How A Simple Stick Developed Into One Of The Most Advanced Muscle Self-Quantification & Isometric Training Tools That Exists.

Welcome to something very out of the ordinary.

It's quite rare that I release a.

Podcast episode on a Monday, but I'm doing that. Yes, I've gone there. Isn't that crazy? Aren't I living life on the edge? The reason I'm releasing this podcast, episode two, is because one of my friends just left my house and when said friend showed up to my house, he had this stick with him full of these crazy computer chips and flashing lights and. And extremely interesting self quantification technology. He showed it to me. He took me through this really incredible isometric style workout that involved like breathing and body control and these intense muscular contractions. And he had invented this new stick. I thought it was so cool that I whipped out my microphones, we sat down, we talked about it. He's got a Kickstarter campaign going for it right now and we talk all about that in today's show. You might recognize this guy's voice because he is also part of the Mind Pump podcast. I have been on the Mind Pump podcast before and they have been on my show before. And this is the notorious Justin Andrews from the Mind Pump podcast who you are about to hear speak. Justin is a personal trainer from the Silicon Valley area. He has a health and health, and if I can talk, a health and fitness professional who has a ton of background working with people on all levels, like soccer moms, all the way up to pro athletes. And this new stick thingy that he made is really cool and I really wanted to help get the word out about it, particularly regarding his Kickstarter campaign. Some of the other stuff that we talk about in the show and if. If you want to try an incredibly unique and cutting edge fitness tool, I would check this out. I'm gonna buy one because it's like a combination work of art, isometric training tool and self quantification device. So there. There you have it. Have fun listening to this one recorded from my back porch with the birds singing in the sunshine. And this was also something that we recorded live via video on Facebook. And I'll put a link to the video version of it as well in the show notes, which I will announce during today's show. All right, enjoy.

In this episode of the Ben Grief.

On Fitness show, it's so intuitive that if I can just show people, push hard when the lights tell you to and back off, you know, control yourself and then show them the movement via some video on the app, I feel like I'm making a bigger impact. I feel like I've done enough coaching with the fitness minded people already that are already sort of in a good path. My focus individually is to broaden that and to get. To get people that are a little more deconditioned.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

All right. We, my friends, are live.

Are we live?

We are live. And this is one of the times on the show when I get somebody on who just loves to sing his little heart out.

Oh, my God.

His name is Justin. He's from Mind Pump. You may have heard the folks from Mind Pump on the show before. We've duetted before, actually. If you have not yet heard the guys from Mind Pump and you're not familiar with Justin, how dare you, for one, then go to the show. Notes shownotes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com AxonPodcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com AXonPodcast and I will link to all the other episodes that we've done with Justin and actually his pal Sal and Adam from down in San Jose. We are perched out here on my back porch where Justin has just finished showing me. Justin, how would you describe this stick that's beside us here? This stick that's like lit up like a Christmas tree with a bunch of different, like, chips inside of it. It looks like something out of the zombie apocalypse. Dude, what is this?

Yeah, so this stick, it's basically capturing your force output. So as you were using it, you kind of noticed that you were irradiating your whole body and you're connecting to your body neuromuscularly. What we're doing with this is we're really just, we're enhancing the experience to recruit muscle. And I'm guiding you through this experience with the LED lights. So basically it's like it's capturing data and you're going through kind of semi isometric type movements with this.

All right, I'm gonna slow you down and open up a lot of there. Yeah, so. So we have a stick, right? It's more, it's more or less like, like a stick, like a pole When I go for a walk sometimes in the morning. You see that spear behind you?

Yep.

I'll sometimes grab that, or I'll grab a wooden dowel or an ASHRAE candle, and I'll go for a walk. And I've talked about this on the podcast before. I'll hold on to both ends of that stick. And anybody listening in has probably done, for example, like a PVC pipe warmup where you'll bring a stick in front of your body, down to your hips, and then back behind your body, back to your butt, and back in front of your body. And you're kind of tensioning that stick a little bit. Yeah, it's called a shoulder dislocate, or even like an overhead squat, where you might be doing a squat, but you're actually. You're tensioning that pipe or that dowel overhead as you squat. Or I'll even do a walk where. And as I'm walking with the pole, like up on these farmers roads up there, I will hold onto the pole and like, lunge to one side and rotate and then lunge to the other side and rotate. And the last time that you and I were hanging out down in San Jose, you described to me the fact that when one is, like, tensioning an object like that, like a pole, that you could actually quantify that. And so what you've done is you've actually taken more or less like, a stick like this, and you've built in the ability for that stick to be able to, and correct me if I'm wrong, detect the amount of tension that one places on the actual.

On the.

On the rod, on the stick.

Yes. Yeah. It's going to be able to, like you said, detect like, this muscle tension that you're able to produce. So right now we have it with specific moves where it's compressive forces. So you're actually driving the stick either into the wall overhead position or you're pulling it into the ground. So there's just a.

So. So the stick can detect compressive forces placed upon it.

Right.

Can it detect when I pull it apart?

Not. Not yet. That's a feature down the road that we're pursuing. There's a lot of features that I'll probably get in trouble if I mention, but there's. Right now you're safe. I have a lawyer as a partner. I got to be careful. So. Yeah. So basically, right now, as it stands, it's primarily pushing and pulling that we're capturing from various types of movements.

Okay. So, for example, and I know that this can be difficult, which is why I really want to make sure I explain it to you guys who are listening in. And. And I will put some links to videos as well. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Axon podcast. That's a X O N podcast. But Justin had me out here in my back patio just now, and an example move was I placed one end of the stick against the wall, and I was basically in, like, a half squat position. And then I kind of, like, tensioned the stick and pushed it into the wall using my torso. There's a series of lights that travel up and down the stick. And you had it set at a specific tension?

Yeah, I had it set at about 75 pounds of pressure. So what's really cool about not just capturing this, but it's also guiding the workout experience. So each LED is gonna basically account for about 10 pounds of pressure. So there's a guided light that shoots out that you try and chase. So if you think of, like a carnival ride, or not even a carnival ride, but the sledgehammer, where. When you. When you. When you hammer down onto that. Onto that, like, stand that they have for it, basically the LEDs on that shoot up to the top, and it kind of shows you visibly how much force you produced within that swing. So I basically took that concept and then applied it to the stick so you could actually visibly see, you know, where that. Where that end range is and where I'm going to try to squeeze and add more tension into the movement. So I'm able to get to 75 pounds of pressure.

Now, would you classify this as an isometric contraction? Because you're applying tension, but it's not actually. It's not actually moving. Like, your muscles aren't moving?

Yeah. So basically, that specific exercise that you mentioned is isometric because you're not moving and you're just increasing that tension internally. So it's this intrinsic force you're producing. So it's a different concept than if I was to overcome load, which there's all these external force factors that typically we work out with. Well, this is where you're actually concentrating on producing the force.

Now tell me about when I am releasing the tension. Because when I release the tension, the light, I'm almost, like, chasing this light. So I apply the tension for, like, five seconds, and then as I see the light come back towards the other end of the stick, I'm supposed to gradually release the tension. Why. Why is it. What's. What's happening that would be beneficial in any way for my body when I do that.

So what I, what I tried to do was emulate like a strength curve. So as you're ramping up, we're going through our concentric phase of contraction. And then what I can do, what's unique about this is I can have this all preset. So say I want to ramp you up for five seconds, hold you in an isometric position for about, about 10 seconds, and then on the way back in the eccentric portion of contraction, this is able to. Now I can control this force, I can own this force. So it's not just me being able to summon this force. I have to do it under control and composure.

What about the breathing component? When you're holding an isometric contraction like.

That, right, so you want to breathe. I mean, that's something that is important. You're gonna get lightheaded and it's not gonna work out very well for you. So also just to be able to concentrate and keep that, that deep core activated along the process of this. So, you know, some techniques, some breathing techniques with cat, cow and all these kinds of things will help to kind of get your timing with that. But you definitely wanna make sure that you get your breaths in and out while you're still squeezing hard.

Talk to me about the actual development of this thing. Like, like you, you conceived of the idea that you wanted the ability for someone to be able to use something like a stick to quantify tension so they could do like torso training, core training, isometric training, breath training. What, what's the first step to actually get this series of chips and lights and everything that you've done and make a device like this? Like, where do you even start?

Where do I start to create this? You know, it was quite the process. Man, this is about three and a half years of in the making. So for me, I was inspired first and foremost by some different techniques that I was introduced to with stick yoga. And then also stick mobility and just moving with something that I could sort of orient my body around. And that really helped because now I actually had something tangible to kind of, you know, work my body to focus on, like a position with. So I have like an anchor point. So I, I did a lot of these moves. And the, the difference between flexibility and mobility is the fact that what we're trying to do is we're trying to, you know, increase this tension and strength and support around the joints. So you're actually. Its strength and flexibility together is mobility. So that's actually been a game changer. For me, instead of going through passive stretching, I started to get work on mobility and noticed that not only could I increase my range of motion, but I was strong in those ranges of motion and I could own that movement. So that really inspired with the stick being an easy way to kind of like with yoga, for me, it's, it's tough because they show you movements. And so a lot of times clients will attempt to do a movement and they sort of get lost because they don't have that perception of where they are in space. So this proprioception, they're, they're lacking. And so this actually helps to kind of show them. Okay, my arm should be up here, it should be pulling back. I should have the stick down here. And I should now hip hinge back to, to sort of slide in this, into this position. So the stick's really helpful. And then I was just like doing a couple isometric moves and was producing force. And it's a hard workout. Like I was, I was pressing hard and going through these movements and like, man, wouldn't it be cool if I could actually, you know, figure out like how much force I was, you know, what, what I was doing tangibly, because otherwise it's kind of like this strange concept that you're trying to teach somebody and like squeeze harder. What does that mean? So now I actually can define it. So I actually had a client that worked with me on this and she's a patent attorney and she introduced me to one of her students from Stanford who is an engineer, mechanical electrical engineer. And he's just this master of, you know, just creating things from nothing. So he did this all in his backyard and his shop and we just like tinkered on it for a year and came out with the prototype and then just have slowly improved over the next year. And now we're at a point where we teamed up with one of the top firms that actually designed the Nike fuel band to take our product to the next level.

So is this something you would use for like a full workout? Is it more of a warm up tool? Is it more of a rehab tool? Like what, what, what do you. Excuse me. Thank you. Zevia.

Yeah, that went right in my face.

Right in your face. What do you envision people and the eggs and onions I had for breakfast?

Yeah.

What, what do you anticipate people using this for?

Well, I mean, that's, that's the thing. There's so many different ways you can go. I, as a trainer, see it being insanely helpful for assessing clients and just what kind of response they can get from their muscles. So this mind muscle connection, which a lot of bodybuilders sort of coined, but just really seeing if they have strength in that particular joint angle and kind of assessing my way through all those different positions. So an assessment tool, I think it's going to be invaluable between trainers and physical therapists, but I want people to just use it as a workout if.

You need an assessment tool. For example, if I have this stick and I know that I can tension a certain amount of tension on the stick and quantify that, whether it's a rotational movement or whether it's a squats or any, anything where I would actually be able to apply force against this stick. What you're saying is like a physical therapist, for example, would be able to track someone's progress as far as their strength curve goes by actually applying more and more tension as time goes on with a stick like this. Or quantifying the amount of tension someone can produce as they use it.

Absolutely. Which is going to be awesomely helpful for somebody who's rehabbing an injury and they're just now sort of reconnecting to that muscle.

Now you say that's going to be helpful, but what do you, what experience are you, are you, are you saying that from as far as like, you know what, what tools are similar to this that exist right now that people are using successfully?

I mean, they've had load sensors and they've had like grip sensors that can.

You can grip like a dynamometer.

Like a dynamometer. And there's also a product called like Active five, I think, which I just gave them a plug. Whatever competition, I don't care. But it's basically like a little hockey puck that you, you use compressive force.

That was foolhardy. You just put yourself out of business.

Yeah, right.

It's very similar. You tension it like that. And what people find is they're actually able to develop strength without injury because it's an isometric movement.

Yeah. Well, you think of it as being like, it's a really safe technique. So you're only going to apply as much force as you produce. So it's not like you're battling external forces which, you know, somebody overcoming an injury. Yeah. You have to really gradually like increase that and that takes quite the long process. So with this, it's, it's more central nervous system based. So I'm really just trying to get the muscle to respond and increase strength and connectivity and communication, which is then going to translate into strength Overall.

So when you say it's central nervous system based, what do you mean?

I just mean that I can get that kind of response, you know, neurologically. So, like this neural neuromuscular recruitment process. So for me to tap into that, you know, utilizing the stick and sort of channel that in the right direction, so creating optimal recruitment patterns, I guess I should say this stick is going to be helpful for that.

Okay, so give me an example of how you would actually use a stick like this with the lights and the ability to quantify the poundage to say, like, identify an improper muscle recruitment pattern or to build a better one.

So to identify a better recruitment pattern. So, like what I could do with the shoulder, for instance. So if I were to bring you into your end range position overhead, and let's say that I'm limited to, you know, just about in front of my face right here and now I'm using the stick to kind of passively put myself into a position, I can actually start to quantify how much force I can produce, you know, from a position that I'm not as familiar with. So what I'm doing is I'm training my body to now account for this position and teach my body to, to be able to produce and stabilize my shoulder from this new end range position. So I can do that from, you know, any different joint angle. And I can, let's say I'm adducting my knee and that's, you know, I have had, you know, I have no strength from that position, but now I'm adducting and I'm, I'm slowly kind of showing progress by applying those forces into the stick. You know, we're going to be able to capture that data, evaluate it, and then see progress going forward.

When you say you can capture that data, is this where something like the app that you're developing would come in?

Absolutely.

Okay, tell me about how the app plays with the stick.

So what's cool about the app is just more visuals, more feedback. So what I love about technology is the fact that now we can see all this effort that you're producing. You can see it in all kinds of new visual ways. So I have a lot of visuals already established on the stick, but now with the app, I'm actually going to be able to dive in a bit further. You can actually see where you're at in the strength curve. So how closely you matched that strength curve. So like a visual representation of this sort of a peak and leveling off and then decelerating, you'll Actually, visually see that and all the little points of force that you hit along that pathway. And then also you can go back in and you can edit and you can add more force based off of, you know, which type of movement you're doing. So say it was that, that, that position where I had you driving it really hard from a split stance. You can produce a lot of force from that position. So I'm going to want to challenge that a little bit more. So now I go back in and I add, you know, my, my goal. I'll set my goal a little bit further out.

I either a higher amount of poundage or a higher number of seconds of time under test.

Yeah, all those variables, all those, like, acute variables within, within an exercise with the app's gonna make it so you're able to adjust. And really from just your general person that's gonna use this as a workout, there's gonna be a lot of preset workouts that myself and, you know, some of my partners, you know, hopefully over at the Mind Pump guys too as well, we're all going to kind of collectively add a bunch of cool workouts that will. Will go onto the stick.

So, okay, these would be full workouts or these would be like warmups that you use prior to a workout.

Yeah, both. So, like, we call them primers. Yeah, but, but basically, like, yeah, there's. There's techniques with that too to sort of stimulate, train your. Train your body ahead of time the movement by. By using isometrics or using these, like, muscle tension techniques, that's going to get everything char and ready for that specific movement. And now I go apply load. It's a great combo, but yeah, you can use it for just an entire workout of doing these muscle tension movements.

Why is it that isometrics are even something that you'd want to do? I mean, unless you're like, in prison and all you can do is push workout. Like, what is it about isos that you like so much?

I feel like we just overlook them because we didn't really have anything that could tangibly tell you if you're improving or not. And I guess, I guess I'm just curious, you know, I'm more curious than anything as to what coaches are going to do with it, what therapists are going to do with it, what your everyday person is going to use it for. I'm not like, dogmatic about, okay, this is how you're gonna have to use it. Like, this is. I definitely have an idea of how I would use it right away. Just from my own past experience. But I'm more excited about the potential, you know, for rehab, the potential for performance enhancements. Just experiencing different modalities I think is important. So this is a totally different modality and something to focus on than weightlifting. So it definitely. And it's already shown in studies and they've done tests and stuff and a lot of. In, you know, eastern, Eastern block, you know, like sort of regions, they've done a lot of cool studies with isometrics that I've been reading about.

So those darn eastern block regions, what kind of studies have they done?

Well, just back in the weightlifting days, in Olympic lifting days, I read a couple of them that were just going over strength and performance increases and rehabilitative type benefits from it. So yeah, we can maybe add some of those studies in the show notes to refer people to.

Have you ever heard of this guy named John Bruni? I had him on the podcast.

I haven't.

His program is called Neuromass. And the way that it works is you do a very slow, what he calls like a grinding movement.

Right.

Like extremely super slow, 15 second up, 15 second down for a certain number of repetitions. And then you do an isometric hold for a certain period of time. And he uses the isometric hold as almost like a, like a primer and also as a way to introduce copious amounts of lactic acid in the muscle tissue. And then you finish up with a power based exercise. So you go from like a super slow squat. Excuse me. To an isometric squat to a squat jump.

Right.

So post activation potentiation.

It's a little bit like a post activation potentiation type of deal. Exactly. And it's incredibly difficult. However, what I'm curious about when it comes to this isometric. So we know we can generate a high amount of force development without putting the muscle at an increased risk of injury because it's not moving the joint through a range of motion. We know we could generate, for example, a certain amount of lactic acid if you hold the time under tension for a long period of time. What about things like hypertrophy, for example, with something like this, would someone actually be able to change themselves aesthetically?

Well, that's interesting that you bring that up. We were just down in Florida and we're at Ben Pikulski. Are you familiar with Ben Pikulski's bodybuilder?

No. Now I feel like. Feel like I'm not one of the cool kids.

Wow. You gotta have him on your show. He's a Great. He's a great guy. I think he's coming to the Spartan race actually.

Oh really?

We got him to, to kind of check it out. He's actually on this.

I love it when bodybuilders come to Spartan races so I can destroy them like, like the muscle bound Kyle Kingsbury back here sitting behind.

Oh look, look, he's already talking. See I just, I know better, you know, I know my place. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bodybuilder guy.

Yeah. So he's, he's, he's hooked up. I think it's called mat is the technique, muscle activation technique. I may be butchering that but I'm.

Familiar with that as a form of therapy.

Right.

So he connected with those guys. He does a lot of like this mind muscle kind of connection when he goes into his hypertrophy lifts. And so you know it's very, very muscle specific in isolating the muscles. And he's, he's all into that squeeze, you know, that pump and the hypertrophy style, you know, repetition range and all that. Uh, but he does it really slow and controlled and, and, and the whole time he's doing that, he is increasing his muscle tension. So if you were to add like say the stick and you're doing those same types of movements where you're doing these squeezing, you know, even as a primer or even going through that and holding these positions, doing the same type of reps, it's going to have a very similar effect.

So now one thing I noticed that you were coaching me to do is we were just doing a workout with this stick with was I would apply a large amount of tension. Right. Like for example when you had me holding the stick up against the door frame here and doing a squat up into the door frame while I tensioned the stick against the top of the door frame, when I released that tension, you've basically got this built in lighting system on the stick where I'm supposed to slowly release the tension and kind of like follow the light. Am I getting any amount of like an eccentric muscle tearing ish type of contraction when that occurs or is that just all like muscle control?

Yeah, more muscle control. Because you know you're not overcoming any load in those external forces. You're the one that's producing the force. And so you're really just teaching, you're channeling this process. So I mean it's heavier on the concentric portion to produce and then also sustain through the isometrics. The, the point of the eccentric part is really to just control your body and control that process so you're safe and you can go into these more compound lifts with that kind of control and composure. One thing about the squat, as you're going down to what I'm trying to coach with that a lot, is just to be able to build this support system. So if I have, you know, heavier weights and I'm accommodating for those heavier weights, first and foremost, I want to be able to recruit properly. So my joints, My body is telling my. My central nervous system is telling my body that all these things are accounted for, and my. My joints are. Are nice and stable. So the. The stick helps to kind of increase that process. And now as I'm getting down, I actually have found that with clients, they're able to get even more depth in their squat because, you know, they're irradiating this muscular tension, which tells their body they're. They're fully safe and. And supported. Now I can actually go a little bit lower, A little bit lower. And now the cue going back up. I'm trying to now take your mind from irradiating your upper body primarily to now driving those forces up from the ground. So now I'm getting more connectivity and utilizing my legs more. So I want to get them more engaged, especially like driving.

I could tell was more aware of my body when I was actually using it, because you have to tension multiple areas to be able to kind of like recruit enough to hold the light on that stick for however long you want to hold it. Now, in your opinion, and I realize this is kind of a broad question because you got freaking experience. You know, I've seen you work out down in San Jose with it, with the Indian clubs.

Yeah.

And with the maces. And you're a big kettlebell guy. And now you have this stick. Talk to me about with. With your level of knowledge of all these, you know what I consider to be unconventional. A little. A little bit more fringe or unconventional workout tools, even though they're not unconventional. Right. Because like you talk about the eastern block countries, they've been freaking used them forever. Like, the mace is. Is what is. Is that not Bulgarian? It's Indian. Yeah, like an Indian type of ancient weapon. What would. If you were to put together the ultimate training routine using some of these unconventional tools, including things like isometrics and tensioning. Walk me through. An ideal routine would be for somebody who just wanted to utilize this kind of stuff rather than say, like, you know, a squat rack or a pair of dumbbells. Right.

I. I do a lot of These things in phases. So I love these tools primarily to just maintain shoulder health and, you know, strength and support. So I incorporate them a lot with, you know, even when I'm going through barbell lifts and I'm going through, you know, dumbbell training and, you know, whatever it may be, I tend to want to go in phases of three to four weeks. Um, so I may go through like, like predominantly like a may spell training style workout where I go through a lot of as many different multiplanar movements as possible and rotational movements because they're, obviously they're great for rotational type movements. So my, my primarily my primary goal with that is, is a functional strength training type of a protocol. So, you know, that's how I would, I would utilize them best for just, you know, focusing on functional type movements. Lunges, squats, you know, swings and you know, shoulder, shoulder movements that, you know, a lot of these.

Yeah. What would like a program look like, like layout for me, just like a sample scenario for somebody listening. Like a Monday through Friday type of program. On this day you would do the clubs. On this day you would use the stick. Like, like what would it look like? Yeah, and we got time, bro.

We're gonna sell this afterwards, I guess, huh? Yeah, I, I would actually start. So I've done this before with, with the mace bells. I would start with a couple of the mace bell swings. So I would, I would go through maybe like three to four sets.

I would do with a mace bell being the long stick with the big weight at the end of the long.

Stick with a big weight.

Okay.

Right.

You're not calling it a mace. You're calling it a mace bell.

Yeah, I call it mace bell. I mean some people might call it a mace.

Okay.

But I mean there's, it's, it's actually limited the amount of movements that I feel are even that necessary. I mean, what it provides best is rotational movement. So I'm going to be heavy on that. So I'll do like three to four sets of 15 to 20 reps and you know, work on the skill and technique of it. A lot of these things are skills type exercises. So most of it I would just consider practice. But so I would pick probably like three to four movements and I would just try and master that movement and take me about, you know, 30 minutes or so. And I would go through even just lateral lunges with it and I would do, you know, 20, 20 reps or so. And really the volume I'm going to increase on these type of exercises because I'm trying to teach the movement and, and get down to the technique so the load really isn't that heavy. I'm going to kind of ramp my way up with the load and start out pretty, pretty light because it's such a skill movement that I want to get that mastery of it. And so I would probably do like five to six exercises total in the entire workout. And it'll take me about 30 minutes.

To 40 minutes with an exercise being like an overhead squat or like a shovel type of motion or swinging or a figure 8 or something like that.

You can get super creative with these things. Yeah. Do like a matrix lunge. Yeah, you can do.

And so you're going to do your mace just like one day of the week or you do that every day?

I would do it probably three times a week. Okay. And then so you can do like.

Your mace work on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Yeah. To be honest, I, I, my personal preference would be to do like a foundational, like heavy intensive days with barbell training just because I can bring the load up quite a bit. And then in between those days is like active recovery or what we call trigger sessions in our maps concepts. That's really where I utilize them best to maintain functional, multi unconventional training tools.

On the in between days from doing like heavier barbell complexes or barbell work.

Absolutely. So honestly, that's, that is specifically the way I use it.

Okay.

And I dom like that's primarily how I use it to maintain especially like these rotational movements in the shoulder. Like you just don't get it from other options that are as effective, maybe kettlebells.

But and then would you also on those same days that are in between your heavier days where you're using these unconventional training tools to increase mobility or restore range of motion or help your body to heal faster or bounce back faster with these things you call trigger sessions.

Yeah.

Would you then be doing in addition to, to the mace, like club bells, kettlebells, your stick over here, that type of thing.

And I would keep it, you know, all the load, I would keep pretty light and just go through the movement of it and, and go through like, you know, like maybe like a 10 minute type of a workout with a couple different movements. Repeat that, you know, throughout the day. So I will do like maybe two, three times a day.

Oh, throughout the day. So you're stopping at certain points throughout the day to throw in a few of these movements?

Yep.

Interesting. Now, Kyle, I don't. He disappeared. He must've fallen asleep. He's nursing his boo Boos inside. This is similar to, like, what I'll do tomorrow morning. Like, back behind you on the table there, there are some kettlebells, and there are these things called neuro grips, which are actually developed by that guy named John Bruni who I mentioned earlier.

Oh, he's right here.

Yeah. And there's like an ab rollout wheel and a spear. Of course, you always got to have a spear. And what I'll do, I finally got.

That technique down, by the way. I was over there practicing.

Yeah. Nail the spear throw.

Yeah, man.

What I'll do on my off days, in between my hard workouts, like, we crushed the obstacle course this morning for over an hour. Right. So I'll be kind of sure tomorrow morning. But tomorrow morning I'll use those implements behind you, and I'll do rollouts. I'll do get ups, I'll do swings, I'll do some lighter goblet squats, more for range of motion. You know, I'll go inside to the. On there and I'll hit the sauna. But I'll use all these unconventional training tools that, like you alluded to, rely more upon technique and more upon neuromuscular recruitment. And it sounds to me like that's where something like this guy, like the stick would come in, where it's not a hard day for you, it's a recovery day, or you're using it as a warmup to recruit muscle prior to a workout.

Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree. And that's really. As a trainer, and if I'm working with a client, that's probably how I would use it primarily. But when I'm talking about the general public and people that are super deconditioned and, you know, have terrible movement to start with, this is. This is a tool that they can do an entire workout and repeat without too much damage. Right. And this is going to be massively beneficial for somebody like that.

Now, will the app allow someone to say, hey, I want to work shoulder range of motion, or I want to work on my squat form or like. Like to choose a certain exercise, choose a certain body part, that type of thing, and then it just tells you what to do with the stick?

Yep, yep. There'll be a. There'll be assessments in there that are really basic. So you can kind of go through a squat. You can go through some positions from 90, 90. So we can. We can check out mobility in your hips, mobility in your ankles, mobility in your shoulders, and. And basically, yeah, like you said, we could. We can add body Part specific type exercises in there too. So yeah, so it's easy and intuitive for somebody to use. That's really the goal. This is to make everything as intuitive as possible. So they just kind of hop right in and go.

Is your background in engineering or are you more of a background in exercise and fitness programming?

Yeah, no, I have no, I have no back. Yeah, no, I definitely have. Exercise is predominantly my background and kinesiology. So went to school for that and then didn't know what I was going to do. I was actually planning on being a physical therapist and going to go to school for that and got into personal training. So did about 10, 11 years of personal training and started to. And then I connected with Adam and Sal and the guys from Mind Pump. The guys from Mind Pump. So and we, we created programs together that we wanted to specifically address issues we saw in the industry as far as the over intensity that was applied in workouts or you know, you know, different. Different issues that we found nutritionally that were being spoken about. So anyway, that just. We just all had a like minded experience together and, and just decided, hey, let's do this, let's talk about it. You know, for about a year we were just kind of building and now we have a pretty solid following of an army of people that, you know, have gone through our programs and it's great, man. This is just another addition that I feel will complement a lot of our MAPS programs specifically. And we're just actually coming out with a new MAPS program we did with Dr. Brink, who's a movement specialist. And he gets into a lot greater detail with the science and the neurology behind movement. And specifically, you know, all the way down to your fingers, your wrists, you know, your elbow, your, your ankles, your toes, like your feet, like all these different things to, you know, increase connectivity, which, you know.

He's like a chiropractic doc, right?

He is, yeah. Yeah, he is. And he's taken a lot of concepts from a lot of brilliant people. And we all sort of work together to kind of put the protocol together in this program to. We called our first program that was similar prime. And so that was to address how people were using pre workouts primarily to get primed for their workout, when in fact they could benefit a lot more from just doing a very specific, you know, type of a warm up. That's not really a warmup. It's just kind of getting your body fired up and teaching you the movements before the workout.

Right. How much do you guys focus on nutrition? I mean, when you're talking about like neural recruitment and the central nervous system, there's obviously everything from myelin shades to oleic acid to, you know, speed of neuron firing to electrochemical membranes on the cells. Like, are you guys focused much on like food, water, nutrients, supplements, things along those lines?

Yeah, we tend to talk a little bit more, more to the general audience. You know, from a nutritional standpoint. This, this is more my background. The, the movement side and, and you know, like assessments and, and, and you know, trying to, trying to look at how to improve performance overall. That's really what I'm passionate about in my background. Sal, you know, he's more from a holistic type of a background where he's looking at, you know, nutrition to optimize wellness and you know, to heal the body and, and he looks into the microbiome and he's really got us focused on, you know, that type of a science and, and, and the quality of food and just, you know, the decisions that we can make to optimize, you know, our, our wellness and you know, and Adam has his experience. He brings in his primarily, you know, from, you know, bodybuilder. Yeah. From macros.

Yeah, man.

Yeah. No, he's actually. I mean, he's pretty, he's pretty on point with the way that he has everybody track and. Yeah, I know.

I just like to.

Yeah, you're just giving a job.

What's your diet look like? Are you like a paleo guy or so?

Yeah, I tend to, I tend to focus a little heavier on. Towards the paleo side, a little bit more on. On food quality. So I'm not necessarily paying attention to calorie intake and macronutrient balance. And I'm just trying to make better decisions when it comes to, you know, the quality of my food and also apply intermittent fasting for health purposes. So that's something that I do include quite a bit.

What about supplements? Do you have like top supplements that you from like a, like a physical therapist or. Well, I know you're not a physical therapist, but from like, like a, either a rehab or, you know, a neuromuscular training standpoint or anything related to, to nervous system recruitment that, like, like fish oil, anything like that?

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you would have a lot of cool additions to that. Like, I'm not my background. I don't, I don't tend to focus on supplements quite as much.

Well, top two, I'd say would be fish oil and anything like EGCG from, from any green tea extract.

Okay.

Like both of those are just like freaking like they're steroids for the nervous system basically.

Oh, really?

Amazing. Yeah. Olive oil too sweet. Because your membrane sheets that transmit the information, those are a huge part of them are oleic acid which you're going to get from a good olive oil. So good olive oil, good fish oil. And then green tea is actually I write about this in my book about how important green tea is for nervous system transmission. Or green tea, any, any kind of like sirtuan based food like blueberries, dark chocolate, green tea, green tea extract, any of those type of things.

Well, that's cool. Most of those things I'm already consuming already.

So you need to have like a green tea dispenser on the end of this stick right here where you just press a little button and green tea comes.

Well, now I know who to look for, for, you know, potential partners. So I appreciate that.

Exactly. So once you develop this stick, do you anticipate people being able to actually just like purchase it at like a sporting goods store to use there? Are you looking into it being more something like something a physical therapist or a chiropractic doc or a physician would prescribe to a client? I mean, where are you seeing this thing? Kind of like, dude, I'm opening this up to the world in this industry.

I honestly, I want to get out of the fitness industry with this.

Really?

Yeah, I want to. It's so intuitive that if I can just show people push, you know, hard when the lights tell you to and back off, you know, and control yourself and then show them the movement via some video on the app. I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm making a bigger impact. I feel like I've done enough coaching with the fitness minded people already that are already sort of in a good path. My focus individually is to, to broaden that and to get, to get people that are a little more deconditioned, a little, a little more hopeless. Like they haven't had, you know, quality information with how to train their body and just start at a real basic fundamental level and, and help to, to.

By, by using the stick.

Right, interesting.

So that specifically is my motivation behind marketing going forward. But you know, there's definitely, definitely application for these physical therapists and therapists and performance driven coaches to see potential and, and utilize this with their athletes and their patients. For me that's like low hanging fruit. I just, I know that, you know, somebody who's smart will be able to see what it does and how they can apply that in.

Yeah, well, I mean, I felt it honestly when, when I first heard about it. I was trying to figure out like how, like wrap my head around like how it even work. Like, you know, you tension a stick and I could kind of get it based off what I was talking about earlier, how I'll take that spear or like an ASHRAE candle or whatever, a wooden dowel, and go on a walk and tension it and you can kind of feel, you know, like a shoulder dislocates. We were talking about earlier how you pass it over and under the head and you can feel that tension, that there's some benefit there. But the ability to quantify and work it into this lighting based system. I didn't get it until you just walked me through. You know, we spent 15 minutes before when you were showing me how to do the squat and the torso twist and the lunge. And I get it now, so it's a cool concept. A couple other quick questions as far as the final prototype, like what we're looking at here. And by the way, for those of you listening in, we're doing a Facebook Live. So I have a little video going. If you go to facebook.com bgfitness you can do a search for Axon and you'd be able to find it. I'll put a link to it too. If you go to Ben greenfield fitness.com Axon podcast that's BenGreenFulfitness.com Axon podcast but back here behind me is like this super slick, like, oh man, Kyle's lounging naked behind us.

No, don't do that.

No, we don't want to see your ball sack, baby.

That was too much.

But we've got, we've got this full kind of like wooden, slick looking device with a stand. Like it's almost like a beautiful piece of art. This finished stick. Is that, is that like a working prototype or kind of. Where is it at in terms of the development of this?

Yeah, so that actually is the aesthetic model that we were able to create with Whipsaw that I mentioned earlier. And it is functioning just to show sort of a sequence. Just right now, the batteries, you know, it's not working. But what you would see is a nice LED display with one button where you can kind of scroll through. It's going to look very similar to.

The LED display being what you're actually trying to chase when you're trying to apply as much tension as you've chosen with the app or with this, with the buttons on the stick that you Want to apply?

Yeah.

The LED display is like lighting up like a Christmas tree.

Right.

Kind of like. I think Kyle back here described it as like a carnival. It is like a carnival because it's like, what's the thing where you hit the thing with a hammer at the carnival and it goes out like a.

Trying to describe that?

Yeah, very, very similar to that.

So.

So yeah, you're following these lights with the amount of tension that you produce. But what you're saying is that, is that this beautiful piece of art behind me is kind of like a. A prototype, and this would be the final thing that you'd sell.

That's what it's going to look like. Right. When you. When you support our campaign, it's going to look like that when you receive it. And what I like about that is you can set it up in your office. It has a cool charging stand that has a. Has a nice design with also two.

Little bands with the stand. So that stand is charged with it.

Yeah, it's gonna be a charger.

Yeah, gotcha.

So, yeah, so you just put your stick like that. It kind of goes in the corner of your house, your office, you know, your gym. And, you know, it looks nice. It's got a great feel to it. You know, we wanted to kind of. Kind of keep it familiar. Right. So wood has that sort of appeal where it's. It's something familiar. But now we've. We've added cool features, too, with tech.

And you're doing this on a Kickstarter campaign?

Initially, we are. We're trying to get raise, you know, funds that way. And can I.

Can I wrap my head around the cost of this thing?

Yeah. So the early adopters. It's going to be like 199, I think, is what we have as a nice option there. If you get there, kind of the first people to go check it out. And then it'll sort of slowly ramp up in price and then there'll be, you know, ways to save too, if you go for two of them at a time or a couple of them. So, yeah, there'll be some options like.

A normal Kickstarter campaign.

Yeah. Nothing different.

So if. So, if you're listening to this podcast, when it comes out, you would go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com AxonPodcast what I'm gonna do over there, because I know, again, this is some stuff that you probably want to see visually. Justin's gonna send me some links, not only to some of the research that he was talking about. If you wanna look into the research behind, for example, isometrics and your nervous system. But then also he's going to send me some videos and photos of this thing so you can see it in action. I'll upload the Facebook video that we're actually shooting as we record this podcast. And in addition to that, we're going to give you guys some special incentives over on that page. So it's all going to live there. If you go to BenGreenfulFitness.com AxonPodcast I will give you everything that you need to know to get your hands on one of these bad boys. I plan on getting one to add into, like I mentioned the days where.

I'm hooking you up, brother.

Nervous system activation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean it's like a piece of art. I'd buy one. It'd be one of those, you know, see that, see that little like roll out fit wood like, like that roller. Right. Like I, I found that in Scandinavia or. No, in, in Finland. And it's pretty. Right. It's just, it's kind of like the spear. It's not like a freaking like old.

Stuff spear eyesore that's just sitting there.

Yeah, yeah, it's a cool, even like the. I know we all have our reservations about the kettlebells with the faces on them back behind you, but. Right. Regardless of their functionality and the fact that they, they swing a little bit differently than the competition kettlebell, they are a piece of art that my wife doesn't mind me.

Oh yeah.

Leaving mine around the back porch. So. So it is, it is a cool tool. Justin, anything else that you want to share with people about the Axon or its development timeline, anything along those lines?

Just, I mean, I've been, I've been antsy to get this thing out. So within the next. I want to say like July 10th, maybe hopefully sooner, but July 10th, the latest. This campaign is going to get rolling and I want, I want to really get people to, to, to go check it out that day, the first day. I want, I want as many people to go check that out as possible, see what it's all about. You can go to axonfit.com and basically get all the notifications when it goes live, all that kind of stuff and then we'll put some pictures and stuff up there as well.

Sweet.

But yeah, I, I'm just excited that, you know, a project like this that's been like three years in the making and I didn't even tell you, but we, we went through two other inventions before I even got to this one. So this has been kind of quite the journey. The journey that my sock puppet in.

A toy car or like something related to the Axon.

Nothing, nothing that sophisticated. But yeah, no, we actually had a machine that we ran into patent issues with that was pretty, pretty cool. Kind of similar to. You familiar with the ARX machine? Kind of similar to that. Like it was mechanical based and, and basically the idea with that was like you would get. You would have to account for this mechanical force pulling against you. So we came up with a whole prototype for that with like a garage door opener and like set it up and had it on this cable thing and man went into great labor intensive days trying to work that one out to no avail. So, you know, this is all part of being entrepreneur. You, you go through these, these hurdles and it's the strong that can survive.

Maybe I'll be on Shark Tank someday, baby. Yeah, and, and maybe you're like a modern day Tesla or Edison or. Wow, one of those cats.

I can't live up to that.

But somebody on the Facebook Live, by the way, also, perhaps we can end on this. They say you sure have muscular hands. Things you don't see on podcasts. Your hands are muscular.

You like that?

No, I think, I think, Holly, you were seeing my hands?

Just saying.

Yeah, yeah, my hands. Yeah, my hands. Well, cool. Those of you on Facebook Live watching this, thank you. Those of you not watching on Facebook Live, I'll put the link to the Facebook Live download if you go to BenGreenFeldFitness.com Axon podcast. That's a X O N podcast. I will also put links there to the other podcast that I've done with Justin and his Mind Pump friends over at Mind Pump. And of course the link to the Kickstarter page, videos photos of this thing so you can check it out. Thank you for listening in. And Justin, thanks for.

Thank you so much for having me, dude. I really appreciate Ben.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we can go jump in the cold pool or something. Hell yeah. All right, thanks for listening, folks. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Justin, the one and only from the Mind Pump podcast. Do you want to to exit us with one of your world famous songs, Justin?

Yeah, let's do this. How about that? The Benny and the Jets.

Thank you. Thanks for watching.

Good night.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.