Why Strong People Are Harder To Kill (And How To Get Strong).

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And there's this expression, I think I first heard this from a Navy seal, that strong people are harder to kill. And in today's podcast, we're going to talk all about why that is and the fastest ways that you can get strong. Now, my guest today is a dude from Texas named Keith Norris. And Keith actually got involved in the bodybuilding scene pretty early back in the day. He was a bodybuilder. He was a powerlifter. He was actually also a football player. He was a linebacker at Texas State. He had a knee injury, but still went on to win the title of Mr. Virginia. He was runner up to Mr. America. And now he works down in Austin, Texas at a place called Efficient Exercise. And we're going to learn about some of the strategies that he uses there to get people stronger. But you may also be familiar with Keith as one of the faces of PaleoFX because Keith, along with his wife Michelle, started the Paleo FX conference that's so incredibly popular in the ancestral health industry. And one of my favorite conferences of the year that we've talked about on the show before. Keith also blogs at the Ancestral Momentum blog. And as you listen to Keith and I talk, you can access any of the resources that we discuss if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com StrongPeople that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com strongpeople so, Keith, what's up, man?

Hey, man, just living the dream here in Austin, Texas, working out, you know.

Yeah, Austin is a cool town.

It is.

You got a lot of little, little skinny runners there, but I know you got a, you got a few swole folks too, right?

That's right. We're trying to change that. We're trying to make out of them.

So. That's right. Strong runners. Strong and fast runners. So, Keith, I think I've, I've seen you say this too. The strong people are harder to kill. So I think that's probably a perfect place to jump in, man. Why are strong people harder to kill?

Yeah, man, it is so true. And actually, I first heard this from Mark Riptoe, who's a guy in Wichita Falls here starting Strength. That guy. That's who I first heard that from. And it stuck. And it's so true. And it's not just. I mean, we're talking today about physical strength, but really it's mental strength, it's emotional strength, and then it bleeds down into physical strength. But, you know, on the mental and emotional side of it, I believe. Am I right, Ben, that you went through Mark Devine's kokoro out in San Diego? Am I correct in that? Did that?

Please don't trigger any PTSD on this podcast.

Okay, all right. For sure.

That was one of the more stressful parts of my ear.

Okay. So one small thing that you left out of my bio is. And you inserted the bodybuilding part, which is like, huh. But you left off my military career, so I was nine years in the military, so really, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

And although I was not a seal, a lot of the training I went through was pretty brutal. And it takes a lot of mental and emotional strength to get through. But let's drop on down and talk about physical strength. I'll tell you a quick story about. And I was just texting this fellow earlier. So client of mine, he's in his 70s, and if your listeners know anything about Austin, it's kind of where the coastal plain, the Texas coastal plain, meets the hill country. So in certain parts of town, it's pretty hilly. This particular client lives on a hill and is. His yard is terraced. So he comes in to work out one day and he's a little bruised up, and I'm like, hey, what's going on? And he's kind of a crusty old guy. And he tells me that he was working on his terrace wall, and it's a limestone wall. Anyway, he falls off the terrace, hits the second level terrace on the way down, boom, Hits another level, hits another level. So he's just kind of tumbling down to the terrace till he finally stops and stands up, dusts himself off, cusses a little bit, and walks back up to where he started and finishes up taking care of the wall. That, my friends, if that had happened to a normal 70 year old, that may have very well ended that person's life. A broken hip, something like that, at least starting the downward slide. This guy, because he's strong and has some hypertrophy to him, bounced right back up, cussed a little bit, came in and came in to work out the next day, just bruised a little bit and was laughing about it.

I think one of the things that people get Nervous about though, when you're talking about getting yourself strong is. Well, there's two things that I get kickback on when it comes to strength building, especially in average folks who don't want to be a bodybuilder. Number one is the risk of getting injured getting there in the first place. Like how do you actually get hella strong without getting injured? Without throwing out your back on a deadlift or, you know, throwing out your butt or whatever it is that you throw out on a squat. That's part one. And then part two is. And you hear this a lot from females, like they just don't want to get big, right? Big and bulky. So I guess let's tackle the first part of that first. Like how? What's the best way? I mean, you have this place called efficient Exercise and I know that you're all about efficiency, but what's the best way that people can get strong?

Yeah, you're right. I was going to give a product endorsement right there real quick and a shameless product endorsement. Thank you very much. I would say that if you're in Austin, come by Efficient Exercise or if you're in San Antonio or Chicago, come by and check us out. But that aside, you have to be smart. I mean, you can't go into lifting heavy weights and jump right into very, very heavy weights. Yes, you are going to get hurt doing that. And yes, I've seen this numerous times and yes, I've seen people with bad form try to lift heavy weights and that's a train wreck, you know, getting ready to happen. The thing about it is you have to start small. It's just like any other skill endeavor. And strength is a skill. It's like any other skill. You don't go out playing tennis and you know, start off playing Serena Williams right off the bat. That's not smart. It's probably not smart for someone who is experienced playing tennis. But you have to start light, you have to get correct form and you have to baby step on up through and you have to use smart programming to get there. And it's not all that complicated. It really is not. But you have to be smart about it.

So tell me about your approach at efficient exercise. Cause I know you guys do unique stuff as far as like matching the. You talked about like force production curves and all this stuff that you do. And I'm interested in what all that entails because I think we've talked about on the show before. My recommendations in the past have been like progress, as you just talked about, Keith. But like whatever, use a barbell, do a five by five or a program from strong lifts or like Dan John's Mass Made simple is another one that I've talked about. But what do you guys do at efficient exercise?

Yeah, so we have access to some very, very special equipment here. This is called the ARCSFIT equipment Adaptive Resistance Exercise.

How do you spell arcsfit?

So it's a R X, F, I, T. And you can get to the website, we've got some videos up there that kind of explain this process a little bit better than what I'm going to do in this verbal communication. It's pretty tough to explain what we're doing, so you really need some visuals along with it. So if you go to the website arcsarxfit.com and you'll see some videos on there that will further explain this. But essentially what it does is it matches this equipment, matches the force curve perfectly for any compound movement that you can think of. Let's use a bench press. Everybody knows what a bench press looks like, so it's very, very easy to explain verbally. Imagine, if you will, that you had a perfectly matched barbell that would somehow magically adjust to your strength throughout the range of motion. So if you can imagine this, let's start off with a barbell. You're lying flat on the bench, you're getting ready to do a bench press. You unrack the weight, it's very, very heavy. Okay. Because one thing that we need to think about is you are 40% stronger in the eccentric than you are in the concentric. Meaning I can lower 40% more weight than I can lift.

Right.

Okay.

So that's one thing, that's why it's so much easier. Like when you have a barbell on your back and you're doing a squat to sit down versus stand up with it.

Absolutely. It is. Now a normal bench press, loaded heavy is a perfectly fine exercise. It's not my favorite exercise, but it's perfectly fine exercise. The problem is with any, with any gravity based system, barbells, dumbbells, body weight exercises, you name it. There is built in inefficiencies. So if I could lift 40% more on the negative. So I'm lowering this weight down. Oh shit. Now it's stuck on my chest and I can't get it up. I've fully taxed myself on the eccentric, but now I've got a barbell implanted in my chest and I can't get it up. So obviously we have to choose a weight that we can get from the most limiting position that would be right at the chest on the way up. That's the most limiting position for the bench press, biomechanically. So I have to choose a weight that I can at least get off my chest. That in turn produces inefficiency all throughout the rest of the the exercise. I could lift heavier weight in any other elbow flexation position, but I don't have the weight on the bar. Ergo, I have to do rep after rep after rep, set after set after set. Okay, so with this particular modality, since it adapts to my strength depending on where I am in the strength curve, now I've got that 40% extra weight in the lockout position. I start to lower it, and it's perfectly matching my force output as I come down. Perfectly matches perfectly matches perfectly. Matches all the way down till I get till I hit my chest. Then we start coming back up and it's perfectly matching again.

So basically what you're saying is when you say perfectly matches, like the harder you push, the harder it pushes against you, and the harder you resist, the more that it pushes against you.

Yes, absolutely right.

So gotcha.

Now, nothing is dropping on me though. So the only thing that happens is I fatigue is I just produce less force.

And nothing is dropping on you because this is nothing is like pulleys and levers because it's a machine.

Right. And you can think of this too. If so, let's say that I take the barbell away and Ben, let's say you trust me implicitly. I pull up a fork truck over you. I lower the forks down and I say, ben, we're going to do a bench press with the forks. You might look at me a little crazy, but just follow me. So you're laying flat on the bench. I slowly lower the fork truck forks, and you try to resist them as I lower. There's no way you're going to stop the fork truck. There is no way, but you're going to try. And let's say I had some kind of device on there that would show you instantaneously what your force output is throughout the range of motion. I lower the forks. You're trying to resist. You're trying to resist. You're trying to resist. We get down to chest level, I turn and I raise the fork slowly. You're trying to push the forks up faster than when I'm actually moving them. And again, you're seeing your force output read out over here. Essentially, that's what this machine does. Now. It's much more complex than that. The transmission is obviously a lot smoother. So the turnarounds wouldn't be herky jerky like a fork trick would be. But that's essentially the idea. You cannot beat the machine. There's no way you can beat the machine. But you're trying to beat the machine.

Yeah, and I've been on it before and it is tough. And you know, even after like a, you know, a two minute set, you're pretty much sore for like two days. So you know that it's working. But dude, do you get any kickback about. Because you're just like sitting Right. Do you get any kickback about this type of movement not being functional? Right, like compared to say like a single leg squat or like kicking something heavy off the ground?

Well, yeah, I mean, we do get kickback, but the thing is you use the tool for the job at hand. Right.

And so this, this is basically one single goal of getting as strong as possible.

Yes, it's one single goal. And I tell all athletes we're going to get you strong in this modality. But if you're a baseball player, you still have to play baseball. If you're a football player, you still have to play football. If you're an endurance runner, you still have to run, you still have to bike, you still have to swim. This is not a magical tool that's going to impart skill to you. This tool is going to make you strong. Then you take that strength and transmute it into your skill. So it's got to be a constant, constant, you know, back and forth play. You train to be strong. When you train to be strong and use the correct tools and then you go on and you, you know, with the rest of your programming.

So how many minutes a day, like, are you. Because I know you can do multiple exercises on a machine like this, but are people just doing like one exercise each day or do you just like pile on like five different moves and you go through one set of each of those moves or how's the programming work?

Yeah, so it totally depends on the person we program in an N equals one fashion here. So I mean, if you were to sit in here and watch clients come in and out, there's no one client session that looks the same. They're all different. Because every client that comes in here has different goals. Every client that comes in here does something different on their off days. Rowing is a huge community here in Austin. Cycling, triathlons, running, all of that. So sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they're like my client who's just climbing.

How about an example though? Just give me an example. Just so people can wrap their heads around it.

Yeah. So an example, I might do one exercise, say a leg press, using this, the Arcs fit equipment. And I might do two exercises for upper body. Maybe I'll do a chin and maybe I'll do an overhead press. So on the arcs fit, they're doing three different exercises. They might do one set. One set? Yeah, sometimes two. Depends on the person. Depends on.

But a set takes like a minute.

Or two or whatever or seconds.

Okay.

Because now the way I use this personally, I do singles or doubles on it. A single, you know, for one, for one exercise might be 15 seconds. And people would look at that and go, 15 seconds, are you kidding me? I'm not even getting going. But if you go to full intensity, full all out intensity for 15 seconds, you are taxed. Seriously, seriously taxed. Yeah, that's just a really, really quick example. And there's a gazillion ways to program this stuff.

Interesting. So do you guys do any traditional exercises there? Like, do you have med balls or stability balls or, you know, like elastic bands and stuff like that?

Yes. Yeah. So we, and I always say I steal from every modality there is out there. I steal from power lifters, I steal from Olympic lifters, I steal from. I come from a traditional strength and conditioning community, specifically for football and volleyball. So I steal aspects from that. I'm like a fusion chef in here. And it's true, if it works, I use it. Body weight exercises, barbells, dumbbells. If you come into the studio in Austin, you will see everything here.

Okay, so, so there's people listening who are like in, you know, freaking like London and Dubai and Australia all over the place. Are there ways that you can replicate this approach using the type of equipment you'd see at the average gym when you walk in? Like matching force production curves, that type of thing?

No.

Okay, so let's, let's say that somebody just like doesn't have access to one of these. What would, what would they like? What would be the next best thing?

Okay, so moving up from there now, we're talking about still heavy compound movements. And what I mean by heavy is something you can handle for 3 to 5 ish repetitions with good form. Okay, so there's a starting spot. What do I mean by compound? I'm talking multi joint exercises. So squats are in, leg extensions are out, deadlifts are in, leg curls are out, that kind of thing. Dips, I love dips. Overhead presses. All the basic exercises that you can think of that are multi joint exercises.

How many sets and how many reps?

So what my target is between 21 and 25 repetitions on these exercises broken up between eight and say five sets. So we're talking about a three by eight. So eight sets of three repetitions or the old school five by five is a fantastic lead in program for most people. And really, if most people were to stay with a 3x8 protocol or a 5 by 5 protocol with the heavy compound movements, I mean they're 80% there. If you don't have access to anything else, really. And seriously, it's that easy.

How many times a week do you think people should lift to get strong?

So it depends on what you're doing. Otherwise for most people, I would say twice a week doing something like that.

Okay.

But it's got to be super intense. And I would also rotate through the exercises too. So I wouldn't do squats twice a week, nor would I do bench press twice a week, but I would rotate through. So a good lower body split would be one day squats, the next day deadlifts for the next workout. Deadlifts.

Gotcha. Okay.

You see breaking stuff up that way, a good upper body would be say flat. Bench press one time one workout, overhead press is the next. So that's. So you're keeping things mixed up. You're still working basically the same muscle groups, but you're working them in a little bit different fashion.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So when you're using this approach, how do you keep women from bulking up or say like a marathoner? Guys or girls who want to run for long distances without having to carry a bunch of muscle, that takes energy to carry and energy to cool.

So there's a couple things that we can dive into in real quick. And really, I am just scratching the surface here, but the question about women putting on a lot of muscle mass, it's not going to happen. You don't have the testosterone levels to be able to pull that off naturally. If a woman is taking supplemental testosterone, believe me, she's not worried about putting on muscle. She's doing it to put on muscle. So that's one thing to think about. I get this question all the time with clients coming in. I want to lift, but I don't want to, you know, I don't want to look like a she male. I got you. And I tell you what, I will double your money back if you wake up one day, and you look that way.

So what about, like, if you look at the CrossFit games, like Annie Thor's daughter, and some of these, like, women who, who are pretty, they're, you know, to use the word again, they're swole. Like, what's going on there?

Okay, so they have either a naturally high testosterone level, and this is what I would like to believe.

Okay.

Or they're supplementing with testosterone. Okay. And this is a professional sport. I have no judgment against. Let me just say that I have no judgments negatively about someone using testosterone to be better at their sport. And that's a whole other philosophical thing. We can go down or ethical thing that we can go down, but these athletes are making money at a sport. Once you start throwing money at a sport, people are going to dodge the system and they're, you know, it's like anything else. They're trying to be the best. You're talking about athletes to start with who are driven to win no matter what, and you start throwing money at it.

What about. What, like, could it be as simple as calories? Like just eating ungodly amounts of food combined with heavy lifting? Like, could that cause a woman to bulk up versus, versus, like caloric balance or caloric moderation?

Not to that extent. Not nearly to that extent. Yeah.

Interesting. Okay, what about estrogen? What about, like, estrogen dominance, Right? Like too much estrogen floating around the bloodstream. Would that be something that could cause a similar response or would that just cause them to get fat?

No, that, that. No, no. It's, it's, it's, It's a testosterone. It's a testosterone driven phenomenon. And that's, that's what it comes down to. And again, listen, I've trained female volleyball players who I knew were not using anything. They were just that naturally high. They're, you know, just the 98th percentile of female testosterone level. They had it. And they were muscular, in my opinion, fricking awesome looking. But they're much more muscular than your average girl. Yeah, a lot more muscular than your, you know, and you see this a lot in volleyball players, and you see it in female sprinters. See that kind of, that heavy musculature, a little bit higher testosterone levels.

And that's, that's what she's speaking of. Serena Williams, right?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, she's, she's got that. She just has a naturally high testosterone level to begin with. And like I say, I know nothing of what, you know, her recovery regimen looks like, because a lot of athletes will use Testosterone to help recovery. I mean it just, it's a recovery process, right?

Yeah.

Which is why Tour Tour de France riders are, you know, do you think they're using testosterone to get swole? No, that's the last thing they want.

Right. But if, but if they were lifting heavy, like some of those guys have.

Huge quads, but if they were to lift heavy. Yeah. They would put on some muscle.

Yeah. Okay. So kind of staying down this pathway of biochemistry a little bit. There is, you know, thisthis thought out there that muscle means growth and too much growth could potentially be carcinogenic. Right. Like being in a constantly anabolic state where you're whatever, you know, toto use like the stereotypical like milk chugging bodybuilder. Right. Like maybe they've got like undifferentiated cell growth just from being so anabolic. How do you strike a balance between being in that consistently getting stronger, feeding your face, anabolic state and then what they've found to be the life extending benefits of things like fasting and calorie restriction and aerobic exercise. And it seems that the two stand in stark contrast. How do you strike that balance?

Yeah, and I think that's everything in life, right? So everything has a yin yang. Everything has a balance. First of all, I would never claim to be the expert on this. At the end of the day, I don't know, I really don't know. But I can say this, I can say that a forced, very, very much forced nitrogen trying to maintain a positive nitrogen balance once you're past that early growth stage, say 25, 26, in that type of range, I think, yeah, you might be setting yourself up for some negative consequences down the road.

Interesting.

I think that now I'll just back up one step and tell you the way I do it. I still lift heavy, I still train very, very hard, I still go at it, but I don't force myself to be on a quote unquote, positive nitrogen balance all the time.

Can you explain when you say positive nitrogen balance, I mean, I know that you mean like eating excess, excess amounts of protein, but what's that mean for you or the people you work with?

So, yes, that and eating multiple times a day.

Okay. Okay. So you're not one of those like snack six times a day as you're getting stronger, like multiple 20 gram portions of protein?

Well, I am, yes. If a, you're younger or you're just, or you have made the choice that. Okay, I agree that there's negative consequences to doing this. Maybe from a Longevity perspective, but I'm willing to give that up for short term gains otherwise. See how this comes back to kind of a philosophical question.

Yeah, like the whole health versus performance thing.

Exactly. Health versus performance. I mean, this is coming from an ex football player at that time. What health meant to me at that time was am I on the field playing? That was health. If I'm healthy enough to be on the field, that to me was health. Things have changed in the last 25 years or so. I don't see it that way anymore. I see health is leading this thing and I want to be strong and have a good body composition to help me in that endeavor. So I've kind of flipped the switch now. I was able to get away with it when I was in my 20s because let's face it, we have the hormonal profile to be able to support that and all the downstream consequences that come with it. That enables you to be pretty bulletproof at that age. And you can get away with a lot of stuff and you can recover from it. You can't do that. I'm 50 now. I turned 50 this year. Now I've got to really think about that kind of stuff.

Yeah. And I think that at least from what I've seen, because there's that research study, I think this is one done at the University of California a few years ago where they were feeding people a calorie restricted diet and they were lifting heavy and they were still building muscle and burning fat.

See? Absolutely. I was just going to say I think the leading driver in this is what is your work output? What are you doing on that side of it? Because I think, and I've proven this time after time again, that it's not the eating that drives the muscle gain, it's the work that drives the muscle gain. And you're going to. Science hasn't really figured this out, but magical things happen when you lift weights. The body is going to respond. It's going to do everything that it can to respond to that stress, even in absence of excess calories.

Interesting. So, yeah, yeah. So another question that I have for you is just about like general nutritional support when it comes to getting strong. Are there, you know, in addition to just like protein and eating good high quality food? And I know that you, as the, as the, the founder of Paleo Effects, you're all about high quality food. And of course I know you're also a fan of beer, which is crucial for building muscle. Do you do any supplements? Are you like a creatine guy? Or anything like that.

Yeah, I do. You know, there's a few supplements I think that are that work for putting on muscle. And I would say that first of all, before you start talking about creatine, which, yes, creatine does work and I do use creatine. Branched chain amino acids. Yes, that works. I do use them. But first and foremost, I have a very, very solid baseline micronutritional program. That's first and foremost because the other stuff, and I explain it to people like this, if I drive up to a work site and I dump off a load of lumber, but, oh, I forget to, to dump off the nails too. I've still got a whole workforce out there that's looking at me with their thumb in their ass. What am I going to do with this? Micronutrition is the same way.

So when you say micronutrition program, what do you mean?

So I don't want to get into a big pitch here, but I am an ID Life representative and Michelle and I came into ID Life early, early on in the inception because they have a very, very smart baseline supplementation program. So I would just say that. And people can go to basically use.

A high quality multivitamin.

It's a high quality, very, very pure, dose specific multivitamin. It's an N equals one multivitamin. So baseline micronutrition, that's got to be first and foremost. Even on top of a badass diet in general, this is on top of, because let's face it, Michelle and I are very, very savvy shoppers. We don't know everything there is to know, obviously about nutrition, but we are saturated with this putting on paleo effects. We have access to everybody. Even as smart as we are, even as well as we shop. I know that we still have micronutritional deficiencies simply because soil depletion, I mean, something as simple as that, just soil depletion, it's not the same mineral content in the soil these days as 100 years ago. Even. That's one thing to think about. A, your diet has to be dialed in, and B, you have to have a solid micronutritional program to bridge the gaps that you're going to have no matter how well you eat. If we have those two things in line, then we can start talking about using creatine. Then we can start talking about using branched chain amino acids, because in absence of those other two precursors being there, there, the other is just not gonna work as well.

Gotcha, gotcha. So, so you got multivitamin Creatine. Any other big wins? You said branch chain amino acids.

Yeah, but I mean, the difference in effectiveness between say branched chain amino acids and creatine is. I mean, creatine way so far outweighs the benefits of branched chain amino acids diet and smart micronutritional supplementation way outweighs the benefits of creatine. So the percentage of increase that you're going to get from each of these implementations just drops off exponentially, if you get what I'm saying. But my first supplement outside of the basic diet and basic micronutrition would be creatine. That's very easy, it's super cheap and it's easy to dose.

Yeah, I personally take 5 grams a day just because a lot of people don't know this. It's like a neurotropic, it is mental health performance. So I, you know, even when I'm not in a strength training phase, I use it just because.

Oh yeah.

I mean it's one of the most research things on the face of the planet.

So it's super safe. So studies on this and it's just, I mean you could eat, you could eat a pound of it a day and be okay. I mean, I'm obviously I'm exaggerating, but I mean, it's super safe. Supplement.

Yeah, interesting. Okay, a few other quick questions for you and then I want to ask you about Paleofx as well here in a second. But this ARX fit that you were talking about, the strength training equipment, do people have to go to a gym or is there a way that like, could I buy one of these from my basement?

Absolutely you could. So Dave Asprey actually has one.

Oh, then it must be good in his place.

Yeah. Oh yeah. No. So here's the thing. This particular equipment has been in roughly five years of beta testing. We've gone through prototype over after prototype after prototype after prototype. We finally got this thing where we want it and we have just come through the first manufacturing run. Actually, as I speak today, the first manufacturing run will kick off for the Omni. So there's three different versions of this machine, the first of which is called the Omni. And that one's coming down the production line right now. So the answer is, can you buy one? Yes. Can you buy all three yet? That's a yes. But the other two versions have to be one off manufactured, but yes. Can you buy one? Yes. Are they ubiquitous in gyms throughout the nation? Not yet, but we certainly.

How much approximately would one cost to.

Put one in your House, you're looking at about 15,000.

15,000.

Wow. 15,000.

Yeah. Wow. So this is pretty advanced technology, but this would be like the, if you were just going to put like one thing in your house to keep you as strong as possible with low impact, this was, this is what you'd recommend, huh?

And that's exactly it. I mean you're. And we have lease arrangements too. So you can look at, you know, 750amonth is a lot more easy to tolerate than the other.

Yeah, I was going to say that's a chuckle change. You could pretty much pay for it and.

Yeah, yeah, so we have, we have the lease arrangement. But yes, I mean you're talking about one tool to handle all your, all your strength training needs.

Yeah, Interesting. Okay.

And you know, as we go through the manufacturing process, obviously one off manufacturing is super expensive. You start, you know, rolling out machine after machine, the price drops. I mean it's just basic economics. So, so anyway, that's where we are with that. We're very excited about it. We have a, a huge amount of interest right now, just put it that way. We're actually even talking with a contract firm that works with the DOD and with NASA and we're talking about that. Ben, I don't know if you saw my AHS presentation, but essentially it was how do we keep astronauts safe in zero gravity conditions over a long haul?

Yeah, actually I didn't see it, but I listened to it later on. It was a good presentation.

And what that boils down to is eccentric exercise. That is the one component that they're missing when they're in microgravity that causes all the bone loss and the sarcopenia that these guys experience and gals experience while they're in space. We can circumvent that with this type of equipment because A, it provides a heavy, heavy, heavy duty eccentric load and B, it's not gravity based.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. And they have them at like if anybody is going to Paleofx just like stop and do a few sets on it. Like what I do, honestly when I'm at the conference.

Yeah, right.

It's like a three day conference. So I do a set in the morning and a set in the evening just to kind of keep myself strong. I'll do like what I'll do like the leg press in the evening and like the pull down of the press in the morning. And it's like my little, my little start and end of my day when I met Paleofix the past couple of years and that's a great segue. PaleoFX. What, what do you think are gonna be some of the, the cooler things that are showing up this year? Because I mean like one year I was there, you guys had like a giant semi truck with like a cryotherapy chamber in it that people could use. And I think, you know, another time there were like Indian Club Bell classes and you know, I've, I've seen all sorts of stuff there. So fill me in on, on some unique things that are happening this year over there.

Yeah, so we'll have, we'll have the unique stuff again this year. One thing that we're putting together and we're super this, we're putting together a combine of sorts. So we're working with a company out of Dallas, Texas, it's called Real Fit Test Score and they're actually coming down tomorrow and we're going to do a dry run of it. So this would be really, really cool. So there's different components to the combine. There's a strength component, there's a speed component, there's an endurance component. And there'll be between seven and nine different exercises or events that will be put on and you'll be scored on each of those events and you'll get an overall score and you'll kind of see how you match up against your peers. And what's cool about this is for instance in the 40 yard dash you can see how you match up against other males of your age or you can actually see, huh, I wonder what I look like against say Chris Johnson in the NFL who ran a 424 0.

That's kind of cool.

So it's very, very cool. So it's Dave, the guy out of Real Fit Test Score, he's a data hound. I mean he has data out the yin yang. So anyway, it's very, very cool. And we're going to do a dry run of it tomorrow. Dave's coming down from Dallas. We're going to put it together. The strength component will be on the ARX machines. So not only will you get a max, you know, like traditional power lifting you would have a one rep max, right. But on the ARX machine we're able to extract so much other data out of that. With one repetition you'll be able to see a lot more metrics that you can follow. You can get an eccentric max, you can get a concentric max and you can get an instantaneous power output over the duration of the lift, which is super cool. So now instead of just having one, you know, maximum number, you'll have actually three numbers combined into one output. Super, super cool. So that's, that's one thing. We'll have that, that combine going on one of the speakers that I'm really, really stoked about is Fred Navarro, who's out of San Francisco. He's actually.

Man, I thought you were going to say me.

Oh, that too. I mean, that's.

I'm just giving you a hard time, dude. Who's Fred? Who's Fred Navarro?

Fred Navarro is a professor out in San Francisco. Sfu. Maybe I'm probably butchering that. But anyway, regardless, he has done research on and has. This is his life's passion. Research on habit change and research on what drives people, A, either to make good health choices or B, continue in the downward cycle of making bad health choices. And I am so simplifying this, but Fred has so much great information and he's packaged it in such a way that is so very, very smart. It is just, it blows my mind. And this is the Holy grail. We know the information, everybody knows the information, and that's easy to come by. But execution and implementation, that is the holy grail. So if you can actually execute what you know logically to be right, that is the hurdle that so many people fail to get over. Well, Dave has a. Dave, Fred has a path to be able to get you over that hurdle. So it's super, super interesting. And this is something that I've always been interested in because I've always known that the information is there. Now how is it that I can have some people comply that information and some people just won't? I mean, they will even tell you, yeah, I know what to do. Yes, I know exactly what to do. I can't do it. Well, why is that? It's got to be some way that I'm packaging it, some way that I'm selling it. You have a switch somewhere or a trigger that I'm not hitting, that I am hitting with other people. And I've gotten better at that. Just because I've worked with people for so long, I can kind of ferret out the, you know, personality trait triggers what I need to hit. But if I have someone like Fred to tell, you know, to kind of lay out a blueprint for me, I can, I can increase my percentage of the people I can positively affect. So that's. That. That's just, you know, a 30,000 foot view, 150 speakers again, Ben?

Yeah. Wow, man.

I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be a five ring circus. We've got the entire Palmer center this year. Last year we had half of that center. For people that have been out there, it's a massive, massive event.

Yeah. Sweet, dude. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, it is a ton of fun. Awesome. Well, everything that Keith and I talked about today, from like the Ara Fix AirX FIC to Keith's gym down there in Austin to Paleo fx, I'll put a link to all of it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com StrongPeople if you want to check it out. BenGrupleFitness.com StrongPeople I'd highly recommend PaleoFX is April 24th through the 26th this year. If you want to add that to your calendar, you don't have to be Paleo to go. It's pretty much just like healthy ancestral living. I've met a bunch of vegans and vegetarians there. I mean, anybody can show up. So check that out. And Keith, thanks for coming on the call today, man.

Dude had a great time. Ben, really look forward to seeing you at PaleoFX in the spring.

Awesome. See you there. Thanks for listening everybody. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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