Why Most Runners Stay Stuck (and How to Fix It) with Lawrence van Lingen

People are just mega stuck. If you mega stuck, you need curiosity and play to unstuck yourself. And often the quickest way again is once your breathing sort of slows down, you have that self-awareness, you go, oh, that's what's going on. Move first and then feel. Don't wait until you feel like exercising. Exercise until you feel like exercise. For most people that really want change, breath's the best segue into it. And One form of meditation is just to notice your breath.

This is movement specialist Laurens van Lingen. He has worked with some of the greatest endurance athletes in the world, such as Jan Frodeno and Taylor Nebbe.

If you're training and you have a training plan, you need to believe in your process 100%, because that's what requires a response. You can amplify the response to a stimulus by your mindset. That's what a lot of the elites do, is, is they manage to give a lot of respect and attention to what they're doing at the time, and therefore you get a strong stimulus and then you get a response. Like, I mean, this is a really, really important thing, is because a lot of people really, really are struggling. You know, an empty cup nourishes no one, and you've got to work on yourself first. And then the more you work on yourself, the more people will interact with you different, and the more you set yourself up for change.

Lawrence has changed my life and my running in a variety of different ways, and I'm excited to bring him back on the podcast for round number 2. He was by far the most requested guest to come back on the show. Recently, Lawrence wrote the foreword for my new and first book, Running Breakthroughs: Transform Your Running and Life. It is a compilation of 10 years of my lessons from podcasting and interviewing different elite athletes, experts, and recreational runners. This is a book that I wish I had earlier in my running and health journey, and I will be rereading for many years to come. The book is available now as audiobook, printed book, and ebook on my website floresgiermann.com, on Amazon, on all of the different locations around the world, and a variety of different bookstores. Thank you so much for the overwhelming positive response so far on the book. It already had more than 140 5-star reviews on Amazon within a few days, which absolutely blew my mind. So thanks for all the support there. This podcast episode was brought to you by PATH Projects. This is the apparel that both myself and Laurens wear on our runs, in the daily wear, while podcasting, and everything in between. Favorite running shorts, pants, jackets, shirts, headwear. You can find out more at pathprojects.com. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Laurens van Lingen. Our first conversation that we recorded, that was about a year and a half ago. That was truly life-changing for quite a few people. The video has more than 100,000 views on YouTube, a ton of downloads on the podcast. And a lot of the comments, I was just going through some more of the comments, they were about rediscovering a joy in movement, about experiencing tears and major improvements in health. And I'm really excited to record round number 2 over here.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited. It's a pretty exciting space to be in, to be able to help people remotely that you've never met before. And a lot of people, you know, they just, it's just from YouTube. It's not part of my community. You know, they've, I've never met them. I've never interacted with them. There's been no sort of video help from my side or no Zoom calls. It's just what they pick up online and it can be truly a game changer.

And the beauty is too, it doesn't have to be super complicated month-long processes. Sometimes it's just small tweaks that you can make even within a few days, if not earlier even, that you can start experiencing some change. And that can cause some positive momentum again. And so I definitely want to go through some of the tools we've previously talked about, but some of the things have evolved as well. And there's new things like the Happy Hip Hack and some of these other things that you're bringing to the light, like the breathing app and different things. So There's a lot to unfold in this conversation. Recently, you wrote the foreword for my book, Running Breakthroughs, and it was so beautifully written. It was so well put together. No, seriously, like we went back and forward a few times, but you wrote about authenticity, about healing, about reconnecting to who we really are. I really want to unpack some of those ideas there, but first of all, like really massive thank you. Like, it was really beautifully written.

Yeah, I don't know what to say. I read— Gwen was laughing at me because when I got your book, um, I opened it and then I read my foreword and I said like, wow, that's quite a foreword. And she said, you're not supposed to read your own foreword in Flo's book and then comment on it and be pleased with yourself. And I said, oh, it's just, it's Yeah, you know, it, it read well and I was like, wow, did I write that? That's pretty impressive. No, but, but like, place of being humble. I was like, okay, that's a pretty good forward if someone else wrote.

There is so much truth in your writing and, and even reading what you wrote in that, there were a few different things I didn't even realize about you. For example, reading in there that your mom had passed from cancer at age 11 was new to me. For you, that, that was a reason to try to do everything you can to heal and save people around you. I didn't know that that was the initial trigger. You experiencing cancer at some point in your life as well made a massive impact. And so everything from that started falling into place for me as well. So Maybe, maybe we can just take a little step back on, on like, why is it that you do what you do and how have things changed for you over the years? Because you haven't always approached the way that you're working with running and movement the same way that has evolved over time. So maybe you can share a bit more about that.

Yeah, well, I think, um, you know, my brother and I sort of relate to the same concept of fully both got into the medical field. Because our mother passed away when we were very young and you, you know, it's a big deal. So probably some part of you wants to help or save other people, you know? So we both sort of feel we're still on the same track with that. I think the difference was like when I was at, when I studied, I was like an insecure overachiever. So I wanted to know the best, know the most. I wanted to be better than other doctors. I compared myself to other practitioners and I want to be the best one, which is kind of okay. But, you know, ultimately, I think the one question that you asked me was if I could go back, what would I do different? Or if I could give myself advice to then, and it's not to say I wasn't happy, but a lot of the time you're so obsessed with wanting to be somewhere, comparing yourself to other people, wanting to be the best, which is okay because it's an intrinsic drive and it does sort of foster some sort of excellence. But if I could go back and talk to myself, I'd say just enjoy what you're doing and love it more. And, you know, because you never really arrive, you never even get anywhere. And it's ultimately, it's not a competition, you know. Um, and, but, but I think, you know, just took decades to get to a point where now it comes from a, from a very, very different place in terms of the joy I get in what I do and the sense of sort of fulfillment and curiosity and play. And I have fun. And that's, you know, enjoying the journey, which is very, very different mindset from before, you know. And also there's a very much of like the doctor knows what's best and you tell people and, you know, even just diagnosing like, oh, well, I've seen this condition many times before, you know. And You know, you hold up the X-ray and like read important things on the X-ray and show them, you know, where's now. Now you have to know, you have to be knowledgeable. So you have to read an X-ray and know what's on the X-ray, but I generally won't discuss the X-ray that much because I'll say, that's pretty normal for your age.

Yeah.

You know, and downplay it. And a really important element of this was, you know, I did, I for a while was an expert witness in, in, for like insurance claims, most of them motor vehicle accident. And a very, very powerful, thing was that there would be people who were hurt genuinely. Okay. Um, but they knew they were getting money. So what happens is they'd recount the story again and again, and they'd say, well, you know, my neck hurts. It hurts if I turn this way. I have a headache in the morning or whatever it is. And then they, they basically rehearse it and say it so many times it becomes their narrative because they're going to have an insurance claim and get money. And it's, you can sort of almost start after a while, get a sense of these personality, um, types, I would say, or, you know, there's a certain setup, you know. And I used to say to some of the people, I said like, because they almost would put off treatment because at the moment the story was they're injured and they want money for the injury, and then later on they're going to fix themselves. Or there was a narrative of when I get the money, it's going to pay for me to do the rehabilitation to get better, right? And, you know, I used to say to them, like, you have to be working on getting better before this payout happens. Because what happens is, for very many of them, you know, sometimes they'd come and try and— they'd come and seek me as a therapist afterwards, you know, as a— to treat them. Um, and very often they ended up in chronic pain when they shouldn't have been because they, they— it the mountain became a, the molehill became a mountain, or they'd re-narrated the story again and again and again, and it starts to gain traction, you know, becomes an entity of itself. And it's one of the themes that I'll tell people is you're not your Instagram handle, you know, don't, I mean, that's one of the reasons I, you know, I've had a pretty colorful past. I have had cancer. It makes for a good story. I don't tell that story. I don't, I don't want that to be part of my narrative. I don't want the, the story is what happens in the moment and what's probably going to happen in the future. Um, so, so it's an interesting, like the amount of change in perspective and shift and mental and emotional shift. I mean, I'm just not the same person as I was when I was younger. Yeah.

Uh, before we start our recording, we briefly talked about some of the experiences that I've had this year, like going through like an event from Tony Robbins, going to an event from Joe Dispenza, and they often talk about like what you repeat often to yourself, like kind of in line with what you're talking about. If you keep telling yourself the same negative story, you start believing that, identifying with it. Whereas if you snap out of that, like it can really make an impact on what happened in the past is not what's going to happen in the future. But if you keep repeating the thought process over and over again, it starts almost manifesting in the future again. And snapping out of that, sometimes it's easier said than done, but it is a very important thought process.

A great example is just count back. If you want to stop a conversation in your head that's negative or fruitless, you know, there's a couple of different ways. I know one of my athletes was saying, if you can't change the dialogue in your head, give it 20 or 30 minutes. If you can't and you're still stuck on the same conversation or the same thought patterns or the same negative sort of cycle that you're in, you need to realize that nothing's going to change, move on, you know, and make a conscious decision to move on. Well, that can be harder than you think. Okay. So a pretty cool way of doing it is just count backwards from 100. And so I get into this sometimes when I'm running, instead of me actually being present or in the moment or enjoying the mountains and the nature and the beautiful place that I live, you know, sometimes having like a conversation in my head and why did he say that? And who shouldn't be, you know, and this is wrong. And, you know, counting backwards from 100 is a great way. At the end of that, you're like, you, you know, you, you just don't typically have that same conversation stuck on a loop in your head.

That's actually a strategy that I hear people do on race day sometimes as well. When they're going through a tough spot, they start counting back. Like, it— for me personally, it wouldn't work, but for some people, they are truly convinced that that's helping them kind of get their mind off whatever else is going on.

So it's, yeah, and get them back into sort of the moment. I know Taylor Knudd, she counts and she counts a lot. She's got counting strategies, but one of them is just she counts, you know, to 10 again and again. But she counts the seconds down sometimes, or she works out how many seconds she's got left. You know, we can do a session and she can say, oh, only 300 and like only 3,600 seconds left.

She's on another level with that. I already sensed that after our conversation at your house when how her thought process is with with some of that. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I think to each their own. Like, for me, the counting is often tied into the breathwork, meaning like have a double inhale, like, and like I do that at the same time with my cadence if I'm running kind of higher intensity. And like, it just becomes such a meditative repeating thing. And that seems to be working well for me. But I've really noticed that what works for one person might not work for another, and you really gotta just experiment with that.

Yeah, I think that's really, really important. You know, like like, um, you know, we talk a little bit about the flow rope. Some people, the flow rope's not the best segue into, into the movement patterns. It's almost like a Rubik's Cube. Like, we can solve it from 6 sides, you know, we can turn it around and solve it from the other way. So if something's not resonating with you, just let me know, because we'll just turn the cube around and try and solve this problem another way and from another perspective. Because people are really individual, you know, as much as we're all the same, then also we're really different, you know. So sometimes it's like you, I mean, you had such a profound experience after one session with the flow rope and people say like, I want that. And it's like, no, sorry. You know, but you, but you might have, you know, people go through and have a really safe sort of experience with breathwork and they go like, oh wow, that, that seems to be moving the needle for quite a lot of people. You know, breathing done right is very, very powerful and and it also creates a sense of neuroplasticity and a potential for changing and rewiring your internal dialogue if it's done right. And, you know, I'm not saying anything new because people know this from meditation or— and there's so many different ways of sort of achieving the same goal. It's interesting, like, I think for most people that really want change, breath's the best segue into it. And one form of meditation is just to notice your breath. You know, so it all just somehow seems to relate back to breathing.

So let's talk through that a little bit more because I have several thoughts about what you just said. I want to back up one second earlier. You were talking about enjoying the journey. Yeah. The part of enjoying the journey, which I think the first thing that stood out to me is when you and I started working together in person where you were actually still working with athletes one-on-one here in Southern California, and I saw you several times. And one of the things that stood out to me was you said the whole part of chasing goal times versus enjoying the process and enjoying the journey and any of those kind of things, right? Where I feel there's a lot of athletes who are very focused on, I have this goal, I want to finish a marathon under 4 hours, I want to finish an Ironman in under X amount of hours. Like, very time-focused or placement-focused or any of those kind of things. And you made a comment among the lines of like, well, the ultimate thing is like, there is something about not really caring about that part and just fully being present and enjoying that, the actual race day experience regardless of whatever that race time is going to be and enjoying that training cycle. And last weekend, I ran the Amsterdam Marathon with my sister., and it was her first marathon experience. And it would have been like, this was one of the best marathons I've ever run. And there was so much joy. I was just going through the race day photos, and I just see myself smiling in every photo. It's like having so much joy, being so present to not be racing the fastest time I could, but to share the streets with someone else and being there together. And that even got me thinking about when you ran the London Marathon last year. Like just seeing how much joy you had in the streets. So I think just, just the way you approach your training cycle on your race day of not always having the finish time as the main focus, but just zoomed out and the whole experience is taking it all in.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and they're not mutually exclusive. Um, Daniela Ryf, who's one of the greatest triathletes ever, I mean, she's won Kona, you know, World Ironman champs multiple times, right? You know, she said like, if you can just tell Taylor, please just enjoy the race, you know, like find joy in the race and remember why you do this and connect with that. That's the secret. So I don't think it's, you know, that's how you win. Yeah. How you get to enjoy a marathon and then run slowly. You can race angry. You can be a, um, a sort of have a sense of anger and I'm going to show them. And, um, you can race from that sort of perspective. I think men can do it kind of more so than females. But generally speaking, um, a sense of joy and purpose tends to light your mitochondria up and your metabolism improves. And there's neuroscientists and neurobiologists now that are really starting to tap into, you know, oxytocin is a performance-enhancing drug or performance-enhancing hormone, right? And it's got a lot to do with, you know, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of rhythm, synergy. You know, not operating out of a fear-based sort of system. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, but it's not some hippie weak way of competing. You can actually get the best out of yourself and have the best performance if it's focused. And in your book, I mean, there's many, many examples of that if you're looking for it. It's kind of where the, where your energy, what the hippies say, where your energy goes, where your attention goes, the energy flows, you know, which is kind of a pertinent thing is, so a lot of people will, will look at Lance Armstrong, you know, you can say like, you can tap into his vibe and his persona and think that that's high performance. But I think if you reframe and you're looking for a different narrative, then there's examples everywhere. And you can start looking at like how Kipchoge sort of approaches racing. And there's so many beautiful examples of people that, you know, you spend time with, Kilian. I'm very sure that you start to realize these guys are just beating to a different drum and there's a very different sense of resonance and focus and a lot of it's just curiosity, play, enjoyment. You know, you cannot rewire your nervous system without play. Play is the precursor to neuroplasticity, to learning, to learning new pathways. And it's really interesting, like people are just mega stuck. And if you mega stuck, You need curiosity and play to unstuck yourself. There's, you know, that, that's the quickest way. Yeah. And, and often the quickest way again is once your breathing sort of slows down and you have that self-awareness and you go, oh, that's what's going on. Now I want to change. Then probably, you know, if you, if you want to approach it with play and curiosity and then also fight or flight. So, you know, we have two parts of our automatic or autonomic nervous system is parasympathetic and sympathetic. Sympathetic is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Okay. Parasympathetic is rest and digest, but it's better to say that parasympathetic is curiosity and play. So literally, if you're curious or playful or have a sense of humor, you're probably not in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Yeah, it really is. And a lot of it comes down to presence, awareness. It's really hard to be angry and be present. Like very often the two are just completely separate from each other. I hired a life coach 6 months ago. His name is Troy Eckert. And I've been working with him on a weekly basis. And it's been incredibly eye-opening for me to have some of these conversations. A lot of it comes down to being aware, being present. And even if tension arises, Like you often talk about, you and him, like I gotta introduce you guys, you're speaking the same language, but he often talks about an open heart as well and what would love do and coming from a place of grace. And even when you get into an argument or when you notice the moment of like you lose yourself out of your presence, you can start to become aware of that and you can actually realize that your heart starts closing. And like the moment you can even open your body, literally open your chest, and you can feel like, hey, all right, I'm open and present again. You have so much more compassion for the other person on the other side, or even for yourself from that standpoint.

Yeah. And it goes back to that theme, like a lot of say, I lost my temper. No, you chose to lose your temper. And so you need that segue, that, you know, which is kind of what we're talking about, the pause between the stimulus and the response, you know, and most people don't realize they just react all the time. And part of what you, what we're really about is to slow down enough to realize, okay, now there's a moment where I almost have a choice and I'm going to choose to lose my temper. It's not, it's not instantaneous. I'm not, I flipped, I lost my temper. It's, oh, it's actually, you know, your thoughts arise and your temper arose within you, but you let it happen, you know, and that pause between the stimulus and the response is interesting. Emotion and emotion are just linked and totally intertwined, how you feel and how you move. You know, the root word of emotion is out of movement. Okay, that's literally what the word means. You feel out of your movement and I think Rich Roll's big on that. He says like, move first and then feel, you know, if you don't, don't, don't wait until you feel like exercising, exercise until you feel like exercising, you know. So there's that, but, you know, I told Taylor, um, just before Kona, I said, enjoy your run. And she says, oh, we'll see. Well, I'll try. So I said, no, no, you don't understand. I'm going to mansplain now to you. I gave you an instruction. The word enjoy means to make joyful. So I'm not hoping that your runners enjoy, you're gonna enjoy it. I'm literally telling you, go and make that run joyful. Yeah. It's an instruction. It's not, I mean, I don't wanna be too bossy, but yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. For anyone listening, for any, any runners, any endurance athletes listening, you often talk about breathwork, but can you give some practical examples if someone listening has 5 minutes time a day? And wants to start integrating some breathwork. Tell us a little bit more, uh, how you would go about it.

Most people overbreathe or take too many breaths per minute. Like you say, screens will do that to you. Looking at phones, reading emails will literally short— like, you'll take too many breaths per minute. So you wanna slow down your breathing rate is probably most people's primary number one concern. And also, generally speaking, you wanna focus more on the exhale. So there's a, there's a couple of tools. One is you can download my app and there's cadence or resonance breathing on there, which is basically, um, slowing your breathing down to about 6 seconds in, 6 seconds out. That's more or less the, if you say the rosary, it'll slow your breathing down to that. Tibetan monks chant at sort of, or when they meditate, they start breathing on that cycle.

So you, you prefer like a 6 breath in, uh, 6 seconds in, 6 seconds out over like a box breathing, like 4, 4, 4, 4?

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a big box breathing fan. Okay. And, and that's kind of personal. That doesn't work for me. Yeah. Okay. But box breathing, you're also holding your breath twice in a cycle and I'm, I'm not convinced. I think enough people like screen apnea is literally you hold your breath when you read an email. Mm-hmm. So I, I think most people need to learn to breathe fluidly and smoothly. Yeah, box breathing has a place with, let's say, helping control your emotions in a stressful situation. But on a day-to-day basis, you want to slow your breathing down. So you can put an app on and it'll give you auditory feedback. So you can sort of close your eyes and slow your breathing down to that. What I typically do is I hum. Okay. So I just breathe in through my nose and then hum. And immediately you're going to take like way fewer breaths per minute. I mean, you could be taking 20 breaths per minute and you hum and you're down to 4 breaths per minute.

It's extraordinary. The humming, it's a fascinating calming.

Yeah.

Hmm. Sorry. Yeah, no, it's such a calming effect. The humming indeed.

It really is. Yeah. Because the humming, the vibration helps your vagus nerve as well. So you were sort of getting like a two for one and then you got auditory feedback on how slow your exhale is and you, you, you can get distracted and very quick, oh, I'm not humming anymore. So, so I think humming is really, really cool. Like if you drive, you can just hum or before a, a meeting or stressful situation, you can sort of calm yourself down. You can just hum. So just, you know, before I was walking around here, I had a few things to do, kind of trying to figure out what's going on. I was just humming. And you can hang to music or you can do like ultra spiritual humming, like, oh, you can project the hum different places or whatever, you know, just have fun with it. But humming is a really, really good way of slowing your breathing down. And then I know a lot of people run. Brian McKenzie, I think, uses breathing very much as gears. There's almost like 4 gears of breathing. It's in and out through the nose, relaxed, kind of working for breathing in and out through your nose, you know, so like you're trying hard now. And then there's a point where that doesn't work. And then typically most people can breathe in through their nose and out their mouth. It makes it a bit easier. And then the next gear, you'd have easy in and out through the mouth. And then the gear after that is hard in and out through the mouth. And that's almost like starts correlating with your LT1 and LT2, you know, your different heart rate zones. But generally speaking, when you're training easy or with a low heart rate, you want to extend your exhales, you know. And also I prefer if you, if you, if you do cadence or resonance breathing, which is 6 seconds in, 6 seconds out, I actually prefer 5 seconds in, 7 seconds out. Are, you know, slightly extending the exhale slightly more. And when you run, you, you wanna lengthen the ex— so at easy running, you can go like 2 or 3 steps in and then 4 or 5 steps breathing out. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And also, like, I think a, a key concept is a lot of us get— you don't have to— some people are de— kind of, let's call it depressed or stuck in exhalation. So they're like, breathe out, and then they're sort of stuck in that pattern. And that's not a very inspired person because the literal root word of the word inspiration is to be inspired. So when I breathe in and take a big breath in, I'm now inspired, right? That doesn't happen, I think, as often as people get stuck at the top of their breath with too much breath in. So if I breathe all the way out and give, assign that a 0, and then I breathe all the way in and give that a 10, you probably want to live at around about a 3 or 4. So not like depressed and totally exhaled and the wind knocked out of your sails, but, you know, a lot of us need to soften our breath, focus more on our exhales, and just come out of sort of, um, almost overexcited, anxious, stuck pattern. Um, and in running, it's the same. You probably want to work on your exhales till your shoulders soften and relax.

Yeah, the breath is so fascinating because it's one of the few tools where you can directly impact your nervous system in a very fast way. Like you're wired and you just sit down for 1 minute and you take some conscious breath and you're calm again. And you do that 3 times throughout the day and you can notice your heart rate variability improve. You can notice your, like overall your body just feels in a different state. And that's a wonderful way. It doesn't even take much time in order to do that.

Yeah. So, so, 'cause breath's automatic. I mean, hopefully you're gonna take, you know, about 20,000 breaths today. 'Cause if you stop breathing, you got a problem, right? And you don't have to think about it and you do it most of the time subconsciously, but yet we can consciously change our breath. We can hold our breath, we can breathe slower, faster. Whereas you, your heart's gonna beat, you kind of can't stop your heart at all. And you don't really have agency over your digestion. You can sort of indirectly affect it, but you can't, you know, you can't, it's not the same. So breathing is interesting. It's like, it's for the large part autonomic, but you have direct access and control. And that's why it's such a powerful segue into your nervous system.

I've done quite a bit of experimenting with nasal breathing at different intensities. I've recently, I've been playing around with breath holds, like not aggressive in any sort of way. But I decided to ride my bike every day to and from work, and it's about 15-20 minutes to the office. And I'm like, well, I'm riding, I'm enjoying it, but let me actually experiment for a bit with what is it like to do a breath out, and not all the way down, but to like a level 3 or whatever. And then I just hold my breath for 10 seconds or something, just while I'm breathing, while I start to slightly feel the urge to breathe. And then I try to relax into that part and then like pick up the breathing again. And I do that maybe once every, whatever, 2 minutes or something. And it's a wonderful way to kind of train like that ability of being able to like take in less breath to become more aware of what that feels like. And the body is pretty trainable with some of that as well. I'm surprised how quickly some of those adaptations are happening, not only from nasal breathing with more comfort even as you go slightly higher, but even with some of the breath holds while doing that during light exercises.

And so, I mean, there's, there's a lot to sort of unpack. There's one is the urge to breathe in for most people is CO2 buildup, not lack of oxygen. Okay. So, I mean, we've done this in, in our class when we do breath hold work. Well, you know, if you've got a pulse oximeter, you can put a pulse oximeter on and measures your oxygen supply to your finger. And during the class, your peripheral oxygenation improves. It doesn't get less. You know what I mean? I'd be like, what do you mean? Like, I've got more oxygen in my finger, not less, you know, because in your mind, you're running out of oxygen. You're not even close for most people. You've really got to hold your breath a long time to drop your peripheral oxygen, you know, and it's, you need to be really determined. Okay. Just please, people, be safe. You know, I think In terms of the autonomic nervous system, I think a lot of breathing, people have bad experiences with breathing and especially if you've had significant trauma. Okay. So like, I mean, trauma just gets thrown around as this word all the time. But so people that have had significant nervous system trauma or big injuries or a real big emotional sort of history or past, if you, you can have a bad response to breathing and you can amplify your your stress state or your sympathetic state. So you, you, you, there are people that have adverse reactions to, to breath holding because you, you're putting your body under a state of stress. So you always wanna approach breathing from a real point of safety and security and feel safe and secure when you're holding your breath and you wanna be proactive. Yeah. And the other one is, you know, people die, um, from shallow water blackouts and stuff. So if you, you, you should not ever, ever hold, do breathwork in water, especially, you know, it's easy to sort of almost hyperventilate and then do cold plunges and stuff. If you're doing any breath holding in water and underwater specifically, also cold water, you need eyes-on supervision. And that person's not doing it with you. Their only job is to watch you. Yeah. You know, 100% of the time. You know, you, that's not something you want to go into like 100%.

And I'm so, so glad you bring that up, Lawrence, for sure.

Yeah. And, and, you know, like you can pass out from holding your breath. So don't, you know, you're riding a bicycle and holding your breath. And so very, you know, just to state the obvious, um, Flo, you're playing with breath holding. You're being gentle with it.

Oh no, exactly.

This is your fall and you're not pushing the limits.

No, this is, this is—

breathe out and hold your breath and see how far you can go while riding a bicycle.

It's really bad. I think a good indicator for me is if I'm starting to breathe again, that I'm still able to breathe through my nose. Meaning at that point I know I haven't pushed it hard. Once I feel like I do a breath hold and after that I, the only way that I can breathe in is through my mouth, then I know like, ah, then I held it quite a while. So I'm, yeah, it's indeed in a very gentle way. And I think you in particular have even warned me previously of like, be careful with heat training. For example, you can fry your nervous system if you overdo it in a sauna. Be careful with cold exposure.

Be care—

like with all of these things, there's different ways you can go about it. And so you can do it in a gentle way and you can like force it and, and that's a different outcome right there.

Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, with your nervous system, if you, if you do have a big nervous system trauma, it can often be very difficult to, to heal.

Yeah.

You can, if you have severe heat stroke, you know, you, you can literally deregulate your hypothalamus and, and, you know, never be able to tolerate heat again. You know, there are, it does happen. I'm not saying it happens that often. You know, but that can happen. That is an outcome. And you know, it's almost like, I don't, you know, I tell people like, just be careful. It's like, you know, like soldiers get PTSD. They're often brave until you're not, you know, like, so once your nervous system sort of goes past a certain point, it can be extraordinarily difficult to, undo that. And I think it doesn't happen often, but it certainly matters to the person that it does happen to. So just be safe and be careful. And again, that sense of play. Do I have a sense of play? Do I have a sense of curiosity? But if you're really forcing it, yeah, you really want to know what you're doing if you're going to start pushing yourself in those departments. For sure. When we do breathing, it's always from a a sense of safety and security. What I like the most about breathwork is we use it because you, you can, so with this carbon dioxide tolerance, if you increase your tolerance to carbon dioxide, you can typically hold your breath longer. As your carbon dioxide levels naturally rise in your body, it's a vasodilator, it's a smooth muscle relaxant, so it's really good for your stomach and digestion. So people that got stomach issues and like any kind of stomach issues, um, like really healthy breath holding and increasing your carbon dioxide levels really helps your stomach with blood flow and motility, you know, and just healthy digestive system and also extremity injury. So you get, you typically, if you, not everyone experiences this, but if you are holding, if you're doing breath holding work and your CO2 levels start to build up, you'll often get like a flush, like a, like warm sweat through your body or your hands suddenly get warm. Because you've basically dilated those blood vessels. And you've got more blood to your hands and feet, which is fantastic. You have plantar fasciitis or Achilles injuries. But at that stage, almost certainly you've really increased oxygenation to your brain. And, you know, you talk about setting the stage for neuroplasticity. This is a fantastic time to sort of curate your thoughts and to do other manifestations or visualizations or something along those lines because you're in an altered state of awareness and consciousness, and you've got more blood flow into your brain, and you're certainly using new neurons, right? Or new pathways, or you have the ability to have new pathways. And what I like the most about breathwork is if you say, instead of focusing on the slight discomfort of breathwork, which is, you know, it's the most pressing need that your body's experiencing, you can focus on your visualizations or manifestations, or something I've been playing around recently is my safe space, okay, which I'll talk about in a minute, which I found quite fascinating. But anyway, you can play around with those and focus on that. And then it's remarkable how easy breath-hold cycles. So if we're doing resilience breathing, let's say you've got to hold your breath for 30 seconds. You know, that can seem challenging and you're focusing on holding your breath and it's uncomfortable and how long have I got? And, you know, suddenly you stop, you're not concentrating that, your attention is more on manifestation. Being in your safe place, being strong, being secure, thinking about what you'd like to unfold or whatever it is. And the time goes past like a snap of a finger and you don't notice the discomfort. That is what you're looking for when you're running a marathon. You don't want to be discomforted. You don't want to be focusing on the discomfort, how far you got to go, how painful the last 8 kilometers are going to be. You want to be in a state of, it's almost like a magic trick. You're not you're aware of that, but that's not what your focus is. Your focus should be on the rhythm of your movement or how well you're breathing or on a mantra or, or whatever. I mean, I think you did a lovely podcast with Courtney DeVault, and you know, when she was really in the pain cave, she went to what, robot, robot, robot for hours. Um, you know, but that, that's, that's kind of like, so anyway, I think breath holding is fantastic in a safe place to give people the tools to start reframing their relationship to discomfort in a marathon and to create almost like the mental concentration or the mental strength or the mental fitness, as we would say, on a healthy alternative to, you know, some people really wallow in it. And I think there was a great study from Boston Marathon is like, the more you think a marathon is about overcoming pain and toughness, you know, like, and if you think you're tougher than other people, those are basically the best predictors for slowing down in the second half and/or ending up in the medical tent. So it's, you know, it, we acknowledge that it's a hard thing and there's going to be discomfort, but that's not what you want to obsess about and you don't want to tough it out.

You know? Exactly. And I, and you see it, you see it so much online with, I think, the whole David Goggins approach, love him or hate him or, or anything in between, but it is that part where if you take pride in running races with broken legs and, and whatnot, it's, it's setting an example for other people as well. And I think you have to be very careful and cautious that that becomes the norm to just toughen it through pain where there are, there are different ways of going about it as well.

But yeah, I mean, 100%. And I mean, I think David, he had a massive knee reconstruction. You know, um, and, you know, I don't know, it's a lot to unpack there, but hopefully he has some sort of moment of self-awareness or awakening where he goes like, okay, maybe that's not the most effective. I mean, but yet for some people, he's just so motivating and so inspiring. So there is good. I mean, that's the, you know, like, that's one of the things I'm noticing and becoming more aware at the moment, you know, everything almost has a duality and a paradox. And it's just like, you know, whatever's, you can flip everything around and see it from the other side. So like, the greats have told just everything. There always seems to be some sort of paradox and duality. It really is. Wander through the world, you know, like I'm just losing strong opinions.

Oh no, 100%. And I think, I think two examples or two extremes from one to the other that stood out is, I think it was with you that I recently was texting about, Gary Vaynerchuk on the one hand and Taylor Knipp on the other hand and how different people approach things and there's different ways about it. One thing that stands out to me from the recent conversation with Taylor Knipp and with you that we had at your house, this is one of my favorite things, was that she stopped rushing and she would just like not be so limited by time, but she would arrive at places in time with a buffer left. So she would try not to stack her calendar full of stuff all the time, but she would be able to be in a more relaxed state because she had a buffer left and she would, it would calm her nervous system. And because she has a calm nervous system, she can train well and the training is absorbing well. And That really resonated with me to a point that I often noticed that there's a lot of different things going on with two young kids. And just very often it's like, all right, hurrying up and getting them out of the door, getting to school, and I'm rushing to work and starting to— whereas if you're constantly in that feeling of stress, that affects the way you can absorb your running, the way you can absorb your training. And like one of the main things that have stood out from working with you was whatever you can do to kind of calm the nervous system. And even that, just building in a few minutes of buffer a day, doing a few things less whenever possible, but even just leaving the house 5 minutes earlier versus always feeling like you're running late, that made a big difference in how I was feeling throughout the day.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. And you know, this calm nervous system, you need some level of arousal. So you can be too calm. So it's not just like calm, calm, calm, calm. It's just healthy. And the sympathetic state is not bad. We need it in emergencies. You need to tap into it and the two coexist all the time. So it is not this constant narration that you only ever need to be calm. But so from Taylor's perspective, at one stage she was very, very busy because she was you know, she went to Cornell and she studied and had a massive academic workload. And then she was training and competing as a world-class athlete. So, you know, she was long-haul flights and doing her homework and just rushing from one thing to the next, to the next. And, you know, I said it once and it just stuck with her. You know, sometimes these things do is like time pressure creates anxiety. And that's something she really, really resonated with because she was under time pressure, deadlines, assignments. For so long and she knows that that creates stress. So for her, it's a, it's a probably, I mean, I don't wanna speak for her, but it's, it's, it's one of the reasons, you know, to put that in perspective. We, you know, so for her, we talk about book mode. So I said to her once, like, get into book mode. And she says, what does that mean? So I said, well, you know, when you read a book and you're enjoying the book and you're curious and you retain knowledge because, and you know, she's, she's very smart, but she retains knowledge from books. So she knows what that feels like. I said, that's, that's the kind of mental and emotional vibe we need now because we're going to learn movement. And, you know, that for her is like, oh, book mode is that state of curious curiosity and play where you can learn optimally. And then also there's this notion of Dan John wrote this great essay on, what did he call it? The can of free will. And he basically noticed how well prisoners responded to strength training in prison, but did very little. Like they only had access to the weights twice a week for 30 minutes. And when they came out of prison, they really, really struggled, um, to be strong. And now they've got more time, they can train more. And, you know, he was kind of a mentor as a, as a halfway house to some of these guys. And they'd say, oh, I can bench press, you know, whatever, 100 kilograms. And, you know, they get there and they can't bench press 60. And he's like, well, you know, so it, it was, it was such a common theme. He went to the the prison and he actually had a look at the weights to see if they weren't labeled wrong. You know, he says, no, they got better equipment than I've got. And it's just because, you know, these guys come in and now they've got job pressure, stress, you know, like they've got to integrate back into society. They've got to choose what to wear that day. They have to choose their breakfast. So, you know, and you'll see that play out with, with sort of Eliud Kipchoge, like they, the power of no, he calls it vitamin N, right? Saying no. Know, and, um, you know, bringing a lot of attention and energy to, to what you are doing. We, we have this with hex bar lift, you know. Um, yesterday I was working with some elite athletes in Ritung and they said, what do you, should you do between hex bar? Cause you gotta wait 3 minutes. You know, you really want to do hex bar and recover fully and then go again if you're lifting heavy. And they're like, what do we do in the 3 minutes? And I said like, respect the weights. Yeah. Respect what you're doing. You know, cuz they want to foam roll or stretch or, or do other things, you know, and a lot of people go to gym and it's like they want to burn calories and they're going from one exercise to the next, to the next, to the next, you know. A good set of hex bar lifts will take you 20 minutes. You don't have to do anything in between. You got to respect the weight and bring your attention to the weight, and that's when you start getting a response. And I think that's what a lot of the elites do, is however they frame it, because everyone's very different, is they manage to give a lot of respect and attention to what they're doing at the time, and therefore you get a, a, a strong stimulus and then you get a response. Whereas a lot of people are too distracted going through it, have, don't almost have the appropriate relationship to the exercise they're doing. Like, I bump into this a lot. Like you, you can say, well, I, you shouldn't be doing this exercise or that exercise. And people say, you can't say lunging's bad. And, um, But it's, there is no such thing as a bad movement. It's, but it's often the intent or understanding or what you're trying to extract from the movement, you know? And, and we got very specific these days. So there's protocols for different injuries, there's protocol for tendons. Um, but it is interesting, like you can amplify the response to a stimulus by your mindset and, and, and that there's a lot to unpack in that, but I, I really do think that starts to at the elite level, you'll often see there's a whole lot more of almost, I don't know what the right word is, like gravitas towards what they're doing and the mindfulness of what they're doing and then what they're trying to get out of it. And, and, you know, a lot of these guys just inherently understand the work you do today shows up later.

How do you, as an, as an athlete listening to this, and you're talking about a lot has to do with mindset, what are some practical tools here? What are some ways that anyone listening can work on that or see if there's ways, like I know journaling could be a powerful tool, gratitude journaling, or like writing down your gratitude first thing in the morning, or like, is there anything that you can think through here mindset-wise?

I would say the number one thing is visualization. You know, visualize where you want to be, how you want to be there in great detail with emotion. So you got to start thinking and feeling what it feels like for your goal, you know, and a lot of the time you want to bring emotion to it. So, you know, like it needs to be an emotional response. Like the emotion is definitely what sets up neuroplasticity. And you got to be careful what you want because you might just get it. So be careful how you frame achieving goals, you know. You know, there's so many people that win a gold medal at the Olympics and are so depressed. Basically on the podium already because it doesn't save, you know, it doesn't sort your life out at all. You know, like there's no future thing that's going to fix your life. You have to start living in the moment and enjoying where you are at present. You know, and let's say money doesn't buy happiness. Well, it does if you don't have enough money, that's for sure. You know, but the example of that would be, Don't say I want to win a million dollars because what are you going to do with a million dollars? You don't know what to do with a million dollars. You don't know how to invest. You've got no tools. You don't know how to earn. You don't know how to do anything. You're just going to spend it.

Okay.

So the lottery is not going to save you. An event is not going to save you. So you really do need to focus on, I want to have an amazing, um, pursuit, like a job or whatever. Um,, you know, or a passion or whatever that brings me joy and money, and I want to be successful at what I do. And probably you want to visualize that you're so successful at what you do, you can pay it forward. Um, and that's, that's a really important thing as well, is like, I think, um, in races, don't visualize yourself to a point in the race or to the finish line. Visualize yourself through the other side and that you're healthy, safe, and smiling and happy on the other side of the finish line. That's a really, really important distinction even while you're racing. Never ever say, I just want to get to this point. Chances are, when you get to that point, you're going to feel like, oh, now I can't go on. If you, you know, financially, if you want to visualize yourself being successful, visualize yourself being so successful you can pay it forward to others. You know, because then you own the process and you're on the other side of the process and it's healthy. Not like, I want to manifest a million dollars.

Totally. I think also with the visualization, is where does the energy flow to? Where do you get drawn to versus where do you feel you're forcing it? And interestingly enough, in the writing of this book, you've played a big role early on. You're the first person that I sent a draft copy of. You provided tremendous feedback throughout it. But at the beginning, the book was way too long and had to go through it and had to do some rigorous editing. And one of the comments that stuck with me was you saying, like, follow your intuition, follow what feels right, follow what draws the energy in. And if it's an absolute yes, keep it. If not, take it out. And I think we can— that's one example over here with writing a book and editing a book, but I think that can apply to all sorts of parts, right? Like how to decide what kind of race to run next or what to do in your running or in your training or in your racing. And really that lens of it doesn't always have to be sign up for another marathon again. It can be something entirely different from that.

So, yeah. So begin this mindfulness of like, let's say we're talking like always be calm. You know, I'm not convinced we spend, you know, like this utopian world. So I think it's okay to have tough times. And I think it's okay to have tough relationships because that's how we learn. And that's how we, you know, you have a negative stimulus. You can have a positive response to a negative stimulus too. But generally speaking, you know, so Alex Ferguson, you know, I'm not, I'm going to mess his Scottish accent up, but he was like, if there's any dude, there's no dude. So, you know, like He used that in a phrase. They were talking and discussing about whether to keep someone or to replace him. And he just said, the fact that we've had an hour-long conversation on this just means absolutely we were replacing him. Because if there's any doubt, there's no doubt. And I think, you know, a lot of the time, like, let's say I'm really done a good job of cutting out negative relationships out of my life. And because sometimes, like, the way I work is so different from the norm that it ends up being frustration or there's, there's too many cooks in the kitchen or too many recipes in the kitchen, which is more of a problem. It's okay to have a lot of chefs, but you want one recipe. And I think it's very important for people just— so here's a good thing is if you're training and you have a training plan, you need to believe in your process 100% because that's what requires a response. I don't think it matters as much what you do. As much as it matters how much you believe in what you do. And like the real greats will make any training program work. You know, that's not the secret sauce. The secret sauce is the commitment and the buy-in that they do have for the— they work the plan. Whereas a lot of people like want some magical plan. And the reality is you can be world-class in many, many different ways. You do many different strategies, many different training strategies. The greats work the plan. They don't, you know, but they believe 100% in what they're doing. So I think that's really important. Um, and you know, for me as well is like, I think it's good to have a frustrating relationship or it's good to be tested or it's good to do things that make you feel uncomfortable. So you can't just run around saying, nope, nope, nope. That's not a hell yeah. You know, that's not quite how it works. You know, there's a bit of a nuance to it, but generally speaking, yeah. Surround yourself with people that see the best in you, that want the best for you, and get into those environments. And it's totally okay if you're not in that environment at the moment, because you're going to appreciate it. I think if everything was just smooth, like, what do they say? Calm seas don't make a good sailor. You know, you need to be battle-tested. You need to have, you need adversity. You need those tough things in your life because one is you won't appreciate the hard things. You won't appreciate the good things when they do show up. You'll just squander them. And, you know, that happens a lot. And you'll hear like people that were, you know, I know of an example, they were born with basically silver spoons, so wanted for nothing, had a very happy childhood, very blessed, very financially blessed. And then they had this financial ruin and they lost everything. You know, and they just said it was the best thing that ever happened to them because they got successful again and then they appreciated it. Whereas before it was, You know, and we live like kings, you know, well, not here. I don't think I'm going to get anyone to deliver food to me, but I mean, you know, you can literally, you're like a king, you know, King Henry that ruled England could also ask, I would like this meal and someone would go and fetch it and deliver it to them. Whereas now we have an app and, you know, your favorite meal from the other side of town will be delivered right to your doorstep. It's an extraordinary time that we live in. And I think With AI now coming, all of these lessons are more and more and more valuable because, you know, we— one is change. People don't like change, generally speaking. We're in for so much change, and we have to be flexible and adaptable and curious and playful going forward because as much as the last 10 years of smartphones has changed the world, the next 10 years of AI is going to radically change the world. Like, it's going to be 10 times whatever smartphones did. And now's the time to really figure out, you know, be playful, be curious, explore. I don't know, be adaptable, be flexible, because everything's going to change.

I truly believe that the power of the next 5, 10 years is going to be your ability to to like focus, to be able to tune out, to be able to get offline from time to time and to truly be aware. Because I do see even now just traveling to Europe last weekend, spending time in airports and on airplanes, everyone is living in their phone and everyone is just completely zombied out. And I feel the more we can be present and aware and disconnect from that as well, the more we can tune into ourselves. I truly think the AI is beautiful, wonderful. I also think people are going to stop thinking for themselves and stop feeling for themselves. And that's a dangerous part as well. Earlier you were talking about the food delivery and how good of a time we live in. For me, starting every day for the last 6 months now with writing down 3 things that I'm thankful for. And funny enough, that actually comes up sometimes of like, ah, having a house above my head or having like access to food or any of these things that you're talking about that We all take so much for granted, yet actually writing it down every morning, like the few things that stand out to you that you're thankful for, it completely changes the energy level of that day. Like just talking about being able to change your state in a short period of time, that's one minute that takes me in the morning besides doing breathwork or meditation that just sets up for the beginning of the day, which has been really eye-opening.

So yeah, and, and we have to do hard things because our lives, a lot of our lives, I mean, they can be stressful or appear hard, but they're not actually hard enough. You don't do enough hard things, you know, and many people experience, I mean, that's one of the reasons cold plunging, you're doing a hard thing and it's life-changing. I think you're getting an outside exaggerated response to it just because there's an absence of hardness in your life, you know. And then that's one of the things that running, you know, running's got consequence and it's, it's, it's, I would hopefully you enjoy your running and you have, you know, like running brings me a sense of joy and I don't push myself when I run almost ever. So it's not, it's, I don't find running hard. Okay. But it is a hard thing. It is, you know, there's consequence if you get it wrong. You know, I like manual labor. I, you know, I'm Moving a wood pile around, I like chopping wood, I like gardening. And hopefully AI allows us to do more physical things and more outdoor things and more, but you do need to set yourself up for discomfort and you do need to set yourself up for change and you do need to have discipline in some form because otherwise, yeah, you can't just, I mean, I don't know, I watched with a long time ago, this program called WALL-E, you know, these guys were just like cruising around on sofas that floated with big gulps and they couldn't stand anymore. And I was like, yeah, you don't end up like that.

Yeah, exactly. One thing I want to touch on is the development and the progress that you've made with the Flow Rope. For anyone listening, some people might be familiar with the Flow Rope, some people are new to it. So maybe you can just high level explain what a flow rope is, what you've experienced with different people, and now you have different thicknesses as well, from like a thinner flow rope to an inch thick to like an inch and a half thick, a way heavier one. So talk to me a little bit more about that.

Okay, so flow rope is, um, is a rope that you swing. Okay, it's not a jump rope, so you're not jumping up and down, but it's very similar to a jump rope or like a skipping rope, but They typically about 12mm thick to, I prefer about 16 to 15mm because I think slightly heavier rope, you swing it slower and you can feel more, whereas the thinner the rope, the quicker it travels through the air, almost like the less feedback you get. Flow rope does a few things. So one is when you learn to swing it from the center or from your hips, you kind of start to create this sense of moving from the center out. And many, many people move from the outside in. And I know this sounds like bizarre, but if you think about weights, you're always contracting your muscle, you're shortening your muscle. So, you know, we're doing a lot of flexion, we're a lot of doing a lot of moving from the outside towards the center. Um, sure, you might be doing leg press, which is an extension, but generally speaking, we move with a lot of tension and a lot of the times it's from the outside in. A lot of runners have been cued to think hands and feet, quick turnover, light, quick turnover. You're thinking about your extremities, not your center. So, A lot of people really battle with learning how to move from the center and generate real power from the center or your spinal engine and let that power be amplified outwards through your body. And so the Flow Rope's fantastic at that, and it really, for whatever reason, it decompresses your spine. So regularly people will, like, regain an inch in height or 2 inches in their height as their spine lengthens out, which is pretty phenomenal, I think. So, so that's kind of like the primary purpose of the Flow Rope. We can also learn the shape and timing of running. So, like, you kind of want your head over foot and then you want to step out of that position. And so we can, we, we can teach that as a drill, as it were, and it's pretty running relevant. So those, and then the other one is transverse movement. So there's a lot of transverse movement in running, a lot of twisting. And I'm just gonna say to people, okay, don't rotation in running. Happens because of length. So, you know, if you go online and you see me teaching backward walking and how your belly button's supposed to go towards your lead leg, you're not supposed to twist it there. You're supposed to put it there with length. You want your shoulder away from your hip, and that'll create the rotation. And if you're running, the correct rotation will feel like length. It'll— so you want to move with length and space, and if you create length in your running, The correct rotational patterns will show up. So it's an indirect, you're not, you're not trying to twist when you run. If you move with length, the correct rotation patterns show up. So that's an important distinction I think will help a lot of people. So that's pretty much what you do with the flow rope. The heavy rope is pretty cool. Once you're competent with a, with a thin rope, you can swing a heavier rope. It gives you a sense of sort of more muscular, you know, it's basically how I train my core. Is with the heavier flow rope. And then we have the big boy, the Black Mamba.

That thing is huge. That thing is like heavy.

That's proper. Yeah. It's really heavy. It'll yank your shoulders out your sockets. It's not a beginner rope by any stretch of the imagination. But what we figured out is we do really, really great footwork. So we call a short Black Mamba a foot fixer. The Happy Pairs told me that, Lawrence, that's a foot fixer. Don't be calling it a mummy mamba. So the foot fixer, and the foot fixer is a great way of self-treating your feet and creating a lot of stability, like really getting neutral ankles and stable feet.

We've got to— so how, how would people go about that? And, and, and anyone listening over here at home who wants to try that part, tell me a little bit more about what some of those ways that you can strengthen your feet? I know that you have some videos about this on your YouTube channel, but I think anyone listening, and I will make sure to link to that, but anyone listening who wants to strengthen their feet, like any high-level thoughts there?

So it's really, really quick. We, we just put the rope sideways and you do active feet and then roll off your toes and it releases and activates your lateral arch of your foot. And then we swap the rope lengthways, and when it's lengthways, your big toe has nothing to press on and your baby toe, the base of your baby toe has nothing to press on. And what it does is it drops your first met head down, which is basically helps fix a forefoot varus, or you might view it as sort of an overpronation and it opens up your transverse arch. And those are things that are highly dysfunctional in most people. And especially if you, if you've, I mean, we can get into like mechanics, but a lot of people that sit too much, your first met head lifts off the off the ground. Cyclists typically don't have a first met head that can find the floor. When your first met head comes down, your VMO, like the muscle on the inside of your knee and your glute max, that's like your power line between your big toe. It's not called your great toe for nothing. So getting that great toe down on the ground and opening up your transverse arch and freeing up the nerve roots in your forefoot is just massive for flexibility. It's—

there's—

you've got more nerve endings in your feet than your hands.. So typically someone's gonna torture you through your feet if they know what they're doing. Okay. I hope this never happens to you or me. So, you know, putting really like getting your base of your foot firm or competent and having stability in your ankles and then that tactile feedback from your feet, whatever goes on in your hips is sort of reflected in your feet. So a lot of the time, let's say with the work we do, once we teach people how to use their hips properly and their, you, you sort of have a sense of hip extension-based gait and, you know, your hips are strengthened. You feel like, oh, that feels amazing. People just become obsessed with their feet because you realize your hip is, your feet and your hip are so matched together. So however dysfunctional your feet are, chances are that's how dysfunctional your hips are. If you sort out the function of your hips, you're gonna realize like, yeah, my feet don't feel appropriate for my hips. And so you, there's a, You know, there's this loop between the two. So any good that you do to your feet will be reflected up in your hips, and any good that you do in your hips will ultimately be reflected down in your feet. You gotta just, you know, sometimes our feet are so beat up, it's really difficult for them to, you gotta help them along.

How many minutes a day would you say? It would probably only be a few minutes that can already make a positive impact, right? For both like the flow rope and for fixing or improving your feet strength?

Yeah, I can, I can tell you like when, for me to move really, really well and, and really feel competent in my body, I, I, I gotta be careful cuz I do a 45-minute Monday mobility class every Monday and I do like a 45-minute breath class and I, you know, I, I do these. So, but when I travel, I don't, it's, I got quite a good handle on what it takes. I, I do crocodile crawling patterns in the morning. I, I'm, I was pretty obsessed with them for a while. I want to do sort of podcasts or deeper dives into why. It's got a lot to do with your vagus nerve and vagal tone. And also I find like crocodile crawling patterns, you get a sense of, you know exactly what your shoulders and hips should do when you run, and then it's just really easy to teach people running. So my current go-to, and then I slow my breathing down when I breathwork and crawling patterns. So my go-to in the morning, meditation, breathwork, mindfulness, everything is 5 minutes of crawling patterns. Okay. Because I've got a productive day. I've got things to do. Okay. And generally speaking, I'm at my most productive and I've got to do the most work actually in the morning. So it doesn't suit me to have this ultra spiritual morning practice. You know, my morning, my day is preloaded and a lot of it happens when I get up.

Okay.

So I do 5 minutes of crawling patterns. The rope work literally takes 2 minutes. I do rope work in between hex bar lifts in my 3 minutes of what are you doing between hex bar and respecting the weight, but also, you know, working on my feet because the better my feet land on the ground, the better my hex bar lifts are. So that's pretty much when I do my footwork. You know, once you've got a healthy breathing, once a week's enough to maintain it and takes 20 minutes. Um, so like you can make this stuff really, really efficient. And then I swing the flow rope about 3 times a week for 5 minutes. So, I mean, we're talking 5 minutes here and there. It can be really, really simple. You know, initially it can be a lot and people get overwhelmed and do too many things, but it's, it's, if you, whatever you do, as long as you enjoy it and it's sustainable, you'll quickly figure out, um, you know, what works for you and what doesn't work for you. And it's really interesting. Like I, I value. Journaling highly and I value your gratitude practice highly and it's things that I've done before for me. I don't get as much out of it as probably you do. You know what I'm saying? Like it doesn't land for me as well. It doesn't work. And that's not to say that that's forever. I might pick up and go, oh wow, this is the most incredible thing that ever existed. But I think it's more important that you figure out what what moves your needle and what's appropriate for you in this time. And I'm very mindful of people's time and resources, and I think you, you wanna do something that's simple, effective, you understand, and it makes a difference. And it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't have to be a lot and it doesn't have to be overwhelming.

Totally. It's so fascinating because even same thing, like my wife is not into journaling and for me it's like, I love sitting down with a journal, a cup of tea and some headphones with classical music, just writing down there's so much stuff going on in my head. I just need to get it out on paper. It just feels like a therapy session with myself. And then I just feel good again after.

So it's, yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, it's pretty extraordinary, you know, like, like for me, you know, yeah, I mean, it's, and it's just so different. And it's like, I think, again, modern world has just pulled us outside of real connection and people. And you need to be, you know, someone said to me, well, not everyone, and it's just come up again, some, you know, like a comment on social media. Well, you, not all comments have to be nice. And someone said, well, that's very altruistic, but I don't think you have to add value to a community. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You are hardwired. You have to imagine if you were in a hunter-gatherer village, there were 20 of you, you all relied on each other. Okay. To get along and to live in survival. And then you were a slacker. Or you were disruptive in that group, you're going to get kicked out of that group so fast. Okay. It is hardwired into us. We have to be of service to other human beings. We have to plug in. We have to connect. We have to have a relationship with people. And you have to do things for other people, not expecting an immediate return because like, that's just how it works. And you can rail against it. You can have, I mean, many of us have had traumatic childhoods or not great mentors or not great father figures. And that doesn't seem real to you. It doesn't doesn't seem important to you, or that's not how you were shown, it's not how you're brought up, that's not who your role models are. But again, it's really, really interesting. It's like once you start to slow down and wake up, then you start to see, like, no one's going to say— there's always a helping hand, there's always the right path. That, like, the Rumi, like, once you begin on the way, the way appears. The second you choose or don't choose, or— because I don't really think we have as much free will as we think we have. Which is in my forward, that Robert Sapolsky, right? You, like he says, which is a great example, like you're either going to become your parents or you become the opposite of your parents. Okay. One's inevitable and the other one's your reaction. Neither is a choice. Okay. So anyway, but once you choose, if there's such a thing of walking on the way, the way appears. And I think that's That's what most people need to realize. Like, as soon as you're looking for it, you'll start to see the signs and the role models and the people, the right people appear in your life immediately. It's like a magic trick, you know? And then that's what we've got to do is start helping each other and being of service. And with the whole of AI, like, your humanity is what's going to make you valuable.

So well said. I want to be respectful of your time. I have a few last questions over here. So people in the YouTube comments from the law, from the first conversation that we had, they described rediscovering a flow, like really feeling like they're finally coming home and just an entire new way of movement. How do you invite that vulnerability in athletes without forcing it? How do you, like, do you have any high-level thoughts there?

I got low-level thoughts there. Just, it's just what we just said, just start and it's inevitable. You know, I think to do the things and it just, it's how you show up, you know, surround yourself with the right people in the right environment and the right thoughts. And that's what you want to do. And it doesn't have to be perfect. You just have to start heading off in the right direction because any movement in the right direction should be noticeable. Will make a difference to you. You want to enjoy the process and enjoy the journey. You know, for the flow rope, again, it's this, it's you get out of reaction mode, which has kind of been the theme of this whole podcast, right? So many people just react. You have to have a stimulus, then there's a pause, and then there's a response. And once you start creating that sense of pause, that's when you realize those aren't my thoughts and I don't have to react in a very predictable pattern. And a lot of, for whatever reason, there's, you know, once you, the flow rope seems to, for a lot of people, I'm not saying for everyone, for a lot of people create that sense of, oh, I author my movement or I'm, I'm able to express myself or I start to join the dots. Cause I think as your body becomes more integrated, so does your mind become more integrated. So it's somewhere along those lines. Um, you know, but, but now for me is like. I see it happening like that Rubik's Cube from so many different points of views. Like, I don't wanna big up the Flow Rope too much because some people get exactly the same thing from walking backwards. Others get exactly the same response from doing breathwork, like crawling patterns for me moved the needle so profoundly. I was like, whoa, that's in, that's incredible. And for like, for athletes, they do crawling patterns, it just shows up in their running immediately and they say, oh, now I get what you mean. So, so there's a couple for the crawling patterns. I'll link a video to it. It's, it's an unlisted video. So you can have the link to an unlisted video. It's not public for different reasons. And, and it sets you up very, very much step by step by step. And, but you only have to do like the last 2, 2 moves or the last 3 moves. You know, we talk about sense of play and curiosity. Your ventral vagus nerve, which is your mammalian vagus nerve, is all about co-regulation in humans. So like, you know, you go to a baby and you go coochie coochie and you smile, or my tone, um, and how I'm speaking, I can talk in a really cross voice or I can, you know, a warm inviting voice. We're so sensitive to that. And I think that's one of the missing pieces is online. Um, our ventral vagus nerve, our mammalian co-regulation, where we fit in in the chimp tribe and how our relationship, I think that's been totally skewed. And also totally overweighted. An interesting thing is your dorsal vagus nerve, the back part of your vagus nerve is reptilian. And reptiles didn't have mothers and they didn't have siblings. They just hatched from an egg and they're independent. And so stimulating your dorsal vagus nerve seems to be able to help you access a sense of I am enough and I have enough and I'm almost like a sense of independence of all of that. And I'm really, really intrigued because it seems to, it's almost like it's not just that we want to balance sympathetic and parasympathetic, it's that we want to balance our dorsal and ventral vagus nerve as well and find the center between our sort of reptilian brain. And, you know, that's pretty hardcore neuroanatomy going on right there. And I'm pretty sure someone's going to fact-check me on that, but it's the experience of it. Is very different.

And I think somewhere along those lines is sort of the answer you're looking for. I've been really loving your happy hip hacks.

Yeah.

For anyone wanting to figure out what a happy hip hack is, where can people find that?

So that's just online, just Google happy hip hack. And interestingly enough, the happy, cause I made up that word and there's only one happy hip hack, so it'll take you straight to my YouTube channel and my video. I love making up the names of exercises because—

Wasn't the Awesomeizer, didn't you come up with the Awesomeizer too from a name?

Yeah. So the Awesomeizer, Happy Hip Hack, we had Happy Penguins at one stage. Anyway, but, and recognize that a Happy Hip Hack is a crawling pattern. It's shoulder away from hip. It's a crocodile crawling pattern. It's literally from our neurodevelopmental stage when we were reptilian. And it's, it's the, it's the notion that length on one side, so getting your shoulder away from hip sets you up for proper rotation and running. And then also it's, it, it's got to do with that, that vagus nerve balance, which is pretty extraordinary. And, and that's why I think like once you start, once you start with these sort of deep fundamental movement patterns, a way of thinking about it, someone's just going like, what the hell is this guy going on about? Slow, soft central movements are called somato visceral movements. And basically modern humans are deficient in slow, soft, central movements. It's like a deficiency. It's like, you know, I'm not saying it's the only thing you need to do, but you know, if you're deficient in vitamin C, you're going to have scurvy and your gums are going to bleed and your teeth are going to fall out and you're going to die. Okay. An orange will fix that. That doesn't mean you need 10, you know, a pocket of oranges. It just needs an orange a day. So we're deficient in slow, soft, central somatovisceral movement. And these are all waking up those pathways. And that's why you can have such a profound effect because it was deficient in your life before. So it's not to over-prioritize these things. It's just to say, hey, we don't know how to move from the center out. We don't know how to move soft and slowly. We don't know how to move, um, you know, organically anymore.

Where can people find more about you? I know laurensvanlingen.com is your main website, right?

That's the hub. Yeah, everything's just my name. So my name is my Instagram handle, my YouTube channel, and my website. And for people as well is like, you know, we have an online community. It's pretty simple. We just do live classes and there's a bit more interaction sort of with me and I share stuff on there. But, you know, it doesn't have to be a lot and you don't have to deep dive and it doesn't, you just start with something, you know, just see how it feels and just enjoy the journey. So people, a lot of people want to work one-on-one with me and how do I get to do that? And I don't like doing it as that much because I think it's much better if you approach this with curiosity and learn and it's not about you. And it's not even about me thinking what's right or wrong. I mean, of course I can help you, but it's almost like the harder you earn that knowledge, the more you figure it out yourself, the better for you because you understand it deep and intrinsically and it's your process rather than someone's opinion of what you should and shouldn't be doing. So just start small, follow along, and then just start your journey and whatever resonates with you and off you go. You know, we've got years to figure this out.

Totally. And I'll make sure to link to that. Do you have any closing thoughts over here that you'd like to share, Lawrence?

No, I think we covered a lot. Thank you, Floris. Because you're just a very kind and compassionate and generous human being. And you do a lot of good in the world. And for helping so many people and being an inspiration, being a really cool guy. And really, really good luck with your book. It's, it's it's amazing. It's one of those things like, it's kind of like what I'm saying. You could just turn to any page and look at it and just go, oh, well, that's valuable. You know, it's great. You can read it from front to back, make sure you read the foreword. But anyway, so you can just open that book and it's just, it's so amazing that you have access to, because I think, you know, one of your gifts is you really do get people to express themselves. And so it's amazing your book, like you get to understand the inner workings of some of the greatest runners on earth and some of the most passionate runners on earth. So good luck with your book and thank you. And yeah, I think just everyone, you know, there's so much harder, there's so much hardship and heartache in the world. Um, and you know, I, I live a very blessed and privileged life and I'm, I'm pretty mindful of that, but I just do think we have to make a difference in a small way, one person, one step, one breath at a time and just You know, just one act of kindness can make such a big difference in someone's life, and they might be the person that cures cancer. You know what I mean? Like, the ripple effect of never ever underestimate the power of doing good. And then because people think I'm way too optimistic and rosy, the opposite can also be true. My wife was told, you'll never make it as a runner. And she decided, well, I'll prove you wrong. And she became one of the greatest runners in South Africa and made an Olympic final. So, in everything there's a paradox. So just enjoy the ride, man, and don't take ourselves too seriously.

Incredible. First of all, thank you, Lawrence, for the kind work, the kind words about the book. You played an enormous role in there, and you really have helped transform my running and my life. And I think if it wasn't for you and a few other people, I don't even think that I would've written this book, but it all kind of came together.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, well done. I mean, I know you put so much love and care into that book and it's just so inspiring. So well done, Flo. And now, like, it's the same thing because you've written a book. Like, I think like, well, shit, maybe I'll write a book one day. You know, that's how it goes. But well done, man. You're a blessing, Flo. Thank you.

No, thank you, man. And it was all just meant to be. Um, I think what you said right there, do it for the right reason and you can just not underestimate what sometimes just saying one thing can do. Like you can literally say one sentence to someone and it can change someone and it's all about coming from the right place from wanting to help other people from a place of kindness and doing good in the world. And I think there's so much beauty in the world when we look around us and we focus on that. And I think you've played a big role in my life through all of that. So yeah, I'm super excited for seeing what you're doing in the running community, seeing your work get in front of more people and Yeah, I'll be doing the flow rope for many years to come here. And it's exciting to see more and more people get really into that.

So yeah, nothing but love, man. Oh, thank you, Flo. Yeah, and likewise. And I think, you know, I don't often say it, but yeah, I should. But you've really played a big role in my life and thank you for all the support and care. And like I say, yeah, let's just pay it forward and get out there and Like, I mean, this is a really, really important thing is because a lot of people really, really are struggling. And I think most of that we can imagine, but it's, you know, an empty cup nourishes no one and you've got to work on yourself first. And then the more you work on yourself, the more people will interact with you differently. The more you set yourself up for change. And, you know, you're one of those guys that works really, really hard on self and you deserve nothing but the best to come your way and good luck. And I'm excited to see where you end up, man.

Appreciate it, man. I'm looking forward to, uh, to another run again, next time in, uh, in the Denver-Boulder area.

So yeah, we've got to get that done. But I'm scared of you now because, I mean, you run up 14,000-footers and do podcasts at the top of mountains.

Like, yeah, extreme for me. About that. Right on, Lawrence. Thanks so much.

We'll talk soon again.

Take in and then think. Wow, Lawrence is such a special person. I don't know why I get so emotional sometimes, especially around Lawrence. I think it's just feeling comfortable and all of these massive highs and lows that have built up over the last few years here, even with the book coming to an end and then being able to finally launch the book. It really took so much out of me. It was like a mental ultra marathon in some of these last stages. And now, yeah, sometimes just the emotions get the best of me. But hey, that's living a true authentic life, I guess. And as much as it's uncomfortable, I'm not going to cut any of that out. It's really how I feel. So I would love to hear from you. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote? Because Lauren shared so many different things here and what might resonate with one person, another person might have an entire different lesson and takeaways. I would love to hear from you in the comments below on YouTube. I will also make sure to link to all of the resources that Laurence mentioned too in the description. My new book, Running Breakthroughs, that Laurence wrote the beautiful foreword about is available now worldwide as an audiobook, as a printed book, and as an ebook as well. My website, floresgiermann.com, and on Amazon worldwide and different bookstores. Thank you so much for the overwhelming positive responses on the book so far, and have fun out there on your runs.

Bye now.