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

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   ... "Hey, I got…

   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.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:40

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

   25. 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.

   26. 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.

   27. MBMichael Blevins2:56

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson2:56

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

   29. 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.

   30. CWChris Williamson3:13

       We are here. This is the deep conversation, Michael. Let's fall down the rabbit hole, my friend.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. MBMichael Blevins15:00

      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.

   8. 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-

   9. MBMichael Blevins20:59

      Hmm.

   10. 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."

   11. MBMichael Blevins21:10

       Mm-hmm.

   12. 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-'"

   13. MBMichael Blevins21:23

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson21:23

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

   15. 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.

   16. CWChris Williamson21:52

       Mm-hmm.

   17. 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.

   18. CWChris Williamson22:27

       (laughs)

   19. MBMichael Blevins22:29

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

   20. CWChris Williamson22:33

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

   21. MBMichael Blevins22:36

       (laughs)

   22. 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-

   23. MBMichael Blevins22:43

       (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson22:44

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

   25. MBMichael Blevins22:46

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

   26. CWChris Williamson22:49

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

   27. MBMichael Blevins22:50

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson22:50

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

   29. MBMichael Blevins22:54

       Yeah.

   30. 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?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yes. …

   1. CWChris Williamson30:00

      only giving 80%, which means they can go back to training. And I was like-

   2. MBMichael Blevins30:03

      Yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:03

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

   4. MBMichael Blevins30:09

      Correct.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:10

      Or else you haven't qualified, right?

   6. MBMichael Blevins30:12

      No.

   7. 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.

   8. 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-

   9. CWChris Williamson30:44

      Alfred Lan- Alfred Lansing.

   10. MBMichael Blevins30:46

       Alex Hutchinson.

   11. CWChris Williamson30:47

       Oh, Endurance by Alex Hutchinson. Yes. He's a, he's a monster.

   12. MBMichael Blevins30:52

       It- yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson30:52

       What a guy.

   14. MBMichael Blevins30:53

       Um, we had him on the podcast after we read his book mostly because he wrote, he wrote about Mark and then never consulted Mark, so Mark has a thing, he's like, "Hey, we gotta have a conversation."

   15. CWChris Williamson31:01

       (laughs)

   16. MBMichael Blevins31:02

       Um, and it went well because we, we agree on a lot of the same techniques in a, like, a lot of the phenomena that's behind building great endurance has to do with the brain.

   17. CWChris Williamson31:13

       Mm.

   18. 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.

   19. CWChris Williamson31:33

       Mm-hmm.

   20. 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.

   21. CWChris Williamson31:54

       Mm-hmm.

   22. 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.

   23. CWChris Williamson32:03

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MBMichael Blevins32:03

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

   25. CWChris Williamson32:07

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

   26. MBMichael Blevins32:09

       Yeah. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson32:10

       (laughs)

   28. 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.

   29. CWChris Williamson32:17

       Mm-hmm.

   30. 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.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

      the characters. People don't love Gerard Butler.

   2. MBMichael Blevins45:03

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:03

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

   4. MBMichael Blevins45:06

      Yeah, that's-

   5. 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-

   6. MBMichael Blevins45:17

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:17

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

   8. MBMichael Blevins45:24

      Ripped. Yeah. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson45:26

      Yeah.

   10. 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.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:34

       Mm-hmm.

   12. 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-

   13. CWChris Williamson45:43

       Oh.

   14. MBMichael Blevins45:43

       ... Jim Carrey preparing to play Ben Affleck.

   15. CWChris Williamson45:45

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

   16. MBMichael Blevins45:47

       He doesn't. And like-

   17. CWChris Williamson45:48

       (laughs)

   18. MBMichael Blevins45:48

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

   19. CWChris Williamson45:52

       No, that's fine.

   20. 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.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:20

       Mm-hmm.

   22. MBMichael Blevins46:21

       And so a lot of these practices that we do, we risk schizophrenia in order to establish an identity. And that, we talk about identity from this sense, because we see it with athletes, and actors too, um, actors, it's a little bit more obvious. But let's say that you've been racing bikes since you were 19 and you're a professional bike racer, you've been to the Tour de France, and you retire at 35. Who are you? Like, y- you have just lost everything that you were appreciated for. We see it in the military all the time. You spend $10 million on an asset to learn the, you know, the deadly skills of being an SOF guy. And you go over there and you do, you know, democratic whatever, and you come back and nobody gives a shit, you need to work at Starbucks. Like, you're one of the most expensive, educated people on the planet at killing people-

   23. CWChris Williamson47:15

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MBMichael Blevins47:15

       ... or doing whatever job is required, and you come back and there is no use for your skills in society.

   25. CWChris Williamson47:20

       Yeah.

   26. MBMichael Blevins47:21

       And so you have a loss, there's no acceptance there. You need to figure out a persona. Um, and everybody goes through this, it's, so it's not just actors. Although, actors are kind of the obvious one just because they're pretending to be somebody else.

   27. CWChris Williamson47:34

       It's their profession, right?

   28. MBMichael Blevins47:35

       Yeah. (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson47:35

       They are forced into this persona all the time. I wanna, I wanna sit in this point. We're supposed to be talking about-

   30. MBMichael Blevins47:40

       Yep.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00:00

      things will happen. The people that we love will die. Literally, the only thing that we all know is that one day all of this will be gone. It's the subject of, um, the poet Rilke and I think it's Freud walking through a garden. It's a, a short essay called On Transience. Rilke looks like he's gonna cry, and turns to him and says like, "What, what's wrong?" And he says, "I just... I can't believe the fact that one day all of this is going to be gone. Isn't it such a tragedy that all of this is going to be gone and that one day you'll be dead and I'll be dead, and all of this will literally decay into..."

   2. MBMichael Blevins1:00:28

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

      And he didn't know heat death, but that's, you know, that's the long-

   4. MBMichael Blevins1:00:30

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:30

      ... the long, long, long story of that. And it is, you know, i- is a, is a tragedy f- to have that.

   6. MBMichael Blevins1:00:38

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:00:39

      But as we go through our life and as bad things happen to us... A good example for me that I've been reflecting on recently is I've been injured, so I've had two bulging discs, L3 and S1, which has meant I haven't basically been able to do fitness.... who am I without my fitness? That's a question I've asked myself.

   8. MBMichael Blevins1:00:53

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson1:00:53

      You know, 18 months, 18 months of being the, the kid with the water wings on in the corner of the room, like, doing another round of side plank and bird dog and, you know, like, core stiffening.

   10. MBMichael Blevins1:01:02

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:01:02

       I went to go see Dr. Stu McGill in Canada, flew all the way to Canada to go and see him.

   12. MBMichael Blevins1:01:06

       Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, that's amazing.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:01:07

       Um, he's a beast. Um, and, you know, I did, I- I- I did this stuff, and I'm thinking, "Fuck, like, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks." And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody as a personal development strategy.

   14. MBMichael Blevins1:01:17

       Hmm. Hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:01:17

       Like, it- it- it sucked, it sucked dick. But first thing it taught me was who I am without my fitness, and the second thing that it taught me was reflecting on that means that I can now tell the people that I, that listen to this podcast and the people that I know, "Look, if something happens to you where you get something that you thought was so core to your being..." You know, something I'd done for 13 years that was, "I'm the fitness guy, I'm the guy that's in shape." Not only is my routine around that, my personality is around that, wrapped around that, blah, blah, blah. Like, who am I without my fitness? But now I can say to the people that are listening, "Look, like, it will be okay. It's going to be fine because your desire for growth and your desire for progression will naturally, like a vacuum, it will suck other stuff into it." And then when you get whatever you've just lost back, when you develop it, and you now have conscious competence of that particular thing, you're so much more appreciative of it. Like, today, I went in class. Class was a, a million things that I'm not supposed to do, from Dr. McGill, so I couldn't do any of them. So I had, like, a poly bar. I was doing, like, snatch pulls with a poly bar in class.

   16. MBMichael Blevins1:02:21

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson1:02:21

       And this guy's, like, flinging 80 kilos around and blah, blah, and I'm like, "Fuck, like, I'm doing it. Like, I get to do fitness. This is fitness."

   18. MBMichael Blevins1:02:28

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:02:29

       Like, I know that it's, like, the, the most nerfed child version of fitness that anyone's ever seen, but I got to do it, and I was like, "Fuck, like, imagine what it's gonna be like when I can pick up 200, 200 kilos again," you know?

   20. MBMichael Blevins1:02:40

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:02:40

       And, and, and that, being able to transcend the suffering that you've had by telling other people, by using the experience that you've had to then teach other people how they can expedite transcending that same suffering or an analogous suffering or whatever it might be is the ultimate middle finger to anything bad that's ever happened to you. Had an experience with depression, had an experience with a family member dying, had an experience where something that you cared about got taken away from you, if you take that learning, distill it down into something really valuable, and then teach it to someone else so that it makes their life better, that is you just going, "Fuck you. Like, you thought that you had me. Not only have you not got me, but you don't have this person either."

   22. MBMichael Blevins1:03:20

       That's, uh, I mean, it falls in line with, I think, uh, Stuart McGill, uh, called it the, like, the gift of injury. And that's, a lot of it is like-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:03:28

       Ryan Carroll, yeah.

   24. MBMichael Blevins1:03:28

       This... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could, it could be, and this, this comes back to the depression topic. It's really rare that you meet somebody that is very well off, um, financially and whatever, whatever we wanna conclude that success is for that person, and that they don't have symptoms of depression. In fact, suicide is more rampant in, um, those middle ranges of successful incomes, middle, high range, than in any other demographic. And you have to wonder at what point, why does that happen? And, and a lot of it has to do with, um, bad th- And this, again, you don't wanna wish... This, this is my... Uh, my argument with Sam Harris on philosophy, the point is to reduce suffering. And I go, "Man, you'll really reduce people's ability to know themselves." And so although you don't wish it on anybody, and some suffering, man, you really want, you wanna have compassion, empathy, and stop it for that person. But really what you're stopping is their own development. I- Suffering is gonna happen. And, and if it doesn't, how good would it be? Uh, and again, this is like, it comes back to my problem with the idea that the soul is infinite or that we are gonna live forever in a happy ever, and everything is happiness, that everything is just so good. Well, do you know what? Like, five days of nothing but the best everything makes you not appreciate the best of everything. So it becomes no- It becomes nothing. So if you have all good experiences all the time, you have no experiences all the time because you have nothing to compare that to. We need polarity in order to understand the universe. You need up and down, light and dark. You need all these concepts. This is, this is philosophically sound where you won't appreciate anything unless you have its opposite. So it's tough to say, uh, you know, "Man, I, I do wanna teach people." In fact, I, I think it was Peter Thiel, like his quote is, like, um, "Any idiot can learn from their own experiences. It takes a truly intelligent person to learn from others."

   25. CWChris Williamson1:05:34

       Yeah.

   26. MBMichael Blevins1:05:35

       Um, which is true, but also there's some visceral things that you just have to learn on your own. And I think being injured is one of those. I, uh, when I was bike racing back in the day, I fell in a time trial and I shattered my elbow, like 27 fragments. It was close to it amputating. If I had tore one more ligament, they would've just amputated it. But they did this weird surgery to get it back. And I'm a fairly physical person, and their first thing was like, "Well, that's over with."

   27. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

       (laughs)

   28. MBMichael Blevins1:06:02

       "Like, you're not gonna do that anymore."

   29. CWChris Williamson1:06:03

       (laughs)

   30. MBMichael Blevins1:06:04

       And it was almost like, "Uh-oh." Like (laughs) how, like, what, how do you even go about it? But the lessons are, A, you aren't what you do. Like, you, your activities are not you. They are just something that you process. And I think it's also true to recognize that you are not a noun. You are not a thing. Like, you are not... We say a person, place, or thing. That's a noun. That's not true. That's, that's a, that's to help grammar work correctly in sentence structure, but it is not true. You are not a thing. You don't just exist. Nothing is a thing. It's all process. All of this is just process. Everything is just moving all the time. And this is, actually might lead, a segue into, uh, how we got back into the fitness space, because we obviously speak esoterically very easily. We go off on these wormholes in our podcast about...... different topics, cultural affairs, all of these things. And we have really denied the request to add anything 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-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:17:19

   Section 6

   1. MBMichael Blevins1:15:00

      it correctly. And so, we went back and kind of reiterated why we hold things. Um, why isometric contraction is so important, why gymnastics is probably the greatest expression of strength. And I know that'll make a lot of people mad. They're like, "Ooh, the back squat's the king of exercises." Although has, like, 90% of it is not applicable to 99% of the sports. So, the- (laughs) just, I'm gonna get on a, like a Mike Boyle thing and people will eviscerate me for my, uh, degrading the squat. But in reality, it can teach you some things abstractly. But lifting weight is a level removed from contracting and holding the body, and this is the hardest thing to teach. It's like, the dog is not the dog, right? The- if I write the word "dog" down, it's not a dog itself. And that's how we've created strength. We've said, "A 400-pound back squat is strong," but that's a arbitrary abstraction for the expression of holding. And so instead, what we try to do is remember that if I need to push against something, it means I'm not developed correctly because I can't control the contraction in my own body. Once I can contract to 100% or whatever your marker is for the expression of strength, it means I have control over my body. I have the will to make a contract in the way and hold against the things that I want to hold against. Whether that's in an MMA fight and somebody puts me up against a cage and I need to hold my position, or it's holding my spine in a dead lift. Whatever, whatever the thing is, hold- strength is a foundation for the expression of power. And so, power comes only after I can hold my position and my stabilization in order to express power. But people go about it differently. I went about it by expressing power first because I'm fairly good at snatching and clean and jerking, and that felt better for my ego. But I'll always use a- uh, lose a clean on the squat because I'm not strong. My spine is unable to hold a position that's necessary to stand it up. So, in learning this ourselves, we're able to now apply it to other people. Our strength training looks wildly different than it did 10 years ago. And that's not because the stuff that we were doing before was wrong, we were just insensitive to what needed to be focused on.

Episode duration: 1:41:55