The POWER of Human Growth Hormone - Ron Williams

One thing, hgh, they call it the miracle hormone for youth life and longevity. Also with the kid, if they have the night light, it actually affects their growth, it affects their brain, it affects obesity. You know, if you have less human growth hormone, then you're more susceptible to becoming overweight and obese. And most people after the age of 23. The age of 23 is when it starts to slowly decrease.

All right, my friend, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Good to see you again. How, how have you been?

Oh, wonderful, man. I'm just excited to be back with you again. I really enjoyed your last time.

Thank you, thank you. That's. I try and be as charming as I can in these conversations so that guests want to come back. You know, know, that's, it's like I, I, you know, I just, I put my book out. I released a book at the end of January, and I've been on, I don't even know by now, like, a hundred plus podcasts. And it really has taught me how valuable and how important the host is. You know, I. Facilitating the conversation because there's a huge difference between somebody that is, is genuinely curious and can let that curiosity lead the conversation versus somebody who's got a script and is, like, going through the 10 questions that they wrote down that they're going to ask you. And there's, there's value in both of those things.

But, man, it made me value a really good conversation, you know, and, and it's, it's actually reinvigorated me for these, for these dialogues that I get to have with people, to really try and have a phenomenal conversation with somebody so that the guest walks away feeling like it was a good conversation. So I feel like if I can do that, you know, I'm, I'm doing something right, at the very least.

Well, one thing that, the last time that, that, that we came on together, man, you were amazing. I left that, that podcast thinking. I really, not only do. I really like that guy, but I like the way he interviews and I like the way he creates this atmosphere for. Great conversation, man. It was beautiful. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks. Thank you. Well, let's, let's dive in because there's a few things that I want to talk to you about. I, I want to talk tactical, practical aspects about, you know, losing, losing fat, losing body fats and, and gaining mass, building muscle. I think I've talked to it on the show before, like, my mission by 40s to be in the best shape of my life. And so I've Started to really take that seriously. And, you know, I. I did a bunch of weightlifting when I was in my 20s. I've always worked out. I've always worked out since I was like 15 years old, but I've actually just never taken it seriously. It's just something that I've enjoyed and I've done and I've kept myself in good shape, but I've never taken it seriously. The point to, like, see what my body can do. And I feel like I'm on a mission this year to actually see what my body can do, because I feel like I would be. I think I would actually have regret, you know, if I was like, 65 years old and I didn't give it a real go to, like, see how much weight can I push? Like, how good can I look, how much muscle can I put on? You know, like, how much cardio can I. Can I endure? You know? So I, like, bought an assault bike that's in my gym downstairs, which is heinous. You know, it's just the worst thing in the world. But I love it. You know, I got a squat rack and bench press and, and. And a weighted vest, which brings a whole new level of. Of pain to push ups and dips and chin ups and stuff like that. So. So I kind of wanted to. I want to do that. I also want to talk about a few other things. Like.

You know, there's this guy in modern. In the sort of, like, modern conversation. I don't know if you've heard of them. The Liver King. You seen that guy?

No, I haven't seen the Liver King.

Oh, okay. Okay, well, maybe I'll bring him up. But there was some huge controversy around him with, like, steroid use, and so I think I'd want to touch on. On that a little bit. So there's a bunch of things I wanted to talk with you about, but the first place that I wanted to begin is when somebody is wanting to take their exercise a little bit more important, a little bit more focused, a little bit more seriously. What are some of the foundational principles that we should begin with? Like, what's just the. The basic framework? Are there certain, you know, exercises that we should do? Is there a certain approach that we should take from our mindset? Like, what are some of the basic principles that you recommend?

Well, Lord, is all movement is not good movement, but movement without movement. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. So we need to move. But some movements are actually dangerous. And when you decide that you want to develop a muscle or build a muscle, or even define a muscle, you want to make sure that you work within the structure of the joint and the muscle. Because this is, this is a real key. If you just do what it takes. If you just do what it takes to build the muscle, you could be sacrificing the joint. You'll build that muscle, destroy the joint. And now you can't even work the muscle because it's too painful. A lot of your old time bodybuilders, powerlifters, even your gymnasts, football players, wrestlers, put their bodies in.

Compromising positions and, you know, destroy the joint. So my first thing is to keep you safe. Second thing is to get the development that you want. So the first thing is foundational is consider the joint that that muscle is attached to. That's the first thing.

Did that make any sense at all?

No, I made. That made total. That made total sense. My, my immediate thought was, what movements are not good movements?

Okay, great question. I'm glad you asked that, because this was the second half of it is all of the muscle groups are made in an arc formation. If you look at the shoulder, it's an arc. You look at the chest, it's an arc. The bicep is an arc all the way through your body, your glutes, your hamstrings, your calves. So you want to stay with. If you want to develop that muscle, you want to stay within that arc formation. If you look at the structure of a bird, his upper body is made the same way ours is. He has a ball in the socket in his shoulder and a bird. If he loses that shoulder joint, he loses his life. So he doesn't do rehab. He does prehab. He rehabs that joint before it ever gets injured, because he'll die if he loses it. So. And the largest muscle group and the leanest muscle group on a bird is his chest. That's why we eat the turkey breast, the chicken breast, because it's lean and it's thick. Well, if we adopt that same arc movement, you notice the way a bird flies in the arc formation. All the muscle groups in the body are made in that same arc. So we want to stay within that arc formation and move away from square movement. Since we're talking about birds, you look at an overhead shoulder press when it's straight over your head, you actually pull that ball out of the socket. And the heavier you go, the more damage you can do. You may not feel it today, but within, you know, within a time period, depending on your genetics, that shoulder is going to start giving you problem.

Yeah. It's interesting because.

Like I've always had sort of bad knees. You know, I played a lot of hockey growing up, so my knees always been a little bit more sensitive. Like when my wife and I went on our honeymoon, I had, it was on my bucket list to go and climb forest, alpine down in the southern part of Chile. And it's like this, you know, 28 kilometer hike where you go up the side of a mountain and you come back down. And we had sat on a plane for basically two days to get down there and cars and stuff like that. And then, you know, we got there and I was so overzealous that we decided to tackle the big hike on the first day that we were there and didn't really stretch. And I'll tell you, man, on the way back down, like I could barely walk. I was in so much pain. Didn't stretch out my it bands or my handleback one was like, it was, it was bad. I was in so much pain. So I, you know, I get what you're saying. When there's like, there's, you know, there are some movements that aren't good movements. What, what's your take on something like deadlifts? Because there's, there's a moment, a movement that I see has become very popularized and honestly like a little bit controversial. And so I see a lot of people like trying to go for max bench press, max squat, max deadlift. What's the use case for something like a deadlift? And does the average person need to be doing that to develop a robust lower framework of their body?

Well, not so much the lower framework, but the entire body. Deadlift, squats, sprinting, those are the top three exercises for releasing your own natural growth hormone which causes overall body growth. But a one rep max is not necessarily, necessarily necessary unless you're in competition. I would never do a run 1 rep max unless you're in a bench press competition, a power lift competition or a deadlift competition because.

The possibility of injury is high. I would use 80% of your max and you should be able to do 8 to 10 reps at 80% of your max. That's how you judge which are, you know, that's how I use to judge other people's max rather than doing a one rep mat. It's not really necessary. And the danger of it, one bad squat could, could, could knock you out forever. I mean just one bad repetition could, could, could, could really ruin your ability to even work out again. So it's not worth it unless you're in competition.

So let's, let's talk about. I would actually like to talk about, you know, three or four foundational workouts or movements. When I say workout, I mean, you know, bench press or squat. And I, I'd actually like to talk about the, the sort of core principles of each of those movements or, or, or workouts because I think, you know, I think there's a lot of people that are going to the gym doing squats, doing, you know, bench press and those types of things, but don't have just the, the fundamentals of what that looks like.

To do that properly. So, like with the squat, for example, what are some of the pieces that are important when doing squats and how do we improve that, that workout? Like you said, is that something that we should be trying to go for 80%? Do we build our, do we build our way up over reps? Like, what do you recommend on, on that side of things?

Well, one thing, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of things that, that go into play here, Connor. And matter of fact, that. Actually, that's a really good question. There are several things with the squats. You want to make sure that when you squat, when you say squat, most people, the first thing they do is bend their knees. Well, when you squat, that's the single best exercise for overall body growth, but the single most dangerous exercise for injury. So you can use squats and it will damage your knee joint. I mean, it'll damage the knee, or you can do squats, and it has the ability to rehabilitate the knee. If your hamstrings are not flexible, it's absolutely impossible for you to do a healthy squat. Impossible.

So the number one thing with squats, I would say, is to make sure as you're squatting, you're developing the flexibility in your lower back and in your hamstrings. Because when you squat, the first movement is not to bend the knees. The first movement is to sit the glutes all the way back. And your, your shin bone should be almost parallel to the wall. Should be almost parallel to the wall. Whenever I squat, the shin bone doesn't move. Just my glutes move down and back and it stays straight. If you can't, if you don't have the flexibility and your knees go in front of your toes. When you're squatting, what's happening is you're forcing all the pressure to the quadricep. You're moving away from the glute partially moving away from the hamstring. So you don't have the support around that knee joint itself. But if you can get those glutes back, you force the glutes to engage and you force your hamstrings to engage. Otherwise all of the pressure goes to the joint itself. And that causes pain in the future. It causes instability. So many different things. That's one with the squats. And you want to make sure, you know, they say keep your body, your back straight. It's impossible to do a proper squat with your back straight. It's straight in comparison to the rest of your spine. It's straight going down, but it's almost at a 45 degree angle.

So I want to just clarify a couple pieces. I think this is important because squats are one of those things that I have a love hate relationship with and I'm starting to actually do them more. And I found that the more that I've looked into how to do them properly, the more I've enjoyed them. And so it was one of those things where I think I didn't like doing squats because I wasn't doing them right. And so they were uncomfortable. And, you know, and I think what you were saying about the tight hamstrings was, was really good. The other piece. So do you want your knees to be above the tops of your feet and your ankles? Like when you're saying keep your shins parallel to the wall, what you're really just wanting to make sure that people are doing is that their knees aren't going forward over their toes when you're doing a squat. Is that correct?

Absolutely, absolutely. If they're going over your toes.

The weak point is the front of your patella. Right there at the knee joint itself is where the weakest spot is. And you have no support from the hamstring because the knees are forward, putting all the pressure on your quads. So it's really important to separate your feet in the beginning. Squats feel better and you feel more comfortable with your legs closer, but the closer your legs are, the more it forces your knees to go forward, the wider your feet are, the more stability you have and the better you can sit those glutes back. If you look at powerlifters, if you just click on powerlifting squats and you just pull up some photos, you'll see how wide their feet are from each other. And that's, that's the best way to do squats. I wish, I wish I could show you, demonstrate it for you the difference in the two. And if you're touching a person, what I'll do is I'll have somebody touch my hamstring and I'll squat with my knees forward. There'll be. The hamstrings will be soft, but the moment I push my glutes back, the hamstrings contract and they engage.

I know I. I value that. I mean, this is where, you know, if I was Joe Rogan, I would ask my producer to pull it up, you know, but we don't have the studio yet, so. But, you know, it's. It's interesting. I was watching this video the other day of, like, Ronnie Coleman, you know, like the old school video of Ronnie Coleman.

Squatting like 800 pounds or something ridiculous like that. I mean, it was just monstrous. You know, I'm looking at him put all this weight on, on his back, and I was like, good Lord, you know, I think about how much I'm squatting. I'm like, if I. If I started to squat more than what I am right now, like, I think my. My knees wouldn't be too happy. But what you're saying makes a ton of sense. So do you recommend that people practice the form in just a sort of like regular squat without any weight first or just with the bar to kind of get the form down first? Like, how do you develop that, that sort of technical aspect of it? Because I think one of the things that I've learned over the years, which I think I said to you before, is, like, I've always loved working out, but I've never taken the technical aspect of it. And now that I'm getting curious with the technical aspect of it, I find that my body is shifting in a much easier. Like, I'm able to push more, lift more.

And my endurance is better and my body just feels better, you know. So do you recommend that people practice the technical part of a squat without weight first? And what would that look like?

Well, one thing I get back to the flexibility. You can practice, practice, practice. And they say practice makes perfect, but practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect. Practice makes perfect. If you practice the wrong thing over and over and over, that's what you're going to do when you add the weight to it because you had bad practice and you've developed some bad habits. So again, I would go back to the flexibility. Get the flexibility, and as you're using the lighter weight, force yourself into the proper position. And as you're going down, as soon as you feel your knees go forward, you stop and say, this is as. As far as I can go, keeping my glutes down and back, and I'm going to get more flexible. And as you get more flexible, go a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper. And what happens is, if you force yourself to go deeper and your hamstrings are not flexible, you move away from your power. Because once you get into position, your chest is up, your glutes are back, and as you go down, as soon as you lose the power power of holding that tight form, your glutes will roll under and you drop your glutes. You can drop all the way to the floor, but if your body's in the proper position, you can only go back so far and it'll stop. It's almost like a spring where you're loading the spring and it's ready to bounce back. But when you go all the way down and then you roll your glutes, it just gets softer and you have to gut wrench it back up. So it's like loading a spring to do it correctly. And yeah, that's one of the best exercises that you can do. I used to do some powerlifting as well. That was my. My start. So I had a really good firm base. But the form and technique, that's something I'm a real stickler on because, you know, it's not worth damaging yourself. So, yeah, I answered the question.

What's that?

I said I hope I answered the question. With the squat, it's good to go ahead and squat, but make sure you're concentrating on. I've got to keep those glutes back, watching in the mirror where your knees are, where your. Where your body, that the form and technique is really, really impeccable because once it's easier to get stronger, all you have to. The. The muscles will adapt and adjust, but. And you can get stronger, but if you keep going against the structure, that structure will eventually break and you're gonna. You're gonna. You're gonna injure yourself.

Yeah. Awesome. And for everybody that's out there, you know, if you're looking for examples of what some of the. Some of the things that we're talking about might look like, you can head over to Ron's YouTube channel, which is Iron Chestmaster VIP and. Or you can just search for Ron Williams and you got a great YouTube channel, man, you got a bunch of really good videos in there. Such you're wanting some of the sort of visual of this, which can sometimes be helpful, then definitely go check that out. Let's Talk a little bit more about some of the basic things that most of us guys want to know, right? How do we build a good chest? How do we build good legs? How do we do we build good biceps? I can. I can hear. I can hear all the guys in the alliance being like, okay, I want to. I want to, you know, build some good upper body. What are some of the main workouts that we can implement around that?

Just for some of these basic muscle groups? What's this sort of, you know, if you don't have a lot of time, if you're a new dad, you know, what are some of the basic things that you just absolutely should do to take care of that?

Well, one with the. With the chest. You just named all the beach muscles, man.

That's it. That's. That's right.

Music.

Yeah. You go out to the beach, everybody looks at what's in front. Oh, look at those legs, chest and arms. Yeah, but one thing is really important, Conor, I think, with the chest, is to understand that the bench press is not the best exercise for chest growth and shape and size. Because you can get a. You can get a contraction with the bench press, but you can't get a peak contraction. And I want to explain that to you, and I'll show you exactly what I mean. When you're working the chest, it's not the movement of your arms that causes the chest to contract. Watch this. So if my hands are here and I push forward, my shoulders are slightly moving forward. That's the only thing that I really use to contract my chest. The big thing with bench press is you're working a whole lot of triceps. Let me show you some. Take. Take one hand and put it on the shoulder where the. I mean, right where the shoulder and the chest ties in. Then take the arm and move it back and forth like this. Okay. So you feel a little bit movement there because the shoulder's going forward. Now take that arm and put it straight to the side, but keep that hand there. Now open the chest as wide as you can and just tighten that shoulder right where it's at, and then squeeze the shoulder all the way forward as far as it'll go.

That's what contracts the chest, is the movement of that shoulder girdle. And so that's the same way with the bird. He flies like this. He's moving his shoulder. That's contracting and the rest of the. Did you know birds have phalanges as well? Fingers have phalanx? Yeah. If you look at a Bird. Look at the phalanges. He has the ulna, the radius. I mean, everything in our arm, a bird has it too. He just has wings on it and he has a pelangium that, that helps to support it so that it doesn't hurt his. The elbow joint in the bird. I mean, to talk like that. You say birds have elbows, they have ball in the socket, they have ulna, radius. Yeah, they have it all. But they fly in that arc movement, moving and rotating the shoulder. So the best exercises are not necessarily square movements. Bench press is really popular because you can lay on your back and you can max out and you can see how strong a person is. It's great for a measurement of strength. But the development of the chest is having lateral movement and that's hard to find in the gym. Having lateral, lateral tension coming in towards the center. When you do a cable crossover, you're reaching behind you and you're pulling in front of you, but it's not directly lateral. So what we did, this is a shameless glove. What we did is we developed a piece of equipment that has resistance from the lateral perspective as well as.

Vertical as well as horizontal. So you get all, you, you get the resistance all the way around to fully develop the chest. And most people say, like you've got this piece of equipment that's called a perfect pushup. Most people don't want to do a perfect pushup. They want to build a perfect chest.

Let's get it. Let's get it.

Yeah. So the perfect pushup. And you'll notice that it rotates the handles. That's dangerous because it, it, it rolls the shoulder out of joint. Now supination is really good for the bicep. Now if you take your arm and you put it straight down, Connor. And then put your other hand where the bicep intersects right where it starts. And you pull up, you'll feel that bicep at the top. Okay, now you feel the, at the very bottom of that bicep. Have your arm bent. Now rotate your hand. You'll feel that bicep go up and down. So you can get a cheap contraction on the bicep by rotating your wrist. But when you rotate your whole arm in a push up position, you're rotating that shoulder joint, that, that shoulder in and out of the joint. That's not what you want to do.

Yeah, it's interesting as you're talking about this. I, when I work out, when I work out my chest, if I do like flies of the cable crossing, you're talking about, right? That's bringing in the weight, you know, from, from the outside in, you know, into the central line of the body versus bench press. I will feel the flies of the cable cross, or even using the dumbbells, I think it's called, like, dumbbell flies.

That will. I'll feel that much more the next. You know, I'll do four sets of that, and my chest will be nice and sore the next day versus I can do, you know, five, six sets of bench press and not feel it nearly as much the next day. Maybe that's just my body. Maybe it's just my body type because I've been doing bench for so, so long. But. Yeah, that's. That's interesting. Okay, so that's, that's for chest. Let's talk.

And the other thing, one, one other thing with that. The other thing with that is with a bench press, you're limited to that bar, and you have to adapt your body to the bar. But if you're using distance bands or dumbbells, you can manipulate them to your body. And when you assume you push that bench press straight out, that's only partial range of motion. You have to squeeze all the way into the center so that you get a peak attraction. So you're not really getting the full range of motion with the bench press.

Like with, like, with biceps. Like you were saying, biceps is a great.

A great muscle group to grow, to really add to the male body along with the shoulders. But bicep curls, heavy bicep curls with the barbell. You're normally stronger with the barbell than you are with dumbbells. And what causes the muscle to grow is the maximum amount of weight with good form without any ballistic movements, because that's damaging. Without any ballistic movements controlled in full range of motion. So with the bicep curl, it's in with the barbell curl. You don't have the ability to supinate. You only do those when you isolate, and that puts the peak on your bicep.

Can you just explain what, what supinate is? What. I'm not sure what that, what that means.

Supinate is when you're rotating your wrist. When you rotate your wrist at the top of the repetition, you'll see the bicep gets shorter as you rotate your wrist, but it focuses on that peak of the bicep. So I would do so in order to really build the biceps that. To look good, not just bigger, but shapely, I would do the barbell curls for the heavy portion of it. To build the size and then concentration curls with the supination for the peak on the top of the bicep.

Got it. Okay, good. And are you doing like three sets of those? Are you doing four sets? Like, what would the sort of the Ron Williams prescription be?

Well, I would do a total on each muscle group between nine to 12 sets. So if you're, if you're going to do three exercises, it would be three sets apiece. If you're going to do two exercises, you probably have to do 10 sets, man. Because you have to do more than less.

Got it, Got it. Okay. And I've heard the key to big biceps is actually big triceps. What's your take on that?

No, the key to big arms is big triceps. Not the key with big bicep, because biceps are biceps, triceps are triceps. But the, the thing about that, what's so cool about that, is a tricep, the bicep has two heads and the triceps have three. So you can build your biceps to be huge, but if you have small triceps, it takes away from the whole arm. So when you build that tricep, you have a third more muscle that's back there on the tricep that you can develop. And so what makes the arm look even bigger is your forearms. If you have good sized forearms, it makes the arm look bigger and shorter. The longer the arm looks, the thinner it looks. See, I'm, I'm really an illusion because what happens, I have really short bones, but long muscles. And see, you can have, you can have three to six different scenarios. You can have a short bone and a short muscle which doesn't look very good. You can have a long bone and a long and a short muscle. That looks horrible.

You know, you, you see some people, they, it's like they have a stick for calves just straight up and down. There's nothing they can do to change that. They can get a little bit better, but they don't have a lot of muscle fiber there and they have a short muscle belly. My body was made for bodybuilding because I have short bones with long muscles. Very seldom, very seldom when you find in my physique a medium muscle length, but I have a lot of muscle fiber which makes me appear to look bigger and thicker than I really am. I remember kind of when I first started competing, I went to a competition. I was at the door and they said, it's going to cost you $20 to get in. I said, I'm a competitor. They said, no, you're not. I said, I'm one of the competitors. I showed him my number, but when I stood on stage, kind of, I just. Three dimensional. I just, you know, it's like I unfolded something when I first started because I was more of a track athlete and a swimmer, but then I started getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it was more noticeable. When I first started, I just had the muscle bellies and the. And the short bones.

Yeah, I feel like I'm. I'm the. The long and long. Like I'm like 6, 1, 62 got long R. Like, I got a long wingspan, which is great for boxing long legs. But it's interesting. I just watched the. I like to watch UFC sometimes. I was watching Jon Jones fight with Cyril gone a couple weeks ago. I guess it's a month or so ago now, or two. Two months ago. That was interesting because Jon Jones is like this massive dude, right? He's like 6 foot 4. You know, he's put on a lot of weight. Enter into the heavyweight division. Little tiny calves, he said, very thin cows. And it was one of the things I. I was like, well, that's super interesting. I saw him talk about it. He's. I just. I work them out all the time, but they just don't. They just don't get bigger. And I've. I've noticed that with myself, where I can build upper body mass and my quad mass pretty quickly, but my calves just don't grow a lot of mass, you know, And I. And I usually do them quite a bit, but I just seem to have super lean calves. Is that. Is that a body style thing? Am I like, am I doing something off there? Like, what do you. What would your thoughts be?

There's a. There's a couple of things with calves is you have to look at the calf, look at the length of the muscle and the muscle bellies, and then you look at how much muscle fiber is there. And then most people, they don't work their calves correctly. They add a lot of weight, but they don't get a full range of motion. They add a lot of weight, but they don't concentrate or focus on the focal point to maximize the exercise they're doing. If you're doing calves like normal people, when they. When they raise up on their tiptoes, they move out to the side like this.

Like, their heels move out to their side.

The heels move out to the side, and all of the pressure goes to the baby toe. That actually relaxes the calf. And so what you have. So you put more weight on and you get all the way to the top, and you never really get that peak contraction which is going to cause that calf to grow. You're not. You're not tearing that muscle fiber in the way that you should. You're hitting and missing. So what you have to do is when you're going up, you focus on the big toe and you turn your ankles in towards each other, and it forces the calf to contract. You have to use less weight before you can do that. But you're working the muscle and not manipulating the weight. You're maximizing that effort. And you can look at the calf. If I could see your calf, I could tell you what. What the possibilities of what your calf would do. So if you were to take your leg and do like this and put it up, I would be able to say, okay, I see what we're working with. And we get. We could. We could. We could do whatever. You know, we can maximize what you have there. But calves are tough, man. They're tough. And most of your black competitors, they struggle in that area.

I've heard people say the Cavs are like the second. What do they call it, has like the second part or something like that. But working out the Cav is so good. I was listening to this guy, Andrew Huberman. I really. He's a Stanford professor, and he was talking about this. This study, this research that came out. It was fascinating because one of the things that they. They were tracking is how what people can do to lower glucose within the body, like lower. Lowering the glucose within the body just naturally. And they found that if people sitting did calf raises for, I think it was two to four hours during the day, that it would naturally decrease their glucose levels in the body. Because there's something about simulating walking and because when you're doing the calf raises, you're simulating almost like a hiking up a vertical staircase or up the side of a hill or something like that. But there's something about that action that they're not too sure what it is that's. That stimulates your. Your heart rate. It stimulates your glucose production, or not production, but insulin production and balances out your glucose levels. And so, but I've heard. I've heard in other places, people say that the. The calves are a very important part to the circulatory system within the body.

Absolutely. And part of the reason why is it's actually the furthest large muscle group from the heart and helps to facilitate all of the. All of the blood to the lower extremities of your feet and your, and your toes. That's the largest muscle group before you get to the most extreme part of your body and so forces more blood into the lower part of your ankle and your feet. So it's really important, especially like, just like that study said, if you're working your calves, you know, when you're sitting down, you're just moving up and down. It's pulling blood flow down to the lower part of your body.

Yeah, it's the, what was it? Sitting's the new smoking, right? That like sitting for too long during the day is the, is the new sort of detrimental thing to your health that we're, you know, sort of all facing. And so I've tried to make it a conscious effort to do calf raises sometimes, you know, long, long calls and stuff like that, or I'll use my stand up desk and I'll be on a meeting, you know, standing up, doing calf raises. And it's interesting because as we're talking about this, my grandfather, who lived until he was 95 or 96, used to do calf raises all the damn time. All the time, you know, and he was this wiry farm boy, you know, from the middle of Canada, and.

But he was strong as a horse man, you know, he was just, he was lean and he was wiry, but he was all like, even in his late 80s, I remember shaking his hand as a teenage boy, I guess I was in my late teens. And he just had this iron grip, you know, and, and so. But one of the things I remember is I would come out in the morning and see him sometimes, and he would, he'd be in the living room, you know, 6:30 in the morning, drinking his coffee, doing catchphrases, looking out at the window, you know, in his 70s or 80s. I'll never forget that as a kid. It's just, you know, I think sometimes we, we take fitness to be this thing of like, oh, I have to go into the gym hours a day and, you know, maybe that's something that you want to do. But I think that fitness can also be a way of life. And so I'm curious if there's things that you do just out in the world or at home, you know, that, that keep you healthy, that have become a way of life for you.

Carter, to be, to be honest with you, man.

Working out was never, you know, when I was younger, is never something I love to do. Working out and training in the gym, I never loved to do that. What I love to do was win.

Love to win. And I wanted to compete. In order to win, I had to train a certain way. I had to discipline myself until over the years, I just got used to training, and it just became habitual for me. But I never really, really enjoyed and loved it. So I have to have an end goal. Whatever my end goal is, whatever requires to reach that goal. I'm willing to do that, but not for the sake of just working out. Most of my workouts, when it's warm out, when it's warm, I work out outside, man.

I'm on the track, I'm in the pool. And I develop equipment so that I can do things on the road and outside. So, yeah, so it's building those habits and disciplining yourself, and it becomes like breathing. Some things are. Some things are skills, and then some things, you know, they're skills that we have to nurture. And I didn't realize that until I was probably about 22 years old when I look back on my life, because, as I said before, I don't remember having a toothbrush until I was 18 years old. Was in the military. So brushing my teeth every single day was not habitual. It was not a habit to me. And when I was in military, that's something that they disciplined you in doing. So I had to learn that. Didn't realize everybody else did that every day anyway, you know, so I had to learn how to do that. So it's the same way with working out. If you do it every single day, it just becomes a habit to you. Second nature.

Yeah. I was talking to the guys.

In the alliance. I have this online membership with like four or five hundred guys in it now. And I was talking to them today and sort of sharing a little bit about my mission and talking about how just dedicating myself to working out five, five, six times a week has been really transformative in a lot of ways. And shifting it to forcing myself to working out in the morning, which is something that I've resisted for a very long time. And I used to, you know, work out in the afternoon or later in the day, and pushing it to first thing in the morning has just. I mean, it's brought a lot of benefits to me. And I actually. I actually did it in part because I heard. I heard and read some research that said that there's a. There's a benefit for most people's bodies to doing it first thing in the morning because it's. It creates a stress spike, cortisol spike in the in the morning. And if you can get that out of the way, it actually re, sort of like sets your, your system. Because having a cortisol spike in the morning is, is connected with your circadian rhythm. It's actually beneficial for you to have some kind of stress spike in the morning, whether you do a cold shower or, you know, breath work or workout or whatever. And yeah, I mean it's just, it's become.

It'S just becoming sort of getting ingrained into my life now, which is really wonderful. And, and my son is starting to see it. He's 2 years old and I bought gymnastics rings, you know, for my gym to do pull ups and push ups and all, you know, all kinds of stuff. And so now sometimes he'll go and he'll, he'll want to come downstairs with me and he'll hang off the rings and swing around and you know, I'm trying to get him to hang on there as long as possible and then he'll sometimes sit and watch my workouts. But it's, it's incredible. You know, it's a really incredible thing. And it's, I, I've watched some of the, I watched some of the guys in the alliance start to, you know, really start to change their bodies and make it a priority in life, which I think is incredibly important. So anyway, with all, with all that said, what are some of the other key pieces that you think people should incorporate into.

Their daily lives? I know you brought up.

I think HGH before, like human growth hormone. How important is that? I've heard people talk about that a lot. Are there things that we can optimize for human growth hormone production optimization within our body?

Absolutely. Man. One is the three basic exercises. Squats, deadlifts, sprinting. If there was a 4 4th one, it would be pull ups. So that releases your own natural growth hormone, getting into REM sleep. REM and the delta sleep helps you to release your own natural growth hormone. So if you're really, really stressed before you go to bed at night, that's going to prevent you. If you have night lights in your room or where your eyes can see it, that's going to prevent it. And your eyelids are not thick enough to prevent your eyes from sensing the light. So complete darkness. So the deep, deep sleep. So one good thing is important is make sure that you don't work, do your job or have something that is mentally stimulating right before bed because that'll keep you from getting into that deep, deep sleep pattern. That's one. And then there are Three amino acids that you can take alone that actually crosses the blood brain barrier to help release your natural growth hormone. One is or the other is tryptophan. And then you have the arginine. Those three taken alone crosses the blood brain barrier to release your own natural growth hormone from the pituitary gland. If you mix those with other amino acids, it becomes just a building block. Just like protein helps to build muscle, it helps to, it's for enzymes for hormones, helps to build those hormones, but it won't release the, it won't release the human growth hormone from the pituitary gland.

Interesting. Yeah. On the note about night lights, I read another study that was talking about how having night lights on for kids or having your kids sleep with the lights on or nightlights in the room and whatnot can actually be damaging to eyesight. And that a lot of, I think it's nearsightedness is actually correlated to kids sleeping with night lights on because it does something to the cornea and the lens within the eye where we're supposed to have time at night where it's just in complete darkness. And so over time of sleeping with a nightlight on, it'll actually cause your eyes to become fatigued and so your nearsightedness so seeing distances will become impacted, which I found wildly fascinating. Like it's, it was, and it was. I don't remember the exact data on it, but it was shocking how like the, the impact that sleeping with a nightlight on can have. And so to hear that also impact human growth hormone is, is, makes, makes a ton of sense. What, what is HGH important for? Like what, what in terms of our health, our, our fitness, our, our muscle build?

Well, one thing HGH is, they call it the miracle hormone for youth, life and longevity. Also with the kid, if, if they have the night light, it actually affects their growth, it affects their brain, it affects obesity. You know, if you have less human growth hormone, then you're more susceptible to becoming overweight and obese. And most people after the age of 23. The age of 23 is when it starts to slowly decrease. And once it starts to decrease, it's easier to put on extra body fat. So the human growth hormone is to keep you, helps to keep you lean. It helps you to build, build. It helps to keep you from putting on extra body fat, but it also helps you to put on lean muscle as well. It's good for your, your, your mind is good for you emotionally. You feel, especially as a man.

More.

Confident in who you are as A man. They had a study that they did with buck boxers, and with this study, they tested the boxers before they went in the ring to fight. After the fight, they tested them again, they went in the ring, and they were basically the same. After the fight, the person that won, his growth hormone increased exponentially. The one who lost, his decreased. So even in winning, it increases your testosterone and your growth hormone. So when you win, win, win. So what I. What I do with a lot of my clients, I find a way to help them win every single day in some aspect and set it up. And they know in their minds I'm releasing natural growth hormone. It's helping my body to develop and to build more towards my goal. So how can we put something in your life that makes it a win every single day? Even as small as making your bed? And first thing in the morning when you get out of bed, make your bed, start the day off with a win. So just little things like that. And I have them put their clothes. If their workout is in the morning. Don't put your work clothes next to your bed. Put your workout clothes next to your bed. Because when you get up, you don't want to make a choice. I'm putting my workout clothes on. Oh, that's right. I must. I need to work out. So with. Those are small triggers to help them to win and to not only get in their workout, but to start their day off on a, you know, on a good note.

Yeah, it's. Well, we're probably gonna have to wrap up here, but because this. I mean, this has flown by much faster than I expected, there's a lot more I wanted to talk about. Um, I remember. I think I recently, I saw a study. They were talking about sprints being one of the most effective ways in increasing your natural, your hgh. And one of the things that you can do, which, I mean, I don't like them, but they're really good. Where you do a max sprint for 20 to 30 seconds, and then you rest for 60 to 90, and then you do a max sprint for your 20 to 30. I think it's 30 seconds. And so one of the things that I do is on my assault bike, I'll do, you know, four or five rounds of that at least once a week, where I'll do max effort for usually 30 to 40 seconds, and then I'll rest for 60 and then back in for 30 to 40 seconds, and then rest for 60, and. And then I think the study showed that if you. If you can work your way up to eight cycles of that, which is a lot. When you're doing max, max effort, max sprint, you know that it can increase your HGH production by like 400%, which I thought was pretty, pretty freaking wild. And what I found interesting to just sort of cap this off and then I want to hear your thoughts on what else we can do and just your thoughts on this and we'll close it out was even. Even though it rushes me, it's very. It's a very, very hard exercise. I feel phenomenal after, you know, I really do. I really just feel phenomenal. It's like that, you know, it's like the ice bath first thing in the morning. Just feel good.

But in the moment, I mean, I'm just swearing at that assault bike, you know, cursing at it. And I think I posted a photo of me on Instagram the other day just like giving my assault bike the middle finger. This is just, you know, it's just kicking my ass, but it's so worth it. But any. I know we've talked about a bunch of things. We've kind of taken a very technical, tactical approach, which I love. I've learned a lot from you in today's conversation. Any final thoughts on any of the subjects that we've talked about? Anything that you would want to add in and we'll, we'll end there.

Yeah. One thing you. You had talked about putting on lean muscle mass and decreasing body fat. What are some of the best ways to do that? Well, one of the things, we have several. We have several energy systems and we have body sculpting systems. And the way, you know, no matter what you do, if you add anything, you're going to get some results. If you say, I want to lose body fat and you start moving, then you're going to lose some body fat and you change your diet a little bit. You get rid of the coke, you get rid of the juices, you get rid of the white bread. You're going to lose body fat. But the thing is, whatever your goal is, you want to, you want to use the least path of resistance, and you want to get as much out of the time spent in the gym or on the bike as you possibly can towards reaching your goal. And so you have energy systems and body sculpting systems. And if your goal is to build muscle, you need to pair the energy system and the body sculpting system together. If your body is to lose the maximum amount of body fat, then you need to pair that energy system along with that body sculpting system. So if my desire is to lose, if my desire is to put on an enormous amount of muscle mass and I change my eating and start eating clean and I start lifting weights, that's all great, but am I doing the right reps, am I doing the right set? Am I eating the right food to fuel my body to perform for me? So if I'm trying to build muscle, if I, if I'm going to build muscle, I need to eat muscle. So my first macronutrient that I want to concentrate on is where's my protein coming from? Are these good sources of protein? How much protein do I need per muscle pan? So that's my focus. Then I want to make sure I have the right amount of carbohydrates and fat to facilitate that. If my desire is, you know what I've got, I've got enough muscle. I don't want to build a lot of muscle. I want to be defined. So it's going to require energy and intensity to get the definition. So my first macronutrient is carbohydrates. Where am I getting my good quality carbohydrates from? But I need the protein to maintain the muscle I have, and I need the fat to lubricate the joints for my heart. I need the fat to also lower my blood glucose levels because it takes longer for the body to digest and absorb. Now if I want to decrease body fat, I've got to use the right energy system and I've got to use the right body sculpting system. So this is the type of training I'm going to do. It can't be high intensity because I'm moving more towards building definition, not losing body fat. So, and the thing is, we say I'm building muscle, I'm building muscle. Well, you're never going to see that muscle. It's underneath that big, huge layer of fat you got. So we need to get rid of the layer of fat so you can see the muscle. So I'm getting rid of the extra body fat. Guess what? It requires fat to lose fat. You have two types of fat, the brown fat and the white fat. And you want to make sure with, with, with the saturated fat, it's, it stays solid at room temperature and it's, it, it, it maintains itself. But if you have the essential fatty acids in your body, they have open bonds and they're alive. And so they're going through the system like this. And because the bonds are open, they actually connect to fat and pulls it right out of the system.

It actually vasodilates. It causes your arteries and your veins to open up. It's good for the heart, good for your eyes, everything. So with that being said, I'm getting rid of the body fat. If I want to maximize my fat loss, then I need to do extremely low impact training with the keto diet. If I'm on a keto diet and I do intense work, then my body releases cortisol, which is a stress hormone. And that stress hormone is a muscle wasting. It's a muscle wasting hormone and it's considered a stress hormone. And it depletes.

It actually attacks the muscle tissue and converts it into glycogen, which is converted into blood sugar, which causes the pancreas to release the insulin. So it kicks you out of keto and you're. And you, and you're working with the wrong body sculpting system, with the wrong energy system. So you have to have the right energy system, the right body sculpting system to maximize your desire.

I love that, man. Like just laid it all out. There's some amazing science in there and I feel like we could go down a rabbit hole on each one of those to sort of lay out what that looks like for each of them. But we have to wrap up and, and pause here for today. I always value our time together in our conversation. Thanks again for joining me. And we will have the links to all of your channels, your websites in the, in the show notes and we'll have the link to your, your product in there because it looks like a really, really awesome device. I have to check it out and get it for my gems. So thank you so much again for joining me, Ron. Appreciate it. Appreciate you. Everyone that's out there listening, man it forward, share this conversation with somebody that is prioritizing their health, their fitness, their body. And that's it for this week. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.