The Mysterious Micro-Workouts, Turning On Your Butt, Overdosing With Melatonin & More With The MindPump Guys

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. I'm in San Jose, California. Or it might be San Jose, I don't know. They don't teach us these things in the Washington backwoods. But either way, I came down here to hang out with some really interesting guys called the Mind Pump Guys. I'll introduce them to you in just a moment. They've actually been on the show before. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com mindpump you can listen into them. Their names are Sales, Justin and Adam and they're a very fun group of guys. This podcast gets like slightly explicit in a couple places, but hey, what can you expect when you throw four full grown red blooded American males into a room together to talk about things like biohacking and sleep and sex and beyond. So this one ought to be an entertaining episode for you. I am interrupting today's show to tell you about this magical oil. So the idea behind oil is that usually it doesn't dissolve very well in things like teas and coffees. And that's why if you are one of those people who say, puts a stick of butter and a bunch of MCT oil in your coffee, you get like this nasty oily lining on the top of the coffee. Well, there's this company that's figured out how to emulsify MCT oil. So you just stir the oil into your coffee and go. And not only that, but they've taken their MCT oils and they've given them amazing flavors. My favorite, by the way, that I've been using this fall is pumpkin spice. Yes, you can get pumpkin spice MCT oil. So you can not only get all the advantages of shoving your body into ketosis and staving off appetite cravings, but you can also make delicious, tasty pumpkin spice teas and pumpkin spice coffees. They've also got a coconut flavor, a vanilla flavor, a strawberry flavor. You can find all this and much more goodness functional food goodness over@onnit.com o n n I t.com here's how you get a discount. Go to onnit.com ben10 that gets you a 10% discount on anything. O n nit.com ben10 and add that pumpkin spice MCT oil to your order. You won't be sorry unless you use too much of it, in which case you will get diarrhea. But don't do that. Don't exceed like whatever they say on the label. Tablespoon 2 tablespoons. Act wisely and with responsibility with your MCT oil. This podcast is also brought to you by something I probably haven't been using enough lately. Because my face is covered in hair. I decided that I wanted to look all manly and lumberjackie for this Christmas season. So I've got a beard and so I have not been using as much as I had in the past. My five blade razor. Yes, I have a five blade razor. Call it razor envy, Small razor syndrome, whatever. I'm into razors with a lot of blades and this particular razor has a soft flex hinge, it has a lubricating strip, it has an ergonomic textured handle so you can hold it better when it's wet in case dropping a wet razor is a pain point in your life. But perhaps most importantly, they cost just a fraction of what you'll pay at the drugstore store. And you get these high quality German engineered razors, including this new generation two shaving head that they have that has all those features, those five blades and the lubricating strip and the trimmer blade for hard to reach places. Everything comes in a beautifully designed gift box and you can get it over at Harry's.com H-A-R-R-Y-S.com not only that, but when you get their limited edition shaving set, which is, did I mention a perfect Christmas gift, you get their foaming shave gel. It smells amazing. Their gift box, which I mentioned earlier, three of their German engineered five blade cartridges and a midnight blue chrome razor handle. So this company was started by these guys named Jeff and Andy who were fed up with being overcharged for razors, so they started their own razor company to give people a great shave at a fair price. You get a $5 discount on any order from Harry's. When you go to harrys.com, h a r r y s.com and enter code BEN at checkout. They have free shipping for just a little bit longer, so be sure to act soon if you want to get that free shipping. Harry's.com H A R R Y-S.com Enter code BEN at checkout for $5 off.

And there's that concept that they've shown in research when it comes to some elements that influence mor that no matter how hard you work out at the beginning or the end of the day, if you are seated for eight consecutive hours and in some cases for even just two consecutive hours, you have a really increased risk for mortality. And something like that. This whole grease in the groove or micro workouts or trigger sessions almost forces you to Take use that pomodoro technique but in a slightly more structured format.

And you want to talk about an energy boost. Nothing. I swear to God. Midday, when you're tired or whatever, maybe you didn't get good sleep the night before. You get up and do an 8 minute trigger session and you feel energized.

Well, wouldn't you say the closest thing. And this reminds me of the takeaway I had from when we hung out with Ben last time was he got me into doing the freezing cold showers. That same surge of energy.

Yeah, you get that from a trigger session.

Very, very similar. The same feeling I feel when I do like a little trigger pump.

When I wake up at night and can't get back to sleep, I do a trigger session.

10 minute trigger session.

That would count.

Actually that's like three times.

Ian's wondering in his qu if you can just use those micro workouts as a replacement for a full workout or if you still need to do the full workouts.

No, no and yes.

Well, okay, so here's the thing.

Yes, you could, but is it as effective? Absolutely not.

Because you get benefits. You get specific benefits from the heavy hard workouts that you're not going to get from the trigger session type sessions. And the trigger sessions complement the other ones, the full hard workouts, quite well. You got to do both. I mean, it's like you're sending the loud muscle building signal with the hard, heavy workouts and then you're just kinda keeping that signal up and keeping that volume on it high with the trigger sessions without causing too much damage. So they really do work great together. But if you're pressed for time or you're traveling and you can't make it to a gym or whatever. Yeah, do three trigger sessions a day, you won't lose muscle, you'll maintain your strength. You might even get a little stronger because it's different. Do it on an everyday basis. I mean, I could definitely see there being benefit with that as well.

Yeah, nice.

They're the perfect partners like Larry Curley and Mo. Actually, you know, switch to the Three Amigos.

We can go the Three Amigos.

Three Stooges.

I like that.

Can you guys sing My Little My Buttercup?

That's the best. It's a sweater.

Fill up the rest of this show.

You know, I think the biggest mistake that people make with the micro workouts or trigger sessions is is mirroring the full workouts are still intensifying them.

I think that's why I hate calling them workouts. It's a Trigger session.

Yeah, and I think that's, I think that's the thing to make sure that people understand that the, you know, the idea behind it is you're not trying to create damage, which is tough for people to understand that, you know, you're.

Just, you know, you really, you want to keep going.

Yeah.

Stop yourself.

Katie Bowman, who wrote a really good book called Move youe DNA, she's a biomechanist. I think she calls them movement bites.

You do throughout the day.

Yeah, it's a cool concept. So we do have a couple other questions though.

Yeah, let's do that.

I want to make sure we get a chance to delve into. So Sal wants to know what you guys think about melatonin as a supplement. And I'm actually really curious about this too because I have my own thoughts on melatonin. But I'd love to hear not just your guys thoughts on melatonin as a supplement, but I know, for example, when we were at dinner last night, you were talking about how you've used binaural beats and specific forms of binaural beats to get very, very effective naps or to enhance sleep or creativity. You guys seem like you're kind of into this concept of things that could help one with napping or sleeping or sleep cycles.

Absolutely.

So do you each have. And Justin, I'm curious since you've been a little bit quiet over there, give you a chance to pipe in. Do you do anything special for sleep Melatonin or beyond?

Well, really like this is experimental for me. So with these beats and what he's talking about with the Brain. Brain fm, which we just got introduced.

To, which by the way is not by neurobee, it's Brain fm.

It's not very different.

That's what I'm trying to explain. Brain.fm. yeah.

And.

And trust we've actually created the scientists and the CEO will get mad when you. Because I know I already offended him a couple times when I was like, well, our buddy Ben, he talks about binary beats. Is that the same thing? And they're like, no, it's not that.

Yeah, I guess there's a little bit.

I just thought it was binaural be.

That's what I thought it was too. Based off of what you had shared with us with your experience. And then when they were explaining they sound similar but supposedly they're further along with. With the science.

It's music too.

Yeah, it's music, but.

Well, my takeaway with it is that like just using it and I've Used it for naps and for sleep. And I mean they even have like specific types of beats for focus and to, you know, like stimulate that. And so for a lot of it for me is like my brain doesn't shut down very easily at the end of the day. And so just putting these on, it's almost like you just get immersed in this sound and it moves and it travels and so it almost distracts your mind a bit to let it relax and just really kind of take in the environment.

It's like white noise. I'm looking at their website, they call it artificial intelligence. And if I recall properly or if I recall correctly, when I went to their website, I had to answer a bunch of questions about what I wanted the session to actually do. And then you, you play sounds right.

I don't know. I don't think it's like that anymore. This was when you did it a year ago.

Yeah, you were.

Yeah, we're on that mobile version. Yeah, no, it's, it's very straightforward. I mean they, they have like a specific sections where you just, you pick like, okay, I want to do a 30 minute nap. And that's actually what I did today.

And it, you just, you just, you fall asleep.

It's hard to describe it. You fall asleep and you wake up, you feel refreshed and you're like, did I even sleep? It was, it felt like it was five minutes.

Well, I like that that Ben took it to that direction because I actually would compare it to a very, very similar feeling that I get when I take melatonin. So I actually do use melatonin occasionally and the reason why I only use it occasionally is I, I see how quick my body gets used to it and I have to keep upping the dose to get that same.

Really? That's what you find?

Yeah, I feel like after I've. If I've done it, like I remember.

I went, how much?

What's the, what's it, what's the typical milligram?

Well, it's five or ten.

Usually it'll be like three to five. Yeah.

Which is fine. I think five milligra. What mine are that I have. Right. I literally have them right next to my bed. I took to, took them last night because we were just all of us entrepreneurs in the same room, man.

I was feeding my entrepreneurs oysters.

Yeah, dude, we were buzzing all night long with all that energy. So it took me a lot to come down and, and that's kind of how I'll use melatonin when I Need that. And I actually use the. The Brain fm. So I took my. My two melatonin, put the Brain FM in and then went to. Finally went to sleep. But it did take some time because I feel like they're the same. But I try and not use the melatonin if I don't have to, just because I feel anytime I have to take a pill that I notice my body adapts to really quick and I have to keep upping the dose to get the same effect. And if I can find something like a Brain FM type of tool, that's a more natural way of doing it.

Except for coffee. Coffee. Just keep on drinking more. Get to the point where you're 50 years old.

Let's be honest. Something like coffee, which I'm actually interested to hear you and Sal probably geek out a little bit on the melatonin because I don't know how adverse it can be when you start getting up into higher dosages of it. And if it is something that could be bad for us because caffeine. More and more we keep learning about caffeine. I mean, you could have quite a bit of it.

Yeah. But depending on your tolerance.

60 cups a day. That was the philosopher Voltaire. I want to hear your thoughts on melatonin 2 Sal, but really quickly. I went to the Brain FM website. They call it neuronal or oscillatory brainwave entrainment, where apparently the oscillations that you hear in the sound entrains your brain into specific brainwave frequencies like alpha or theta. They have a really interesting scientific white paper on their site. And up until this point, I have used something called sleepstream, which is almost like a DJ with a bunch of binaural beats and piano tunes and white noise and stuff like that that you can use. But it seems that what they're saying on the Brain FM website. Maybe I'll have to get them on the podcast at some point for a little bit more detail. But they say it's not binaural beats. It is. It says it's completely unrelated to binaural beats. It is instead auditory beat stimulation. I don't know.

I would love to hear you grill them. You would be a great. We had them on the show and they were great and we did ask.

Oh, they're great guys, too.

They are. Yeah. No. And I love what they're doing and where they're going, but I would love to hear you pick on them and kind of dive into, especially since you've been using. And is it binarial or binary? How do you say it? What's. What's the proper way of saying that?

Binaural.

Binaural, yeah.

Nor bisexual.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, is it. No.

Bi. Alveolar. Yeah. By. By areola.

Entering my ears.

I'm a little worried.

By vulvar.

Yeah. No, I would. I would love to hear you. I would love to hear you interview them. I think that would be great. Actually know to dive into that stuff.

Yeah. One of their lead scientists or whatever was at dinner with us last night. Yeah, I just need to get his contact information, talk to him. So, Sal, melatonin, what's your take?

So melatonin is interesting. It is classified as a horm. Up until recently, it was theorized that it was coming from the pituitary. Now I think we've pretty much established that the pituitary gland is what releases melatonin. Here's the interesting thing about melatonin. We know having low levels of it is very bad for health. We know melatonin has got antioxidant properties. It's neuroprotective. As you get older, the production of melatonin tends to decline. In fact, melatonin is being studied as a potential cancer treatment. I know they're testing it on animals right now because it's got some anti cancer properties. Here's the problem. Melatonin initially was set up as a medication at a particular dosage. And when you sell it over that dosage, they can sell it through some loophole as a supplement. So when you buy melatonin at the store, even 1 milligram, which we think is a low dose, is a high dose of melatonin. When you talk to the melatonin experts and scientists, they think that you should take something like 0.1 to 0.3 grams of melatonin max per night.

That's actually, by the way, just to complete Aside, I take 0.3 every night.

They say between 0.1 to 0.3, because when you take the big doses, like adam did, which 5 grams doesn't sound like much, but that's a big dose of melatonin. You may in fact suppress your body's own melatonin production. Like most hormones, there's probably a negative feedback loop where if I'm taking melatonin and my body senses this massive amount, it's probably gonna reduce its own production and maybe reduce or downregulate some of the receptors that it attaches to. So when it comes to supplementing, I.

Think in the absence of microdosing, that, that's true.

Yeah, maybe.

Uhm, however, the other thing is that I've found for jet lag, like when you cross multiple time zones, like when I, when I came back from Finland. Yeah, I do like the hot cold and the sauna and everything. But I do a lot of melatonin the first couple of nights. I mean 50 to 60 milligrams of melatonin and I mean this is about the amount that. For example, I have a naturopathic physician, he'll give this to cancer patients for pain at night, that dosage of melatonin. But if you're jet lagged the first couple times that you get back, I mean you can hit the reboot button on your body with exercise and cold and bright light in the morning and absence of light at night and all these other techniques. But huge dose of melatonin can help a ton.

Yeah. And that's more of an acute like, okay, here's this. I'm jet lagged. I'm going to use it for this particular purpose. But I think a lot of people are buying melatonin and using it, you know, on a, on a nightly basis. And they're taking 5 grams every single night or 10 grams every single night. Well, that's what I'm finding that yeah, they get less and less results.

Yeah, that's why I was that I, I noticed that that was me. I've definitely noticed that, you know, because I, man, the first time I did, I definitely got great sleep and I got great sleep again. And then I found myself every night doing it where now it's more intermittently like last night was a very rare case where I felt like we were just zinging, you know, and I could not. Typically, if I take, you know, two or three hits off of a joint that normally is going to put me right to sleep, no problem. And that's all work.

Last night, a melatonin joint.

For all the kids listening.

Melatonin joints.

Yeah. Normally I'm utilizing CBD to help me sleep at night.

So that's what I do. I use melatonin. The microdosing I get is from actually a guy who I'm gonna be with this weekend because I'm headed down to San Diego. Dr. Kirk Parsley, who is a Navy SEAL who makes this stuff called Sleep Cocktail. And it's gamma aminobutyric acid in a very small form that crosses the blood brain barrier. Micro doses of melatonin and there's like some little things in there that have been shown in research to help with sleep. Like vitamin D and fatty acids and a couple different amino acids.

Maybe some magnesium.

Like some HTP and some magnesium in there. Yeah. But it's in very, very small amounts. So it's. It's.

Well, that's the thing. Like 5 HTP. I remember when 5 HTP came in the market, and everybody's like, oh, take this. It'll help you relax and sleep. And I did, and I could not sleep when I took it. Same thing with melatonin. If I take a big dose of melatonin, I will fall asleep, and then I'll wake up in the middle of night and I'll have crazy dreams.

Oh, if you. If you don't take enough, you wake up like clockwork at, like, 2 or 3am Exactly. Yeah. And you can't get back.

Or if you don't get, like, the extended release. I remember listening to a scientist who. I can't remember his name, unfortunately, I can't remember the names like you do, but he, again, he was an expert on melatonin and how to use it, and he said, like, he said 0.1 to 0.3 grams. Extended release is what he recommended.

Yeah.

And.

But none of you guys were the. The blue light blocking.

I actually have.

We got to get into that.

I actually have some at home.

Yeah, Sal's doing that.

I got to get into. I changed my.

That's like birth control for your face.

Well, I changed all my. I started. I changed all my. My phone, computer, all that stuff to do the, you know, the whatchamacallit.

The lower, like, F. Lux.

Yeah.

There's a better one now. It's called Iris. I interviewed this Romanian computer programmer who developed this one called Iris that goes, like. Reduces, like, flicker and temperature and all these things, like, flux, reduces just blue light, but there's still flicker on your screen, and there's still what's called increased temperature that they're measuring in Kelvin. So IRIS lets you basically just like, hack your entire monitor. Yeah, you should listen to the podcast I did with him anyways, though. So you don't wear blue light?

No, I don't. But it's something that I know that I want. I do want to experiment with, because I. I mean, I noticed a difference. Just, like, literally cutting out the. The TV and the computer screens and the phone. Like, if I do that a couple hours before I'm trying to settle down, my ability to get into sleep is so much easier than it is if I'm, you know, looking at my phone right before I go. So I I do want to play with the blue blockers and walk around with them at the. But I feel like. Don't you feel like in the order of operation that would probably be more important is to cut out the. The small screen in your face?

No, no. If I could pick one thing at night.

Oh, wow.

I do the blue. Because when you're at a mall or an airport or driving down the road with the bright fluorescent lights from the car shining or looking on your phone or your iPad or your computer, the blue light blockers pretty much cover them all. Like they cover any scenario in which you want to avoid modern artificial lighting at night so you naturally produce your own melatonin later on in the evening. And so you could have no special pieces of software and no special expensive bulbs in your house and just at least have something like blue light blockers on.

See how you just sold? I know you see how you just sold? They're like. Okay, now you.

Are you sure that wasn't an infomercial right there?

This podcast was brought to you by the blue light blockers I just invented.

Yeah, no, I absolutely will then. Because I felt like that to me, you know, I felt like I'd be an idiot. I'm wearing these, but then I'm still doing the TV and the computer screen like till midnight. Like that. For me, I felt like that defines.

But the weird thing is you get like I had them on at the restaurant last night and I was getting sleepy at about 8, right? Because if you have them on, your body starts to get sleepy at about the time it would when you were be camping in the wilderness. So it's. It's really interesting how it can work in reverse where you become like a social isolate, you know, around. Around the time the sun goes down.

When you're wearing them, dude, Moscow mule.

Which is why biohackers never get laid.

Moscow mule. Was that what we had?

Yeah.

Yeah, we did have a Moscow.

That was the first time I ever had that. That was amazing.

That's a very.

You're talking about the copper with the copper.

Yeah.

Why do they serve in a copper mug? Do you know this?

It's some special tradition, but there's also a pretty serious issue with like copper toxicity. And people who. Who drink and use copper eat out of copper like that. Almost like plastic or cast iron. Like cast iron. That's a non. Non absorbable form that can cause like hemochromatosis from. But I mean like having an occasional Moscow mule or cast iron skillet steak. I don't Think is a big deal. But you may want to test your like, hold on.

Pass me that alcohol.

I really enjoyed that. And I'm not, I'm not a drinker at all. So to have that, I was like.

Man, that was delicious.

No, it was awesome.

That's amazing.

Ginger beer.

It's anti inflammatory, so it must be good for you. It's like, I see. It's like putting vodka in kombucha. That's the drink that I tell people. It up your liver and heals at the same time because kombucha has glucuronic acid and gluconic acid in it, which is great for liver cleansing. And then you throw a little vodka in there to put some fire, put.

Some fuel on the fire so you end up in the middle.

Counters baseline. Baseline psoriasis. We have a question that you guys had. A lot of questions come in about low back. And I personally used to struggle with low back pain all the time, especially when I would race triathlon and spend a lot of time in the saddle. I've learned a lot about the low back over years of training and now. And also not sitting like a normal person, wink, wink like a normal person. But I'm curious to hear your guys take on back. Bryce is curious because he has ruptured herniated slipped disc issues. He wants to train his butt and his glute and his hips and get mobility in his hips and get his hip extensor strong, which frankly, those are two very important things for decreasing low back pain versus just getting the hands of serenity massage in your rector spinae. But what do you guys, you guys think like, how do you train the back without re injuring the back?

Well, okay, so probably, this is probably.

The most common thing that I think we deal with. Right. I think low back, low back and.

The knee is probably second knee and shoulder second, third, close. Here's the thing with. If you, if you picture the spine, if you take the spine out of the body, it can't obviously can't support itself. It goes in whichever direction it wants to. So it follows the direction of the muscles that pull it or that are tight or maybe loose.

You actually take spines out of people's.

Body like the predator.

Freaky.

Yeah. So if so, you know, besides the ruptured, herniated or slipped disc, there's not much you can do without with the disc. But what you can do is create an environment around the spine that keeps it stable so that when you move in different ranges of motion, you're not relying on ligaments to support you. You're not moving in end of, you know, ends of range of motion. Like, if I'm bending over, I want my spine to be able to move, but if I have issues with my disc, I want to avoid getting to ends of ranges of motion. And what supports that is muscle. So it all goes around correcting muscle imbalances, producing recruitment patterns that are favorable. You want to look at muscles that are tight and improve extensibility in them, but you also want to look at muscles that are loose and weak and strengthen those as well. You want to get.

But how do you functionally do it? What kind of. Well, yeah, exercises. What kind of moments?

Let's get into that and let's, let's talk like. Okay, so.

Well, okay, here's a couple.

Ben brought up sitting down, right? Like, which is that's. And the reason. That's very, very intelligent of him to stand. Why he podcasts, even though I would never do that. But it's smart because one of the worst things that we do is sit down. You know, sitting down is people don't realize that you're, you're in this contracted position and we're creating this, this recruitment pattern that is totally unfavorable for the low back. And if most people, it forces them into this anterior pelvic tilt. And that's what puts all that stress on that low back. So learning to correct that in and get those favorable recruitment patterns like Sal said.

So have you read the book Desk Bound, by the way?

No.

Kelly Starr. Oh, dude. One of the. Because a lot of people, they stand in the wrong position too. They hear that your stand up, get rid of your chair so that your low back gets fixed and you stand the wrong way and create the same thing like loom bar lordosis and hunched over, back over because you don't have your desk heights or hot chick stance.

This is what I have. This is the problem that I have with actually people. A lot of people that run is, you know, they already. They have these poor recruitment patterns and then, you know, they think that running is going to get you in shape, which it can, right? You can burn a bunch of calories and lose body fat, but they have a lot of stuff going on that they're not fixing and they're really just kind of cementing it.

They're just consistent. They're just training that bad recruitment, which.

Is the same thing as the people that are standing that you're saying right now that are still having the issues is because standing Just doesn't do it. It's like standing in a favorable position and understanding what. What, like a neutral pelvis looks like. So talking about things where I would take someone like this and. And we actually just did a video on our. Our mind pump TV. So we have a YouTube channel where this is. What it's kind of geared around is we take little things like this that we feel like a majority of our clients, we've dealt with or had had to help them with an issue like this. And, and I think each one of us went around and gave like, a tip, like, as far as an exercise or movement. Mine was a basic floor bridge, but I was very detailed about how you do a floor bridge, because a lot of people see a floor bridge and go, oh, yeah, you know, my physical therapist or someone told me, I need to do these floor bridges. But then they still are not getting the pelvis neutral before they go into that movement. And it's really a movement to help teach you to hip hinge properly and teaching someone how to do that. So we got it.

But you could do that when your, when your low back is hurt. To get to Bryce's question, like, obviously deadlifts are great for protecting the back and building a strong back and stabilizing the core. But if your back is already hurt, what you're saying is you. You hit bridge instead of deadlift as an example.

Yeah. Well, I want to.

I want to stand.

I want to. I want to regress you all the way to there first before. Because ultimately our goal would to be to get back to deadlifting, because nothing is going to strengthen that. That whole area out more than doing a movement like that. But a lot of clients are like this. They're in this because whatever, either an accident has happened or over time. So I would regress someone all the way to something as simple as a floor bridge and get them to. To perform that correctly, which. Teaching them how to fire the glutes. And so the. The YouTube video that I did on this was just really breaking down the floor bridge and getting people to understand what they're trying to do on a neurological level, how they're trying to connect to the glutes and get them to fry.

That's the key. That's the key right there. The key really is before you get into these exercises where you're trying to strengthen things, you have to create. You have to correct and create recruitment patterns that are favorable. Because if I focus on strength, even if I do the right exercises, even if I do all the Right. Exercises. All I'm going to do is strengthen the wrong recruitment patterns. If I don't change them and correct them to begin with, well, the body.

Is always going to choose the easiest path.

It's just the way you move. You know, if you had, like, a real common one that caught that, you know, leads to, you know, low back pain, is hip flexor dominance.

Dominance.

What if I have hip flexor dominance?

He said as he sat in the couch.

Exactly. If I have hip flexor dominance. Now, here's the thing, though. Sitting down long time, long time without training, other recruitment patterns will cause that. But if I'm. If I understand these things and I train my body to move the way I want, then sitting in a couch or sitting on a chair isn't going to cause as much problem or maybe cause no problem at all with it. With a hip flexor dominance, I can train somebody to change the way they recruit their core so that the core stabilizes more than their hip flexors do.

Right.

And then, boom, we don't have a problem anymore. But if I don't do that and I have them do a bunch of core exercises without having. Without teaching them how to change that recruitment pattern, all I'm gonna do is make their hip flexors even more dominant and cause more problems. And this is why you get people who say, how come my low back hurts every time I work out my abs or my core? It shouldn't. It shouldn't hurt. But the problem is, is they're doing. They're doing most of the exercises.

So in terms of exercises, just. Just to give Bryce a few takeaways here, hip bridging and then standing instead, were a couple of things that you brought up.

Yeah. What were the ones, you guys?

What were the other exercises that he could do? If he can't deadlift, he can't squat. What are a couple others?

Just get ups off of. Off of the bench?

Yeah.

You know, even if it's with a single leg or just getting.

What do you mean? Get up.

So what I mean is, like, just sitting up and down without using momentum to. To get out of it. Basically, like you're emulating a squat, but you're really just focusing on connectivity in your posterior chain. So I'm trying to make sure that like. Like I'm properly recruiting by utilizing force more through my heel and getting my hamstrings and my glutes to fire when.

I come up that doesn't involve expensive equipment.

Nothing.

Can't work.

Yeah.

I mean, there's no way that works.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Where's the tool I buy?

One of mine is, especially if it's in the low back, because that seems to be the more common one, is to teach someone to deactivate their hip flexors through a process called reciprocal inhibition. And then working and strengthening, embracing their core. And that's a very effective way to do what I talked about earlier, which was change the recruitment pattern. Easy way to do that. You lay on the floor, on your back. You can place your legs, knees bent, heels up on something, so a chair or a table, you wanna press down with your heels so that you elevate your hips off the floor just a little bit. Just maybe an inch off the floor. And what you're doing by doing that is you're activating the glutes and the hamstrings. And by activating the glutes and the hamstrings, they inhibit the opposing muscles, which happens to be the hip flexors. It's called reciprocal inhibition. So hip flexors are relaxed now because I'm keeping my hips slightly elevated, squeezing my glutes, and then I go into my slow, controlled crunches to work my core. And that helps teach that recruitment pattern, the proper recruitment pattern that you want. Then when you go, we can progress from there to the heavier, more complex exercises. But now you're not. So hip flexor.

I think it's important to note, though, and I mean, Ben even, you know, made a jab about it a little bit. Because it's true, though, people want the sexy exercise or the tool or like, you know, just give me what I'm supposed to do. And what you're supposed to do is it's. I need you to connect. And it's on a. It's on a more of a mental level than it is actual physical level. And, you know, people want the. They want the thing, the tangible thing. They want to just give me this thing that I need to do or just tell me to do that, when.

It'S like the machine's going to provide this for me.

And I think, Right.

No, not.

Not any of the vibrating foam rollers in the world are going to replace being able to sit down on bench using your butt properly.

Absolutely true.

Yeah, it's. It's. Sometimes it's the simplest, easy. It's some of these simple movements that. And I. And I. And I did this YouTube video. I remember what.

Well, it was about. It was about the glutes. We did it specifically about building the butt, I think, was this.

Yeah. And it was and why we went into it. I remember I had just got to. I just saw a trainer. I was in the gym, and I saw a trainer teaching the floor bridge, and, you know, which is a great basic exercise. And it's one that I've regressed many clients to to just to get them to teach the hip hingement movement properly. And I'm watching him do. Do it with her, and she's just kind of thrusting away and with no rhyme or reason, and I'm like, you know, the whole purpose of that movement is to really get people to understand how to connect to those glutes and to have control of their hips and, you know, just going up and down, like, oh, I mean, she's burning some calories. She's working some muscles. But. But you're really not working on the. The root cause of her issue. And I think getting people to understand that, like, when they have issues like this that, you know, hey, nothing would be better than building or doing a deadlift. That would be awesome. Is because that's what we want to work to, but we got to lay the foundation first. And you got to do those boring movements. You got to do something like getting up off of a bench. You know, I know it sounds lame, but doing that correctly is. It's tough for some people.

The. The.

The two most potent methods that I've personally ever discovered for reducing low back pain and joint pain in general and turning on the glutes. One is a program by Dr. Eric Goodman. There's a book that he wrote called True to Form, and his style of training is called Core Foundation Training. And it's all a combination of stabilized breath, elongating the spine, and contracting the glutes. And there's, like, 10 different moves in the program. I do all 10 every movement morning. So it takes me 10 minutes to go through all of them. I have them all memorized. While the coffee water is boiling, I do each of those exercises. It completely eliminated my back pain after cycling. And what I've tacked onto that since then is something I made a podcast about soon called Eldoa Training. E L D O A. It's a form of myofascial stretching. We're gonna have a class.

We have a class. We have a class in, like, two weeks.

Self traction to hydrate tissue to reduce pressure on discs. You literally feel like 2ft taller after you finish doing it. And I'm all about the 80, 20 taking the best moves from these programs because I don't have the freaking time to do the full program. So I just took three of the exercises I learned in eight hours of training with this Aldoa guy. And I do those three at least once a day, especially if I've been sitting.

Can we just elaborate on what he just said? Because I think that's such great Advice is the 8020 approach with, with when you're. You're finding these new things. Because one of the biggest pet peeves, and I talk about this on our show a lot that I have with Google.

Becomes dogmatic.

Yes, Becomes very dogmatic. Somebody says like, oh, this. And then they get, they get, they feel great. They have back relief and then now it becomes their, their everything. That's all they do. You know, they, they immerse themselves in that and then they become, it becomes a camp. And it's all about this way of working out. It's superior there. No, take. Take what you found works really well and that you've noticed from there, there. And then continue on in your journey of finding, piecing this together. I think that's great.

It's like any of those resources, like whatever. Kelly Starrett's Becoming a Supple Leopard book. Great book, great manual for deep tissue work. But you'd go crazy and wouldn't have any hours left in the day. If every day you decide you're gonna get better knees by going through the 40 pages of the knee exercises and doing every single one. No, you grab the one for me. It's smashing a lacrosse ball right on the inside of the vastus medialis. Holding it there and twisting a few times, right? And that's it. That's the one thing I took away from that chapter that I know gives me the most bang for my buck. So, yeah, there is no rule that when these books come out and these diets come out that you have to drink every smoothie in the diet book or you have to do every exercise or workout in your. In your 40 of the best high intensity interval workouts book. Or, you know, it's. You gotta, you gotta cut through the clutter and simplify.

Did you have a back injury or was it just overall dysfunction from the years?

It was exactly what you went into, Sal. It was overactive hip flexors, a turned off glute, some sacroiliac joint dysfunction from the fact that when you're, say, doing thousands and thousands of repetitions a day on a bicycle or running, if you have just a normal anatomical abnormality, like a difference in the length of your femur bone or a difference in the rotation of your Hips from one side to the other, where you pile thousands and thousands of repetitions on top of that.

That's a problem.

Then it becomes a problem. So, yeah, it was certainly something that took me a while to fix after I got out of chronic repetitive motion activity.

And that's the thing people need to understand when they do that type of activity or sports or these endurance based sports, that they are constantly, for long periods of time, days during the week, they are training a particular pattern over and over again. You're literally practicing to move a certain way so much that your body becomes very good at moving that way and it prefers to move that way, which can cause a lot of problems. And that's why changing it can be so hard. Like, we'll get clients. Like we, we put a, we did a, a build your butt. We call it a build your butt bundle with this modification, teaching people how to turn on their glutes. Because we had saw, we had seen so many people, especially women, who wanted to build their butts with their, with their squats and deadlifts and they just weren't. And they were doing the right exercises, you know what I mean? They were doing the lunges and the squats and the deadlifts, lifts, but they weren't getting any.

They were so hip flexor and quad dominant, which is what we came across. We've came across this with, you know, hundreds, probably thousands of clients.

Yeah.

That we've trained. And, and they come in and they're like, man, I just want to build.

All the squats, I do all the deadlifts, but my butt's not growing. It's like. And then you watch their form.

Oh yeah, you watch the mechanics. And they're, they're all, they're all dominant.

You should have called your, your podcast the butt growers. This is also why there's very few Instagram accounts with bootylicious trash athletes. You just don't really see.

They run their butts off, they have.

Nice quads, but the booty kind of disappears.

It's a very short range of motion.

Yeah. Well, if you guys send me those exercise videos, I'm going to put in the show notes so folks can see some of these moves you're talking about.

So.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com mindpump2 BenGreenfieldFitness.com MindPump the number two. Not only that, I'm going to link to the previous episode that we did with Sal and Adam and Justin up at my place in Spokane. And some of the things that we talked about in today's episode, except melatonin. I don't want anybody going out there and buying 60 milligrams of melatonin. Do as we say, not as we do. Guys, thanks for coming on the show. And thank you for letting me invade your podcast studio.

Yeah, anytime, man. You're always welcome.

Always a pleasure, man.

Next time I show up, I want to see those little, like, horsey saddle chairs in here and blue block and blue blockers everywhere.

Don't worry, we got you.

You all right?

Three, two. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

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Sam.