The Truth Behind Contrast Training with Patrick Coyne

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 248. Today, Merilee Simpson, your host, will be talking about the truth behind Contrast Training with guest Patrick Coyne. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance, performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Patrick Coyne is the owner of Black Sheep Performance located in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a former All American in Division 1 quarterback and a professional model. Patrick founded Black Sheep Performance to offer high end training to individuals of all ages and backgrounds. In this interview, Patrick shares his journey from being a professional athlete to becoming the owner of Black Sheep Performance. He discusses the founding pillars of his gym, the SSA method, and how he creates a culture of inclusivity for his clients. Patrick also talks about the importance of inducing healthy stress, building resilience and the role they play in the training process that Additionally, he discusses his new business venture, Contrast Studio, which aims to help people with mental health issues through biohacking. Let's dive in.

What's up, Patrick? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

Yes, ma', am. I'm doing well. How are you? Thanks for having me.

I'm doing so good. I'm really excited to dive into today's conversation. So for those of you who have not had or been introduced to the pleasure of your work, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

So my name is Patrick Coyne. I'm 30 years old. I am the proud owner of Black Sheep Performance located in Cincinnati, Ohio. And I do say very proudly, we're the best Midwest or the best performance biomechanical gym in the Midwest. We're located in Blue Ash, Ohio. We have 17 employees. Started in 2018 on the side of a house. No startup money, no nothing. I'm 100% owner. Raised every dollar by myself. Created the culture with my wife and my best friend who is now my president. I was a former All American and Division 1 quarterback. I partied a lot. My career did not turn out how I wanted it to and I was always injured. Granted, partying did play a role, but I wanted to figure out how I could bring the next generation of athletes not to make the same mistakes I did. And that's where I came up with kind of the founding steps or the founding pillars, rather a black sheep. I lived in Miami Beach. I was a professional model for a while. Did not like the way that the back end of that industry worked. So I literally moved home, moved back in with my parents, with my now amazing wife and started training people for free on the side of a house. I wanted to offer very high end training. I spent time at Lando Performance in Denver, Colorado where I actually met my wife. Lived there for two years and left there with my tailbone. My legs didn't feel like I was legit. I needed to be. So when I moved back to Cincinnati, I realized there was a massive gap in very high end performance training. So people learning to walk again, knee replacement, hip replacement, all these things. And also there was nowhere for the big time professional athletes to go in the city of Cincinnati. So I wanted to service all of those individuals. So we say we specialize from 9 to 9. We win the whole entire family. And I specialize in human optimization. As long as you want to better yourself spiritually, mentally and physically. We don't have specific clients. I don't care if you're a bodybuilder. We have bodybuilders. We have widows that are 91 years old. We have Joe Burrow, we have Rose Lavelle. We have huge names. All the way down to someone who's in the band and just wants to feel better about themselves and get into a community like themselves.

I love that. So would you mind diving into the founding pillars specifically around your, your, your method, your, you know, what, what it is that black sheep stands for?

Yeah. So Black Sheep performance. So I was bullied very badly as a child. So my big thing in layman's terms is that I wanted to create a culture around people who are different. And different is not a bad thing. People, the outliers of the room, people taking themselves seriously, making goal lists, actually wanting something out of life. And in today's society, people post about their accomplishments, but they get made fun of for when they're posting things on their way up, when they're spending time learning they're not getting paid attention to. I mean, you're kind of left in the background. You're a true black sheep in your community. If you really want to make something out of your. I wanted to build a culture of a gym to where people could walk in and absolutely be themselves and push themselves to supreme being. So what we believe in is called ssa. So the founding pillars of the training at Black Sheep is I'm a former bodybuilder, former Division 1 athlete. I didn't move well when I was a bodybuilder, didn't feel well as an athlete. And I think there's a big combination of hyperpagery and actually performance style training. You know, there's first, you have your French contrast, you have your pap, you have all these fancy words. But at the end of the day, I like to dumb it down to, like I said, is what we call ssa. So we believe in very. Inducing very healthy stress. Stress is a good thing, it's not always a bad thing. So once we introduce stress, if you introduce. So say you pulled your hamstring. I actually pulled my hamstring yesterday doing sprints. I do sprints every single week. Freak accidents happen. Let me train hard enough. So now that I've induced a certain amount of stress to give myself an injury, I now have to have the stress has to be greater to heal the injury than the injury itself. So I have to create a stimulus around the stress. So once I create the stress, I create a stimulus. The stimulus kickstarts that change. And if I can make enough of a stimulus, I actually make an adaptation. Where's that A come in. So for stress stimulus and adaptation of black sheet performance. And again, if you're a client, we have some clients that have lost over 200 pounds. You are going to run, you are going to learn how to march, you're going to learn how to shuffle, you're going to learn how to backpedal and extend your hip. Just because the best athletes in the world do these drills doesn't mean that biomechanically, every human being doesn't have to earn the right again to sprint, to jump, to rotate, to throw. That's all the fountain of use and that's what we make all our clients do.

Okay, so I'm really curious about how you move through, you know, create boundaries and move through the process of creating enough stress that could potentially cause like you say an injury, but it almost sounded like you're doing it in a way where it's like, hey, we, we welcome that because that means that we're working hard enough. And I feel like in our industry there's so much focus right now, this huge shift around like rehab and most people spend their, you know, hour of training rolling around on the floor. So, so how, and I don't mean to make that sound critical, I just, no it's okay.

It's true.

How do you get your clients on board to not fear injury?

Essentially, I think fear or injury, and fear comes from past trauma. There's something inhibiting you from a massive amount of growth. And I think spending time with your client and being a client facing industry that we're in, you have to pay attention to those things. And if you pay close enough attention in your assessment, and I make all my clients jog when I meet them, I always try to see and put them through certain movement patterns that they would be, you know. What have you not done in a while? Well, I haven't ran. Okay, well, let's address that issue. Why not? It could be from a spouse passing when they used to run all the time. So now we have to deal with the emotional stress portion of it. But when I go back to stress is I'm not a true west side conjugate guy. I did take a lot of things from Lily Simmons and pardon my French, weak shit breaks. And yes, it's amazing to be able to touch your toes and to bend and to contort and do all of these fancy. You know, we use hip cars, we do these controlled, articulate rotations, we do pails and rails. But that's not the whole workout. You know, we. We've had it right for a long time. The lunges, the squats, the rows, the overhead throws, the presses, rotations, flexion, extension, all these things, they have a place and we don't have to try to reinvent the wheel. So I think one, having a very proper assessment, knowing your client. Two, actually knowing your anatomy and not just throwing stuff on the wall and seeing if it sticks. But three, understanding and getting your client to buy into let's get strong. There's never been anyone that's been too strong. And I don't want to make you look a bodybuilder. I don't want to make you look like Ronnie Coleman. I don't want you to deadlift £750. But I want you to be strong in all planes of motion. I want you to be strong on one leg, on two legs. I want your wrist and your fingers to be strong again, to be able to do push ups and chin ups. Obviously, no grip strength is a direct correlation to blood pressure and health. As we get older and older. So inducing people to almost playing and lifting and moving like a kid. Again, it's one, it's endorphin based. But two, I think when you stop doing things like running and moving and climbing and hanging and again, just because I'm talking about this is. I'm not just a true, I don't even know the word for that type of trainer. We're not doing gymnastics. We're not just tumbling our people. There is deadlifts, there is squats, there is RFEs, there's all these things. But there has to be almost the play inducement into our program that induces a healthy amount of stress. But again, you can't hold your body weight from a bar for 10 to 15 seconds. Why are we going to start trying to progress you to a deadlift and a squat and all these things that I don't think you're really ready for?

Okay, so I love this. Would you mind diving into your assessment because it sounds like it's something different than we typically usually, than we typically hear. You know, we typically are like, oh, can you touch your toes? What's your range of motion in your shoulders?

You're having the true fms. The true FMS screening. The sit and reach. Your internal external rotation. Internal external rotation of the femur of the hip of each joint. I always start my clients on the ground. I always start my clients on the ground. I don't really believe in sitting and reaching. We sit on our feet. I do more of dynamic movement. So even if it's sitting on your feet, we do a 90 90. I do test internal external rotation of the shoulder. I do test internal external rotation of the femur and the hip. Those are all very important. But what the problem is is those are very closed chain environment assessments. All injuries in life happen in open chain environments. You're moving around, you're running with your kids, you're bending down very quick. So how can you assess someone in a stressful environment when they're sitting on the ground and trying to reach for their toes? Extreme flexion of the back comes down when you're either really bending down and reaching for something really quick or in something like a top push up or anything like that. So what I do is once I do the traditional assessment, giving everyone their body measurements, doing internal external rotation of each joint, seeing joint stabilization, proprioception, all those things I make all my clients if able to. Now you have to think we have clients that have lost limbs, we have people with extreme neuropathy, we have people that are actually down bad. I'm not going to run them. But for the gen pop client that comes in, I'm going to do some sort of rhythmic march. I want to see your rhythm. I always express rhythm before power. Once we're into rhythm and power. I want to see you actually move. I want to see some sort of locomotive motion. I want to see you jog to the best of your ability. I want to see you shuffle and get that internal rotation active internal rotation. I want to see you cross over external rotation of the hip. If you can do some sort of loaded jump. I'm not talking about dumbbells or hex bars. I'm talking about hugging a six pound med ball so you can get some stabilization that thoracic cavity. Grabbing a med ball. I want to see you jump. Are you knee dominant? Are you hip dominant? What happens when it is an open chain environment? And last but not least, I always believe in extreme isometrics. So I'm going to get you into one position. I'm going to induce stress where I know the joint angle isn't changing and you cannot get hurt. And I'm going to see where your mental is. I don't believe in mental toughness. Hey, push the sled as many times as you can. We're going to do it 10 times further than this. At your final assessment, I want to see you hold a split squat ISO or a glute ham ISO, an extension or a dead hang as long as you possibly can. And then I can go from there and go, listen, here's the weak points and this is where it's breaking because I can also see energy fire up the kinetic chain. Is it in the foot, the ankle, the knee, the hip, or pardon my French, are you a mental midget? And are you just absolutely tapping out of everything that's hard in your life? And if that's the case and there's nothing wrong physically or anatomically, we have some underlying issues we need to call or need to address that the weight room has nothing to do with. And then we can build it back in. Sorry, if you hear Rudolph over there, my son's playing with some bells.

That's okay. I love it. Okay, so let's talk about this. How do you have in your time, Right? It also sounds like. I heard you talk a lot about your. Your approach really does have a holistic approach where you are dealing with the internal and the external. How do you fit it in to their program into their session? How does that, how does. What does that look like in your process in an everyday way?

I think before even we get to the programming, I think addressing that you can't have one without the other. It's a duality. It's the yin and the yang. Everything external is internal. Everything internal is external. Stress shows up through injury. Cortisol shows up through repeated sickness and injury. So I think addressing one without the other is doing the client a very big injustice. So I think we're the only gym in the country that teaches all of our youth athletes how to meditate. I do always start with trying to get my clients in parasympathetic states. And a lot of times I can see the tension in their traps. I can see it in their waist, I can see it in their hips, I can see it in their jaws where they're holding their muscles. For me it's some sort of extreme duration isometric. It's learning how to address the pelvic floor and breathe properly. I don't do the balloons. I'm not big into that. I like to teach people how to meditate with something that they don't need. I like to remove phones. So if you have an hour session, the last thing that I'm ever going to do is walk you on a treadmill. Now aerobic and anaerobic capacity is very important, but I'm not going to spend hey first 15 minutes you're walking on the treadmill. Nothing makes me more upset than seeing that with clients you can do that before, show up 15 minutes early, hit that treadmill. So when the time you're paying for at a very high rate, I'm going to train you like you've never been trained before. So a lot of it is teaching the warmup, teaching how to get those clients in a parasympathetic. So when the client does show up 30 minutes before they're doing all of their correctives and rehab because I've instilled it in the properly way, I have a great staff as well. So if someone asks questions and I'm busy or they're busy, I want to help someone else's client. So once you start with me, you've done all your correctives, your nervous system training, your central nervous system training to get your heart rate up on the wind bike or the med balls or anything that can help with that. That way when I start with you, I'm really addressing the underlying factors and then post workout getting you so get you back into sympathetic during the workout, get you some fight or flight and then I get you back down into the parasympathetic system before you leave. So it's another meditation, another long duration isometric. Laying on a physio ball and doing deep belly breath. Something so simple takes three to six minutes. People just don't have the time for. But you have time for Netflix Unlimited scrolling. All these things that just boost dopamine with nothing on the other end of it. And that's kind of led me into the other business I started as well. But I think it's very important to as trainers and people look at me, yes, I'm a, I'm a very successful business owner. I'm starting another business. I'm a freaking personal trainer. I'm a cpt. I'm not a physio, I'm not a biomechanist. I'm not all these big words that people have gotten obsessed with. I'm an old school trainer. I suffer la fitness. And I have no harm saying that I'm proud of myself, but I think teaching people the right way to warm themselves up to where I can actually train you when you're there for that hour, hour and 10 minutes, that's where I think the magic happens. I don't want to spend all the time warming you up. I don't want to spend all the time doing these small, intricate things that you can do by yourself. And I lose money because of this. But if you've been with me and I you've hit all your task lists and your goals that you can be self sufficient. I'm probably going to kick you out of my program and I want you to go to the gym and be a billboard for me. You know how to set up a program, you know how to warm up, you know all your movements, you know how to set a program up, all these beautiful things. If we're just good friends, just work out with me on the side, let me help someone else. But I literally try to get clients on their own as fast as possible.

That's so good. Okay, so there's something that you, you sort of touched on and I really, I would love to hear your perspective on this idea between understanding the difference between discipline and ensuring that we are building resilience as well as understanding, you know, what is resistance to like, I just don't feel like it. And we need to rely on discipline to push through or are we in too much of a sympathetic state that we cannot create the adaptation that we're wanting to create. How do we navig what where it is?

I think it, it goes off. It goes back to the initial goal. Is getting out of pain your goal? Or is being the best athlete or the leanest or the biggest you've ever been? Because again, at the end of the day, I'm a client serving business if you just want to come in and get huge and you don't really care about pain, if I get you out of pain and I haven't made any aesthetic progress, you're probably going to fire me as a trainer. So I think getting through to clients heads like, listen, if you want to look like this, here are the risk factors and everything that you're going to be giving up or compromising your health with, that sucks. But if you want to look like this, here's the things and the steps we have to take. If you're trying to get out of pain and just get to a functional standpoint to where you're pain free, that adaptation I'm looking for is a lot different than someone trying to put on muscle. And yes, muscle density, it helps with osteoporosis and all these things. Yes, the studies are proven, but when the client comes in again, if you don't give them what they want, need, they're going to go somewhere, somewhere else. So I try to get all of my clients to kind of understand the difference between their aesthetic goals and their functionality goals. And I try to meet them in the middle. If I can get them to buy into my program, they combine both and we're going to be on the same page. But if I have you throwing up at the end of a session, I'm not going to make a pro. I'm not making progress with that. I put you in a hole for the next 24 hours. I deal with a lot of big time athletes, high level CEOs. I need you producing when you leave the gym, if all of a sudden, every single day you're laying on the floor 25 minutes post workout and I'm calling some people out, I know, and I won't say names, but people pounding on their chest and grabbing wrists and being like it's a comm or a thousand calories or you got, you don't get to leave, it's like, well that's, that's dumb. Pardon my French, but that doesn't make any sense to me at all. You're just going off caloric burning and just putting people in a hole. And you wonder why. Oh well, if it's a female, you know, my butt hasn't grown, I haven't lost any inches, I haven't done any of these things. Well, you're screwed at the end of a workout because you have so you have such a high nervous system fatigue by the time you get up to tomorrow and you want to work out as hard as equal, you have no chance. So I think, I hope I answered your question.

You did. And I'm also curious. You know, part of what I noted, you know, part of what makes a client successful is not just the work that you're pouring in. How do you drive client adherence.

Retention or.

No like to get them to actually show up and do the work.

I mean, I think one is people will do different pricing structures. I think that all the time. That session sometimes don't always work. I think getting people to buy into a monthly rate is really, really, really, really important. Because if you have 10 packages or 10 sessions and you don't have no timeline to get it done, life happens. And it's a hard night with the kids, it's a hard night with the wife. You had to stay late at your work and your business and oh well, I can just, I can just push that session back versus my clients know if you train with me, if you buy 10 sessions, you got five weeks max. If you don't want to commit to yourself and commit to me, I'm not committing to you. And no offense, I'm training some of the best athletes in the world and I consider myself in very, very good shape. I don't look like a bodybuilder like I used to. I got big gaps in my sleeve, which I'm fine with. But if you're choosing to become part of the black sheep culture and family, we have people almost on a waiting list. You're ready to come in and train. You're going to change your life. And if you're not willing to do that, I'm going to have to politely ask you to walk out the door. If you're not ready to commit to yourself, there's no way that I can commit to you. And if you see 15, 16, 17, 20 different people in a private gym doing the same thing, attacking the same goals, talking about the same thing, that you're going to get your ass kicked again today, but you're going to get a high five, a smile and love when you walk in the door that makes you want to come back. Why do people go to their neighborhood bar every night? Funnily is the alcohol. It's the community and the camaraderie. So if I can create a community and create a network that people can network with each other, they can start businesses together. Pro athletes can talk to the most successful businessmen. A nine year old athlete can see the professional athlete working on the same equipment with the same intellectual property. How do you not buy into an environment like that? And that's where I wanted to be as a kid. So I think people blame themselves for client retention or client buy in when instead of looking at yourself, look at the environment around you. Look at what everyone around you is preaching. Listen to the music you're playing, listen to the messages you're speaking about. What do you talk about in your free time in the lobby when people are walking by? There's so many little intricacies that you see as a business owner that when you started with one client and now you're at 600, you know what I mean? You, there's a huge culture shift where you're like, how did I get from 1 to 40? Oh, is my culture in my environment. So how can I replicate myself without my training? I can try to replicate my energy and hire like minded individuals that actually, pardon my French, again, give a shit. You have to care. I just want you to care. And that's what I tell all my people. If you care, you're going to get the people to come back in because you're creating an environment that's very easy to close a deal.

Yeah. And you also speak to, I mean, you speak to a couple of things that it's, you're very convicted in your process and it's, it's not coming from this. Like, please, please, can I train you? It's like, no, it's a privilege. It's a privilege to work with me. And it comes down to a commitment to yourself. I think that people mess up accountability. And in my opinion, I'm not your mom. I'm accountable to my kids. I'm going to help you be accountable to yourself because you're a grown adult.

Yep. You know, and like our thing is, I tell people, I am not here to be your friend. I'll be your friend when you reach your goals. That's not my job. I'm not here to be your friend. And again, I, some of my clients are some of my best friends that I met when I started training them. But they understand and it's turned into now my mentors are now my business partners and things like that. From me showing them my level of accountability to my team, my gym and every single one of my clients. I'm obviously, I'm committed to my family. That's the easiest part. But all of a sudden if you're not committing to yourself and me and I just miss time with my family, it's not going to be a good place for you. I'm going to call you out and a lot of people that are very successful don't really always want that or need that. So for me, almost being the bad guy in those people's lives, when they realize it's coming from a place of 100 love and no ego, they reach their goal and like that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. That, that's all I needed. And at the end of the day, I don't really care about them loving me in the process. Once they reach their goal, they're going to respect me and they're going to, they're going to help my network grow.

Yeah, solid. So now I'd love for you to dive. You started to dive in before we talked, before I hit record. But I'm curious about your new business venture that you're starting to work on. You're opening up all these franchises of, to like biohacking, essentially. So can you talk a little bit about what that is, why you created that, and a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So I'm a big mental health advocate. I myself struggle. People with mental health issues, it doesn't, it wasn't. One, it wasn't a choice. And two, it never goes away. You learn how to, you learn how to be successful with it. You learn how to sharpen your sword and use it as a, as a gift instead of something that's tearing your life down. So I was just consistent, consistently doing research on things to make anxiety feel better. The sauna, the cold plunge, all these things I had never really dove into. I had a client, Kirk Herb street, who was on college, excuse me, college game day, very successful. His wife and his son also trained in the gym with us. At their house, they have a sign on the cold plunge. And I was in the cold plunge and their song was right inside the door. Man. I know that people are doing contrasting. Contrasting is a very famous thing. And while I'm in the plunge, I'm like, I Google. I'm like, contrast training in Ohio or contrast training in Cincinnati, nothing. I'm like, okay. Contrast training in Ohio, nothing. Contrast training in the Midwest, nothing. Contrast training in the U.S. i'm like, okay. By then I'm a savvy enough business dude. I'm like, okay. There is something here. There's one place in Beverly Hills, there's one place in New York, but it's more of a bathhouse where they have red light cigars. There's so much, I don't want to say liposuction, but they have Botox, they have hydrofacials, they have red light rooms, they have Salt rooms, they have massage. There's just like at the Walmart. There's so much, so much stimulation when you walk into those places. I'm sorry, I'm from Ross. I'm a bit of a redneck, but you can.

I'm laughing because I'm like, yes, I know. I'm like, oh, you're talking about spa Castle. I think I've been there. I'm just kidding.

There's so much that goes into these spaces. You don't really know what to choose. And I have a very successful business partner and one of my clients who wasn't my business partner at the time, I pitch him ideas every time I see him because I knew that I was like, I want to take a people based business that I'll never sell and that I love and I want to give my son one day, hopefully I have another kid that they can grow up there. My trainers kids can grow up there, hopefully end up giving my trainers equity and build something really special. I'm like, there has to be a business where I'm not tying people, the people there and their time, trading time for money. There has to be machines that are doing something similar that I can have one person there get the same effects, get more volume and evoke change. So I just started doing my research and I'm like, there is not one person just doing hot and cold. So I had a meeting with Dan Kasky who is the president of Palm Beach Tan through my network. He's on our board now of this new business. We talked to him about the tanning bed salon concept. What's the square footage, what's the room, what's the overhead? What are all these little things that are happening? And I'm like, why don't we just take a tiny bed salon? Why don't we rip the tanning beds out and why don't we put in a plunge and a sauna, put some wood on the walls, make it sexy, make it a spa. And I think this is really going to evoke change. I think it's going to help people because we could get down to the nerdiness of brown fat and metabolism and sympathetic and parasympathetics for the reasons of the cold exposure in the sauna. But for me it was like, this is something I've seen actually change and help me. There's people that can't work out, don't work out. They're scared to go into a gym, they're scared to go into public. So what if I created instead of A bathhouse feel. What if I was the in and out burger of Contrast Space? I offer burger and fries for hot and cold. That's it. It's a private room. Ends with the meditation. You're in and out in 30 minutes. We're going to open in September. Our first location in Montgomery, Ohio. It's an affluent area by Cincinnati. Try to open up four in the first year, 10 to six months after that, and 18 months, and then we're going to start to sell franchises.

That's so cool. Okay, so can you dive in?

It's called Contrast Studio. Sorry. It's called Contrast Studio.

I love it. So can you share a little bit more about. And you started to talk about it, but I. Can you share a little bit more about what specifically are the benefits that most people don't even realize or really understand about contrast training and exposure? And then you mentioned that it was something that helped you. What happened, if you don't mind?

Yeah. So for me, what you're basically working with. Yeah, one year you're working with brown fat. You're working with the ability to produce a massive amount of dopamine. So if you're talking about the high point of sexual activity with your loved one, you get two and a half times the amount of epinephrine and dopamine released that lasts for 40 minutes. Whether you're talking about cocaine, whether you're talking about really bad things that do really bad things to your body but make you feel good, dopamine, adrenaline. I do it personally for a very clean energy hit. From the time that I do that, it lasts six and a half hours post cold exposure. Now the sauna is in my eyes and layman's term for cardiovascular health can reduce your cardiovascular risk for Cardiovascular disease by 40%. Doing it 20 minutes, three times a week. Susan Soberg created the Soberg principle, which is 53 minutes of heat. 11 minutes of cold exposure is the bare minimum for the maximal effects. So on the cold exposure side, it addresses the brown fat. The brown fat protects the internal organs in our body. It can also. It reduces and it reduces or turns up the valgus nerve in our neck. And it basically affects parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. So I'm like, there's one way that you are thrust into making a choice to relax and breathe. Learn how to calm yourself down, get a clean energy hit, and feel more resilient for the rest of your day in cold water. It's very, very simple. Low stress, high outcome. Also on the other end of that the cardio benefits of it, the, the dopamine hit from it is very, very important. But more importantly, what you're affecting us is one, you're, you're limiting blood pressure. So you're, you're very, very, very. So the number one reason we die is cardiovascular disease. One thing to combat that is optimizing your blood pressure with hot and cold vasoconstriction, vasodilation. You're literally maneuvering your blood pressure up and down in a healthy environment. That's amazing to me on the other end of that is how can we as humans continue to try to become more resilient? Like I said, different ways to induce stress. The shivering is similar to a pump in the gym, right? The shivering that you chase and cold exposure. Now obviously too much cold exposure can absolutely wreck you. You can get hypothermic, you can really affect your in a negative way. But if you're dosing it in almost like microdosing, the drop after the core temperature decreases of the water as blood goes, goes back out to the core and goes back into the body. So what you're doing is you're literally teaching your body how to go to almost complete like catacomb state to where you feel like you're about to die. You realize you can relax, you realize the brain is in control, you're coming back down, you're producing blood flow in very stressful situations. You're training those neuro pattern or the neuro patterns in your brain to relax under stress. It's a long way to say this is going to help you, this is going to help your nervous system, this is going to help your heart, this is going to help your energy throughout the way. This is going to affect the metabolism in extreme ways. But yeah, you can lose weight doing sauna and cold plunge where you hit a wall. Absolutely. You do have to work out, but it's a great place for people to start. On the ADHD and anxiety side, that's where I came into play in a study Susan Soberg did, who is, she's the leader. She's absolutely incredible. I really, really, really want to talk to her. But the big thing for me is that it induces two and a half times the same amount that ADHD medicine does to calm the body down and focus the mind. It released two and a half times the amount of dopamine and epinephrine and adrenaline receptors that an ADHD pill does. Whether that's Adderall, Vyvanse, I've used them all As a young kid, I was prescribed to them. It gives you the same amount. So if you're telling me as a kid, and we are partner mental health organizations, we've partnered with a lot of different people in the city of Cincinnati on this already. If you could tell me that I didn't have to take a pill and I can come in, actually learn how to calm down inside cold water, but feel really energized afterwards for the rest of the day. I'm sorry, but that's, that's what I would have ran to a long, long time ago.

So forgive me for, for my ignorance in this, but I'm curious, like, what's the process in terms of integrating both cold and hot? Like, because I see, for me, my perspective. I see doing one or the other. So is it like you go into the cold plug for two minutes and then you get into the sauna, or is it like, day one you go into the cold plunge, day two, you go into the sauna? Like, how, how do they live together?

Because there's actually two different ways to look at it. If you're looking for muscle growth, the worst thing you could do is get into cold after. So you have to think you're working with vasoconstriction and vasodilation, right? So what we're trying to do, if you get into cold and you're absolutely killing inflammation, which does increase growth, breaking a muscle down, tearing it back down, building it back up, that's incredible. If you're looking for muscle growth, cold before is more important. If you're looking for inflammation decreasing and pain and energy, you can pretty much do it any time of the day. Because if the 1% of muscle growth isn't that important to you, the timing of it is pretty irrelevant. I prefer to do mine in the morning. What you're doing is you're teaching those your cells to open and close rapidly at a rate so you're more adaptable to the environment you're in. It's like wearing a hoodie in the summer to get acclimated to the heat. Before the winter, when people actually try to take layers off, you should be putting layers on. When it gets cold out in the spring, instead of putting a hoodie on, you should be outside in a T shirt and a long sleeve. You're acclimating to a stressful environment. So when you induce the stressful environment, you're more applicable to be calm. So what you can do is. My protocol is the 53 and 11 from sober. So what you'll do with me is you'll be in the saun for 27 minutes. After 27 minutes in the sauna, 24 to 27 minutes, you are doing one to three minutes in the plunge. That plunge is cold. Very, very, very cold. So the thing is you're upping your body temperature. You have to choose to regulate it. It doesn't bite as hard a lot of times. And when I'll do it six in the morning, we open, I'll just walk in 6am I'll literally get my head completely under the water, sit back up, go three minutes, dry off, no shower and go straight to work. And it's an incredible boost. It's like you're you. If you wait for your coffee till after that plunge and you have your espresso, you're a rocket ship for the rest of the day. And again, running three businesses, having a kid, having a wife, being active in all those roles, I have to have the juice all day long. The most benefits you're going to get is when you blend hot and cold alone on alone together. They're very substantial. They work just asana is a great practice of health. Just a plunge is great practice for health. But I deal with human optimization. What's the best practice is when you blend them together. Maximal heat exposure, minimal cold exposure and you can continue to blend them. So there you could do contrasting, which is where I got the name from. You can go 5 minutes cold, 30 seconds hot, 10 minutes cold, 1 or 10 minutes hot, 1 minute cold, 15 minutes hot, 2 minutes cold. You can continue to go back and forth as much as you want. But again, that environment change, that external stress is something, yes, inherently we need better as an environment or better as a community, better as a freaking civilization, we need to get better at that. But selfishly, if I know that this practice is most beneficial for humans and there's countless and countless and countless and countless studies after. My biggest problem and every business has problems or issues is continued education is the biggest issue with the, with what we're going through right now and educating people on to get in freezing cold water at any time of the day. And you have to pay for it too. So you're not getting paid to do it. You actually have to pay to get in really cold water.

Oh gosh, it's funny. Okay, so what about when you know, if you're doing contrast therapy, where does your workout come in?

Me personally, I believe in getting the vagus nerve completely submerged right when you get in. That's where the most brown Fat is in the body, underneath the clavicles. If you can basically induce that shock, the amount of come down. Yes. You're going to have 30 seconds where that frontal lobe and your brain is completely shut down and you feel like you're going to die. You're not going to die, you're not going to die after that 30 seconds, that frontal lobe absolutely wakes up. It activates. You are now controlling your breathing, you're controlling your rhythm, you're back in control. So for me, I start my day with it. If I end my day, I'm a type A personality. I bounce off the walls. If I did a plunge at 10 o', clock, I'm not going to bed till 4am so again, each person's differently, we're all wired different neurologically. If you're like I said, muscle growth cold, prior heat is kind of irrelevant. You can use heat however you want. If you're looking for inflammation decrease and just nervous system training, they can say after workout, but that's, I think it's more malleable if you don't really care. You can put that into your program however you want. For the true meatheads, the true bodybuilders, my professional athletes who care about caloric timing and every little minute detail, do it before if you want to get bigger and faster, if you're using it for yourself. As a 30 year old who hasn't played sports since I was 21, I'm going to do it when I can fit it in my day. And that's just being honest. Right. Optimization and scheduling doesn't, excuse me, doesn't always time up.

But it, it does fight the counterintuitiveness in me because we're indoctrinated to believe like rice ice, you know, ice for inflammation, to reduce inflammation. So it almost sounds counterintuitive, but I, I know what you're saying. I get what you're.

Those studies, those studies have actually been shown to be completely, completely skewed. The rest, the rest ice, compress, elevate. So I, I, I thought, I, I thought I tore my hamstring off the bone yesterday doing sprints. I sprint once a week. I do loaded sprints, I do open up sprints, max velocity where I'm building up and sprinting long duration. Haven't got hurt in six years. Pulled my hamstring. Everyone's like, did your program the wrong way? Are you ever going to sprint again? I'm like, I'm just sprinting into four weeks. Freak accidents happen. But they're like well, what's the protocol? And I'm, like, getting asked when I'm still on adrenaline, I'm throwing up, like, I don't feel good. Like, what's the. What are you gonna do? I'm like, everyone shut up and please leave me alone. Give me 20 minutes to come back down. But the last thing everyone's doing, and a lot of the clients at the gym were trying to give me ice. I'm like, get the ice away from me. Why would I ever want to push out blood that's promoting healing inside of my hamstring? When I've taken cold, all the blood disperses. Blood flow creates healing. I want to push blood flow into an area. That's why you do bfr. That's why I do isometrics, so I do all those things. So I'm heating for the next 24 hours. So I have another 24 today. It feels better. I can actually get extension into my hamstring, which is amazing. But tomorrow, I'll start the cold. I'll start the cold exposure. But until then, the last thing you ever want to do to our hurt. Now, bones. Yeah. You break a bone, get some ice on it. You need swelling. That is bone. If it's tendon, ligament, muscle, muscle, you need heat, elevation. Yes, that works. The more blood you get to the heart, the more it pumps back out. But again, if you're talking about real injuries, which we most calf, hamstring, quad, especially in, like, men's softball leagues. A lot of guys that we come in, oh, I tweaked my quad. We'll stop icing it. When's the last time you put heat on it? When's the last time you got an Epsom salt bath? I feel so much better off the hot tub. Well, yeah. Your body temperature just raised up, and you promoted a bunch of blood flow through your body. There's a lot of blood in that. That triggered area versus when you get cold. I just. I wish that I could go back in time and talk to him because it does help a lot of people. Compression does help, but we know now blood flow is the key. Blood flow is the absolute key. And actually, blood can carry healing properties when you direct it to a specific area, too.

Amazing. Amazing. Okay, so this has been amazing. Thank you so much for pouring into me and into the community. I want to be respectful of your time. So for those of us who want to go deeper with you and want to learn more from you, learn more about contrast when it comes coming into our area. What are some of the best places that I can send people to.

Yeah. So my website is train bsp.com train is in choo choo train B as in boy, as in sister, P as in Patrick. So train bsp.com that's our Instagram, our Facebook, our social and our website. The Contrast Studios is our Instagram. Right now we have our website launching next week. But Black Sheep is my baby. Contrast is something that I'm doing for the community. I am a trainer by trade. And then my personal Instagram is Patrick Coyne with an underscore C O Y.

N E. And we'll be sure to link all that up in the show.

Notes, please. Thank you so much.

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