing it so that you’re not ingraining that pathway of hold breath and do the thing? How can we do the thing and breathe? Because when we’re breathing, the body feels safe. If you’re breathing and doing stretching, or you’re breathing or doing anything when it comes to movement, you move more freely. Once you hold your breath, your body goes into this time to try to stay safe. Same thing in jiu-jitsu. When a new person starts jiu-jitsu, the first thing that you have to tell them to do is breathe. You remember.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nsima Inyang: You’re on bottom side control or you’re in some type of position, and immediately you’re like, [sounds of strain], you’re trying to produce force and you’re holding your breath while doing so because you don’t feel safe enough to produce that force while breathing. What this is going to do is it’s going to help us to get those tissues moving in the way that they should. The body’s going to feel safe so those tissues are going to start moving well, and we won’t have excess tension throughout the whole system. And this is why I would tell somebody with whatever lifting that they’re doing right now.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, tell me.
Nsima Inyang: Let’s lower the loads that we’re working with and learn how to use the breath while lifting, pushing, pulling, hinging. Let’s learn to use the breath while doing all of this. What this means is when we are in our concentric phase of the lift, whether it’s a push when lifting, whether it’s a pull when pulling, whether it’s hinging or coming up from a squat, we’re exhaling. Let’s just use the squat as an example rather than a bunch of things. The squat, inhale when you’re going down to the hole, exhale when you’re coming out of the hole. Let’s learn how to do that. Because in life, if we’re going to squat down to the ground, we shouldn’t hold our breath when going down to the ground, but many people do.
We should just, whether it’s inhale when getting down there and then breathe normally, we should be able to do that. And what I want to try to help you do is I want you to make this a global phenomenon. So you’re having very minimal or no, unless they’re purposeful breath holds, you’re not holding your breath during the day. There’s other benefits outside of this where you’re not going to feel as stressed, because a lot of people, when they are looking at their phone or they start thinking of something that brings a level of anxiety, inherently they start to hold their breath and they don’t realize it.
This is something that’s going to help you get rid of global tension outside of what you’re doing in the gym, which is going to help you just feel better overall. And this isn’t something you deal with in just a day, this is a habit change. If you want to change the way you do this when you’re lifting, you must lower your loads. You don’t do this with maximal loads. You don’t do this with heavy squats, heavy deadlifts. You don’t do this when lifting heavy sandbags, or even kettlebells, if you’re not used to this. You work on doing this with light load, and just like you progressed before with heavier loads, you progressively overload your ability to lift while breathing over time, you can progressively work with heavier and heavier load.
Tim Ferriss: So assuming I’m working on this.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: I’m working on the breathing. Tim, breathe. All right. My garage is a gym. I may not have all the requisite tools at the moment, it’s got all the basics. What are, whether it is me or others, but what are some of the non-negotiable exercises that you might prescribe for someone in my position, where it’s like, “Okay, I remember back in the day, I like to consider myself pretty athletic.” My enthusiasm outstrips my structural integrity on some regular occasions, and I would like to train for the long game, but also I would like to be very strong. I would like to be, for me. For me, I would like to be very strong. I still know I can develop that capacity. It’s just a matter of strengthening or catering to the low back so that I’m not terrified every time I set foot in the gym of having some spasm that cost me two weeks of sleep. So we were talking about, well, let me ask you a question. So back squat or no back squat?
Nsima Inyang: For you?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: Depends on the type of back squat we’re talking.
Tim Ferriss: All right, because we had box squats come up, and I had some questions and concerns around that. We talked about sandbags. How would you think about lower body, I guess it could be full body, but lower body loading for someone like me?
Nsima Inyang: I would want you to focus a little bit more on unilateral before we do more bilateral axial spine back squat loading. So something like different forms of lunges. The ATG split squat is a really good money movement. Do you know what the ATG split squat is?
Tim Ferriss: I do not know what that is.
Nsima Inyang: ATG split squat is something popularized by Ben Patrick. Deep knee flexion of the front knee, the back foot has a large amount of hip extension. So you’re getting hip extension of the back leg, deep knee flexion of the front leg. So you’re building a level of strength through long ranges in motion with that movement. So those ATG split squats, different types of lunges. I would have you focus on that instead of the traditional actual loaded back squat for a while. I’d also say that not that bilateral squatting is bad, but if you do, maybe you start learning how to do that with a sandbag. So use a kettlebell or a sandbag with that. First you need to learn how to lift a sandbag, because when you lift a sandbag, the load is in front of you. Your spine is going to be in a fairly neutral position, but you’re going to have a little bit more of slight maybe flexion in that spine. And you’re going to learn how to breathe against that load while squatting down with it in front of you.
So that could be a 50, 100-pound sandbag. You’ll probably start there and you’ll probably move forward with that over time. But the thing is is you’re not directly loading that spine right now as you’re doing, you’re not causing all of that compression. Not that compression is bad, but it seems as if you are a bit compression sensitive when it comes to squatting patterns because of what’s going on with your back.
Now, if you did want to work on some bilateral squatting, which I don’t think is a horrible idea, I would probably say if you wanted to work with a barbell, don’t squat to full deep knee flexion depth. Let’s stay away from that for a while. So let’s do barbell back squats to a box, making sure you’re maintaining tension as you go down to the box and coming up. So you’re not just plopping down to the box, sitting back, losing that tension, then coming out. You’re maintaining that tension while breathing, and you’re working maybe 40, 50%, 50, maybe 60% of your one rep max, where it’s like you can actually master the movement without stressing about the load, but over time you can inch that load up in a safe manner.
Tim Ferriss: And is the reason for that, just because this might help other people. So I injured myself three years ago doing a workout that did not feel like an injury at the time. It was back squatting, but I was basically going ass to heels, and I suspect in retrospect that I was doing like a little butt wink where I was starting to, to make it simple, just like round the lower back in the bottom ranges. And I think it was that kind of bending of the paperclip that caused that initial acute problem.
Nsima Inyang: That was a real squat, bro. That’s how you’re supposed to, that’s a real squat, bro. You don’t squat ass to grass in a squat.
Tim Ferriss: So the box would, let’s just say, would it be just above parallel, something like that?
Nsima Inyang: It would be above parallel right at 90 degrees.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, basically helps to mitigate the risk of that.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Would you do something similar with the sandbag or would you do that from the floor? What does the range of motion look like?
Nsima Inyang: You can squat down to to it. You could squat down to a box or you could squat all the way down with a light load if you feel comfortable. I would suggest that in your situation, you inch that down over time. Because what you could do is if you have multiple sandbags you could squat down to the other sandbag, or you could squat down to a box. And then over time lower that height where you feel comfortable. Just make sure as you’re squatting down, when you hit depth, you’re maintaining tension.
When I say maintaining tension, by the way, I mean you’re not totally just sitting on the box, limping out and then coming back up. You’re exhaling or inhaling as you go down to the box, you’re still maintaining that position, and then you drive up. You’re not losing that tension that you’ve created in your legs, your feet especially as you go down. You’re maintaining it. So you don’t lose — because the reason why people do the Valsalva maneuver is so when they hold their breath, they can maintain structural integrity of the spine, rib cage over hips, et cetera. When you’re braced and you can’t move, what’s keeping that integrity is the air that you’ve stored in your abdomen when you’re squatting down.
When you’re breathing while doing this, whether you’re inhaling while you’re going down and exhaling when coming up, the structural integrity is you are maintaining it. You’re maintaining it while you’re breathing. So when you’re breathing, you do have more room for that to happen, but you should be able to maintain that structure without the breath. When I deadlifted 755, I didn’t use a belt. Main reason I didn’t use a belt is I wanted to make sure that my structure could deadlift this weight without the need of outside assistance. The weight belt, when you’re using it, is supposed to, when you push against it, increase the amount of intra-abdominal pressure you’re able to create and help you maintain that. But when I did that, the reason why I didn’t use the belt is because it didn’t make sense to me to develop all this strength if I couldn’t do it on my own. So when now we’re breathing while doing this.
Tim Ferriss: Very Constantine, Constantinos. Remember that guy back in the day?
Nsima Inyang: A lot of Russians did that, though, a lot of Russians would do that. But I think that there’s a knowledge there, because you want to be able to do all of this stuff on your own. Yes, it can add some, but having to need to use a belt to do everything to maintain your structure I don’t think is the best idea. Now, when we’re using the breath, we’re not getting that extra pressure that it helps create, but we’re training ourselves to always be able to maintain the right structure and maintain the right amount of tension while breathing when lifting weights. And the reason why we’re doing that is because life wants us to do that.
When we’re going through life, when we’re fighting, we’re not holding our breath. And I know that some people will say, “Well, this isn’t the gym. The gym is supposed to help you do this stuff better.” The reason why I started doing this is because I wanted to make sure that the strength I was building in the gym would be something that would —
Tim Ferriss: Transferable.
Nsima Inyang: Transfer really well to the fighting that I was doing and the stuff that I was trying to do. And in all of that, breath holding is never part of it. Unless swimming, there’s breath holding. I think for me now when lifting something really heavy, it’s an exhale. When people see me using sandbags, this is an aside, but I was always somebody who when I lifted, I purposefully wanted to stay quiet. I don’t like emoting. I don’t like it. It’s not in my nature to be the person who goes, “Ah” when doing stuff. But when you learn to breathe while lifting, what ends up happening is when you’re creating that force, when you’re lifting that sandbag off the ground, when you’re pushing, that happens. You’re lifting, that happens. It’s not because I’m trying to sound hard or tough or whatever, it’s because it’s like —
Tim Ferriss: Like the Thai fighters kicking, same thing.
Nsima Inyang: It’s what my body needs to do to produce the force efficiently and I can stay safe through it. So as that started to happen, I started to feel stronger, and it transfers. You know what I mean? So that’s something that actually I think would help people understand this, especially the exhaling to create tension, is let’s do this right now. I think you already understand, but I think it’d serve. Growl.
Tim Ferriss: Growl.
Nsima Inyang: Growl. I’ll do it first. Huhhhhn! Growl.
Tim Ferriss: Huhhhhn!
Nsima Inyang: What do you feel? Do it, just breathe. And then Huhhhrrrrrnnn!
Tim Ferriss: Huhhhrrrrrnnn! I feel, there’s a sort of shielding. I feel there’s an abdominal contraction.
Nsima Inyang: There’s a level of tension that’s created.
Tim Ferriss: That’s the most noticeable thing, yeah.
Nsima Inyang: But now when you exhale, when you see a fighter, that tension is created to keep this structure in place so it’s safe when producing force. So this is why when I’m lifting a heavy sandbag or when I’m coming out of the hole of a squat or when I’m dead lifting, sometimes this will come out. Because it’s my breath helping me create a strong enough structure to not buckle under the load I’m lifting, rather than me holding the breath. And not that again, not that this is bad. If you’re a lifter and you’re doing this for your maximal lifts, I’m not telling you to just desert the Valsalva maneuver, but I do believe that if you learn to breathe while lifting, this is one of the fundamental things that will keep you safe while lifting, that will help you progress well, and will help you decrease the amount of stress that it has on your body over time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay, cool.
Nsima Inyang: And lastly, the biggest thing I think is it’ll help you get rid of excess tension that you’re holding in your body when you don’t need to have that tension. A lot of people deal with that.
Tim Ferriss: All right, so let’s say I’m working on that. Let’s say I decide box squat, going to give that a go. Maybe I have a safety squat yoke or something. Sandbag, all right. Probably do some isolateral stuff. So ATG, split squat. For somebody who’s listening, let’s say maybe they’re in a similar boat. Or maybe their back is fine, but they want to get stronger using these movements. What type of set rep programming do you give to someone who’s not an elite powerlifter?
Nsima Inyang: There’s no need to do anything under five or six reps if that’s the case, you don’t have to do that. Because over time, as you work with sets of five, six, eights, 10’s, over time, you’ll naturally be able to get stronger in those rep schemes with those loads. And I’m not saying that heavy lifting isn’t good, I do things that are three, four, five reps when I’m working with heavy loads, I still do that. But the problem that happens with a lot of people when they get into a program that’s focused on the load and the heaviness of the load, they start doing things they shouldn’t do to lift that load.
So if we’re trying to focus on maintaining our breath, there’s going to come a point where you’re working with the load that you’re going to find you won’t be able to breathe well, you won’t be able to inhale and exhale at the phases of the lift that you should be. But also, you manage to lift it and you’re like, “Okay, I’m strong enough for this,” so you’ll add on more. And then you’ll get to a place where you’re holding your breath, and then you’ll get to the place where all the times that anything’s really happened for me has been when I was creating a little bit too much tension. I was holding my breath and something happens, not when I was breathing with it. So that’s why I don’t necessarily, if you’re not someone who’s powerlifting, and if you’re in the gym, you’re just wanting to lift and get stronger, so I don’t want you to focus on the weight on the bar. I want you to focus on the quality of the movement.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’m by myself in my garage, so I definitely have no one to impress. So what would you suggest then? Would it be two, three sets of blank with X number of minutes in between? Because we were chatting a little bit, and this is nothing obviously compared to what you do, but when I was my strongest back in the day, which was probably ’96 when I was in China of all places, I was doing sets of, let’s just call it six to 10, but closer to six in pretty much all movements with five to 10 minute rests. I was taking really long rest intervals. And generally hitting, it was split push, pull legs, and I was hitting each of those workouts once a week roughly. What would you prescribe as a starting point for me with sets and reps, and rest intervals and things like that? Any thoughts on how to approach it?
Nsima Inyang: Two to three sets per movement. I like people doing things for sets of… Not sets, reps—six, 10, 12. I would say doing that kind of rep scheme. So what I would do is on certain days, if you’re doing two times a week in the gym, one of those days, have your movements doing maybe sets of six or so, and I would also split it up like this too. When I lift, I do upper and lower body. I don’t just break it up into a push, pull, whatever, I do full body stuff. So if you’re doing upper and lower on a certain day, for one day for your upper body movements, if you’re doing sets of six or so, do sets of 10. Yeah, sets of 10 on your lower body, eight to 10 higher up.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So this day, let’s just say it’s Monday.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Upper body would be six rep sets.
Nsima Inyang: Six rep sets.
Tim Ferriss: Lower body would be 10.
Nsima Inyang: Higher up 10, 12 sets. Yeah. 12 reps per set. On another day, if you’re doing a full body day again, I would say for the upper body, that would now be higher repetitions and your lower body would be lower repetitions. Right? If you’re doing two full-body days. Now, I think you said you’re doing push-pull —
Tim Ferriss: Legs.
Nsima Inyang: Legs. Right?
Tim Ferriss: And I’m not married to that. It’s just easy for me to remember.
Nsima Inyang: This is the thing. There’s so many ways to set things up, but for minimum effective dose, if you can do each body part twice per week, which you can probably do in two to three training days, it doesn’t have to be a five-day week split. Literally, you can do all this two or three days in the gym. For two days, that’s how I would split it up. For three days, you get a little bit more leeway with volume, and three days is nice because if you, for example, on your first day, if you find that you do better having slightly lower amounts of movements, then you can split that volume into three separate days rather than having that volume in two days instead. Does that make sense?
Tim Ferriss: Can you give me an example?
Nsima Inyang: So, if you did five upper body movements and five lower body movements on one day, and then day two you did five lower and five upper, right? If you’re finding that that’s too much for you to do in a two-day period, you could take some of that —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that would be too much for me. I, for whatever reason, handle volume very poorly.
Nsima Inyang: Split some of that volume. Instead of just totally taking down that workload, split that workload into three days. So then you’re doing, what is it? We just mentioned 20 total sets. Do six sets, six sets, and then on another day, it’s going to be eight sets of that movement. You split that volumes three days, you’re good, right? But you can still do that rep scheme where you hit each body part twice a week. You manage to do some slightly lower repetition, some slightly higher repetition. You’re good.
Tim Ferriss: Yep. Got it. Okay. And then what about rest between sets?
Nsima Inyang: That’s variable because some people like to have actual rest between sets, but then you can also, if you’re doing on a certain day, let’s say for your upper body movements that you do some push and some pull, you could superset those because they’re antagonistic. So when I say antagonistic, instead of resting, you would do a pushing movement. Then you could literally just, let’s say you do a push, then you do a row. You could do that back to back because the recovery of each movement doesn’t necessarily get too much in the way of each other.
There will be some stress from the weight you did in that specific first set, but the muscles being worked when you’re doing that push movement do not get as much in the way as the muscles you’re doing work in the pull movement. So you could rest if you wanted to, but you could also superset it. And one thing that I think, a concept that I want people to take from this because I know how people love to have that specific program that they do, which is good, but learn to add an element of play into this. Learn to have an element of freedom into this.
So if you feel like you want to rest or a minute or two in between a set, rest, if you feel like you want to superset, superset, because again, I think that when you start, you can get very specific with it, but when you start making too many stringent rules within it, it becomes too — it can for some people become quite daunting and monotonous. So something that I do is when I’m doing a squat, I’ll sometimes do some rope flow in between just to get some rotation —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Let me ask you this. Just to stand in for the audience here.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Do you think you could have gotten away with that earlier in your training? Have you laid such an incredible foundation of strict, maybe monotonous training, that now, I mean, you’re like, okay, this body’s not really going anywhere. So if I want to do some Sudoku in between my overhead presses and do some rope flow over here, maybe a little pantomiming in between this set and that set, that you can get away with it in a way that might not serve a beginner or intermediate. Or am I off base there?
Nsima Inyang: So the reason, let me mention the reason why I do rope flow in between, it’s not because it’s part of a workout. It’s because it helps me feel better. When I put so much compression on myself, there’s a level of — for me, there’s a level of stiffness that I feel from that set. The reason why I do the rope flow is to help me kind of undo that stiffness before my next set. That’s the reason why I do it. I don’t do it because it’s a super efficient part of the workout, but I do it because it helps me feel better for the next set I’m about to do. When I do a lot, and other people notice this too, but when you do a lot of compressive things back to back, you start to kind of feel this lower back tension and stiffness and this overall stiffness that you’re creating for the workout.
The stiffness isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you have something, especially, you don’t have to do rope flow in between sets too. You do that post-workout or later, that will be something that really will help you feel better. But the thing is, when you only do that, you then walk around with that stiffness that you’ve created and you have nothing to undo it. This is one of the reasons why a lot of people will work out, then after their workout, they’ll do dead hangs because they feel like, oh, I’m getting this decompression in my spine from everything, and that can feel better.
But the thing is you can get that same decompression from the rope. You could get the same type of decompression from swimming. Swimming does the same thing. But the reason why I was saying all of this is have a structure to what you do, but allow yourself to kind of add things to it or subtract things to it when you want. Because the only thing that’s going to help you get bigger and stronger is progressive overload over a long period of time. It’s not going to be the magic set and rep scheme that you’re doing right now. It’s going to be what you’re doing being progressed over years.
And for people listening, because I think one criticism that I get a lot is like, you didn’t get this big from rope flow. Nah, I didn’t get this big from rope flow. But at the same time, I could have gotten this big while feeling better for years if I had the other practices that I do, like the rope, the clubs, the kettlebells, if I had those practices included, it’s not about getting big, it’s about gaining strength and muscle, but moving well throughout the whole process, not focusing on the way you look, but moving like a fridge and feeling like you’re old, that’s not the goal. I mean, I don’t think anyone sets out to gain muscle and strength with also the goal of feeling like they’re 80 years old. No one wants that, but that’s where a lot of people are, and a lot of people will kind of just, they’ll assume that that’s part of the process —
Tim Ferriss: And doesn’t need to be.
Nsima Inyang: — and doesn’t need to be at all.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you definitely need to hang out with Jerzy. You’ll enjoy hanging out with Jerzy and Anjala.
Nsima Inyang: I’m excited. No, from what you told me about him, I’m going to like him.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you guys will get a kick out of each other and because, for instance, Jerzy, he also does decompression but usually hanging upside down and like —
Nsima Inyang: In boots?
Tim Ferriss: Boots. But he does some really heavy weights. He’ll hold onto a hundred pounds in addition to hanging upside down. Anyway, he’s got his own approach to things for very, very short duration, five to 10 seconds. But I think you’ll find a lot of his stuff thought-provoking. But he is all about movement, and he gauges, he tracks everything meticulously with his trainees, but he’ll also look at their gait, and he’s like, I want to get you to the point where you walk like a dancer.
He’s like, that’s definitely one of his explicit goals is watch gait and movement in that way. And when I told him that I was doing, and I think there’s a place for this, I’m going to continue to do it, but I was doing biking for exercise, and what his thoughts were, and he was like, “Terrible.” He’s like, “That’s stupid. So stupid.” And Jerzy, I know I’m paraphrasing here, but he was like, “If you want to ride a bike because it’s fun to ride from point A to point B,” he’s like, “Great.” He’s like, “If you want to ride for 50 miles because you enjoy it, great.” He’s like, “If you’re doing it though as this monotonous punishment and training,” he’s like, “Terrible.” He’s like, “Don’t do that.”
Nsima Inyang: I want to mention, don’t lose your train of thought, but I think that’s what he’s mentioning there in terms of relation to gait, it’s a very smart way to try to think about some of your training. Because when a lot of people think about the squat, when a lot of people get their feet set, they usually have their feet out at an angle. Most people —
Tim Ferriss: Slightly pointed out toes.
Nsima Inyang: Slightly pointed out, slightly pointed out toes. You’re creating this force upward with that barbell. So you’re learning how to have force coming from the ground through, but you’re just going straight up and down. Now, the thing to think about, and the reason why I mentioned this is when you do watch a lot of people that develop those capacities and a lot of them walk through space, it’s almost like they’re walking in a squat position with their feet. They’re walking with their feet out like this.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, they got a Charlie Chaplin-esque.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. The thing is, you’ll see some pro NBA players walking like this. You see a lot of that, right? I’m not going to necessarily say that that’s bad, but what I’m going to say is over time I used to kind of walk like that, but as I started thinking about what my feet were doing during everything I was doing and I started thinking about doing certain exercises that would potentially improve my gait over time, now my feet face forward when I walk. And I’m not intentionally doing this. It’s just my directionality through space is now forward. I’m not fighting myself trying to navigate forward with feet that are outwards. That’s not efficient.
I’m not saying everybody needs to walk with their toes forward, but I’m saying when you start thinking about ways to adjust your gait with your movement, so this could be the bilateral movements like the ATG split squat, that could be using a sled. I think sleds are super powerful, and the unfortunate thing is not everyone has access to a sled, but that is literal forward and backward force production. When you’re pushing a sled, there’s this force that you’re learning how to push forward, but you need to have your feet moving you forward too. So you’re learning over time how to push a weight forward through space. I think they’re super powerful, not just for developing structural strength, but also improving one’s gait over time.
The way you walk will change, and the rope will help with that too, but that’s something to think about. I don’t think most people should be walking with their feet ducked out. And I used to walk like that because sumo deadlifting, the feet are here. I’m producing force from a foot position like this. Squatting, I’m producing force from a foot position like this. Now when I go and do other things, that’s the way I move through space, and that’s not efficient.
Tim Ferriss: So, just because I’m curious and at least long ago found a lot of dividends from doing sumo deadlifts —
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. They’re not bad, by the way.
Tim Ferriss: Recommendations for sumo deadlifts. Any thoughts on common mistakes, tips, principles that you’ve refined over time where you’re like, okay, here’s some of my pre-flight checklist that might be helpful to people. And could you just describe, it’s called sumo deadlift, right? Because it’s a deadlift. You’re pulling a barbell loaded with plates off the ground, but your legs are wide, right? Your hands are in between your legs going down to grab the barbell. So you look like a Yokozuna squatting down and getting ready to do the whole sumo thing, hence the name. What recommendations might you have for people who are hoping to improve their sumo deadlift?
Nsima Inyang: There’s this funny thing within the powerlifting community where there are powerlifters who are like, they look at the sumo deadlift and they say, “That’s not a real deadlift. That’s not a conventional deadlift.”
Tim Ferriss: Conventional deadlift would be like knees inside the arms, right?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. And it’s just so funny to me. We had Colton Engelbrecht, an aside, Colton Engelbrecht.
He has the highest total ever in powerlifting of around, I think I’m going to butcher this, but I think it’s like 2650, right? At two — I think he was 275 when he did this. So he wasn’t even at the heaviest weight class. He was 275 at 22 years old. He’s been powerlifting for three years. Highest total ever.
So he squatted 470 kilograms, 260 kilogram bench, 470 kilogram deadlift on an eight or nine day. So he squatted and deadlifted 1,036 pounds in the same meet.
Tim Ferriss: At 22.
Nsima Inyang: At the ripe old age of 22 years old.
Tim Ferriss: Good lord.
Nsima Inyang: The reason why I mentioned this —
Tim Ferriss: Is this yet another reason you never stretched your street fights people? I mean, I doubt you’d pick on this guy, but —
Nsima Inyang: People are getting —
Tim Ferriss: You just never know.
Nsima Inyang: — so much stronger, so much younger. It’s insane. But the reason why I’m mentioning Colton is because Colton does the sumo deadlift, and some people roast him for that, and they’re like, it’s not conventional. It’s like, whatever. But when we had him on the show, I was like, “Colton, why do you sumo deadlift?” And he was like, “It feels more natural.” And I was like, “Yeah, it does.” It feels weird to bend down and pick up a barbell implement in the conventional way, at least for my body type. Some people with very long arms, certain length of their femur, some people feel better with conventional, but the sumo, for me, has just made more sense because you’re getting down in this hip position, you’re driving with your legs. It just makes more sense in my opinion.
So, nothing against conventional, nothing against any other deadlift, but the sumo. Now, when doing the sumo deadlift, I think one thing that people really need to focus on is what their feet are doing. And I think this should be how it should be with every single lift. But when doing the sumo especially, there’s a cue that people get, and people get this cue in squatting too, where you’ll hear knees, push your knees outward, right? For the squat, you push your knees out so you can have space to get in between your hips when you’re squatting. Sometimes your knees are too far forward. Some people with their limb lengths don’t have the ability to get down to depth. So when you push your knees out, you provide room.
The sumo deadlift, when people say push your knees out, when you push your knees out, you provide room for the barbell to ride up your body. But the other cue of rooting the feet into the ground, and I learned this cue from Kelly Starrett’s book, Becoming a Supple Leopard, back in 2013.
Tim Ferriss: Have you met Kelly?
Nsima Inyang: Met Kelly. Yeah. We’ve had him on the show a few times.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, cool.
Nsima Inyang: I always mention where I’ve learned these things. Kelly’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: Kelly’s great.
Nsima Inyang: I learned that from his book. I also learned, and the reason why I keep my face relaxed when lifting and stuff. I also learned that from his book, Supple Leopard, because when he talks about my fast release, you shouldn’t have a pain face. If you relax, it’s going to allow yourself to relax through these movements. But anyway, that’s an aside. Rooting your feet into the ground will allow you to have external rotation of the hips.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, we did a little bit of this earlier today, but just describe for people what that actually means. So you’re in a gym doing a sumo deadlift, you have shoes on, presumably. What are you doing with your feet and legs?
Nsima Inyang: I think something that can help somebody understand this is using the hands, putting your hand on a table, and trying — you could actually do this with both hands. Keep your fingers planted in the table and try to see if you can rip the table apart while keeping your fingers where they are. Rip the table apart. Now, what do you feel when you do that?
Tim Ferriss: So in this case, you’re sort of externally rotating your hands, even though they’re not moving.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right?
Nsima Inyang: Ripping that table apart, but what do you feel when you do that with your hands? That’s actually, what do you feel?
Tim Ferriss: What do I feel? I mean, I feel a lot of tension in my arms.
Nsima Inyang: You feel a lot of tension in your arms. What do you feel in your shoulder?
Tim Ferriss: Shoulders have gone down and my lats are engaged. So, I mean, there’s a lot going on.
Nsima Inyang: So, the shoulder can be compared to the hip, where the hip externally rotates as you’re grabbing the ground, the shoulders will have this downward rotation when you grab.
Tim Ferriss: As I do this, I guess it depends on if we were doing a push-up, it might even be better. Right now, our arms are extended in front of us. If we were doing a push-up, what I would expect is that this eye of the elbow, the inside of the elbow, let’s just call it the eye kind of when you bend your arm, it would be in that crook, would almost certainly rotate. I would imagine there would be some rotation in a push-up position.
Nsima Inyang: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Which would then mimic the, I guess, femur or —
Nsima Inyang: Exactly. So the reason why I wanted you to do that with your hands is I think that can help some people understand what they should be doing with their feet because —
Tim Ferriss: You’ve got some meaty hands, my friend. I do not want to get slapped with those things. Jesus.
Nsima Inyang: Tim. Tim.
Tim Ferriss: I’m just saying.
Nsima Inyang: Let me say this, you don’t know how happy that makes me feel. Do you know why?
Tim Ferriss: Because you’ve wanted to slap me and now it’s not allowed?
Nsima Inyang: No, no, no, no. Over the past, jiu-jitsu, and we’re going to come back to the foot thing, but the jiu-jitsu is a martial art that has a lot to do with the hands, the grip. And I’ve noticed that my hands have gotten bigger because I’ve purposely started doing more hand type of work this past year.
Tim Ferriss: Like the rice bucket.
Nsima Inyang: Like the rice bucket. I’ve been doing a lot of hand work because I started, because of all the gripping in the martial arts, I started to feel pain in my fingers. And one thing you notice with a lot of high-level black belt grapplers is their fingers are kind of mangled because of everything that happens over the years. So I started doing rice bucket work and a bunch of other things, but my hands, I’m happy you say that because my hands didn’t used to be this meaty.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: So thank you.
Tim Ferriss: You’re welcome.
Nsima Inyang: It’s working.
Tim Ferriss: You’re welcome.
Nsima Inyang: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, if this jiu-jitsu or YouTube thing doesn’t work out, you could go into one of those Russian slapping competitions.
Nsima Inyang: I would never.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I know.
Nsima Inyang: I would never. No.
Tim Ferriss: Not worth the TBI.
Nsima Inyang: No. They would mess me up for sure. I’m not strong enough for that. But the reason why I wanted people to do that on the table and feel that is because when a lot of people try to do this with the feet, they just grab the ground like this, and what you were doing in the park initially, they kind of just curl their toes.
Tim Ferriss: Like pinch.
Nsima Inyang: Like pinch instead of pinching slightly and then ripping apart to create —
Tim Ferriss: And ripping apart, just to be clear, is not straight out to the sides. It’s really like a rotation.
Nsima Inyang: It’s rotational.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. Right.
Nsima Inyang: And that rotation is going to allow the knees to come out for the sumo deadlift. The knees will pull out because you’re getting external rotation of the hips, which will allow you room to drive the hips forward.
Tim Ferriss: Let me ask you this, with the sumo deadlift, when you place your feet, let’s just say straight ahead is 12 o’clock, and then your toes are getting pointed out, how externally rotated are your feet to begin with? Are they as far out as you can get them and really close to the plates? Are they at 10 o’clock and two o’clock, and then you get that type of tearing apart external rotation? Because I’m thinking —
Nsima Inyang: So nowadays my feet would probably be at 11 and one.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. All right.
Nsima Inyang: The reason why they’re at 11 and one is because I have better mobility than I had in the past. So when I do create that torsion I have more hip mobility to create when I’m moving outwards. Some people who don’t have that hip mobility have to have their feet in a wider position so that they can create enough width to have their knees not be in the way of the bar. So that’s totally dependent on one’s hip mobility.
Tim Ferriss: Hip mobility.
Nsima Inyang: But when you get more hip mobility when you’re creating that torsion, your feet angle will change slightly for how comfortable you are in the position. So whatever position you have right now, there’s a golden position for the level of mobility you currently have, and as that mobility improves and as your ability to create more force improves, that position will adjust.
Tim Ferriss: How close to the plates are your toes?
Nsima Inyang: My toes? Oh, no. Yeah, my toes aren’t —
Tim Ferriss: How wide is your stance is another way to put it.
Nsima Inyang: It’s like 90 degrees. So when I say 90 degrees, I mean my legs are out and my feet are, or my knees are right below my femurs, so I don’t have this. You see a lot of people where they almost have this triangle angle with their feet. I have a box. That’s the structure I’m creating.
Tim Ferriss: In the bottom position, you’re saying?
Nsima Inyang: In the bottom position. Yeah, in the bottom position, it’s like boom, boom. It’s like a —
Tim Ferriss: From knee to ankle is perpendicular to the ground.
Nsima Inyang: From knee to ankle is perpendicular. Interestingly enough, you notice like an Ed Coan, he had this outward, you’ll notice he kind of was — his feet were closer together in his sumo deadlift, and he was a crazy sumo deadlifter, but that’s where he found he was able to create the most force.
Tim Ferriss: What was his crazy, record-setting deadlift? Some insane number. What was it? 970 at 220 or something?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, let’s put it on screen. Ed Coan’s had a lot of records.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, he’s had a lot of records. I remember getting this book, I’m blanking on the author’s name, but it was like Ed Coan the Man, the Myth, the Method, which was a great book, and there was a photo. You want to talk about people who were well-built for their sport. You look at Michael Phelps, you’re like, okay, I could swim my whole life. My body doesn’t look like that guy. His ankles are funny and he is just perfectly built for the sport. And there was a photo, I don’t know if it was Wilt Chamberlain or some NBA player who’s like 10 foot 10, and he’s next to Ed Coan, who’s not 10 foot 10. He’s like five foot five. And they put their hands together and they were the same size. And I was like, man, oh, man. You could not design from scratch a better body for this exact lift.
Nsima Inyang: Have you ever met Ed Coan?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t think I have met Ed. We’ve had conversations before, but no, I don’t think I’ve met him in person, actually.
Nsima Inyang: Okay. Ed is a literal mutant to this day. The last time I saw him in person was a few years ago.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, is it fair to say, I mean, one of the greatest powerlifters, if not the greatest of all time?
Nsima Inyang: Still the greatest powerlifter of all time. I would say he’s still the greatest powerlifter of all time. I think he popularized his sport so much. He got so many people into powerlifting. He inspired so many of the greatest powerlifters and minds, or minds in powerlifting to this day that I don’t think no matter what anybody else does in powerlifting, I think Ed Coan is probably still the greatest.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Nsima Inyang: And then from there it’s like, well, who has the highest total in that? You know what I mean? And going back to Ed’s structure, first off, his hands are huge. I shook his hand and his hand engulfed my hand, me being so much taller, it’s like he ate my hand with his and made me feel so small. The second thing is the length of his arms. Ed has these —
Tim Ferriss: His ape index must be off the charts.
Nsima Inyang: He has these orangutan arms, bro, where it’s like, when you look at his sumo deadlift form, it kind of makes some sense with how easy —
Tim Ferriss: He doesn’t have to have the legs super wide.
Nsima Inyang: He doesn’t. He doesn’t, right? So one of the things about the sumo, and one of the things about lifting in general, is finding the best position for your anatomical leverages. So not everyone’s going to squat with their — some people, for example, a Kelly Starrett, a lot of the time he was squatting with his feet pointed straight forward creating that torsion. But you look at his limb lengths, he could be really good for that.
Some people, if they have a longer torso, sometimes that position doesn’t do well for them because as they head down into the hole, their body folds. So some of them need to have a much wider stance so that when they head down into the hole, they don’t have this massive folding of their torso. So what’s one of the cool things with lifting where you’ll see someone like an Olympic lifter with beautiful mechanics, but then you also really have to pay attention to the way this person is built, and you have to find the best way to move that way through space with your leverages.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. Makes me think of one of my buddies, amazing striker. Used to compete at very high level, and I mean, he is gangly as fuck, right? And that was part of the problem because he would be a foot taller or he would have eight inches of additional reach on people, so he would just pummel the hell out of people in the same weight class. But there’s certain movements. You want that guy to do bench press? You’re going to come away with the misperception that he is weak, right? It’s like, no, maybe with that particular movement, sure, it’s not very well-built for his dimensions, but let him throw a power jab at your face. Yeah, he is well-built for that. Just different body types.
Nsima Inyang: Let me add this in because I think this is something that can maybe give some people something to explore when it comes to their deadlift movement. When it comes to deadlifting, the things that we think about is the conventional deadlift, the sumo deadlift. Well, you could also attempt doing a staggered stance deadlift. So a staggered stance deadlift would mean there’s one foot ahead, one foot behind, the foot behind has the heel elevated slightly.
Tim Ferriss: Like a kickstand.
Nsima Inyang: Like a kickstand. Exactly. Kickstand. It could be called kickstand, staggered stance, deadlift. Deadlifting that way. You could use either a straight bar, you could use a trap bar. The concept still holds true, but the reason why I have enjoyed progressing that staggered stance deadlift, and I use a trap bar when I do that, is just because, for me, it feels as if it relates to gait a little bit better than the standard deadlifts do. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the standard sumo or conventional, but when I’m thinking about creating upward force, how would I jump off of the ground?
When I think about that and then I think about, okay, transferring that to a barbell, I wouldn’t necessarily jump off of the ground in the stance that I’m using in sumo or conventional. I would do it in this kind of staggered kickstand stance and then pop off. If I were trying to actually create force upwards, that’s how I would do it. And I think that that would be worth one’s time to progress. You’re not going to lift as much weight initially, but over time, you can build up some, I don’t even like saying this because I don’t want people to think of it in terms of numbers. I want people to think about the movement, but you can get very strong doing that. And then, you’re also strong in the stance that can relate to how you’ll actually move yourself through space, but now you’re creating force with it.
Tim Ferriss: What are some exercises that you think, I know this is such a maybe trite question, but just really incredible bang-for-the-buck exercises, and for instance, for me, and I’m not saying I’m any paragon of exercise expertise, but like the two-handed kettlebell swing, it seems like you get so much from that exercise performed consistently with progressive resistance, whether that’s in terms of loading through higher volume or increasing the weight. I mean, it is just remarkable how much I get out of that exercise even once or twice a week. It’s just astonishing to me. Continually. Anything else that you would throw into that type of category that come to mind with the condition that you can get somebody to the point where they can perform them safely, reasonably quickly?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. I think everyone should own a sandbag because picking up a sandbag off of the ground, starting light. So you get yourself, let’s say you get a 75-pound bag, you fill it up to 50 pounds, you get yourself to lifting that without any type of discomfort. And one of the reasons why I think that is so beneficial and so useful is the way that one will bend down to pick up a sandbag. Because when you bend down to pick up a barbell, it’s this implement that’s perfectly symmetrical. The only way that the hands are involved or when they’re gripping like this, right? You have to get yourself in this neutral position, you hinge forward. It teaches you how to be a perfect hinge, a perfect lever.
But whenever you lift a sandbag, every sandbag lift has its own — it’s never the same because of the nature of the implement. It’s this shapely thing that you have to, first off, you have this open palm grip, you have to grip around it, and then you have to organize your body to lift it safely. Anybody can lift a sandbag safely while breathing. Over time, you increase the weight. But I think that if people learn to lift sandbags well, that will be something that will actually prepare you to lift well for life because your spine isn’t in this perfect neutral position as you’re doing it. There’s slight curvature, and you learn that it is safe to lift something with some slight rounding of the spine.
Of course, with a barbell, you don’t do that often unless you’re doing something like a Jefferson curl, which I think they’re pretty solid, especially if you don’t load them to a crazy extent as you’re progressing it, because some people get focused on the load. By the way, what a Jefferson curl is it’s a purposeful rounding of the spine to lift a barbell off the ground. It’s actually the antithesis of, I think I’m using the word antithesis correct, but it’s the opposite of what you’re taught to do when you deadlift to create a neutral spine. You’re literally rounding your back to lift the barbell off the ground. It sounds like a joke, but it’s to ingrain in your body that my spine is okay getting to this position, lifting something. But I think a sandbag would be money for people.
Tim Ferriss: And just for clarity, are you picking it up and then dropping it, and then picking it up and dropping it?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. A base thing that you could do is literally pick it up to around your stomach, bring it back down to the ground. You can either drop it or you can lower it back down to the ground. Then there are progressions where now you pick it up, launch it up to your shoulder, bring it down back to the ground. So you could drop it or you can bring it slowly back down to the ground. And then you could pick it up, throw it over your shoulder, pick it up, throw it over the opposite shoulder. It’s inherently a rotational throw when you become adept with it, right? So there are progressions, but the base progression would be literally just — the first thing you would do is you would just do a sandbag deadlift, then you would do a lift to the stomach, then you would do a lift to the shoulder, then you could do a throw.
And then there’s a bunch of things, you could do squats, you could do split squats, you could do Cossack squats, you could do lunges.
Tim Ferriss: Cossack squats is another one. Typically, I’ve just done that with kind of a goblet squat type of hold on a kettlebell, but just remarkable how much you get out of that exercise as you slowly — and what was wild about it to me, what a funny name, number one, but is I was using it as a warm-up for some acrobatic stuff that I was doing way back in the day. And I was just using it as a warm-up. But I noticed I was getting stronger.
And so I started adding a little bit of weight, a little bit of weight, and I got to the point where I was doing Cossack squats, and it’s not like this isn’t a ton of weight, but it’s like with a, I don’t know, 70 or 80-pound kettlebell. And again, the transfer, I was just like, “Wow,” I wasn’t even treating this as part of my workout. But just over time, because I was doing the acrobatic stuff very regularly, so I was like never doing it to exhaustion, just that “greasing the groove.” And I was like, “What the hell is going on here?” It’s just remarkable how much it had transferred.
Nsima Inyang: It’s a money movement. So I mentioned all those movements because these are all things that you could do throughout the day with a sandbag that you keep by your desk. You could do squats, you could do some quick lunges, you could bring it up to your shoulder. You could do some quick Cossack squats. You could do a reverse lift. You could literally do all these movements with a sandbag —
Tim Ferriss: Are you just bear-hugging the Cossack when you’re doing the Cossack?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, you —
Tim Ferriss: Bear-hugging the sandbag, rather.
Nsima Inyang: — you can keep it right there.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: And then you go into a Cossack squat position. Yes, absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Nsima Inyang: And with the Cossack squat specifically, it’s particularly powerful because most people, when it comes to training the adductors, they mainly do that with the machine in the gym.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, so adductors, guys, are inside of your thighs. I mean, that’s very super — like Suzanne Somers, thigh master, that’s adductors, right? So if you were trying to pop a ball between your knees using your adductors.
Nsima Inyang: There’s a very shady side of the internet of women popping watermelons with their adductors.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. That’s —
Tim Ferriss: I thought I’d seen it all.
Nsima Inyang: You haven’t until you see that.
Tim Ferriss: This is going to be the headline for your episode.
Nsima Inyang: But if you want the strength to do that, right, Cossack squats are going to be great. There are more specific adductor movements like the Copenhagen plank.
Tim Ferriss: You’re saying most people who train their adductors are using —
Nsima Inyang: Only using —
Tim Ferriss: — one of those machines.
Nsima Inyang: If they ever use that machine, sparsely, they use that sparsely typically. And that ends up being a very weak link. So one thing that I’ve noticed in —
Tim Ferriss: Now, just for people who might wonder, because those machines are very popular. They’re usually monopolized by any — not to paint them with a broad brush, but a few women are just sitting on there for hours it seems, working this stuff, right?
Nsima Inyang: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: Why is that a weak link compared to doing something like a Cossack squad or something else?
Nsima Inyang: Because you never — you do get some tension on those tissues when you’re doing a typical squat, but not an insane amount. When you’re doing a sumo deadlift you also get some tension on that area, but not as much as when you’re isolating it at a bilateral fashion with the Cossack squad. Along with that, in the Cossack squad you get more length of those tissues when you get to depth of the Cossack squat than you would —
Tim Ferriss: I’ll give another —
Nsima Inyang: Go ahead.
Tim Ferriss: — bad visual for people. So people are like, “What the hell are they talking about Cossack squad?” So imagine the most stereotypical, Russian dancer, arms folded, kicking out from side to side, and then freeze-frame, on the ground, where one leg is fully extended to one side and he or she’s basically squatting ass to the other heel on the other side. Okay, Cossack squad, right?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Yeah. And one thing I find interesting about that is for a long time I was really trying to get good at Cossack squats, and it wasn’t until I was allowing myself to breathe when I got down to that position that I actually got there safely and came out. So —
Tim Ferriss: What have you found most effective for improving ankle mobility, right? Because for a lot of people, if they try to do a Cossack squad — well, do you have heel up or heel down, I guess?
Nsima Inyang: Heel down.
Tim Ferriss: Heel down. Okay.
Nsima Inyang: I have heel down. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So for a lot of folks, if they try to do that, they’re going to fall backwards if they don’t have the ankle mobility, right, if the knee can’t travel kind of over the toes.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Any thoughts on developing that?
Nsima Inyang: I think that a great conversation for you would be Ben Patrick too.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. All right.
Nsima Inyang: Because what I’m going to tell you —
Tim Ferriss: Literally knees over toes.
Nsima Inyang: What I’m going to tell you is this is why I find that I’ve been so lucky to learn from so many people, because the only reason why I’m able to first have the level of mobility I do is because of a lot of things that I’ve learned from these different people. So, for example, the ankle mobility you’re talking about right there, some things that helped with that were the ATG split squat that I was telling you about, which is a movement that, again, he popularized. But that front leg — I hope that when this podcast comes out, maybe there’s an image of an ATG split squat that can be pulled up so people can see —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Nsima Inyang: — that the front leg that’s doing the split squat, over time there are regressions to that movement, by the way. So everything we’ve talked about, if you find that you’re not getting there, regress the movement, regress the range of motion.
Tim Ferriss: Tell me if I’m getting it roughly right. And also, I have his ATG device that is plate loading for wrist work, extensor work, grip work, which is fantastic. What does ATG stand for?
Nsima Inyang: ATG, his company, stands for Athletic Truth Group. You think it stands for Ass to Grass.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I didn’t see it coming. Okay, got it. Athletic Truth Group.
Nsima Inyang: Athletic Truth Group.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Got it.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. And Ben is a guy — one of the reasons why I appreciate Ben so much is because he’s a very open-minded individual. You’ll run across so many people in these different fitness spaces, and they’re so —
Tim Ferriss: Dogmatic.
Nsima Inyang: — dogmatic, gung-ho about their system and, “If you do this system, this is what’s going to happen when you do this. It’s not good. And this is what’s going to happen when you do this.” It’s like everything is their system. But the people that I tend to really appreciate are the people that, they may have some things that they do, but they can also see the strength in many other things, right? And Ben is that type of person where — he’s also someone who continues to learn. He has these — this what he’s done, but Ben is continuously learning and applying new things to the people that he works with and himself and finds benefit. And it’s one of those things where he’s in the constant growth rather than finding the negatives of everything that everyone’s doing, right?
Tim Ferriss: To protect his predefined fiefdom. Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. So, anyway.
Tim Ferriss: So let me throw out something. Tell me how close this is. So there is an exercise, of all places it was actually given to me by a physio in Sweden who I chanced upon. Because my back has been bothering me for so long and everybody you meet is like, “Oh, you got to try my friend’s blah,” right? Or, “This person can do this,” or, “You have to try my friend, the acupuncturist.” Everybody’s got a suggestion, God bless them. But it ends up, after a while, you become a little tone-deaf to it, because I’m like, “All right, look, I can talk to your tarot card reader and I can talk to your Qigong person. I’m just not sure it’s going to do anything.”
But this physio ended up working with a lot of professional fighters, that’s not me, and professional soccer players, and he really knew his stuff. I just lucked out. Because this drunk guy at a party was like, “You should meet my physio.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m sure I should meet your physio.” And then I just had a wide-open day the next day, and I was like, “Fuck it. All right, sure, I’ll meet your physio.”
And Sebastian’s his name, ended up being excellent, in Stockholm. And he gave me some very basic exercises, again with the intention of remediating some of the back pain and strengthening. And one of them was elevated front foot split squats, very lightly loaded, going fully down to the bottom position where the front knee is way over the front foot toes —
Nsima Inyang: That’s regression for the ATG split squat.
Tim Ferriss: — and basically ass is on the heel. Three second pause at the bottom, back up, and doing sets of six to eight basically.
Nsima Inyang: That’s a regression for the ATG split squat. That’s a regression for the flat-ground ATG split squat. And to go back to what you’re asking about the ankles, why is that really good for the ankles? Do you know that the position that the ankle gets into is this deep position, right, that you can, when you own that position, you lower it to the ground. And now, when you own that position of the ankles, right, you apply that to a Cossack squat, you’re able to get to full depth of Cossack because of where the knee — the knee is over the toe and you’re in deep ankle dorsiflexion, right? That’s how these things work, where —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, dorsiflexion, just pull your toes towards your nose.
Nsima Inyang: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: That’s dorsiflexion. And toes towards your knees. That’s dorsiflexion.
Nsima Inyang: The thing is when you find that you don’t have the mobility for a specific movement, there are so many ways to regress it. With a Cossack squat, you could do a Cossack squat with a wall behind you. So the wall can help guide you down, unloaded, wall behind, Cossack squat. You can even angle the foot outwards a little bit, to allow yourself a little bit more give with that —
Tim Ferriss: You can also add some heel, right?
Nsima Inyang: You could also add some heel. You can also put it on a box if you need to, and then slowly regress it down. And I want to mention, the concept of regression is what got me out of knee pain, is what got me out of pretty much all pain, right? But specifically I want to mention knees because when I was in my early twenties, I had a meniscectomy, partial meniscus removal. I can’t remember which knee now, I think it was my left, because of something that happened in jiu-jitsu. I also, when I was younger, I had Osgood-Schlatter and I was a soccer player. So when I got into my early twenties, I couldn’t sprint. I felt like I was probably going to have trash knees for the rest of my life. I couldn’t run, couldn’t run without pain at all.
So, let alone run, absolutely couldn’t sprint, couldn’t jump, right? But I was doing squats and stuff and there was some pain I was having, so I was using knee sleeves. So I was pretty certain that, at this point I just need to make sure to keep them pretty strong. But these things like sprinting, et cetera, it’s not going to be part of the system for me.
That’s when I came across some of Ben’s stuff back in 2019 or 2018, I think, right? I came across some of his stuff on Instagram, started regressing it, doing like the simplest regression. So I had ATG splits going on a box. There’s this pulse movement that you do where you just have this very small range of motion with the knee where you’re just putting yourself into slight knee flexion, coming out, pulsing it, driving a lot of blood to the knee area, right? And I would progress these things over time.
After four or so months, I was able to get into full, deep knee positions that I was never able to get into without pain before. And then, when I started doing things like running, I was able to run without pain. And then I started sprinting without pain. But it started with regression, right?
Tim Ferriss: Bless you.
Nsima Inyang: So the reason why I’m saying that is —
Tim Ferriss: That was a very princess-like sneeze for such a large man.
Nsima Inyang: I didn’t want to let it out.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: If I let it out, it would be disgusting. So when you hold it in, it turns into this mousy squeal. Let’s keep that in there. Let’s keep that in there. If I had to sneeze again, I’ll show you what the big one looks like just so I can save myself, my gosh.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Nsima Inyang: But I say this because regressions are the name of the game for all this. If you have pain doing something, there is a way to regress it, and you need to own the regression before you progress.
Tim Ferriss: I just want to underline this because when I started to get out of some — I mean, this back has been — this chronic back pain has been one of the biggest challenges of my life, because I’ve always seen myself as athletic. I’ve always been able to sort of take a kicking and then get back on the horse and get back to athleticism. And this experience where this pain at such a pivotal, cornerstone piece of your body is tied into every movement. When you sleep — there’s no escaping it. Psychologically, physically, emotionally, it has been such a difficult experience and given me so much sympathy for people in chronic pain. It’s like if you have not been in serious chronic pain it is impossible to understand what it’s like until you’re there.
And I would say the one mantra of sorts that has allowed me to start digging out of that hole — and I used a different term for myself, I don’t remember where I got it, but it was just like, “Scale it down.”
Nsima Inyang: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: Right? And it’s the same idea, right? It’s just like, okay — let’s just say hypothetically, okay, I might need this surgery in the elbow. Okay, great. I can’t do X number of push-ups. Okay, fine. Do one 10th of X number of push-ups, right? Okay. You can’t do whatever it might be. Well, barbell puts too much torque in the elbow? Okay, fine, let’s use dumbbells, right?
But the rule is you can’t do nothing. You have to scale it down. And maybe you omit exercises, sure. But it’s like, “Train around it, train around it, train around it.” And it’s like, for instance, the box squat. Great example. Jerzy is like the — Jerzy Gregorek, who I keep mentioning, is the ultimate master of regressions.
To use your word because he’ll have someone, they’ll do a squat and they’ll go down eight inches and he’s like, “That’s it.” And they’re like, “No, but I do below parallel in the gym.” And he’s like, “You shouldn’t.”
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, you shouldn’t. Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: And he’s just like, “Okay, your max depth is,” whatever, I’m making this number up, but it’s like, “36 inches off the ground.” And they’re like, “That’s a joke.” And he’s like, “That’s your assignment.” He’s really funny too because I remember at one point I was like, “So you’re suggesting?” And he’s like, “No, I’m not suggesting, I am telling you.” And it feels like a waste of time to start off in where he would start people, but as they develop the right mechanics and then, pain free, progress. And it takes weeks, maybe even months, to get back to where they think they should be, and then lo and behold, they’re so much stronger, they own the position, all these aches and pains go away. So you can’t do nothing, but you can scale it down or regress it, right?
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And the other thing I’ll mention just for people who may be in a similar position to myself where they have a lot of low back stuff, the other reason that Sebastian prescribed the front foot elevated split squat was to avoid hyperlordosis, overarching of the low back. I have a lot of thoracic mobility issues, so I tend to flare out and arch. And he was like, “Okay, let’s mitigate that by elevating the front foot.”
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right, cool. Dig it.
Nsima Inyang: I want to mention I — Ben, he has an app, and on that app he puts all his stuff there for monthly payment for people, so if you guys are — and Ben mentions that people can do this, so I’m going to mention this too. You could go on there, you could screenshot the movements, and you could cancel, literally. And I have a program there too in his martial arts section, right? And you can literally go there and you can just take it all if you want to.
But the reason why I mentioned that is because all the regressions are right there. If you’re looking for a way to regress all these movements, that’s all there, right? There’s also in — and that school community. But just take the regressions and be patient with those regressions, because one of the reasons that I was held back for so long was because I thought I was better than I was. I’ve been playing soccer for like 16 years. I’ve always seen myself as an athlete. So going to do some of these things and these simple regressions, I was just like, “No, I can move on to the last chapter. No, I should be able to.”
And then I’d always find myself in pain. I’d always find myself moving backwards. And it wasn’t until I just realized, “Hey, be a beginner with this. Start with the regressions, own those, and then slowly progress upward.” But then I was able to make all the progress to where I am now, right? So it’s a big shift.
And this is the last thing I’ll mention. I think one of the reasons why this is hard for some people that lift or that have already been training for a bit is because traditional lifting is kind of easy in the sense that, if you get strong with the shoulder press, you just increase that weight, week by week. Bicep curl, increase that weight a little bit. You get this big payoff very, very quickly, then you see that weight going up. But when it comes to holistic movement in some of these ranges, you’ll realize that you have some weak links that you have to work on with potentially no weight. And that’s not as fun as just doing the heavy shoulder press. You know what I mean?
Tim Ferriss: Getting the payoff.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, I would also say it’s like you can get away — at least, I’ll personalize it. I think this is true for a lot of people, but just because you can lift more weight than your friends does not mean your form is good, right? I don’t think my form was the worst in the world, but we were talking about 96 when I was probably my biggest and strongest and arguably fattest, but — I wasn’t that fat. But where I was doing 400 pound-ish back squats for a set of 10.
Now, in retrospect, should I have been doing that? Probably not. And when I mentioned earlier, I was like, “Oh, yeah, probably three, four years ago,” whenever it was in that back squat workout, when I hurt myself, I was probably going too low and having that change in the spinal position with like butt wink, and I think that probably contributed to it. And I’m sure there are people out there who are like, “Pssh, Tim Ferriss can’t even do a goddamn squat. I knew it. That guy’s an idiot.” What I would say is, you could be right, number one. Number two is get video of your technique and have somebody who actually knows what they’re doing, like a very high-level competitor, look at that technique. And chances are it’s not as good as you think it is. Do you know what I mean?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And then there comes a point where it’s like, all right, I’ve bent the paper clip so many times, boom, I have an injury. And now it’s just a wake-up call. It’s like, “All right, let’s start from scaling it back, from the fundamentals. Swallow my pride, take my ego down a notch, and work it back up.” Which is very hard to do psychologically. Really tough.
Nsima Inyang: It is.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, there’s so many parallels that I see here. It’s like with Jerzy, it’s like, man, you have to check your ego at the door, because you might walk in and — he doesn’t care. He really doesn’t. He’s so salty. You could be world champion in X, Y, and Z, and he’ll be like, “Okay, you’re going to start with 20 pound on dumbbells.” And you’re like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah,” he’s like, “20 pound dumbbells because you shouldn’t be doing this with more than 20 pound dumbbells.” And people are just like, “What?” He doesn’t even compute.
But then with these micro progressions, as he would call them, it is incredible. Like I was saying to you, he had this Vietnam vet with a number of fused vertebrae who had been walking around in body brace, could not bend in any direction, got him to the point where he is doing stiff-legged deadlifts with 315 off an elevated platform.
Nsima Inyang: That’s so crazy.
Tim Ferriss: And continued doing that for decades. I mean, it’s unreal. And similarly — and I haven’t seen this because I haven’t really been doing this term in the notes that I had for this conversation, it’s not my term, but I like the term, which is microdosing movement?
Nsima Inyang: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve only played with that with a few things like slacklining. And it is incredible what your body can end up doing with three to five minutes a day of slackline. You do not need — in fact, one could argue you shouldn’t do really long sessions. So what are some other examples of microdosing movement? Because as I get older, more and more, yes, you want to be strong. Yes, I agree with Pavel, strength is kind of the mother attribute in a lot of ways, right? Yes, you want to have muscle mass because of Sarcopenia and all this stuff as you get older. That’s all true.
And fundamentally, we are evolved as bodies to move in space. Our brains are evolved to manage that interface, right? And I find myself hungering for more and more athletic movement, right? So what are some other ways to microdose movement that might kind of produce benefits, and you can take that however you want to take it, that are surprising to folks?
Nsima Inyang: Mm-hmm. So I think one of the simplest things one can do is start introducing different shapes of your spine. Primarily a shape that I think many of us are scared about, which is like spinal flexion.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Spinal flexion, reaching over, touching your toes with a rounded back.
Nsima Inyang: Exactly. But let me actually just rewind real quick because I want to mention, Pavel talks about “greasing the groove.” I got introduced to microdosing by a friend of mine, Cory Schlesinger, I think he’s like —
Tim Ferriss: Just to be clear, microdosing movement.
Nsima Inyang: Microdosing movement. Not microdosing psilocybin, although that’s fun. But microdosing movement. Cory is — I don’t know if he’s working with the Phoenix Suns now, but he was like the director of performance, I think, for the Suns recently, so I know he’s working with an NBA team. But when he talked to us about it, he was having a lot of his NBA athletes, he would have them do a little bit of movement before games, a little bit of movement after games, and he’d figure out ways for them to have movement sprinkled into their days so that they always felt good.
Because what happens with some athletes is they have to have this extensive warmup routine to get their bodies ready. And these are athletes, by the way. So if an athlete needs this extensive warmup routine to get ready for game day, somebody who’s sitting at a desk or just working or whatever, the amount of prep you might need to get ready to move is far too much. The goal of microdosing movement or “greasing the groove,” as Pavel puts it, is to make it so these different movements just become a part of who you are and what you do.
You don’t need to prepare to bend your spine down into a flex pattern and pick something off the ground because you’re just healthy and safe — you feel healthy and safe doing it. Now, the thing I’ll also mention here is that there are many really smart people who are against some of the things like Jefferson curls. Like Stu McGill doesn’t like it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, doesn’t like it.
Nsima Inyang: Stu doesn’t like it.
Tim Ferriss: No.
Nsima Inyang: And I would agree to the sense of people who haven’t regressed the movement enough. If you just rush into something like a Jefferson curl that we were just talking about, where you have deep spinal flexion, you pick up a barbell or something off the ground, that’s going to cause you some issue. Especially if you don’t feel safe doing it. You’re going to hold your breath, you’re going to force yourself into that position, and then you’ll tweak something and then you’ll say, “This is a bad position or a bad movement.” But when you learn to breathe through movement with no weight, right?
So like I was talking about, let’s say you decide that I’m going to pick that ball off the ground a little bit a few times a day, flexing my back and going back to the ground. I’m going to inhale when I go down and exhale when I go up. I’m going to make myself own this movement. Doing that with no weight initially for most people is going to feel fine. And then as you improve that, you’re like, “Okay, can I do that with a six pound kettlebell? Can I do that with a 20 pound kettlebell? Can I do that with a 30 pound kettlebell? Can I organize my body to lift this safely in this position?”
And then you own that position because it’s no longer foreign to you. Now you’re no longer flexion intolerant. But when you’re someone who has avoided these different ranges of motion with the spine, whether it’s deflection, extension, et cetera, and then you go into this — into a workout, or you try doing some weighted rotational movement and then you tweak something, you think that these are bad movements or bad ranges of motion. But the thing is that you didn’t regress it enough and you didn’t spend time with the most basic forms of those movements.
So when it comes to microdosing, one of the ways to make microdosing easy for you is to make your environment serve you. This is why — and some people might just think I’m some fitness nut for this, but I keep equipment around my area. Around my desk, I have a kettlebell sitting there, I have a club sitting there. I have a 100 pound sandbag by my desk, by my work desk.
I also have a gripper on the table so that if I’m doing something on my — my laptop is one side, I can hit that gripper up a little bit. I have these things just sitting around to encourage me to touch them, because if they’re not in front of me, I am not going to do them. All this hand stuff, you give me that compliment on my hands, bro. It’s because I have grip equipment everywhere.
Tim Ferriss: I cannot —
Nsima Inyang: I have it in my car. I have it at my podcast desk. I have it at my work desk. I have it in the kitchen. I have it everywhere.
Tim Ferriss: I can’t wait for you to — I think you already saw the video, but to take another look at the Abrahangs —
Nsima Inyang: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: — with Emil Abrahamson, because then you could just have — I mean, you could do it off the back of a set of stairs. That’s what I do at home. But if you get like a hangboard — and don’t overdo the hangboard people, that is the perfect way to blow apart your tendons and ligaments. Take it easy. But that’s something you can sprinkle in so easily. I sprinkled that in.
Nsima Inyang: My rice bucket sits in front of my TV, right? So that’s the thing.
Tim Ferriss: And just for people who are wondering what the hell we’re talking about, the rice bucket, imagine old badly dubbed Chinese Kung Fu movies where they shoot — they make their hands into spears, shoot it into a bucket of rice, and turn their hands and do different movements to toughen up their hands and their grip and so on. It would be a version of that. A lot of baseball players do that too, right?
Nsima Inyang: They knew what they were talking about.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly.
Nsima Inyang: They knew what they were doing. A lot of this stuff isn’t new. I’m not making this stuff up. People who do this stuff for centuries because it works. But would I do the rice bucket if I had to pull out the bucket of rice from my garage every single time?
Tim Ferriss: No, of course not.
Nsima Inyang: I’d have to keep it in the vicinity of something that I already do stuff, so that when I go by it, I’m like, “I can do this for a quick minute as we’re watching something,” and then go back, right? I have, for example, there’s this stool called a Hunkerin Stool — by the way, you don’t need a Hunkerin Stool, you could just have a low seat —
Tim Ferriss: Hunkering stool?
Nsima Inyang: Hunkerin, H-U-N-K-E-R-I-N, Stool. It was made — this guy’s name is Kasey. He owns this company, Hunkerin Stool. It’s a low springy seat.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: Right? People will see, if they ever watch any of my videos, you’ll see me sitting on a Hunkerin Stool.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I saw one of those in one of your videos.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, it’s a low springy seat. So now you sit down —
Tim Ferriss: What do you use that for?
Nsima Inyang: You just sit down in a squat position.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, okay.
Nsima Inyang: You sit down in a low squat position.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it.
Nsima Inyang: So I noticed you have these low mats here that maybe people might sit on for meditation, but you have these things that will encourage you to get lower to the ground, right? So the sandbag, I also sit down on the sandbag as it’s low to the ground, and that helps — that encourages me to get down in this low position, this low squat position, to become comfortable there. So now I’m not uncomfortable getting down to the ground, which is an essential thing that we need. A lot of us, some of us only get down to the ground when we’re doing martial arts. Some of us probably can’t remember the last time we purposefully went down to the ground on our own volition. Maybe you fell, right?
But can you become comfortable going down and coming up? Because now if maybe you do fall, it’s not as much of a struggle for you to figure out the puzzle of getting off the ground. It’s actually not even a puzzle. You just can’t.
Tim Ferriss: Well, Kelly, you mentioned Kelly Starrett, who — he and I go way, way back. And we actually were in Japan together at the same time and went on this amazing trip with a group of guys. But on that trip, Kelly and I — I mean, both of us, it’s kind of obvious when it’s pointed out, but in Japan, if you’re going to traditional inns and spending time in those types of environments, you are getting up and down all the time. And you are sitting cross-legged and you are getting up, and you’re basically doing Turkish get-up light all the time, right? You are constantly getting from that sitting on the floor position to fully standing.
And every once in a while, these are harder and harder to find, you’ve got a squat toilet, and it’s like, “That’s it.” And I remember asking one of my friends when I was 15, because I’d never seen a squat toilet, it was my first time out of the US, I’m like, “What the hell is this?” And I went to a baseball game and all they had was squat toilets. And I remember asking my buddy, he was 15 also, I’m like, “What do your old people do?” And he just started laughing, he’s like, “They’ve been doing it forever. They have no problem.” And I was like, “Wow.”
Can you imagine what would happen, how many ER visits and ambulances you would need if suddenly that were put in a US stadium? Forget about it. But the fact of that “greasing the groove,” right? It’s not like these 80-year-old Japanese people are doing tons of Jefferson curls and Turkish get-ups, but they are sitting down, getting up, sitting down, getting up, many, many times a day in a lot of cases.
Nsima Inyang: And even just that aspect of sitting on the ground. Think about the position that the back gets in, the deep knee-flexion that you’re getting. And many of these people can just comfortably sit in the Seiza position without a problem. The position of the ankles, the position of the knees, all these areas, when getting up and down off the ground, how healthy that is for your joints and your movement? That’s why it’s like, instead of thinking about all of this as exercise, how can we build our environment?
The places where we go, even if you’re at a cubicle at work, can you put certain things in there that can help you — encourage you to move a little bit more, right? If you do that, that will make a lot of this stuff so much easier because it’s less about, “How do we program this?” And more about, “Let’s just touch this a few times a day.” After you become more comfortable sitting down in that low position a little bit more, picking up with that, with the rounded back, just casually picking up that sandbag. You’re not doing these things while warming up. You’re just doing them. They’re what you do.
Then, when you want to go progress it, it’s even easier because this is just how you move. For me, it wasn’t until I truly set my environment up to serve my movement ability that I started making bigger and just bigger leaps in my progress because it became less of, again, the structured workout that I have to go to the gym and do all the time to just, this is just what I do.
I can just pick stuff up. I purposefully hung up gymnastics rings so I can develop my skill of hanging once again, right? So I have those just hanging and the TVs right there, so I’ll just do some quick pull-ups and hang on it.
I set up this environment and so it’s almost like an environment of play. I have fun here, and I think if more of us did that, it would aid in our movement progression much faster than always having to go to a gym with four walls, fluorescent lights and get this workout in.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Also, I’ll bring up another person you would have a blast with if you haven’t met him. I remember I got so much shit, it was funny. I got so much shit when — a lot of people were interested off the bat, but I also got a lot of shit when I did an episode on gymnastics strength training with a guy named Chris Sommer. Coach Chris Sommer, former coach of the national men’s team in the US.
Nsima Inyang: I think I bought his program years back.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, GST.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I remember there were a bunch of folks in various communities, I’m not going to name them, but they’d be pretty obvious, pretty belligerent online weightlifting communities. There’s a fair number and there’s like, “Bah ha, ha, ha. Now Tim Ferriss is into Pilates. Good luck with that. Good luck developing strength.”
And I’m like, let me see you do an iron cross, right? Let me see you do a planche with your feet off the ground, and then tell me that those guys or gals aren’t strong. Let me see you do that. But the point that I was just going to make is it doesn’t have to be with a bunch of ferns and chrome inside four walls.
You can get so unbelievably strong, and this is going to be old news to a lot of people, but with calisthenics and doing, if you want to try it here, I’ll give people something, they’ll be like, “Oh, this is so stupid.” I’m like, “Okay, try it.” Do something called pike pulses.
So, there are a lot of ways you can strengthen your core and abdominals and so on. This one, so put your feet, sit down on the floor, legs out in front of you. If you’re sitting up, that is a pike, and so your feet are straight.
Now what you’re going to do is put some strength into the toes, point them. And now what you’re going to do is reach forward on either side of your legs, not as far as you can go, but pretty far. You’re probably going to be on your fingertips on either side of your legs.
Now it’s very simple. All you need to do is lift your legs off the ground and just pulse up, keeping your legs completely straight, quads locked, and just bring your legs off the ground, bringing your knees to your chest. Good luck with that.
Do a couple of sets of 10 or 15 of those, and if it’s too easy on the first one, bring your hands forward four or five inches. If you can do it then do it again, most people will just be murdered by that. And that is, you do not need a lot of space. You could do that in the smallest apartment right next to your bed.
Oh, there’s so many good exercises. This is really inspiring me also, to get back. I really feel like my new chapter, I have to be careful not to be too enthusiastic and hurt myself, but it’s going to be a couple of fundamentals.
I’ll probably continue to do sumo deadlift in the way that I described it a la Barry Scott who trained Alison Felix way back in the day. That was in The 4-Hour Body stuff. But the sumo deadlift with no eccentric, I just find it just transfers to so much.
Kettlebell swings for sure. And I was very interested, people can probably find video of you doing this, but the pendulum.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, the pendulum swing with some kettlebell juggling.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Haven’t gotten to the juggling yet, but different types of swinging. Rope flow to get into some new planes of movement. And then I think I’m going to re-explore some of the GST stuff. Because I recall doing some basic basic ring stuff. It’s like, look, I’m not going to win any awards here.
And then doing this is all body weight stuff. And I got so big. People thought, they’re like, “Oh, my God, how much heavy lifting you’ve been doing?” And I was like, “Zero.” Most of this is from also because my upper arms, my biceps were the biggest they’d been in probably a decade.
And people were just like, “Bro, what you on gear? What’s going on?” I was like, “No, I’m just literally doing straight arm tension. I’m not even doing any flexion. I’m not bending my arms. This is all ring work with fully locked arms. That’s it.”
Nsima Inyang: Dude, it’s great that you mentioned this because over the years, one thing that I try to do is I try to find stuff I’m interested in that I really suck at to improve at. I’m 250 pounds, so for me —
Tim Ferriss: You are a lot bigger in person than you’re, I mean, you’re big on camera. And then I was just like, “How am I going to find this guy?” And I was like, “Oh, he’s not hard to find.” Those quads are the size of my office. Jesus.
Nsima Inyang: But yo, man, calisthenics was something that for me, I think is a place that I’m not the strong, I’m not very, very strong at. Some of that can be attributed to my body weight, and I’ve been so excited at just really nailing down all of these calisthenic basics to continue to improve so that I can do more complex movements.
Because one of the things that I think that frustrated me with calisthenics years ago was like, gosh, these muscle ups, oh, I was always making excuses of my weight, but I was not strong enough with my body weight to do these things.
So, one of the things with calisthenics is also owning those basics, push-ups, dips, pull-ups, regressing the pull-ups if pull-ups were tough.
Tim Ferriss: Also like regressing, like ring turnout push-ups, incredible.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve had shoulder surgeries and stuff. The degree to which that has helped my shoulders just ring turnout push-ups.
Nsima Inyang: Scapular pull-ups. The strength of the scapula I think is something that a lot of people, as they’re doing calisthenics, they don’t realize is so important, and there are ways to isolate the scap and strengthen that with these movements. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, God, yeah.
Nsima Inyang: I realized how weak my scapula was compared to a lot of other things. Like when I would be doing pull-ups, yes, the scapula is involved, but I wasn’t focusing on it, which is why a lot of progressions were elusive to me because my scapula wasn’t as strong.
So, I’m very excited progressing calisthenics, and I’m more so excited for the next five years. I think that in five years, six years from now, I can be pretty elite at calisthenics and it’s going to take me that long, and I’m okay with that.
That’s a ways away. But I know that chipping away at that skill is going to be one of those things that for me, when I’m 60, 70, 80 has those big maybe 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 has those big dividends. Because one thing is when you see people who are very adept with their body weight, they just have control of everything.
They’re very adept with their body weight strength, and these aren’t, you can lift weights. But just because you’re strong with a barbell or strong with weights does not mean you’re strong with body weight. I know many heavy people that can deadlift hundreds of pounds that struggle doing 10 pull-ups because they don’t have good control of their body weight.
Tim Ferriss: Or just because you can lift a lot of weight in a few movements does not mean that you’ve bulletproofed yourself against injury —
Nsima Inyang: Nope.
Tim Ferriss: — either.
Nsima Inyang: Exactly. Exactly. And calisthenics is something that will show you those weak links with your control of your body and will help you improve with that over time. And your practice of wanting to — rock climbing inherently adds the skill of calisthenics into it, so it’s a two for one.
I would love to do rock climbing, and the thing is, I do so much jiu-jitsu right now that it’s like I’ve got to pick between rock climbing and calisthenics. I’ll focus on the calisthenics bit and maybe do rock climbing here and there, but that’s a very good practice to develop that level of strength.
Because rock climbers, man, elite ones, and even non-elite rock climbers, just the way they can contort their bodies and have the strength through their grip, through their whole body, my gosh. It’s another amazing practice that’s awesome for longevity. That if you’re struggling to find something —
Tim Ferriss: Well, that was part of, side, a knee injury this past ski season. I was super bummed and I was in a great location, but I’m up in the mountains and the climbers are world class.
Nsima Inyang: Oh.
Tim Ferriss: So I started going to a climbing gym with my ski instructor who was also a very good climber. He sets routes and he’s very good, super technical. And in that gym, because we would go when I would typically want to go skiing, so let’s just say in the morning. These are work days so the gym was not empty because this was a popular competitive gym.
So, national team was there, silver medalist from the Olympics was there when we would go train, so it’s amazing to watch those people, number one. But secondly, what really motivated me was, yes, sure, I just love rock climbing because it is along with jiu-jitsu, it’s human chess. Those two are actually very similar in a lot of ways.
But what I noticed in this gym in particular was these groups of mostly women, but not always, mostly women who are in their 60s and 70s who were doing stuff that I could not conceive of doing. And they do this week in, week out.
I saw a guy and my buddy was complaining that he couldn’t go climbing because of a hip issue. And I saw the 70-year-old guy with a leg brace on climbing, and I took a photo —
Nsima Inyang: 70?.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. With a full leg brace. He’d twisted his knee, and he’s like, “I’ll just use one leg and two arms and flag with one leg.” And I sent a photo to my buddy who’s younger than I am. And I was like, “Bro, I’ve got some bad news for you.”
And I was so inspired to see these people who are decades older than I am who are doing things that I could not even approach doing right now. And I was like, “Okay, this is a good sport.” This is a really good sport.
Jiu-jitsu too, if you play it smart, just like gymnastics. I can’t recall if Coach Sommer had a quote. It was something like, “There are aggressive gymnasts and there are old gymnasts. There are no aggressive old gymnasts.” It’s something like that. And it was just like, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves because the candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast situation.
What are the non-negotiable lifts? If we’re talking about just for lack of a better modifier, traditional lifts. The stuff that you could do that people could do if they walked down to a good neighborhood gym.
Are there any things for you that you’re, all right, these are some of the ingredients in my multivitamin? It’s just like I take the multivitamin every week. That’s how it works. A couple of movements.
Nsima Inyang: The first one would be a sled. The reason why I sled is because it is something that Grandma can do, and it’s something that the NFL linebacker can do. And it can be progressed or regressed to either level while causing probably most likely no issue to either.
The reason why I mentioned the sled before I mentioned something like a barbell back squat or a barbell deadlift, is because some people, when it comes to direct actual spinal compression, where the barbells are right here, they just can’t handle forms of that compression when moving through space yet.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, I probably shouldn’t handle it frankly, right? I’ve been doing back squats, but there’s definitely part of me that’s like, “Homie, this is not a good idea.”
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. This is the thing though, I think there are many forms of squatting one can do. We talked about sandbag squats. That’s not actually loaded. That actually feels really good because the weights in front of you, you are holding it. They feel safe, they feel good, they can be progressed.
But the sled is something that you can load that thing up, and if it doesn’t move, you just don’t have the ability to produce the force to push or pull it through space. I wish everyone would be able to work with a sled because it’s so safe and it has such a huge ability to be progressed or regressed to any level safely for literally everyone.
That’s why I’m starting there. Louie Simmons was someone who, and he was the owner of Westside Barbell, who passed.
Tim Ferriss: Legendary.
Nsima Inyang: Louie is the one who got Mark, and Mark introduced the sled to me, and it’s just, the sled is powerful. So, unfortunately it’s hard for some people to have that at home. I have a Torque sled at my house. It’s this TANK sled that you can wheel around.
Tim Ferriss: So, the Torque sled is not, it’s not on skids, it’s on wheels with —
Nsima Inyang: Wheels.
Tim Ferriss: — mechanical resistance?
Nsima Inyang: Yes. And that one’s, again, they came out with a new one that I have, I forgot its model, but it’s one that you can literally swivel around. So, you’ve seen the TANKS where you have to push it, then you have to get to the other side and push?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: This one. You can push, swivel and turn and push. It looks like a little Batmobile. It’s pretty —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s cool.
Nsima Inyang: — cool.
Tim Ferriss: Does that allow you to pull as well, or you’ll only push?
Nsima Inyang: It allows you to pull as well. You can hook a cable to it, and then you could also push and pull it. It has magnetic resistance, so you can increase the resistance so that the harder you push, the more resistance it gives you, so it can build to any level of resistance.
I have my mom, who’s 67, I have her come to my place so that she can do the sled multiple times a week. That’s why I have her come, because it’s something she can do and progress without pain. So, if people can just get themselves to a place that has a sled, it’s a full body movement from the feet to the hands.
Tim Ferriss: What does a sled workout look like? Or where does it integrate into a workout?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. A sled can be a very meaty part of your workout if you learn to like it. The reason why I say learn to like —
Tim Ferriss: That exhale says so much.
Nsima Inyang: The reason I say —
Tim Ferriss: If you like swallowing broken glass, I have a piece of equipment for you.
Nsima Inyang: This is the thing, the slide could be a good first two, three minutes to get the knees warm when you’re moving forward and backwards. Or it could be a very metabolically taxing strength building workout that you can do for 20 minutes to get your heart rate up while also increasing your ability to produce force.
So that’s why I say when you’re pushing a sled, your heart rate will spike, your whole body will go on fire because you’re starting from your feet to produce force forward and pulling backwards. So it’ll spike the heart rate, but everything will start to get sore.
Your feet, your glutes especially, when you’re learning how to stack your body against that weight, you’ll see it. And people who are new on the sled, some of them aren’t familiar with getting their body in the right position to produce force forwards.
Tim Ferriss: They’re too upright.
Nsima Inyang: They’re too, the system’s very open. So upright, you mentioned, right? So, some people, they’ll start pushing a sled, their ribs will be in this flared forward position. Their pelvis won’t be in a neutral position, it’ll be tilted back, and they’ll try pushing, they can’t produce much force. You then, they learn how to —
Tim Ferriss: And just to, sorry. Just to paint a picture for folks. If you imagine a sled, all right, so it’s a sled, like a toboggan with weights on top of it, but what you’re holding onto, imagine you have two subway poles in front of you that are, I don’t know, 18 inches apart, 24 inches apart. Those are vertical.
You’re holding onto those, one with your left hand, one with your right hand, and then you’re pushing that. Right? And so we’re talking about the body position because this is going to be one of my follow-up questions is, what is the correct, what is your preferred position for pushing a sled?
Are you bent 90 degrees at the hips, staring at the ground with your head in line with your arms as if you were doing an overhead press? Is it, I don’t know, 20 degrees off of parallel to the ground with the upper body? What does it look like?
Nsima Inyang: So, this is where I think the power —
Tim Ferriss: I’ve wondered about this because I got a sled based on, actually, I think it’s Mark Bell, who I owe thanks for this. A very early, early, early stone age version of something like the Torque sled.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Was it from Torque or was it another company?
Tim Ferriss: I think it was another company. It was —
Nsima Inyang: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: — like Xpro, X-P-R-O or something like that. I can’t recall. Sorry guys that I’m butchering it. But the challenge with that for me always was it was like, “God, I love this hip extension and glute engagement, and if I’m not careful, I feel my lower back.” So that’s what I need to account for. I would love to get back into sled, but —
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: — I would love to hear your thoughts on just avoiding probably too much flaring and pointing my titties at the ceiling. It’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea, guys, if you’re arching your back unnecessarily. It’s a simplification. So, what would your prescription be?
Nsima Inyang: Level one for the sled would be learning how to create a neutral system when pushing the sled through space. So you’re inherently going to come forward a little bit. You’re not going to be vertical and pushing.
You’re going to be leaning forward a little bit, but you need to make sure that your rib cage is over your hips. So it’s like two bowls pouring into each other. When we were mentioning this open system flared, I know some people aren’t watching the podcast. Your rib cage would be —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, flared. Imagine — sorry. Imagine if you had a foam roller. You put a foam roller right below your shoulder blades, and then you basically bent your upper back to bring your head closer to the ground.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: That would be flaring, right?
Nsima Inyang: So you cannot produce a lot of force when you have this flared system. You also, it’s more difficult for —
Tim Ferriss: It’s super common, by the way. People who think they don’t do this, take videos of yourself doing varied exercises. It is so common.
Nsima Inyang: Yes, it’s extremely common. Another issue is maybe having, this is a little bit less common, but too much flexion, right? So too much bending when trying to push. You want to be in a neutral position, a strong neutral position where your rib cage is right above your hips.
Tim Ferriss: So, can you explain that to me? Because rib cage over my hips makes me think that I need to be upright.
Nsima Inyang: All you want to think about is, for example, the neutral position that we think about when we’re squatting down, that rib position, let’s now angle the body forward while maintaining that rib position and pushing the sled.
Tim Ferriss: Got it.
Nsima Inyang: That’s all it is.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: That’s going to be the position that allows us to be able to produce the most force while moving forward. Now, for some people, when it comes to the upper part of the spine, let me also mention this. This is the level one pushing and pulling position that we want our ribcage in.
Because for me, when I want people to progress what they do with the sled, it’s a very powerful tool to allow you to push and pull in different spinal positions. So you start off by pushing and pulling the sled with a neutral spine. Then you can start to push and pull the sled laterally.
So the sled is here, you’re here, you’re pushing the sled laterally. You’re pulling the sled laterally while maintaining a fairly neutral spine. But then over time, the strength that you can get the sled is that when you push the sled, you can push with more spinal flexion when you become more comfortable.
So you can learn to produce force with spinal flexion. And then you can learn so when you’re pulling the sled, you can learn to almost Jefferson curl pull the sled in deep spinal flexion.
You don’t start here, but when you become comfortable, and you’ve been doing this with very lightweight initially, you can be comfortable pulling this load with deep spinal flexion. That’s later on. And that’s, for me, where the sled has become super powerful.
Because what my goal is for myself and what I’ve done is I became very strong pushing and pulling stuff with a neutral spine. Then I pushed and pulled with spinal extension, purposefully putting myself in this position while pulling and pushing. I pushed and pulled in deep spinal flexion so that I could become very strong in this spinal position.
I push and pull in deep lateral flexion. So I’ll literally push the sled here with lateral flexion of the spine.
Tim Ferriss: That’s so scary for me to watch.
Nsima Inyang: I’ll pull the sled here with deep lateral flexion on the other side so that I can strengthen all of the positions of my spine with this implement.
This isn’t something you’re able to do with the barbell. You could do spinal flexion Jefferson curl stuff, you can do some lateral stuff, but the sled allows you to produce force on an object forward, backward, and to the side with that intent of movement.
Tim Ferriss: When you are pulling, how are you pulling? I know this sounds dumb, but do you have ropes attached to the sled like with the Torque sled?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: How are you pulling it?
Nsima Inyang: So the Torque sled, there’s two ways that I’m pulling. When I want to get into deep flexion, I have this thing, it’s something that Mark made; it’s called a shake strap. It’s this strap that you’re able to, it’s like a cable attachment that you can put on a machine, but you can also put the sled.
And I loop my hands through it, right, so my hands are here, and then I’ll let my back bend, and then I’ll start walking backwards in deep spinal flexion with that pulling me. So it’s like, if you can imagine my — there’s a video of this.
Tim Ferriss: I can imagine that.
Nsima Inyang: Imagine you reach through a hole and then grab it and it’s —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s right there.
Nsima Inyang: — wrapped around the wrist.
Tim Ferriss: And literally —
Nsima Inyang: When I’m going backwards, I’m in this position while moving backwards. I’m in this deep spinal flexion.
Tim Ferriss: What about off the rack white belt version?
Nsima Inyang: Neutral spine.
Tim Ferriss: Neutral —
Nsima Inyang: That’ what I said.
Tim Ferriss: Right, but are you using the — what’s it called?
Nsima Inyang: You can use either the sled attachment that, whatever sled you’re using, or you can most sleds have something that you can hook onto and then you can place that attachment, and then you can still push and pull with a neutral spine.
Tim Ferriss: I got it. What is that? What does Mark call that?
Nsima Inyang: It’s called a shake strap.
Tim Ferriss: Shake strap.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. It’s called a shake strap.
Tim Ferriss: And he sells that somewhere presumably.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Everything that I’ve talked about, I put it all in a place called thestrongerhuman.store. It’s a website so all this equipment is there, but you can also find this at his website, which I believe is markbellslingshot.com. So, for the sandbags and everything, I mentioned ropes, it’s at thestrongerhuman.store.
Tim Ferriss: I was in the middle of nowhere, Italy, and I went to this gym, this tiny gym, and there was a slingshot there. And I took a photo and I sent it to Mark.
Nsima Inyang: Those things are everywhere. They’re everywhere. That’s one of the cool things about that. You’ll see them in the most random gyms, but when it comes to that, the basic version of the sled that Mom and Dad can do, older people, younger, everyone can do, push and pull with a neutral spine and learn how to produce force.
Slowly increase the load. When you feel comfortable, start introducing a little bit of play in your spine. But when you introduce this play in your spine, don’t move the spine out of that position when pushing and pulling.
Tim Ferriss: And probably drop the load.
Nsima Inyang: Drop the load. Absolutely, drop the load. It needs to be light. But let’s say for example, you start exploring with a little bit of spinal flexion when pulling the sled. You get into that spinal flexion, the sled is really light. You start pulling backwards. You’re breathing, you’re not holding your breath.
Your body learns, hey, this is actually a good position for us to produce a little bit of force in. We’re strong here. Versus when most people get in that position, there’s a breath hold. It feels unsafe. Something gets pulled.
So for me, now, the only reason I was able to progress this was because I worked on those regressions. And when a lot of trainers maybe see some of this, they’re like, “That’s unsafe. Just wait a few years. You’re going to blow your back out.”
Like, “No, I’m not going to hurt myself because my body knows that this is a good resilient position to be in. I’m not afraid of this position.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. There’s also, I mean, so that is definitely key to keep in mind if you’ve slowly conditioned yourself to be safe in those positions. There’s also just a lot of dogmatic, “Never do this” nonsense that has no backing.
The number of classes I’ve been in where they’re like, “Don’t lock your knees. Don’t lock your arms.” There are these posters that Coach Chris Sommer pointed me to. It’s a photo of this Chinese gymnast beast in a Maltese cross. If you want to know what that is, go check that out. And it just says underneath, “Lock your elbows.”
And it’s yeah, if you’re not dumb about it, our body, we have this full range of movement for a reason. Look, if you’re hyper mobile and this and that, you got to take it into account.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: But also, you’re allowed to ask questions about the rules. Make sure you understand why the rules exist and if the person can’t explain it. Interesting. Well, at least I cross examined it.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, so one topic that you wanted to make sure we touched upon is soft tissue work.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: This is a topic near and dear to my heart, so take it away. Where should we start?
Nsima Inyang: So, again, so many things. I’ve met Kelly Starrett maybe three times, you know what I mean? I think he’s been on the show twice, and he’s come to the gym.
Tim Ferriss: Can I set the stage for people who have no idea who this is?
Nsima Inyang: Set the stage for Mr. Starrett.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So Kelly Starrett, famous for Becoming the Supple Leopard, which by the way, I’m not sure if he’s ever shown this photo. There’s a photograph of him in the gym that he started with his wife, which is him in a leopard print bathrobe, pulling a Zoolander. I’m not sure if that relates to the title of the book, but the point is, high-level PT performance coach, works with the highest levels of military, highest levels of athletics.
And also, this is important to me at least, is a practitioner, right? He walks the walk. I think for his, I think I’m getting this right, for his 40th birthday, and this is a large man. He’s a big boy.
Nsima Inyang: He is.
Tim Ferriss: He’s got to be 230, 240, 250, who knows. In that range. Thighs as big around as this table.
Nsima Inyang: He’s going crazy if he’s listening to you say this right now, by the way.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I’m just going to keep laying thick.
His legs are ridiculously large. He is a very strong man. And for his 40th though, because you would look at him, you’d be like, okay, that’s a meat cube. I’m sure he is very strong in a couple of lifts. However, for his 40th, I think it was he wanted to power clean some ungodly number, and he can’t really use one of his wrists. So he catches the barbell in this half salute with one arm when he catches it on the shoulders. So there’s that.
So on his birthday he wanted to do that. He wanted to, I believe it was run an ultra marathon. And not just any ultra, but the Quad Dipsea, which is a killer, like a widow maker. You guys can look it up. It’s in Northern California. And do a standing backflip. So it’s like you would look at him, you wouldn’t assume all of these things are possible, and yet there you have Kelly Starrett. So that is, and —
Nsima Inyang: He did a backflip?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: Yo.
Tim Ferriss: And also, formerly incredibly high-level world-class kayaker. So this is an athlete who now helps other athletes and many more non-athletes in addition to that.
So I took us on a bit of a sidebar. But you were saying, Kelly.
Nsima Inyang: I think everyone should own his book on Becoming a Supple Leopard because there’s so many concepts. I bought that book in 2013, and so many concepts or things that I’ve continued to build my knowledge pace on that have helped so much. One thing from that book that was just a small mention but went a very long way for me was keeping a relaxed face when doing myofascial release or soft tissue work. And when you’re doing soft tissue work, and we can just use an example, if you’re on top of a foam roller or you’re using a hard med ball, Kelly has his harder products like his Supernova product. It’s very hard and you roll on top of it. It can hurt because you’re now rolling your tissues on top of this hard piece of equipment. The instinctual thing to do was grimace and make faces.
Tim Ferriss: Give me this.
Nsima Inyang: And what happens, even when I did that instinctively I tightened up right here. And those tissues, they bind up to try to keep you safe. You hold your breath, you tighten your face. You’re not able to get as deep into the tissues that you’re trying to work and help become more supple. So Kelly’s advice is like, “Get rid of your pain face.” Stop, right? Because inherently, if you just try to get this loose, get this relaxed, you’ll start to probably breathe. You’ll start to get deeper into those tissues. The soft tissue work will work better. That’s the goal of that.
Tim Ferriss: Why is the soft tissue work important?
Nsima Inyang: The soft tissue work is important because what I’ve found is that when you have certain tissues that are too tense, earlier in our conversation we’re talking about not holding the breath so that you’re not holding onto too much tension, but what tends to happen for many of us is we have different areas of our body that hold more tension than others. And what soft tissue or self-myofascial release does is it helps you search for areas. You’re tacking down certain tissues, that feels good, that feels good, ooh, that feels gummy.
You’re doing work on that, whether it’s with a med ball or a Body Lever, which is the leverage tool I showed you. And when you’re able to breathe and work through those areas, what you’ll find is when you again work through that and it’s not as painful, you go and you move again, you might have extra range of motion. You might have less joint pain in a joint that’s lower or high of the area that you were just working. And a goal of this is to have that tissue state that you create after doing soft tissue work, have that be your default.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: That’s the goal.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Let me mention just a few things here too. One is going to sound super bougie, but I’ll say it anyway. Even when I was driving around in my POS, hand me down minivan, and making next to nothing out of college, body work again, like scale it down. If I had to go drive into the most dangerous part of San Jose to the most sketchiest massage place just to pay for a 30-minute massage because I couldn’t afford anything, I would do that.
So bodywork and soft tissue work is something that has just been a non-negotiable for me forever. And it doesn’t fix everything. It’s not a panacea, but just to get into the microdosing movement, you can also microdose massage in terms of self soft tissue treatments.
So before bed, pretty much whenever I’m at home, certainly before bed, I always roll. And that is not just to work on the tissues, it’s also to down regulate. And I’m not sure if there’s any science to back this, but it feels like it helps me shift into more parasympathetic state, helps with sleep.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And I do literally it’s five minutes, I would say. Probably no more. Typically lower body, not a lot of upper body stuff. But as a result of that tiny, tiny continual dosing, it’s like when I do get body work, it’s very common they’re like, “Wow, your muscles are very easy to work with. What is the story here?” And it’s like, “Yeah, it’s just flossing.” It’s the daily practice of doing that soft tissue work.
And I haven’t used it yet, but I’m excited to use — maybe you should just put — maybe the person who owns this product, so they should maybe in quotation marks, just call it the “Nutcracker.” I think of a Nutcracker, what is it called? The Body Lever.
Nsima Inyang: The Body Lever.
Tim Ferriss: The Body Lever. It looks like a giant nutcracker that you can, with your arms, use to compress your leg, or your abdomen, or you could brace it against a leg and use it to benevolently crush your arm to do forearm stuff. I mean, it looks very, very flexible. Rock climbers have used something, I think they probably have rebranded it now, called the Armaid, just specifically for the forearm stuff.
Nsima Inyang: I think there’s a company, maybe Rogue, they had this thing that you could open up and clamp down on your legs and arms.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, very, very similar idea. So I’m looking forward to using that. I remember I saw you, maybe it was in the same video, I feel. But you were in a sauna with a proper banya hat on, with the nutcracker on your leg. And I was like, ooh, I want one of those. And I actually took a screenshot and sent it, small world, to Kelly Starrett. I was like, “Starrett, where do I get one of these nutcrackers?” And lo and behold, full circle, and now I shall have my nutcracker.
What —
Nsima Inyang: It’s here today.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. Oh, amazing. All right. Look at this. Christmas comes early.
What other types of, because when people think soft tissue, there are right and wrong ways to do this. Not everything delivers the kind of benefits one might hope, right? So for me, I mean, this is very 101, but it’s like if I find an area as I’m rolling out my IT band on my vastus lateralis, and the outside of the quad tends to get very, very tight. And if I find that gummy painful spot, it’s like, okay, you don’t just gloss over that. Let’s sit on that for a while.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: Also, using vibration even. Now they have Theraguns and stuff. I used to use a Hitachi Magic Wand for this, funny enough, if people —
Nsima Inyang: Wait, what?
Tim Ferriss: Popular with lesbians.
Nsima Inyang: You really — bro. Okay, I could see that working. Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. So multipurpose, but using percussion devices for sure. Also, when I’ve located through foam rolling that painful spot, going to it with a theragun or something like it. A million different devices you can choose from.
Any other particular types of soft tissue work that you like to do?
Nsima Inyang: So let’s just start with probably some of the easiest that you can manage. People like Gua Sha. You can get yourself a Gua Sha tool. You could pull out a butter knife.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, right.
Nsima Inyang: You could pull out a butter knife, lotion up an area that you want to work. Let’s say that you do a lot of gripping and your forearms are tight. Pull that out, get the area lotioned up, and then start to work those areas. Concepts when doing soft tissue work with any implement is number one, you have to breathe. The thing that people, I think makes it hard for people, makes them not want to do it, is they do it, they feel tension in a certain area. They hold their breath. They tense up. It doesn’t loosen up because they’re too tense. And it’s a bad experience, so they don’t come back and do it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: So just like we were talking about how when you’re doing exercise, you need to regress it to your pain-free level stress.
Tim Ferriss: That’s true, yes. I was just going to say the same thing.
Nsima Inyang: It’s not that you regress your soft tissue work to a pain-free level, but you regress it to a level that you can breathe, and try to relax while dealing with the pressure you’re putting on yourself. So if you’re putting so much pressure that you just have to go like that, you decrease the pressure. You’re not ready, dog.
Tim Ferriss: Which is also true with manual therapy. If you have somebody working on you. If you’re bracing, or holding your breath, or making a pain face, it’s too much pressure.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, absolutely. Way too much pressure.
So that’s something that can help you actually make progress with the practice, because if you can keep that as your North Star, try to relax my face, make sure I’m breathing, and putting as much pressure I can manage if I’m keeping these two things in line, you can progressively overload the amount of pressure you place on your tissues, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, just to pull something out. This is, I can’t remember who told me this, but it’s from Thai massage. I mean, who knows if this is originally from classic Thai massage. But a very, very, very good Thai massage therapist, which is an incredible art form, incredible, said to me, “There’s no such thing as too deep, only too fast.” So it’s like you can get really deep with a lot of pressure. You just can’t get there too quickly. And you can apply that to self massage.
Also, there’s a guy, Jason Nemer, co-creator of something called AcroYoga, amazing Thai massage therapist also. And he’ll just use his forearm and his elbow on his own arms, on his own legs.
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: You don’t necessarily need a whole magician’s kit full of tools. You can also just use your forearms.
Nsima Inyang: Exactly. Tennis ball at home. I think some tissues that people really leave out of the mix are their feet, especially the bottoms of his feet.
Tim Ferriss: I was just going to say this little looks like a tennis ball called Rubz, R-U-B-Z, but it’s got little nubs on it.
Nsima Inyang: Super hard, or is it softish?
Tim Ferriss: It’s pretty hard.
Nsima Inyang: Super hard? Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s pretty hard. But just I will travel with it, and it’s like the amount of relief you get systemically from rolling out your feet. And I think who I picked that up from is Ed Corney, actually.
Nsima Inyang: Okay. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. He talked about decompression, a certain type of hanging. He has a very particular device. And then I’m pretty sure he talked about rubbing out the feet because he said it helped with his knee pain. I was like, huh, I think I’m going to try that.
Nsima Inyang: I’m really happy you mentioned that about Ed, because when it comes to soft tissue there are many people within the sphere of fitness, especially on the evidence-based side of fitness, that when people talk about soft tissue work, the only thing, the only rebuttal they have is like, “Well, there’s really no research to back that up, and it’s probably placebo. If it feels good, go ahead and do it, but there’s nothing really to prove it works.” And the frustrating thing about not just that, but many aspects of evidence-based fitness is that there’s a waiting game to wait for a paper to tell you something works that’s probably been done for centuries in many different cultures for a long time. Massage and soft tissue work has been a panacea for so many different groups of people around the globe. But we have people in exercise science that want to discount it because they don’t have a paper that proves this efficacy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: So that’s why, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying evidence-based work isn’t helpful, but don’t allow evidence-based studies to block you off from trying something that might just be really beneficial for you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: That’s all.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Let me add something to that because this is definitely a nerve for me as well. It’s like, all right, look, science is amazing. Okay. The scientific method as a structured way of not fooling ourselves, incredible tool for humankind. I mean, indispensable. And Western medicine, I’m going to say, and this is going to be controversial, the most effective healing system ever devised on the planet, period, full stop.
If you look at infant mortality, reductions in infant mortality, the advent of antibiotics, I mean, this is an incredible system of healing, as are many others. All of that said, as someone who has been involved with supporting early stage science now for more than a decade, science is fucken expensive, and it’s really slow.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And what that means is also within the realm of exercise science, it’s like you don’t want to fool yourself so you should be scientifically literate. Yes, you should pay attention to the literature if you can. Yes, by the way, that takes some training to get to the point where you can actually read something like that properly.
However, there are so many incentives that will prevent most studies from ever getting done that you could be waiting forever. And especially in the realm of exercise science, where it’s like you’re not experimenting with a speculative type of invasive brain surgery in some far-flung third-world country. It’s like, no, try some soft tissue work. Who cares? The downside risk is so minimal. See how you feel. Learn to trust your body again. Which is another reason why I, more and more so, and it’s not valuing it more so, but increasingly value movement, because it teaches you to get reacquainted with the subtleties of feeling your body, which autopilot linear movements in the gym do not automatically do. Do you know what I mean?
Nsima Inyang: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And then you can become a better gauge. And look, this isn’t to pat myself on the back, but as you do more of that, it’s like when we were doing the rope stuff this morning and I was like, oh, I feel like I’m flaring. I feel like I got a little too high on that right foot. And it’s like you develop these sensitivities, and then when you have, and look, again, I’m not Baryshnikov, or I’m not a surgeon with the most delicate hands in the world, can’t read Braille. But as you develop that, you can then trust your body, right? It’s like, all right, you’ll begin to pick up patterns.
And also, I think I had too many exogenous ketones, but lots of personality, I’ll keep going for a second. The other thing, and this came up through my archery in the last six months, because I was training with amazing guy, Jake Kaminski, two times silver medalist. One of the most successful archers the US has produced in the last 30, maybe 50 years. And he, like me, takes meticulous training notes, including soft tissue. So that if he had a problem, he’s like, “Hmm, this rib is slightly out,” which is a really common issue with archery. He could be like, “No, it’s not the last workout.” He identified through patterning because he shot a million plus arrows easily. He would look back and he’s like, “It’s usually five or six workouts back.”
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I could identify either what helped me, or what the problem was. And similarly, it’s like, just experiment. Take good notes. Try not to fool yourself, and keep what works, ditch what doesn’t.
Nsima Inyang: Ditch what doesn’t.
Tim Ferriss: But man, the soft tissue stuff, it’s so incredibly helpful. And I wanted to add also, just because I mentioned the pre-bed, not to totally hijack this, but so it goes.
Nsima Inyang: You can. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: You mentioned rope flow prior to bed, if I’m not misremembering. That was not on mic, but do you do rope before bed?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. I’ll do some nights it’s maybe three or five minutes. Some nights it’ll be just flowing for 20 minutes outside my house, just relaxing.
Tim Ferriss: And you were saying that also it helps to alleviate the morning stiffness the next day.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Okay. I’ll come back to the soft tissue thing in a second. But Mark and I were having a conversation early last year, and we were like, man, you just wake up. What can help us just get rid of waking up in the morning, just feeling that morning stiffness? Not morning wood, just body stiffness.
Tim Ferriss: Don’t want to fix that.
Nsima Inyang: Right, don’t want to fix that. You want that. That’s a good sign of hormonal health. But the general morning stiffness where you got to wring out your body a little bit. So I thought about that for a while, and then I just started doing rope flow before bed. And the first night I did rope flow before bed, which wasn’t something I usually did. I usually just like, I’d come home, work, maybe take a walk, go to bed, wake up, do rope flow, feel amazing. Did rope flow before bed, woke up the next morning. It was just like, ah. Really, I just felt like I didn’t need to — my body was already lubricated. That’s what I felt like.
And I was like, okay, maybe this is just a one night thing. But I then noticed that the nights that I didn’t do some rope, and all it is is rotating before bed. Let’s just call it that. If you have something that you can get some natural rotation in before bed, cool. If you have the rope practice, cool. But getting that natural spinal rotation in before bed will help you feel better when you wake up in the morning, and your back will not feel as stiff. You know what I mean?
It’s huge. So the reason why I know it works is because I have nights where I don’t do it. And I’ve also told many people in the stronger human community to try that and let me know what they feel. And everyone that does it wakes up feeling better in the morning. So I know that it’s one of those practices that if you have a practice where you do some soft tissue work, don’t stop the practices you do, just add in three minutes. Do two to five minutes before you go to bed. Two to five minutes.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, scale it down. If you’re like, “I don’t have 10 minutes.” It’s like, “Okay, you do one minute.”
Nsima Inyang: Every case.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like, oh, I can’t do one minute. It’s fine. Do three passes on the IT bed on each leg on a foam roller. Come on.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like there will be a point at which you have no excuse. And I’ll add one more thing, which I guess I accidentally omitted from my mind as soft tissue work, but it’s definitely soft tissue work. And this is something that has stuck for me big time and I’ve passed on to a lot of friends. Also, to give credit where credit is due.
So my mid-back was bothering me. I had this really old injury and my mid-back was really spasmed. And I was doing hand balancing practices 100 years ago with a guy named Andrii Bondarenko. And I didn’t train with him much. I mean, the guy is a phenom. He is a, or at least at the time, was a top Cirque du Soleil performer, famous for one armed hand balancing, like one arm handstands. He’s not a big guy. Who knows? He probably weighs 130 pounds, maybe 140. Maybe of people I’ve met personally, the most incredible combination of strength and mobility that I’ve ever seen.
Nsima Inyang: What’s his — I’ll get his name after. I need to write that down.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Andrii, A-N-D-R-I-I, Bondarenko. And I think his Instagram is just Andrii Bondarenko, excellent teacher. And we did some hand balancing stuff, and I was explaining my back issues and he’s like, “Oh, you need to get one of these mats.” And the mat was, I ended up getting the Nayoya Acupressure Mat.
Nsima Inyang: Is this like a Shakti?
Tim Ferriss: It might be the same thing. There are a bunch of imitators too.
Nsima Inyang: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: There’s one called Bed of Nails. The basic idea is it’s like a thick towel with plastic golf cleats covering it.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And then there’s one for the neck, and it fucken hurts. And even to this day, I’ve done it hundreds of times, if you’re a little sensitive, especially if the tissue’s inflamed, it hurts. If you stick with it past three or four minutes then your body chills out. And I typically stay on 10 minutes.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: The reason Andrii introduced it to me is his coach, when he used to do team acrobatic competitions, which is a big thing in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, where you have guys — it’s almost like if you could imagine cheerleading plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, where you’d also have male only teams, female only teams, where you’d have a flyer, someone who’s doing crazy acrobatics. That would be Andrii who would get shot into the air, with guys who would make a, they call it, a basket with their hands. People can look this up.
All those guys would just be beaten to hell. And the coach would make all of them lay on one of these for 45 minutes after every practice. And I started using it and I was like, okay, I have no idea how this works. All I know is man does this work. And before bed, especially with a lot of my back issues, that is non-negotiable. And I’ll give one trick for folks also. If you have low back issues specifically, traveling with the whole kit and caboodle is a pain in the ass. Just take the neck attachment, travel with that. That’ll fit easily into most suitcases. And then you can lay on that for your low back on the carpet in the hotel or whatever for 10 minutes before you go to bed. Resolves 50% of my low back issues for sleep. It’s incredible.
Nsima Inyang: So the cool thing about this is it’s really simple as to why this all works, blood flow.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: You bring pressure to an area, you drive blood and nutrients to that area after pressure is relieved. So when you have that on your back, or you have that on your whole back, because I actually have the same thing at home. I have it in a box. I need to bring it back out. Because I did it for a while and I was like, oh, it’s cool. I like it. It helps me relax, but I didn’t keep it. So I’m going to bring that back now that you mentioned it.
But all these things, they’re driving a bunch of blood to that area, which now when you get up you feel relief in those areas that you brought a level of pressure to. And that’s why it’s so good for healing of specific areas. And that’s why when it comes to soft tissue, I don’t just do the hot areas that most people would think about, like maybe the quads or the forearms, et cetera. I hit my whole body throughout the week. So I’ll do tissue work on my head. I have a tool that I’ll use. And while I’m in the sauna I’ll get on my temple, I’ll get on my head, I’ll get on the back of my neck. I’ll get here.
Tim Ferriss: Must make people comfortable. This is not like you’re in a public sauna.
Nsima Inyang: I have a sauna at home.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: But when I do go out to the public sauna, I do take a Gua Sha tool and a Body Lever with me, and I will hit that stuff in there. And usually people are like, “What are you doing? That looks like, it feels so good.” So I’ll give them the Gua.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. You know what? That’s not so bad. That’s not so bad. I mean, I’ve been to some of the OG, Russian, Turkish baths in New York City, and there are these old guys from the old country who are shaving their chests in the sauna. And I’m just like, “Bro. That’s not okay.”
Nsima Inyang: You shouldn’t be able to do that.
Tim Ferriss: It’s not okay. I’ve seen it on multiple occasions. So the point I’m making, Nutcracker, fine. I’m okay with it.
Nsima Inyang: Absolutely. But that’s the thing. You’re bringing blood flow to all these areas. And if you can — going back to what you were mentioning about learning how to heal yourself, that’s what this is.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: Body workers are essential. They’re great. I have no issue with them. But I think that if you’re someone who you go to a body worker and it’s usually maybe a two-time-a-month thing, because that’s what most people can afford, usually it’s like once or twice a month. Now you can go to a body worker multiple times a week because you are your own body worker. You learn to find the areas that —
First off, you learn that when you put pressure in a certain area you get release somewhere else, so you take a mental note. And at this point, for me, I know that when I’m feeling a little something in this upper part of my glute, I know what to hit. If I’m feeling something in my wrist, I know what to hit, my forearm. I have these reference points of how to heal myself because I’ve become familiar with pressurizing my body.
And you learn these things. You know what I mean? And anyone can learn this. You don’t have to have a degree with a bunch of schooling on this. You just have to touch yourself.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. That’s it. You just have to experiment.
Another one, and I actually owe Dustin Moskovitz the thank you for this, co-founder of Facebook, now Asana. It is the worst branding, which is why I always forget the product name. It’s like the Back Buddy. It basically looks like a very tricked out Pimp my Thera Cane. So a Thera Cane would be like a plastic candy cane that allows you to get to points on your back that at least I am completely unable to touch.
And then there’s one that looks more like an S.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: I’m pretty sure it’s called Back Buddy. People can look this up. If you just search Dustin Moskovitz Back Buddy I’m sure the right name will come up. And I have one of these everywhere I go as well because there’s no way, in terms of soft tissue work, me doing good work on my back is going to be a little tough for getting very focused attention.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Anything else to add on the soft tissue side of things?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. In terms of equipment, Amazon has med balls. So you can get yourself a med ball on Amazon.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a ball name, medicine ball?
Nsima Inyang: Medicine ball, yeah. Because that can allow you to — and they’re inexpensive. So you can roll on top of it, on top of your hamstrings, your quads. You can do some torso work. But it’s a good inexpensive tool for you to get yourself some soft tissue work.
Tim Ferriss: And just for clarity. You are rolling on top of it, or you are rolling the medicine ball on top of your leg, as an example?
Nsima Inyang: You’re on top of it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Nsima Inyang: You are on top of it, using the pressure from your body to put into that ball.
Tim Ferriss: Ah, yeah. I got it.
Nsima Inyang: So I would look at these are different types of pressure. The med ball allows you to put your own pressure into that implement. So there’s that. I think there’s this woman called Jill Miller. She has on Amazon Tune Up Fitness Balls is what they’re called.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: I like those specifically because they’re not extremely hard. They have a tad bit of give. They’re hard, but they have a bit of give so you can really sink yourself into it with that pressure. So I would suggest instead of, because most people they want to get the hardest balls, but the thing is hard, hard instruments, especially when you’re pushing or pressurizing into them, they can almost make most people back away from that resistance. Most people need to use a slightly softer implement to ease themselves into this soft tissue work before moving towards the Kelly Starrett Supernova, or his Peanut, or any of these harder implements.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: So that would be at some type of pressure. The Body Lever allows for a leverage type of pressure, where now you are pressing two things into each other and you’re finding that type of pressure. And then it also allows you to kneed, like you would at a massage with a masseuse. You now can use that pressure to knead.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: And then, as far as other implements, there are Gua Sha tools that you can get from different companies, Amazon or whatever, where again, it’s this rubbing pressure. You want to have these implements that provide you different types of pressure so you can do whatever it calls for on any given day. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Let me ask, just because I have to ask, or my OCD will not allow me to proceed, or at least not land the plane on this conversation. Nordic curls. What are Nordic curls and what does your resume look like with respect to Nordic curls?
Nsima Inyang: The Nordic hamstring curl is something that I started doing again after I met my buddy, Ben Patrick. I wasn’t able to do a Nordic curl when I first met him.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, so explain what a Nordic curl is.
Nsima Inyang: A Nordic hamstring curl —
Tim Ferriss: Is this also something you should not just run out and try without supervision?
Nsima Inyang: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Regress it. If you try a Nordic curl, most people will pull their hamstring.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Nsima Inyang: A way that you could do a Nordic curl would be, let’s say there’s a flat bench. Let’s imagine that you have your knees on the bench. You could strap your ankles into the bench, and the goal is to lean your torso down, almost just like you’re leaning your torso down, all the way down, and then come up with the strength of your hamstrings. So you’re not slamming down, you’re not just falling, you’re going down slowly. And the hamstring strength is going to be the limiting factor if you are able to control yourself down or bring yourself up.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So, exactly. It’s so much hard. I mean, it is hard the way you describe it, and it is even harder. I have a Sorinex machine for the Nordic hamstring curl.
Nsima Inyang: I have a machine at home too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I haven’t touched it in a long time. It’s a little dusty at this point, but imagine I’ll give another visual for folks. So imagine that you had a nice thick memory foam at the edge of a pool, so you could put your knees down without your knees hurting, and then a really fat friend came behind you and just sat on your ankles. So now you can get to your max height on your knees. So your hips are kind of in, your knees are in line with your hips, which are in line with your shoulders, and your fat friend is sitting on your ankles, but you’re comfortable in the memory foam. And then without breaking at the hip, right? Keeping the knees, hips, and shoulders in line, you put your hands behind your back and then go all the way down so your nose touches the water and then come all the way back up. It is so fucking hard. And then how does this fit? Why the hell am I asking you about Nordic curls? There must be some historical reasons.
Nsima Inyang: So I saw that a few years ago. I saw that Tyreek Hill did a certain amount of Nordic curls.
Tim Ferriss: Who is this person?
Nsima Inyang: Tyreek Hill is an NFL player. I don’t watch much football, so I forget the team he plays for, but he’s like, people see him as he’s one of the fastest, if not the fastest player in NFL. And one thing, and a trend you notice amongst a lot of guys who are very fast is that they also have the ability to do a few, if not many Nordic curls. One thing about the Nordic hamstring curl, there has been some research to back this up, but it doesn’t mean you have to do Nordic curls if you want to build resiliency in sprinting, but they progress Nordic curls on athletes that sprinted. And these athletes all had less occurrence of pulling their hamstrings because of the amount of strength that you build in your hamstring at length. Because you notice at the end range of a Nordic curl, your hamstring is at this length and position with stress on the hamstring, which is why if you’re new to the movement, you need to regress it because you could pull your hamstring in that position. It feels —
Tim Ferriss: Pull a hamstring, by the way, is not like, “Ouch, that hurt. Let me sleep on it. Now I’m okay the next day.” Typically, it’s not one of those.
Nsima Inyang: It’s not nice. So when Ben talked to us and told me about the Nordic curls, I tried one, couldn’t get it, and I was like —
Tim Ferriss: What did this NFL guy do?
Nsima Inyang: Oh, I forgot how many, I think Tyreek did maybe 12 or 13? 12 or 13. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to progress Nordic curls, and when I saw Tyreek’s video, I was like, “I want to do more than Tyreek.”
For me to progress Nordic curls, I started at the basic regressions. I started first off having a bench higher and going with limited range of motion, so not going all the way down, finding where my body would not be able to handle the pressure and going to that range, repping that out. Slowly lowering down, took me a few months to lower down to a flat bench. Then I was able to finally do one Nordic curl. Then I would do a curl where I would go down and push myself up and give myself assistance. And over time that built, and then I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think in the video I managed to do 18 Nordic curls. I’m not sure if I did 17 or 18 Nordic curls.
Tim Ferriss: Something like that. I mean, look, I’m relying on, I’m relying on some deep research here. So let me take a look here. I mean, I think we should pull up the tape.
Nsima Inyang: We’ll have the video here. We’ll have some footage here.
Tim Ferriss: Deep research says that the previous record Tyreek was 10 and you did 15.
Nsima Inyang: There we go. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But the point is, the differential was substantial from a percentage standpoint. You did not just eke out, barely beating the record. You beat the record substantially.
Nsima Inyang: And this isn’t like a world record. I think there’s a guy who, he’s much lighter, but I think he managed to do 25 Nordic curls or something like that. So it’s like I’m not the guy in the world who’s done the most Nordic curls, but I wanted to be Tyreek. If I’m to be Tyreek in one thing, because I’m not faster than Tyreek, it’s going to be doing more Nordic curls.
But it’s one thing, a strength coach who I respect so much and he’s taught me a lot through the show and through what I’m able to see him do with athletes, Ian Danney. He’s someone who I love his work because he’s someone who takes everything that we’ve managed to talk about here, and he applies it to different athletes he works with. So he’ll have certain athletes that he progresses a lot of Nordic curls with, he’ll have athletes that he does different soft tissue work with. He has athletes that he purposefully has them do certain types of static stretching, which certain people are like, static stretching isn’t good for you, but Ian knows when and where to apply these different modalities, rather than saying, “That’s just bad, we shouldn’t do it.” Ian is someone who understands how to use all of these things holistically to make progress and that’s something that I really think most of us should try to do when it comes to our personal physical practice.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So bone density. I have lifted most of my life and in certain segments of my body, I was shocked to find, I think partially due to the back injury and reducing certain types of loading. But I have below average bone density in a few segments of my body. Not all, it’s like the average is fine, but averages can be super misleading. You’ve got to be careful with the averages. So the average on DXA, great, but in certain segments way below average. So I was like, “Hmm, I’ve been thinking about bone density a lot.” For longevity and health span, you want sufficient bone density.
There are different ways to catalyze the adaptation of increased bone density: compression (lifting), tension (isometrics), impact (jumping), and then rotation, which is certainly for me, and I think for a lot of people, whether they consider themselves athletes or not, that is an obvious omission a lot of the time. And that could be mace, kettlebell, juggling, rope.
Nsima Inyang: And that’s more so pulling at the bones. So that rotation, it is rotation, but it’s also pulling these segments.
Tim Ferriss: I Got it. I got it. Okay. So you need more tension. So rope may not be actually a great example, but the kettlebell would be since it’s at the end of a kinetic chain that’s getting elongated or at least, and stretch in that sense.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it. All right. Aging insurance, certainly. This is something I think about a lot with aging parents as well and really trying to, I was talking to a doctor I know really well and he is like, “Yeah.” I call my parents’ trainer and I just say, when I see he’s like, I just say “Make them cry. You have to make my parents cry,” because they need the bonus. You have to load it, it can’t be comfortable or at least overly comfortable. Anything else that you’d like to just add on? Bone density?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, I think that, okay.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, also another one. Just because the one place I’m happy to spend a lot of money is on very, very, very good doctors. And I’m fortunate to have really good doctors. You have to ensure you have adequate calcium absorption and that you are not taking things that could over time interfere with calcium absorption. So in addition to the stressors, you’ve got to pay attention to what you’re able to absorb.
Nsima Inyang: On my YouTube channel, I have a video that I made. It’s like 40 something minutes on bone density that goes into everything.
Tim Ferriss: All right, great.
Nsima Inyang: It goes into all of this. So if you guys want to spend some time and go and watch that video, it’s going to be worth it for you.
But one thing I want to mention, I’m happy you mentioned the jumping thing because jumping is something that we just literally stopped doing. Some people, it’s something that I stopped, I was a soccer player for years, and when I got into a certain form of practice, there was a point where I didn’t jump for years unless maybe I was just doing a random box jump here and there, which I ended up being really crap at because jumping is something I stopped doing. And what happens to many people is because they slowly stop getting off the ground, there comes a point where they never jump again and then they’re 40, 50, 60, they jump, they pull something and then they’re like, “I can’t do this.” Because they can’t, first off, they don’t have the strengths to propel themselves off the ground, but they also don’t have the elasticity to be able to land and handle the force from the ground.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. It’s not the jumping, necessarily, that the problem, it’s the landing.
Nsima Inyang: It’s the landing. So I think something that can be a great investment for many people, including those that are older is a rebounder. A rebounder is a mini trampoline that you can have.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, little trampoline.
Nsima Inyang: There’s many brands. Bellicon is like the Rolls Royce of rebounders, but there’s also
Tim Ferriss: Bellicon. Sounds like the Rolls Royce.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. There’s also less expensive brands. But I love the rebounder. I have a rebounder, and the reason why I like it is because it’s something that I can just keep in the backyard and when I go outside, I can just hop on it real quick. It feels pretty meditative. But there’s been quite a few studies to show, especially in older adults that rebounding helped them build bone density because of the low intensity jumping that it causes for them.
Tim Ferriss: I can guess at the answer here, but why is that better than say, jumping rope or just jumping in place?
Nsima Inyang: It’s a regression.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Nsima Inyang: It’s the regression. You know what I mean? Because many people, they try jumping rope. Many people, their feet will get beat up a lot. It’s something that you absolutely can and should build the capacity to do. I look at jumping rope as rebounder, light hopping, 30 seconds to a minute to two minutes of jumping rope each day or every other day. Then over time, you’re going to get to a point where you can jump rope for 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes. But the thing is, the ability to jump rope without certain muscles and areas getting taxed more than others is a full body build of elasticity from the feet to all the way up to the neck. Because everything needs to have the right amount of tension, but not too much tension. So what a lot of people notice when they start jumping rope is that they’re like, “Oh, my calves got super sore.” Right?
Experienced people who jump rope, it’s not their calves that get super sore. It’s like everything just kind of starts getting tired out because their whole system is just popping them off the ground very lightly. Whereas when you’re new to it, that impact and even your feet are too weak to handle that impact on the ground and don’t pop off. So that’s why a rebounder is going to be super good then regress, so you can have your hands on something and start jumping. Then just literally, when I say —
Tim Ferriss: What do you mean by hands on something?
Nsima Inyang: Put your hands on a table, hop. Use that to help you have a softer landing. Initially, you might have a lot of weight in your hands so that, because maybe you can’t handle that landing, but over time you’re going to be able to put less weight in the hands. And then this is where I got my mom.
Tim Ferriss: So hopping aka, basically, emulating what you would do, kind of jump roping?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, you could do that lightly. You can also kind of transfer from leg to leg light hops, but the goal is to, again, do not be embarrassed with how low you have to regress to feel comfortable with this. Don’t just try starting to jump with a jump rope immediately, because if you do that too soon and your body’s telling you signals that you’re not ready for it, whether you’re getting a lot of impact in your lower back, your knees, your feet are feeling really beat up. You need to listen to those signals and regress the hopping. I’m telling you, if you can regress hopping, do it a little bit, it doesn’t have to be every day, it could be every other day just a little bit. You’ll get to a point where you can start jumping rope. You’ll get to a point where —
Tim Ferriss: If you want to see an example of what not to do, people can search for the Tim Ferriss experiment parkour episode where I went from no jumping to let me try to learn parkour in a week. Don’t do that. Yeah, do not do that. Basically just blew apart my entire body like Forrest Gump’s braces. Not a good idea, so yeah, regress.
Nsima Inyang: But the reason why I think that that’s so important, it’s great for bone density what we were saying here, but I think it allows you to bring back that skill and never lose it. Because once you’re able to start hopping and it’s now an effortless thing, just a little bit will allow you to hold onto it for the rest of your life. And if you have it right now, do the low-intensity jump rope. You don’t even need a jump rope. Just do some hopping each day so that you maintain that ability to just propel and land that goes very far, and a majority of the population can’t do it anymore just because one day they stopped and they never did it again.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I can’t remember who told me this. I’m inclined to say Kelly Starrett because I get a lot of these from Kelly. So Kelly, I’ll give you credit for this even if it’s not you, but I think it is Kelly who is quoting a famous Russian sports scientist, as I recall it, who said, “Once you stop jumping, you start dying.” That was the quote.
Nsima Inyang: I love that. Yes, dude, that’s true. There was this video, maybe I’ll be able to find it by the time this comes out, but it literally showed this young man and it showed all of his relatives that were over 40. He had something up there and he was trying to have everyone jump. No one even actually, there was a few people in their 30s, everyone tried jumping and they could barely get off the ground. It’s such an awkward thing, and he’s someone who trains jumping so he was able to go super high. But it just shows that once you stop, it can go very quickly. But I want people to understand this doesn’t mean you can’t get it back. It just means that you’ve got to treat yourself like a kid that’s learning to walk again, you got to start with the basics. Be okay with that taking a while. Your feet have to adapt to the stress your body has to adapt to handle that force, and could be a year, could be two, could be like whatever.
Tim Ferriss: So what does a rebounder session look like? How long would you bounce on it?
Nsima Inyang: Literally, you could bounce on it again, just kind of like you could do a minute, you could do 10. A rebounder takes away a lot of the impact that you’re going to have from the ground because it allows you to go in and then you’re able to use that energy to pop back up. So when you become, there are rebounders, like the Bellicon, I think other rebounders also, they have these handles that you can use if you find it difficult.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve seen this. Yeah, they’re all tricked out. They’re like the Batmobile sled.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, there’s a whole fitness, a whole fitness trend of people on YouTube that do rebound or exercise is like it’s a workout for them. And The cool thing, and this is actually, I think this is a great thing, some of them are heavier, that’s powerful. Somebody who is, let’s say they’re a hundred pounds overweight, 150 pounds overweight, but they can actually start jumping again and they can start bouncing again. But then over time they can transfer that to flat ground. So that’s why I think it’s super powerful for everyone, and if you find that jumping, you can’t do jumping, rebounding is great.
Now, I also like rebounding too, because it’s something that I feel kind of decompresses my system a little bit. I like it because when I get into the air, there’s just this, I can’t replicate this floaty thing that happens in the air where it’s just like you’re weightless, and then when you become experienced, you can really go down into the rebounder and just get super high and you’re just literally going down and floating. When I come off of the rebounder, my body feels similar to when I finish a swim. I feel this global decompression everywhere. So it’s one of those practices that I look at that makes the body feel better afterwards than before. It’s not meant it can be a workout if you want to be. I don’t look at my rebounding as a workout. I look at the rebounding as a recovery practice that feeds my body and allows me to do more hard work later. I look at the rope as that too. It feeds my body and allows me to do more later. It’s healthy for me. And it’s just fun.
I think a big thing here, all this stuff for me is fun, man. It feels like play, right? So that’s very important for me.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, playing the long game, if it’s too boring or too punishing, ultimately it’s got to be sustainable. And we’re excited to try a lot of what we’ve talked about. So where can people find all things Nsima?
Nsima Inyang: Yeah, make me and my producer Owen Carr, we make videos on the YouTube channel, which is just my name Nsima Inyang. So if you want to find the bone density video, the traditional strength training video that’s at my YouTube channel, which is just my name, Nsima Inyang. For any of the —
Tim Ferriss: Just to note for people, there’s a silent N in there. N-S-I-M-A I-N-Y-A-N-G.
Nsima Inyang: Yeah. If you say my name wrong, trust me, I ain’t going to get mad at you. Don’t worry, okay? So don’t be scared. Over at my website, thestrongerhuman.store, there’s ropes, sandbags, kettlebells, the Body Lever, pretty much everything that I use, it’s over there at the Stronger Human Store.
And then if you want to learn rope flow for free, I have a rope flow Foundations course that has 55 modules and over 50 videos that go in depth, taking you from being someone who can be basic with rope flow, to someone who can now flow with many different movements. That’s in the stronger human community, which is on skool.com/thestrongerhuman. And I also have stuff there where you can learn kettlebell flow, how to do soft tissue work. Pretty much —
Tim Ferriss: Skool.com is spelled like normal school?
Nsima Inyang: S-K-O-O-L, S-K-O-O-L.com/thestrongerhuman. Thanks for that correction. My goal for that place is, first off, there’s a great community there of over 12,000 people right now. They’re all doing, I love how these people bring in their different expertise with what they’re doing. Not everyone is doing all the exact same things that I do. So it’s cool that I get to learn from them too. But it’s just a great community of people that are all just trying to become stronger and build their own personal physical practices. My goal for myself there is just to put everything that I’ve learned there.
I think I want to mention this, Tim, your podcast is a podcast that me and my best friend, his name’s Brian Bulaya. We were listening to your show back when I was 18 years old. We were listening to your stuff back. Actually, no, I think I was 20. The 19 and 20s when we were listening to your show, we would literally go on calls and be like, “Okay, dude, what’d you learn from this?” We’d get the books that were referenced in the show. I think we read The Way of the Superior Man because of something you mentioned on one of your, somehow came up. So that’s what got me on the path of self-development and learning, constant learning and Brian would say the same thing. Me and him are going to go crazy because like, “Oh, we just went on Tim Ferriss.” It’s cool. So I want to say thank you.
Because honestly, dude, I’ve listened to so much of your show, so much of your show, and it’s taught me so much through the years that for me being here right now, it’s literally insane to me. I’m just happy that I was able to stay kind of chilled during this show. This has been really cool. So I want to say thank you because you literally, man, your stuff has changed my life, seriously.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing. Thank you.
Nsima Inyang: Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: And so glad we got to spend time together, and I’m very excited to see what you do in the coming years. How old are you?
Nsima Inyang: 32, turning 33 this year.
Tim Ferriss: You’ve got some runaway. I cannot wait to see. The fact that you’re doing Masters. I’ve got to talk some shit.
Nsima Inyang: I also compete in Adult! I also compete in Adult. I don’t only compete in Masters.
Tim Ferriss: Because Masters starts at 30, right. And I remember this past winter, someone’s like, “Yeah, you should do some Masters competitions in skiing.” And I was like, “What’s the lowest age that one can be Masters?” They’re like, “30.” And I was like, “Oh, I see.” So people who just stopped competing at the highest levels. No, I’m not going to be a mop for those guys. Thanks very much.
Nsima Inyang: But there’s ranges of Masters. There’s Masters One, which is what I did. So I compete in Adult and Masters, but there’s also Masters Two and Three. So they do it from 30 to 33, then 34.
Tim Ferriss: All right, all right…
Nsima Inyang: So it’s not like I’m competing against some 60-year-old.
Tim Ferriss: Just sandbagging. Just like, “Take this guillotine… bitch!”
Nsima Inyang: No, they’re all around my same age.
Tim Ferriss: “How’s that arthritis? I’m going to [inaudible] your arm off. Don’t look at me that way.”
Nsima Inyang: But I also compete in adult.
Tim Ferriss: “Take your walker and get out of here.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Well, the very, very, very fun and super, super informative to spend time together and very inspiring because as you’re talking about these things, and I’m sure I’m not the only person, I’m sure people listening, you do a very good job of making it seem, which it is, not just tangible but achievable. Scale it down, right? You’re not going to walk in and do 600, 700-pound, 800-pound deadlifts tomorrow if you haven’t been deadlifting. You don’t need to do that. You shouldn’t even attempt to do that. You shouldn’t even attempt your one rep max and the payoff that you can get from layering these things in. Learning to feel your body, learning to then trust your body, becoming familiar with the map that is your body and how it changes over time. The payoff with this type of micro-dosing of movement, the micro-dosing of soft tissue treatment, it does not need to be. And turn your life upside down, change everything transformation overnight. And it shouldn’t be because that’s going to fail.
And from experience, I can tell you whether it was with training with Jerzy back in the day, or training with Coach Sommer back in the day, it’s like these little things done consistently. If you are consistent and you add some progressive overload. Doesn’t mean a lot, doesn’t mean slapping on 20 pounds every time you go to the gym with extra weight. Micro-progressions that are sustainable, so you’re not getting injured, ideally, those things will happen—little nicks and bruises along the way. What that can add up to when I look back at some of those experiences, it’s just unbelievably impressive and more important, fulfilling. And you can actually fully inhabit this body that, by the way, mind, body, there’s no separation. It’s just one integrated unit. And we are evolved to move our bodies through space. That’s why the idea of a brain and a jar doesn’t really work. Uploading consciousness, no. It’s all integrated into the movement of the body. And I think you are an incredible ambassador for it. So thank you for that. And you’re a very, very, very good educator.
Nsima Inyang: Thank you.Tim Ferriss: That is hard to do. That is hard to do in a very crowded media landscape. And I saw that video and I was like, “Huh, interesting.” And then Mark’s name popped up and I was like, “I think I recognize that mutant.” Hold on a second and I texted Mark, and here we are. I’m glad it happened and we’ll link to everything in the show notes, folks. We’re going to go get some food, which I’m very excited about, and show notes, as per usual, tim.blog/podcast, we’ll link to everything. And I can guarantee you, if you search for this episode, Nsima, N-S-I-M-A, there will be one and only. It’s hard for me to imagine getting a collection of those. And as always, folks, until next time, be it just a bit kinder than as necessary to others and also to yourself, very important. Compassion that doesn’t include you is incomplete, as Jack Kornfield would say. And thanks for tuning in. Until next time.
The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Nsima Inyang, Mutant and Movement Coach — True Athleticism at Any Age, Microdosing Movement, “Rope Flow” as a Key Unlock, Why Sleds and Sandbags Matter, and Much More (#816) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-06-19 22:32:58
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这篇访谈记录了Tim Ferriss与力量运动员兼动作教练Nsima Inyang的对话。Nsima Inyang是一位巴西柔术黑带、职业自然健美运动员（世界前五名）和精英级力量举运动员（深蹲超过622磅，卧推接近400磅，硬拉超过755磅），他将这些领域的训练与壶铃、战锤、沙袋和绳流等非常规训练工具相结合。
访谈涵盖了以下主题：
绳流 (Rope Flow): Nsima将绳流视为一种独特的内在武术，它能提高协调性、灵活性、旋转力量和正念。他建议即使是简单的绳子或阻力带也能进行绳流练习。
力量训练: Nsima强调单侧训练（例如单腿深蹲）在双侧训练之前的必要性，以及沙袋在力量训练中的作用。他提倡根据个人情况调整训练计划，避免盲目追求高重量。
动作练习: 访谈中讨论了各种动作练习，包括壶铃训练、徒手体操、心肺功能训练以及柔韧性和软组织恢复方法（如筋膜放松、泡沫轴）。
微剂量运动 (Microdosing Movement): Nsima主张每天进行少量运动，而不是集中进行高强度训练，这有助于保持身体健康和避免受伤。
软组织工作: Nsima分享了他对自我按摩工具和技术的看法，包括刮痧、Body Lever等，强调了学习自我疗愈的重要性。
骨骼密度: Nsima讨论了如何通过压缩、张力、冲击和旋转等方式来增强骨骼密度。
跳跃: 他解释了为什么人们会随着年龄增长而失去跳跃能力，以及如何通过循序渐进的方式恢复跳跃能力。
访谈还介绍了Nsima Inyang创立的The Stronger Human在线社区，以及他使用的各种训练工具和设备。 最后，访谈还提及了其他一些健身领域的名人，例如Kelly Starrett和Mark Bell。 总而言之，这是一次关于如何通过结合传统和非常规训练方法来提升力量、动作能力和整体健康的精彩访谈。
“I look at rope flow as its own internal martial art.”
— Nsima Inyang
Nsima Inyang (@nsimainyang) is a strength athlete and movement coach and co-host of Mark Bell’s Power Project, one of the top fitness podcasts in the world. He is also one of the most freakishly athletic humans I’ve ever met. He’s a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a professional natural bodybuilder (placed top five in the world), and an elite-level powerlifter (750-plus-pound deadlift, etc.)—but what sets him apart is how he blends all those worlds with unconventional training tools like kettlebells, maces, sandbags, and rope flow. After nearly 20 years of lifting and martial arts, Nsima has developed a unique way of helping people build muscle, move better, and stay pain-free for life.
Nsima is also the founder of The Stronger Human, a growing online community focused on strength, movement, and resilience. With hundreds of thousands following his YouTube content, Nsima’s mission is simple: help people feel powerful in their bodies again—without relying solely on machines, cookie-cutter workouts, or the fitness industry’s outdated rules.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
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Want to hear another episode with someone who can fix what’s broken? Listen to my conversation with movement guru and physical therapist Dr. Kelly Starrett, in which we discussed training for range of motion as we age, the “airport scanner shoulder test,” balance training for everyone (not just seniors), breathing techniques for back pain, the “Tower of London” spinal mobility exercise, getting 800 grams of fruits and vegetables daily, the “never do nothing” philosophy, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
Deadlift Working Sets: 495 lbs, 585+ lbs for triples, doubles, singles.
Jerzy Gregorek’s Trainee: stiff-legged deadlifts with 315 lbs off an elevated platform after having fused vertebrae.
Tim’s Cossack Squat: with a 70 or 80-pound kettlebell.
Tim’s Back Squat (past): ~400 lbs for a set of 10.
Nsima’s Mom’s Age: 67 years old.
Nsima’s Grandmother’s Age: Lived to 100.
“I look at rope flow as its own, internal martial art.”
— Nsima Inyang
“I’ve had people that are in the Stronger Human community that, literally, after day one, they’re finding that they have better balance walking up the steps. And these were people in their fifties and sixties.”
— Nsima Inyang
“The thing that I would want to get you doing is, first, to make sure that you learn how to breathe while doing everything.”
— Nsima Inyang
“If you want to just get yourself a rope from Home Depot and cut it and make a rope, that’s fine. You can work that. You can even work with an exercise band you might have at home.”
— Nsima Inyang
“Many aspects of evidence-based fitness is that there’s a waiting game to wait for a paper to tell you something works that’s probably been done for centuries in many different cultures for a long time.”
— Nsima Inyang
The post Nsima Inyang, Mutant and Movement Coach — True Athleticism at Any Age, Microdosing Movement, “Rope Flow” as a Key Unlock, Why Sleds and Sandbags Matter, and Much More (#816) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
