A Conversation Not About Fitness | Michael Blevins | Modern Wisdom Podcast 160

1. 0:00 – 1:40

   The hedge-fund grinder loop: when “fitness” amplifies stress

   1. MBMichael Blevins0:00

      ... "Hey, I got to beat my hedge fund at, you know, 6:00 AM to start before everybody else starts." So I wake up, two alarm at 4:30. I get in my car with caffeine, cortisol's running, sympathetic stay is up. I'm in traffic, I'm swearing at people. I get to the office, I'm late. I do all this stuff. And then I'm like, "Oh, it's noon, I got to get my workout in." So I run down to a CrossFit gym. I blast an 11-minute MetCon, crush it, give everybody a high five, get back to the office, finish work, get back in traffic, go home, and then I wonder why I feel like I'm diseased-

   2. NANarrator0:31

      (laughs)

   3. MBMichael Blevins0:31

      ... 'cause I can't sleep then.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:37

      Michael Blevins in the building. How are you doing, man?

   5. MBMichael Blevins0:41

      I'm good, man. Thanks for having me, Chris. I appreciate it.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:43

      Really happy to have you on. We've got one of our mutual friends out with you at the moment, right?

   7. MBMichael Blevins0:48

      We do, Elodie. Yeah, Elliesaurus.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:51

      (laughs)

   9. MBMichael Blevins0:52

      (laughs) Yes.

   10. CWChris Williamson0:52

       All the way from Newcastle to... Where are you? Where are you based?

   11. MBMichael Blevins0:55

       I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah.

   12. CWChris Williamson0:57

       Cool.

   13. MBMichael Blevins0:57

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson0:58

       Sweet, man.

   15. MBMichael Blevins0:58

       Wh- which is a strange place to visit, I guess, if you're in Europe and you're thinking about coming to the States. It's not generally the destination that you're thinking of. (laughs) It's usually East Coast, West Coast. The middle area admittedly is not that interesting, but Salt Lake seems to be kind of a sweet spot.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:17

       Yeah.

   17. MBMichael Blevins1:17

       I get... Yeah, it just seems to be... I don't know what it is about it. It's- it's pretty here. It's high desert, you know, high altitude. There's skiing if you're into that. There's a lot of outdoors. You're three minutes away from, like, Red Rock Desert, so it's pretty good.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:32

       Yeah, it's good, man.

   19. MBMichael Blevins1:33

       It's-

   20. CWChris Williamson1:33

       Elodie's, Elodie's a little bit of a wanderluster, isn't she? So, uh, I'm not surprised-

   21. MBMichael Blevins1:36

       (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson1:36

       ... that she's ended up on your, on your doorstep. So-

   23. MBMichael Blevins1:39

       Yeah.

2. 1:40 – 3:18

   Fitness as an “escape to reality,” not an escape from it

   1. CWChris Williamson1:40

      ... how would you describe your approach to fitness?

   2. MBMichael Blevins1:44

      Ooh. Um, I tend to run away from it, but I have to kind of asterisks that. I- I run away from the fitness industry, because I think fitness, I think, is really important, because it's kind of our last attachment to what it is to be human, right? Like, before we become all so technologically advanced that we have robots throwing food down our throat and all entertainment is LED screen and all- all senses are sensed, you know, through some other machine. Um, I think it's- it's kind of the expression of being in your body, your mind. It's kind of the combination of maybe, uh, you know, however weird you want to get, but it's- it's kind of like a spiritual experience when you, um, express it appropriately. And I think my approach to fitness is providing that experience for people, providing, like, the idea that this is an all-encompassing philosophy that influences other parts of your life.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:46

      Isn't it interesting that a lot of people use video games, social media, et cetera, et cetera, as a "escape" from reality, in quotation marks.

   4. MBMichael Blevins2:56

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson2:56

      And now you're offering people an escape to reality, with fitness.

   6. MBMichael Blevins3:01

      That's a really good way to put it. Um, I would say, and I would- I would- I would kind of bookmark that for a really deep conversation about what it is to actually sense something.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:13

      We are here. This is the deep conversation, Michael. Let's fall down the rabbit hole, my friend.

3. 3:18 – 6:49

   What is reality? Senses, interpretation, and the ‘black box’ brain

   1. MBMichael Blevins3:18

      All right, so there's something to this experience. And how I frame this for people, because people are very, um, I don't know how to put it, because I don't want to... Uh, people's initial belief is that what I see, what I hear, what I feel is reality, right? But, in reality, that's not, that's not it at all. So, what I sense is, um, an interpretation of certain signals, wavelengths, patterns, particles, that my bay- brain translates for something that I can make sense of. So, the- the color is green, but that's just a wavelength spectrum. In reality, what is that? Like, does that actually exist? Or are we already in, um, a- a sort of virtual reality? And by putting on virtual reality through our reality, we're just devolving into one level of abstraction. So, how I first like to think about it, and this is a nightmare situation for people.

   2. CWChris Williamson4:18

      (laughs)

   3. MBMichael Blevins4:18

      This is like... This is claustrophobia-inducing. And I like to say, you know, imagine that you, yourself, your body with all your senses were- were locked into a 12 by 12 by 12 by 12 box and it was completely dark, there is no light, but the outside world exists around it. How long do you think it would take you before you start trying to interpret what's going on around? Like, you hear a car pass, so the- the echoes and the ricochets of sound, you start to echolocate and eventually, actually very quickly, your body, through an act of synesthesia, would start echolocating and you would start getting visual perception of what's outside of your black box.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:03

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MBMichael Blevins5:03

      And this is what happens with people that learn how to echolocate after being blinded or something like that. Uh, they can actually navigate a three-dimensional world based off of sound and ricochets and noises because they've taught their brain to reinterpret their own reality, so it becomes kind of a SONAR thing. And e- every human has the capacity to do this. In the same sense, if you, um, are, uh, missing something, whatever, taste, hearing, the- the senses take over and you'll- you'll make a map of the world. Like, our- our- our reality is whatever the map we make of the world, but the map is not the territory.

   6. CWChris Williamson5:41

      Mm-hmm.

   7. MBMichael Blevins5:42

      So, the best way I like to put this is, like, actually that- that- that black room, that is reality. You are already that. Your brain is in a blacked out container, and all it's doing is interpreting the world around it.

   8. CWChris Williamson5:56

      Have you, um-

   9. MBMichael Blevins5:57

      And sometimes you get that wrong.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:58

       Have you looked at David White's work?

   11. MBMichael Blevins6:00

       ... I have not.

   12. CWChris Williamson6:01

       Right. So you're describing what David White has arrived at. So anyone that wants to find out a little bit more about this stuff, just search David White on, uh, Making Sense by Sam Harris. It is-

   13. MBMichael Blevins6:14

       Ooh.

   14. CWChris Williamson6:14

       ... episode 184, which came out earlier this, uh, earlier this year.

   15. MBMichael Blevins6:21

       Oh, i- is this the author of A Case Against Reality?

   16. CWChris Williamson6:24

       Yes.

   17. MBMichael Blevins6:25

       Yeah. Okay. So I am familiar with his work, I just don't know-

   18. CWChris Williamson6:27

       Yeah, yeah. So you know what-

   19. MBMichael Blevins6:28

       Um.

   20. CWChris Williamson6:28

       ... what he's saying is, is a real serious manifestation of what you're talking about. The world as we see it could be completely different. And he-

   21. MBMichael Blevins6:37

       Yes.

   22. CWChris Williamson6:37

       ... thinks it's likely to be really different. But because we have to survive, we've managed-

   23. MBMichael Blevins6:42

       Hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson6:42

       ... to interpret it in a way that allows us to survive. So I, I, I, I get that. I like, I, I like that approach. I think it's interesting.

4. 6:49 – 9:57

   From philosophy to utility: sensitivity, assumptions, and re-mapping reactions

   1. MBMichael Blevins6:49

      Uh, yeah, and, and is it useful? It's, it's always like-

   2. CWChris Williamson6:52

      That's the question. That's the-

   3. MBMichael Blevins6:53

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson6:53

      ... that's what I was about to bring it back to. So we've got, okay, we've got fitness. We've got this, this, um, bringing back to reality, what is reality, all this stuff. But at the end of the day, what does it matter if what we see is a true representation of what is out there when we don't have any other way than the way that we do have to see that?

   5. MBMichael Blevins7:12

      So I totally agree. The utility of it for me and through fitness specifically comes when I say all of these are just representations of reality, but how good you are at interpreting that has to do with your sensitivity, right? So the more sensitive I am, um, with faulty tools admittedly, like my eyesight is faulty, my memory is faulty, my taste, my touch, my hearing. You know, I, I literally ran past somebody the other day, and I thought they called me an asshole. And I was like, "What did you say?" And they're like, "Oh, I said, I'm sorry." And I was like-

   6. CWChris Williamson7:47

      Why did you default-

   7. MBMichael Blevins7:49

      ... "Shit."

   8. CWChris Williamson7:49

      ... to that?

   9. MBMichael Blevins7:49

      Um, that's, I've thought a lot about that. I was like because-

   10. CWChris Williamson7:52

       (laughs) What about people calling you an asshole as you're running past?

   11. MBMichael Blevins7:55

       Well, because I think in, in my model of the world, I've built a model where the majority of people I run into are not worth knowing, and I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm actually on the negative side of it.

   12. CWChris Williamson8:08

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MBMichael Blevins8:09

       And it's something I've had to, like, really work after to really correct that thinking because I want to become more sensitive to other people. So I've, I've started this drill because I realized, you know, when driving in traffic and somebody cuts you off, you're like, ah, flip that person off, give them whatever. It ruins, you're kind of like, oh, people are so stupid. And in reality, that's not true. People are not stupid. Human beings are highly intelligent. They just sometimes lack attention towards my personal well-being, which makes me think derogatory things about that person.

   14. CWChris Williamson8:42

       (laughs)

   15. MBMichael Blevins8:42

       But if I remap the situation that they didn't cut me off because they're against me, that goes towards, um, uh, wha- whatever razor it is, I can't remember, but the, the thought is it-

   16. CWChris Williamson8:55

       Do not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.

   17. MBMichael Blevins8:58

       Exactly.

   18. CWChris Williamson8:59

       Yeah.

   19. MBMichael Blevins9:00

       Um, so if I, if I go back to that model and I go, okay, first attribute a different thing. They cut me off because they're in a hurry, right? They're late for something. What if that lateness was, you know, their daughter was in the hospital? And this is, like, a drill that a lot of people do. And then now suddenly they cut me off, and now I want to get out of the way and help that person out. And so it remodels the world. So I want to become more sensitive to those interactions. And fitness is just a way to become more sensitive to the world around you-

   20. CWChris Williamson9:28

       Mm-hmm.

   21. MBMichael Blevins9:29

       ... because you become more sensitive to your output input, right, what the environment I'm in, my heart is racing, the weight is heavy. I don't want to do the activity, my brain is working against me. All of these conversations and inputs and outputs, I have to start to manage, and that's something that we don't practice. So we lose our sensitivity with the, you know, the model of the world that we're viewing. And I think the more you get into fitness, the more sensitive you are to reality.

5. 9:57 – 14:42

   Presence, pain, and the ‘whip’: intensity as forced attention

   1. CWChris Williamson9:57

      Why is fitness the answer to that? Why can't I do it through something else? What's so special about fitness?

   2. MBMichael Blevins10:03

      Um, mostly because it's the glasses that I see through. So I'm applying my bias through most people and, and-

   3. CWChris Williamson10:11

      Hmm. It could be if I was speaking to an artist, they might say-

   4. MBMichael Blevins10:13

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:13

      ... "Well, it's obviously art that's the thing to do this." A person... I'm going to, so I'm going to steel man my own argument here-

   6. MBMichael Blevins10:19

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:19

      ... uh, or your argument. I would say that the visceral feelings that you get, especially when you do high-output fitness-

   8. MBMichael Blevins10:26

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:27

      ... um, but then I, again, I can go on the other side of that and say Pilates, yoga, especially yin yoga-

   10. MBMichael Blevins10:33

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson10:33

       ... slow things that essentially is just mindful stretching.

   12. MBMichael Blevins10:36

       Sure.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:36

       There's some very, very present states that you get into there. But there's no hiding being at 180 BPM heart rate, right? There is-

   14. MBMichael Blevins10:44

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson10:44

       ... there's nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to hide when you're picking up anything over 70% of your max on a deadlift.

   16. MBMichael Blevins10:51

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson10:51

       There's, you know that it's happening. It brings you into the present. And, uh-

   18. MBMichael Blevins10:55

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson10:55

       ... I did a, a podcast with Paul Bloom, uh, psychologist and philosopher-

   20. MBMichael Blevins10:59

       Oh, yeah, yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson10:59

       ... from University of Yale. M- beast, absolute beast.

   22. MBMichael Blevins11:02

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson11:02

       And his new book is talking about why people like pain. So how-

   24. MBMichael Blevins11:06

       Hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson11:07

       ... uh, pain and meditation, basically how, what is the similarity between BDSM and meditation? What do they have in common? And there's this-

   26. MBMichael Blevins11:14

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson11:14

       ... quote from a really famous dominatrix that said, "Nothing captures attention like a whip." And-

   28. MBMichael Blevins11:21

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson11:21

       ... the point is, the reason that people do these extreme sporting events, base jumping, that flying squirrel thing, I don't know what that is.

   30. MBMichael Blevins11:28

       Yeah. Yeah.
6. 14:42 – 20:49

   Sacred vs profane fitness: building a container that transforms

   1. MBMichael Blevins14:42

      Yeah. And I, I'll grade this on kind of a curve because there is, there's stuff that demands attention at the very top of intensity. And you kinda, you decide, you described, uh, squirrel suit flying and some base jumping. And there was this, um, there was, um, there's a documentary called Valley Uprising. I don't know if you've seen it. It's on, it's on Netflix. It's, uh, it's one of the best documentaries I've seen, and it's basically about the culture growth in Yosemite National Park when climbing came onto the scene. So it starts with all the great climbers and how they developed these routes, and it kinda gets to, um, a guy, interviews Dean Potter, and he's, uh, he's dead now. He died from, I believe, a base jumping accident. Something related to that. Um, but he was an extreme free solo climber. One of the best. And people kinda saw where he was headed with it, and so people attribute that, "Oh, he is just, um, he's just a..." What do you call it? An adrenaline junkie. That- that's- that's generally what gets said, um, about some of these people is that they're, like, just seeking a hit. Like, they're junkies, right? But how he described it was how I describe anything that requires presence, which he's trying to touch a void. So he was specifically talking about, uh, tightwire ro- uh, like tightrope walking.

   2. CWChris Williamson16:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. MBMichael Blevins16:03

      And he'll walk, you know, freely up thousands of feet where any mistake is certain death. Like, any slip. And even, like, certain things, certain, uh, inputs that aren't up to you. The wind direction could shift. Anything could switch you off. And that danger allows him to be totally present and appreciative of his life. It's actually the opposite of what most people attribute to ad- adrenaline junkies, which is, um, "I am risking this on this knife edge because it actually allows me to feel life at this intensity that I can't get doing anything else." But I back that out into, you know, let's call that the sacred space, where everything is so... Like, I don't know if you've ever been to any kind of ceremonial, um, happenings, but they create a space and they clean it and they clear it and everything is precise.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:52

      Ritualistic.

   5. MBMichael Blevins16:53

      Um, it, ritual, right. And like, you know, they smudge and they call in directions and they do all these, you know, very ancient and cultural, uh, traditions. And the idea is that they're creating a container that they can create sacredness inside a profane world. There's a really good book called, uh, The Sacred and the Profane that kinda describes how almost all, uh, all human cultures have this idea of sacred and profane. That... And, um, the interesting part about fitness is that we've kind of lost that. That's- that's why, um, I kind of go against the industry so much, because we've created nothing sacred inside this practice that I think is really sacred, which is intuitively teaching you about your own psychology, your own physicality, your own capability, and eventually your own spirituality. Um, but our gyms have become, for lack of a better term, like masturbation pods. Like, they're just people going to the gym and looking at themselves and either being dis- like shaming themselves or admiring themselves in a narcissistic way. And fitness in the industry is purely aesthetic. Like, we talk about functionality, right? Like, CrossFitters are talking about, "Oh, it's form and function." And-... it's functional because I lift a heavyweight quickly and look how athletic I am. But in reality, if you've ever dealt with CrossFit athletes, 99% of them are dieting before a competition so that they get more camera time. Like, i- it's still the same aesthetic problem. There's very few, um, maybe at the top, where they put aesthetics aside for performance, which is the expression that we're talking about. Um, but on this sacred/profane thing, once I come down to the bottom of the curve where I think that it's not sacred, it's not profane, that's actually still sacred, which is minute practice that's very boring. So, um, where I think the most development comes in is actually some of the monotony. Like, finding, you know, sitting and thinking becomes the most painful... Or sitting and not thinking, rather, becomes one of the most painful experiences somebody could have, because their brain is all over the place. So, uh, in, in the fitness world that we're trying to create, we had to kind of start over. And, and we constantly start over. We deconstruct what works, and then we recreate what we think is better. And so, we're constantly breaking this space down and rebuilding it into something that can transform people. And one of the ways, one of the simplest ideas that allowed that to happen is we got rid of the name for our physical space. So, there is no name. Like, we have a brand that we sell stuff through because we have to file taxes-

   6. CWChris Williamson19:34

      Hmm.

   7. MBMichael Blevins19:34

      ... called Nonprofit, but the space is just called the space. And one of the reasons to do that is that way when people have powerful experiences here i- in a container that we've made sacred, they can't talk about it, right? It, it, it's not, uh, you know, #blessed and #gotinmy, you know, whatever... Uh, I'm gonna flex, show my abs, and then say something inspirational like Gandhi. You know? Like, I don't... It's, it's become, I guess, perverse in a way, and what we wanted to do is rewrite that. So, this space is sacred. People can have experiences and they can talk about the experiences, but they can't talk about the spot that really illuminated that by not having a name. Instead, it's a green building warehouse on Ninth South across from a strip club. And people go, "What are you talking about?" And so no one can find their way here unless they really seek it out, and I think that was the biggest difference that we've made is that we don't advertise. We don't try to push what we're doing, because if people wanna find the thing, they'll, they'll do some really hard work, which means that takes away, you know, me having to convince them that fitness is an important thing, or convince them that hard work is important.

7. 20:49 – 22:54

   Anti-marketing vs authenticity: why the ‘space’ stays small

   1. CWChris Williamson20:49

      What would you say to someone that said all that that is is another marketing ploy that's triggering off different signals? So, some-

   2. MBMichael Blevins20:59

      Hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:59

      ... some gyms are super out there. They've got the, the guys with the tans and the white teeth, and, and then other gyms are, "We're functional, and we've got the fittest athletes," or, "We've got the biggest athletes," or, "We've got the this."

   4. MBMichael Blevins21:10

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:10

      And someone could say, "Well, that's just another, that's just Michael being another step ahead of the curve there and thinking, 'Well, if I make anti-marketing my marketing, then the marketing will work even better-'"

   6. MBMichael Blevins21:23

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:23

      "... because it sets you apart.'"

   8. MBMichael Blevins21:26

      To, to some point, that is true. Um, there, there's a gorilla aspect to this, but I would probably reply, like, "Well, then we would probably have more than seven clients." But, i- if it was, like, a marketing scheme to get people into this place, but in reality, (laughs) there's seven people that are basically allowed on a daily basis to come in and train here. Other days, we might allow a few other guests and whatnot to come train on days that we're training.

   9. CWChris Williamson21:52

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MBMichael Blevins21:53

       But on transformational projects when we take somebody from A to B, we limit it, um, it's very private here. And I mean, yeah, I would say if the anti-marketing was working, um, we would actually be making money off it. But n- we don't. Instead, to support this entire space, we have to create, uh, material such as books and things to read and all of these things in order to support the work that we're doing that then informs the other material that we're writing. It is a terrible business model.

   11. CWChris Williamson22:27

       (laughs)

   12. MBMichael Blevins22:29

       (laughs) It's... We joke about it often. It's like, we're really bad at business. Um-

   13. CWChris Williamson22:33

       Suck at business. Okay. So, I'm-

   14. MBMichael Blevins22:36

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson22:36

       ... I, I walk into your space. For some- somehow, I've got on the guest list. Someone's got me, Elody's got me in VIP or whatever it is-

   16. MBMichael Blevins22:43

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson22:44

       ... and I, (laughs) and I manage to, uh-

   18. MBMichael Blevins22:46

       You're gonna be really disappointed if you think you're VIP if you come in here. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson22:49

       You know what I mean, right? The doorman hasn't-

   20. MBMichael Blevins22:50

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson22:50

       ... the doorman hasn't stopped me at the door before he started his shift at the strip club across the street.

   22. MBMichael Blevins22:54

       Yeah.

8. 22:54 – 27:41

   What happens when you walk in: a month of questions, not workouts

   1. CWChris Williamson22:54

      And, um, I've, I've s- I've got in. What happens? What's it like? Tell me about the space. There's people listening who will know the, the heritage that you guys have through Jim Jones and all that sort of stuff. Like, what, what, you know, what, what happens? I walk in. What's it like?

   2. MBMichael Blevins23:08

      Uh, one, one of the things that we got right at Jim Jones was, um, having an inside and an outside. In here, stuff happens. Out there, other stuff happens. And so, that was the start of understanding a sacred space. Um, and some of the things that we messed up were obvious to us, but, you know, uh, we let too many people in. (laughs) Um, but in reality, when people come in here and they're having this experience, um, it starts with a lot of conversations. And this, this is why... Sorry, I mean, not to use these terms, because it's en vogue, but it's not... What we do is not scalable. Like, there's never gonna be a day where I'm like, "Cool. What we did worked really well 'cause we know it works really well. Therefore, let's just-"

   3. CWChris Williamson23:55

      "Let's roll this out across five sites," yeah.

   4. MBMichael Blevins23:58

      Exactly. It's like, "Hey, let's, like, duplicate me, let's quadruple me."

   5. CWChris Williamson24:02

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MBMichael Blevins24:02

      "Let's just fill up the space. We've got 5,000 square feet. Let's open up another one down the street, which is like Orange Theories or CrossFit gyms down the street." There's no formula for this. So, when people come on, uh, in, it's really off-putting at first, because for a month...... I am just asking questions. And that's all I do. I ask questions, I show them a couple things. I might have them move around a little bit to get a better idea. I ask them about their work life. We have conversations about their past, their history, their traumas, their injuries, all of these things. And after about a month, people start going like, "Hey, how much is this place?" 'Cause I haven't charged anything. So the first month, I actually do due diligence to see if I can actually make it work. The reason we're so successful is because I don't work with people that I don't think I can win with. Like, w- we can both win. If it's not a win-win situation, I don't want anything to do with it. And it takes me about a month to suss that out. To understand their home life, to understand their background, to understand their motivation, and then we just start the process. Um, it, it becomes very one-on-one, but sometimes incorporating groups when they need it. So the idea here that's different than most gyms is, when you go into a gym, like a CrossFit, Box, they have a program, it's the best programming in the world, by the way. It's, like, this master elite weightlifter, Navy SEAL, wrote it and, um, he's been to the games 19 times in five years. And, um, that program is supposed to be for everybody because it's the best in the world. It's the super secret squirrel program. And if you come to this gym, you get to do that with everybody that's a super secret squirrel. And, uh, you know, that's intelligent programming. Look, and they're, it's written two years in advance. Like, it's written like, you know, a doctorate (laughs) . You just, like-

   7. CWChris Williamson25:49

      (laughs)

   8. MBMichael Blevins25:49

      ... your whole, the next four years of your life are planned. You're back squatting in 2024 on a Tuesday at 85%.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:56

      (laughs)

   10. MBMichael Blevins25:57

       And (sniffs) instead, when people come in, I look at them on the day and decide what they need to do. Now, that, that sounds like it's a last minute approach. What we're doing is an intuitive approach to a structure that I've broken down. So when somebody comes in, after about a month of analyzing, I go back and I work out, in order to get to X on this date, they're gonna need this kinda stimulus. It might be, um, three endurance wor- uh, endurance sessions a week, two strength sessions, one body flow session, uh, two, you know, body work sessions where they're actually getting recovery work. I try to plan out everything and then dose it, like, okay, they're, if they're dieting and Erin is running their nutrition and cooking for them, then I'm talking to her in order to slowly break down calorie restriction so they don't ever feel it. Or increase macros in a certain area so they can handle certain adaptations. And then on the day, I have kind of an idea of what needs to get done. You know, during the week, I need these three sessions. And if this day, they walk in and I look in their eyes and they didn't sleep well, well, there goes the high intensity session. Right? Like, that's the last thing I wanna do to somebody, is beat them down so that it's harder to come back. Our model now, as opposed to what we were doing at Gym Jones, which was to literally just fuck people up. Like, that, tha- that's all we were doing, was, like, really hard work, so people were shocked by all the work that we were doing. And we became adapted to this heavy workload and we could tolerate it, so then we'd give it to other people, they would break down and we would just laugh, like, "Ha, see? You're missing something in your fitness."

   11. CWChris Williamson27:31

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MBMichael Blevins27:31

       And that's what most trainers and coaches do when you come in to see them, they, they wanna make you hurt to show them how much you're missing of their knowledge or their expertise.

9. 27:41 – 31:13

   Against ‘pain as proof’: boredom, endurance, and the brain’s adaptations

   1. CWChris Williamson27:41

      So it's used, that pain, I think, often gets used in fitness as a proxy for secret or hard work. But I mean, like, I can write a workout for someone now... I'm not a programmer, I've not got my CrossFit level one, I can write a program for someone now that's impossible to do.

   2. MBMichael Blevins27:59

      For sure.

   3. CWChris Williamson28:00

      And it's ha- and it's hard work. That doesn't mean that I have some-

   4. MBMichael Blevins28:03

      No. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson28:03

      ... super secret squirrel knowledge. Right?

   6. MBMichael Blevins28:05

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:05

      So I, I, I, I-

   8. MBMichael Blevins28:06

      All out, all out minute on the Airdyne every five minutes for an hour.

   9. CWChris Williamson28:10

      Yeah.

   10. MBMichael Blevins28:10

       Like, it's like, yeah, I can make anybody hurt. And that, that's a tool, but in reality, and if you follow Paul Bloom and some o- like, Daniel Kahneman and a lot of these people that are really delving into the psyche and behavioral patterns of people, we find that pain tolerance doesn't come from beat downs, it comes from so- slow accumulated ability. Right? Like, "I tolerated this much. I lived. Cool. It wasn't that bad."

   11. CWChris Williamson28:37

       (laughs)

   12. MBMichael Blevins28:37

       "And then I come back and I do a little bit more." You look at a, an elite endurance athlete, like, somebody like Re- like, Rebecca, uh, Rusch is a perfect example. World champion mountain biker, won Leadville a couple times in a row, she's a Red Bull athlete, she's, she's known as the queen of pain.

   13. CWChris Williamson28:53

       Mm.

   14. MBMichael Blevins28:53

       Like, that is her fucking nickname.

   15. CWChris Williamson28:56

       (laughs) That's badass.

   16. MBMichael Blevins28:57

       She doesn't go and beat herself down every day. She actually goes and enjoys herself in a natural environment on a bike, being physical in the way that she loves to express it.

   17. CWChris Williamson29:08

       Mm.

   18. MBMichael Blevins29:08

       And then on the day, all this accumulated tolerance gets put towards one competition. And of course she's gonna slay everybody. She hasn't had to tap into the hurt locker every day in order to get amount of volume that's required for a professional's got.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:23

       Per- perfect example of that, Eliud Kipchoge never, never trains above 80%. Never.

   20. MBMichael Blevins29:29

       Mm. Right. Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson29:30

       Fastest man on the planet. Fastest man on the planet over 26 miles, never trains above 80% 'cause he's got it in the tank. Now, I wonder how much of that, how much of their particular physiology has that extra 20% in there, you know? Like, to, to raise that ceiling, it takes a, a super, a super physiology to have that in the tank. We were talking, I was talking to Steve Fawcett from CrossFit JSC the other day and he was talking about how the best athletes will qualify for a local competition or whatever it is by only giving 80%, which means they can go back to training. And I was like-

   22. MBMichael Blevins30:03

       Yes.

   23. CWChris Williamson30:03

       ... "Yes. But that's only if your 80% is good enough to be as good as everybody else's 100%."

   24. MBMichael Blevins30:09

       Correct.

   25. CWChris Williamson30:10

       Or else you haven't qualified, right?

   26. MBMichael Blevins30:12

       No.

   27. CWChris Williamson30:12

       So, and I, I, I think that's a really interesting point. Like, you know, how do we, how do people...... continue to improve, continue to get themselves better without, like you say, just force-feeding themselves with this pain. And, and, and using pain as a proxy for hard work.

   28. MBMichael Blevins30:30

       So, this is where the boredom and monotony pays off. Like, there is something structurally that changes in the brain with enough boredom. And th- like, um, if you've ever read a book called Endure, um, we had him on the-

   29. CWChris Williamson30:44

       Alfred Lan- Alfred Lansing.

   30. MBMichael Blevins30:46

       Alex Hutchinson.
10. 31:13 – 43:45

    Mapping physiology to psychology: sympathetic strength vs parasympathetic endurance

    1. MBMichael Blevins31:13

       And f- and fitness in general. And this is where I said, like, there's something in there in his book, and we've noticed it, is that if it's not boring, it's not working for endurance. What you're, there's this ability, and maybe I'll phrase this on a bigger spectrum for which we work because we work in general fitness and capacity, GPP.

    2. CWChris Williamson31:33

       Mm-hmm.

    3. MBMichael Blevins31:33

       General physical preparedness means that we want to be capable in each of the designated energy systems as we know them, so we've redefined a lot of them, but as they go, strength, maybe it's called power endurance for some people, maybe it's called, for us it's capacity, maybe it's MetCon, whatever, it's like this 90-minute thing.

    4. CWChris Williamson31:54

       Mm-hmm.

    5. MBMichael Blevins31:54

       And then there's endurance and then there's ultra-endurance and in between are fettered with really ridiculous terms like speed endurance, who the hell knows what that means.

    6. CWChris Williamson32:03

       Mm-hmm.

    7. MBMichael Blevins32:03

       And then there's strength endurance is just another way to describe-

    8. CWChris Williamson32:07

       It's the three, it's the three rep max. Call it a three rep max.

    9. MBMichael Blevins32:09

       Yeah. (laughs)

    10. CWChris Williamson32:10

        (laughs)

    11. MBMichael Blevins32:10

        I wish it was this simple. Uh, but we- we basically bastardize our terminology, but we do address, okay, this is the systems.

    12. CWChris Williamson32:17

        Mm-hmm.

    13. MBMichael Blevins32:17

        Um, but we chart on top of that. One of the things that I think that we're most well-known for is taking stuff like the physiology and mapping on, um, a psychological map as well as a philosophical map on top of that. Like overlays. If you imagine, you had a bunch of those, forgot what they call them, uh, where they have a projector and those clear screens or whatever.

    14. CWChris Williamson32:41

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    15. MBMichael Blevins32:41

        And you can kind of lay them and they should all line up. And one of the ones that we've reached psychologically, um, is that each, each thing takes a different temperament. So strength is on a very sympathetic fight-flight, that's an energy system, it's ATP, it's creatine phosphate, it's this immediate go-to. The presence, it's self-preservation. Like if you've ever lifted anything really heavy, when it's getting shaky leg and you're starting to do, like, you know, a little bit of palsy at the top just past the knee and you're trying to struggle to get that up-

    16. CWChris Williamson33:12

        Mm.

    17. MBMichael Blevins33:12

        ... your immediate feedback is let go because you could hurt yourself. Self-preservation is an immediate task for that. So ultimately, we find with most athletes that are in that channel, they're very self-involved actually. And not, not as, not to say that as a pejorative, it just means that in order to get good at their sport, they have to be present inside their self, and their self has to be the existing thing that is most important. But to an extreme point, that, uh, sympathetic state becomes narcissism, right? All importance. And you see it when, when somebody, like, pulls a super heavy deadlift and like, you know, he's thumping his chest, it's a, not an egomaniacal, but it's a very ego presence that that person is the most, "He did it. He is the champion."

    18. CWChris Williamson33:59

        Mm-hmm.

    19. MBMichael Blevins33:59

        And then on the opposite side, we have ultra-endurance which w- runs into the multi-day, and even you can see this after a couple of hours, you'll see, you know, Kipchoge or, like, any of these runners, they cross the finish line and they're in tears. They're breaking down. They lost their sense of self.

    20. CWChris Williamson34:13

        Mm.

    21. MBMichael Blevins34:14

        And that's because we find endurance happens in a s- parasympathetic state which is loss of self, loss of ego. If you've ever messed with psychedelics, it's eco-death, which is a deep parasympathetic state, or you could breathing drills to get you there. Pranayama, breath of fire, all of these things reinforce a state where I have lost my sense of self, I have separated from my body, and I've become one with the universe or whatever you want to describe it as.

    22. CWChris Williamson34:38

        Mm.

    23. MBMichael Blevins34:38

        And so as we map these things, we understand that certain states are good for certain people at certain times. Not everybody needs to run in a ultra-endurance, but if your job is very, uh, self-centered, uh, sympathetic, you know, maybe you work, uh, at a hedge fund where everything is immediate and your sense of accomplishment is very personal.

    24. CWChris Williamson34:59

        Mm.

    25. MBMichael Blevins34:59

        Um, is your answer gonna be CrossFit and, and powerlifting? Because you're just like multiplying the amount that you're in that state, and when you compound that with your commute to work or the fact that, "Hey, I've got to be at my hedge fund at, you know, 6:00 AM to start before everybody else starts, so I wake up to an alarm at 4:30, I get in my car with caffeine, cortisol's running, sympathetic stays up, I'm in traffic, I'm swearing at people, I get to the office, I'm late, I do all this stuff, and then I'm like, oh, it's noon, I gotta get my workout in. So I run down to a CrossFit gym, I blast an 11-minute MetCon, crush it, give everybody a high five, get back to the office, finish work, get back in traffic, go home, and now I wonder why I feel like I'm diseased."

    26. CWChris Williamson35:42

        (laughs)

    27. MBMichael Blevins35:42

        "'Cause I can't sleep then." And you're like, you're just compounding this state. And in reality, like, hey, maybe we should, you know, maybe the... Eh, especially if you, if that's working for you, by all means, like, if you're-

    28. CWChris Williamson35:54

        Mm-hmm.

    29. MBMichael Blevins35:54

        ... I don't know, a Jocko character and waking up at 4:30 and crushing the day is the answer-

    30. CWChris Williamson35:59

        Mm-hmm.
11. 43:45 – 1:07:04

    Identity, personas, and transformation friction (actors, athletes, and everyone)

    1. CWChris Williamson43:45

       ... because I w- I had, I had Aubrey Marcus on and, um, he, uh, first off, everyone that's listening will know what that episode was like and if you haven't already heard it, I implore you to go back and listen, number 117, one of the best 60 minutes of conversation that I've ever put out. And, um, he started talking about one of his fears for actors. And he said that because they're constantly playing a role-

    2. MBMichael Blevins44:09

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson44:10

       ... he was talking about how the persona is incapable of receiving love. Capable of receiving praise, but it's incapable of receiving love, because love is something, it's speaking to you, speaking to who you are as a person, right? It's about-

    4. MBMichael Blevins44:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson44:23

       ... "I see you, I see the values that you have." And love is something that requires honesty. When people are playing a persona, which is literally an actor's job, but-

    6. MBMichael Blevins44:32

       Mm-hmm.

    7. CWChris Williamson44:32

       ... everybody that's floating around, to one degree or another, your ego is, uh, mediating that id, right? It's stopping the id from coming out and being all visceral and just meaning that you run across the road and get hit by a car or whatever. Um, and that- that's, everyone has this degree of persona. And I think that-

    8. MBMichael Blevins44:50

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson44:50

       ... that's one of the reasons why you have actors who seemingly incredibly, incredibly successful, how could he be depressed, how could he be this? It's because they don't-

    10. MBMichael Blevins44:59

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson44:59

        They feel love for the characters. People don't love Gerard Butler.

    12. MBMichael Blevins45:03

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CWChris Williamson45:03

        People love King Leonidas. They don't love... Do you know what I mean?

    14. MBMichael Blevins45:06

        Yeah, that's-

    15. CWChris Williamson45:06

        It's only when you're able to transcend that and actually have... Uh, I suppose this is one good, good advert- for the advent of social media, is that now actors are able to flesh out that personality-

    16. MBMichael Blevins45:17

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson45:17

        ... a little bit and be more than just, uh, the maximus dutius thingies.

    18. MBMichael Blevins45:24

        Ripped. Yeah. (laughs)

    19. CWChris Williamson45:26

        Yeah.

    20. MBMichael Blevins45:26

        Y- absolutely. I, I think I would take it one step farther and be like, I wouldn't worry about actors. Everybody has a persona. Like, we are all just characters.

    21. CWChris Williamson45:34

        Mm-hmm.

    22. MBMichael Blevins45:34

        And I don't know if you've ever seen, um, Andy and Me, I think it's called, uh, with Jim Carrey when he was... Uh, it's a documentary about-

    23. CWChris Williamson45:43

        Oh.

    24. MBMichael Blevins45:43

        ... Jim Carrey preparing to play Ben Affleck.

    25. CWChris Williamson45:45

        Yes, when he's playing and, and he doesn't, he doesn't switch off.

    26. MBMichael Blevins45:47

        He doesn't. And like-

    27. CWChris Williamson45:48

        (laughs)

    28. MBMichael Blevins45:48

        ... it is so profound. And maybe I'll ruin it, spoiler alert.

    29. CWChris Williamson45:52

        No, that's fine.

    30. MBMichael Blevins45:53

        In the end, when he's talking about it and he goes, "I realized in a moment that I had become Andy and people saw Andy in me and I realized I didn't know who I was anymore because I didn't know who Jim Carrey was. Jim Carrey was just another mask that I needed to try to fit on and get used to again." Which is terrifying. That, that is ego depletion, that's, yeah, a loss of self, a loss of identity. It's also, in the extreme points, known as schizophrenia.
12. 1:07:04 – 1:17:19

    From ‘Fitness is Fucked’ to directives: manuals, definition of strength, and endurance-as-love

    1. MBMichael Blevins1:07:04

       to fitness until this year. Um, uh, in fact, our, our symposium is called Fitness is Fucked. (laughs) So, it gives you an idea of like how we-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:07:12

       Are you just, sorry to interject there, are you only doing that in the UK or are you doing it in the US as well?

    3. MBMichael Blevins1:07:17

       Uh, we're doing, so we mostly just do the symposiums in the US. The one that we have planned for the UK, we actually just had to cancel because of the fucking corona scare.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:07:26

       Are you kidding?

    5. MBMichael Blevins1:07:26

       It's just-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:07:27

       Oh, I didn't know. That sucks for you.

    7. MBMichael Blevins1:07:28

       Yeah, it's ... Well, it's, it hurts on two parts because I know it's ridiculous. Um, but it hurts on another part, is because I am now, because I canceled it, I feel like I added into the panic. Even though it was just, it wasn't-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:07:44

       Oh, yeah, yeah

    9. NANarrator1:07:45

       Okay.

    10. MBMichael Blevins1:07:45

        ... possible for us, right? Like, it was just like, "Look, people aren't traveling to do this stuff, so if we can't fill out a seminar, we can't come there." Um, and it just doesn't look like it was moving. So we just postponed it. Hopefully, after, we'll come back 'cause the UK, we have quite a large audience in the UK.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:08:01

        Shout out Paul O'Leary.

    12. MBMichael Blevins1:08:02

        Um, yeah, Paul's a good one. He's largely responsible for that. So he comes to our symposiums here. That's how Elodie got involved. Um, she came out, uh, to a symposium last fall. And, um, those symposiums, although we call them Fitness or Fucked, people realized really quickly that we're not talking about fitness, um, unless we're talking about the industry. When you come to the symposium, it's structured that the first day is dialogue. And we don't have (laughs) ... This has changed in the past year. We do not have material to teach, uh, which was very terrifying for us at fart, at, at the very start. Because most people that teach a seminar, "Hey, come learn these points that I've dictated that you should know."

    13. CWChris Williamson1:08:42

        Mm-hmm.

    14. MBMichael Blevins1:08:42

        And what dawned on me last year was that I don't wanna teach like that. I wanna know what people wanna know that we can do and then we'll go down that. But to get to that point, we just have to ask questions 'cause people don't know what they wanna know.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:08:54

        Mm-hmm.

    16. MBMichael Blevins1:08:54

        And so it starts, for the first three hours, we're just bouncing questions off of people. You know, "Why are you here? What, (laughs) what are you doing? What do you wanna know? What's worth knowing? What's, what is it to understand something?" We go down these really deep concentrated things that eventually we, we end up in a very similar place each time. But then people will understand our thinking when you come to subject. So the next day, when we're actually talking about fitness and how to progress it and, you know, how, how to set somebody up to learn about themselves, they have this, you know, 12-hour conversation to backbone it. And now-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:09:26

        It's a lot of context, right?

    18. MBMichael Blevins1:09:28

        Yeah, exactly. So as opposed to, "Run at this heart rate for this long," that's just an abstraction. That's just an easy way for me to get out of responsibility of actually teaching somebody. But if I actually teach somebody, I'm teaching them to be sensitive and to pay attention to their personal organism, which is, "What does it feel like right now? Can you talk to me during this effort?" Like, heart rate's a part of it. "Is it above this? So what happens if ..." You know, and, and this is a really cool experiment you can do with people. We're doing steady state stuff, so I want you to stay at around 70% max heart rate and then we're gonna try to express efficiency in whatever modality you wanna get good at, running, biking, et cetera, whatever. Let's take biking. So, okay, you're spinning, you're at 140 for 45 minutes, everything is fine. I come over, I chat with you. I take my half glass of whatever I'm drinking and I set it on the edge of a box next to you, and it's halfway on the edge so it looks like it's about to fall. Immediately, that person's heart rate will escalate. Their response to the same stimulus will escalate because their brain has just taken on another task. It needs to stop that glass from falling.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:10:34

        Mm.

    20. MBMichael Blevins1:10:34

        And so what we do is try to teach people, in that space, all of these things personally. Right? If you're just running every day, that's fine, that works, you get pretty fit. But if you're running thinking about work and all your other responsibilities, you're not actually trying to get efficient at something. So we teach people to clear their thought process, uh, to create a sacred space in which they can become good at something, and then we enter a distraction. So, it's like an advanced meditative process, right? We bring in distractions, come back to the breath, come back to the breathing, come back to the focus, think of nothing. Something comes up, that's okay. Acknowledge it, but don't worry about it. The glass is not in your control. Physics will take care of it. And if it breaks, your effort still needs to be done. So if something goes wrong, you need to keep doing. You need to keep going. You need ... And our, you know, definition of endurance is you need to see something through to the end. The same thing is true with strength. Strength, and this is, uh, we recently came out with our strength manual. Um, and basically people asked for a long time, "Hey, will you write some programming?"

    21. CWChris Williamson1:11:35

        (laughs)

    22. MBMichael Blevins1:11:35

        I refused to do it.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:11:36

        (laughs)

    24. MBMichael Blevins1:11:37

        Mostly people just wanna-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:11:38

        Michael, for the, M- Michael, for the love of God, can you just teach us some fitness for once, please?

    26. MBMichael Blevins1:11:43

        (laughs) Yeah, yeah, just quit talking about physics and dumb shit.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:11:46

        Yeah.

    28. MBMichael Blevins1:11:46

        Um, well, I thought about it and I thought, "You know, what I could do ..." Because what happens is I say, "No, we don't teach fitness. I'm not gonna write a program," what happens is people just go to the next shitty program.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:11:56

        Mm.

    30. MBMichael Blevins1:11:56

        Right? And then they're, like, trying to take our concepts and apply 'em to some other thing.

Episode duration: 1:41:55