Core Coiling Madness With The Insane Inventor Of The Bosu Ball, The "Club" & Much More: The...
Ben Greenfield interviews David Weck, inventor of the BOSU ball and RMT Club, about his path from a rollerblading injury to creating stability training devices. They discuss core coiling versus bracing, spiral gait, and Weck's newer hand device called pulsers, plus demonstrate drills you can try.
Questions this video answers
November 11, 2017
47 years old
1999
Patent pending Oct 4 (year implied 1999); first sales Oct 14 (year implied 1999).
Pulsers
Chapters
Yo, yo, yo. Every once in a while, I have an amazing person come to my house. This is Ben Greenfield, by the way, in case you were wondering. And this podcast involves such a guest who does not fall short, I guarantee you that. This cat showed up at my doorstep and entertained me from minute one. Me and my boys showing us all manner of exercise tricks and how to use, like, clubs and these, like, really cool handheld devices that make you a faster runner and special moves on a kettlebell. He invented the freaking Bosu ball. I mean, how cool is that? And we hung out at my house a lot and talked a lot. And he's a super, super intelligent, cutting edge guy. He's one of those guys who just like, thinks outside the box, which I really respect. His name is David Weck. And you're gonna get to take a deep dive into David's mind in today's show. This show is brought to you. Speaking of innovative things. Toothbrush. Yes, a toothbrush. But this thing is like Apple designed a toothbrush. It won Time magazine's best Invention Q Grooming award, made it onto Oprah's New Year's O list. And it's an electric toothbrush with vibration and a timer that reminds you, like, when to switch to a new area of your teeth. And it literally, it's like Apple designed a toothbrush, but without the big price tag. So you gotta see this. You gotta brush with this for yourself and you can try it out. You get your first refill pack free, by the way, it's called the quip. Here's how you get your first refill pack free and get the quip at just 25 bucks. You go to getquip.com Ben. That's G-E T Q U I P.com Ben. And your dentist will be the first person to tell you that you don't have to dish out hundreds of bucks for a top of the line electric toothbrush. And you can start taking care of your teeth at a very, very affordable rate with this thing. And it's literally revolutionizing the oral care industry. So check it out. Getquip G E T Q U I P.com Ben this podcast is also brought to you by these sick looking watches. They're called MVMT watches. Mvmt. So they founded this watch company on the belief that style shouldn't break the bank. Now they've sold over a million watches in 160 countries around the world and every single watch is gorgeous. It's beautiful. They start at 95 bucks compared to the same type of watch at a department store, which is gonna set you back, like, 400 to $500. I have one, but my brother has one. My wife has one. This company was started by two broke college kids that wanted to wear stylus watches, and they couldn't afford them, so they started their own watch company, and they just send them directly to you. You get 15% off an already slamming deal. This is great for holiday gifts, by the way. Free shipping and free returns. Just go to mvmtwatches.com ben. But not like it sounds. I like movement watches instead. MVMT watches.com Ben. That's MVMT watches.com Ben. You can join the movement. See what I did there? All right, let's get on to today's show. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.
My college football coach used to say, the eye in the sky does not lie, okay? It can be misinterpreted, which it is when you don't understand it, but it doesn't lie. If you think about balance. The best way to think about balance is coordination, okay? An orchestra. It's where and when. That's what balance is. It's homeostasis. Right now, I'm not afraid of anyone. Not afraid of anything. Ask me a question and be prepared, because you might not be able to handle the answer, because I'm just going to tell you the truth.
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You're not allergic to that smell in here, are you?
No, no, no, no.
Do you know what you're smelling right now? That is the scent of the wonderful rosemary diffusing. Did you know rosemary actually increases your memory when you smell it? Yeah.
My father told me to drop rosemary drops in my scalp.
Wait, how do you drop them into your scalp? What do you mean?
Take a little. One of those little rosemary things. You just.
You mean onto your scalp?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
You got holes in your head like a cheese grater. Hey, we are. We are recording, my friend. We are recording. We are live. If you're listening in right now, I have. I have a kind of slightly insane Guy in my office. His name is David Weck. The David Weck? Pretty, pretty much the. The main thing that I knew about him until yesterday, essentially, was that he invented the Bosu ball. You invented the Bosu ball?
That is correct.
We're going to have to get into that.
Oh, yeah.
Because I would imagine there's more to inventing a Bosu ball than just like finding a big old exercise ball at the gym and chopping it in half. Or was. Or is that the whole story? I just tell it?
No, no, no, no. I think it's a little more intriguing.
Okay. All right.
Well, and there's also the entrepreneurial aspect of it I think some people might be curious about.
Entrepreneur, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneur. Is it. What's that from? The Little Rascals. Who's a little kid in the Little Rascals? You know, not Spanky.
Alfalfa. Yeah.
No, not Spanky or Alfalfa. The little. Yeah. Back in the day, I don't know what they would have called this little fella. He was a little African American fella.
Oh, Buckwheat. Buckwheat or Stymie. Butwheat.
Entrepreneur.
Eddie Murphy did a good one.
An entrepreneur did that? Yeah. Eddie Murphy did that, too. Okay. So anyways, though, David is. He doesn't just cut balls in half. He' wicked smart. We just finished filming a video out in my driveway because he's here at my house in Spokane, Washington, and David showed me how to activate my core. He showed me a brand new way to run that just blew my mind. You guys are.
I'll.
I'll be posting plenty of links for you in the show. Notes that you'll get to see in terms of some of the things that he's invented to make you a faster runner, to turn on your core, to turn on your booty. He taught. He taught me how to fix a flat butt. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's all. I'll link to the Facebook Live video that we just shot. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com WEC that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com w e c K. So anyways, though, quick thing about David, he's Of course, the CEO of Bosu Fitness. It's like a whole company. It's not just a ball.
It's like, oh, no, no, it's a company. I'm the founder. I'm the founder.
So what did I just call you? The CEO?
Yeah.
Okay. So the founder just gets to walk away and be lazy. The CEO?
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
Well, here's what it is, okay? The CEO has to catch tuna and make sure that, you know, you're making money. The founder has to set the vision for the next big thing. And you know, my. My hooker. My hooker harpoon isn't prepared to catch tuna.
You're. You're the big vision guy.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Okay, cool. You. You know where you belong.
Prehistoric beast bigger than a blue whale.
The RMT Club. You invented that. Which I thought was the.
Did you really?
Somebody sent me one and I'm like, dude, this is like a mace for six year olds. It's like this light club because I'm used to like the big, like, you know, the. On it. Maces and these big steel clubs. And I get this thing in the mail. It's like this plastic club. And I'm like, I play around. I toss in the corner of the gym. And then I just whipped it out when David came over. I'm like, here, dude, I know you invented this, but. And then, dude, just like five minutes up my driveway, you completely gassed me with it.
Well, here's the thing, okay? Speed, speed, speed, speed. And I've been training with clubs for 20 years. I got a whole collection. You know how you come into Ben Greenfield's home if you ever privilege to do so? This man has more toys and gadgets and, you know, things that fix your DNA. People send me, oh, God, yes. But so my house looks like that with clubs. And so I invented the club that didn't exist because I care about the functional carryover to movement first and foremost. And speed. Speed, Right. You clipped yourself in the leg just a little bit going.
It didn't hurt. It would have hurt if I would have had like one of those big steel maces.
Cancel Christmas.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cancel my trip to Finland in a couple days. You showed me a move I could do in the back of the plane. Just tore my butt. It's called the Royal Coil. And. And you guys have to see this video. So. So again, I'll link to that and I'll link to all of his crazy Weck method videos. But anyways, David descended on my house in Spokane. And before we. We dive into, like, how this club came to be and how the BOSU ball came to be. Dude, I want to go way back. I want to go way back. How old are you?
I am 47 years old.
47.
That's right.
And you said this whole story you were telling me, and, you know, we haven't had a chance to Talk about this too much, but it started when you were six.
No, it started at birth. Okay.
So, of course.
No, no, no, no. But what I'm saying is sort of the. So you're sort of the product of your, you know, your genetics. It's the nature and the nurture. Right?
Right.
So you cut from a certain cloth, and then, you know, depending upon your surroundings, that's what shapes you. Those two factors.
Genetics, epigenetics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I was born to, you know, loving, caring, amazing parents. And my father's one of the most competitive people I know. Okay. And this was his first son. Okay. And he, you know, Harvard Business School, and, you know, he's a go getter. You know, he was. He's an incredible man, and he put me on the pedestal. So for my first 19 months of existence, the world revolved around me.
What'd your dad do?
He was a consultant.
Okay.
Yeah. So when the world revolves around you and you have a mother who just dotes on you, you have a father who makes your relatives put on surgical masks and gloves the first time they come over, because you're not gonna mess this kid up.
You kidding me?
No, I'm not kidding.
He never heard of, like, the hygiene hypothesis, Eddie.
He just. No, apparently not.
My kids, licking dog poop and hanging out with the goats out back.
No. Well, I got into the dirt, you know, pretty soon thereafter.
Right.
What I'm talking is, you know, days old, this was. I was his, you know, project progeny. Right.
Oh, gosh.
He. He wants to be the best. And guess what he wanted from me. So my first 19 months, that's my exposure. And as a human being, you have a want curve. Right. And if you get what you want, the want curve will expand and get bigger. Right. And if you don't get what you want, you have to either reconcile, you ain't gonna get what you want, or you have to figure out how to get what you want. That's the way life works. So my want curve was, you know, the universe. Right, Right.
So were you born. Were you saying you were born with a silver spoon or just, like, super duper high achiever type of dad?
Super duper high achiever dad. No silver spoon.
He wanted to live vicariously through you.
No way. I don't know if it's. No, because he was successful. He just wanted me to be better than him.
Okay.
Be the best in the world. Yeah. So anyway, that. That's. That's how it started. And then come six years old, that's when I Began to start to realize that, hey, wait a minute. I'm really not the best at anything.
Anything. I mean.
So you remember thinking this when you were six years old? Yeah.
Some kid beat me in a race and I'm like, can I swear on this? But yes or no?
You can. We'll cowbell it out.
Okay.
Good for the kiddos.
Good. I'll try not to do it for.
All the six year olds.
I have sort of a football background and some of the most influential people in my life were, you know, they cuss like sailors. So.
Kidding.
I get excited and I do that too. So I'll, I'll refrain as best I can. But yeah, when I was six years old, I got beaten a foot race and I was just like, wait a minute. What? What? You know that's not supposed to happen because.
Because you're the best.
Because I'm the best.
The best. Supposed to be your dad have been telling you for six years, not telling me.
That was, that was the, you know, that was the vibe.
Okay.
Yeah. It was much deeper than spoken word. Right? Yeah. Right.
So anyway, so were you the only kid?
No, no, I'm the first of four.
Oh, okay.
But I'm the first.
You're the first.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
So anyway, that's where it started. When I was six years old, they started to dawn upon me that, wait a minute, I'm not the best at this, I'm not the best at that. I was still very high achiever. I mean, in my, my first grade, teacher told my parents, he said, she said, look, your son is very talented, but he's going to come into problems because everything is easy for him and he gets the coast with what we're doing and he's going to coast like that and then he's going to get hit with the cold water that you can't always coast. Okay, so. And we'll get into some of the crashes. Yeah, yeah, but so anyway that, so.
You lose the foot race at six years old.
Yes, yes. So the, that six year old experience coincided with another one where I fell asleep standing up. All right, now just think about that. That's, that's sort of like the epitome of effortless power, right? Normally.
What do you mean you fell asleep standing up?
I was standing and I fell asleep.
When was this?
Six years old.
Still six years old, you remember?
Yes. No, no, that story was told to me. I don't remember that.
Okay, now what's that have to do with this?
Well, it's, it's. These are the imprints that form you as a person. Okay, right. So there's sort of these. You know, that's just a deep neurological experience that, you know, it's enticing him. How would you like to fly, Ben Greenfield? I love to fly. I bet you'd like that. Yeah, so would I. Right. So falling asleep standing up is very indicative of, like, holy. Like, I can do so much with so little. It's pretty cool.
I thought falling asleep when you're standing up was a bad thing.
Well, I don't know if it's good or bad, but it set.
That's happened to me before. Training with the. With the Navy SEALs down at the Kokoro camp in San Diego.
Did you stay standing? Did you stay standing?
I don't think I did. I toppled.
Yeah, right. I mean, I think that's. That's sort of what's supposed to happen is you lose consciousness, you lose the ability to stand.
26 mile night hike, and then they had us do murph with a 50 pound weighted vest. And this was like 4am yeah, those are my. Fell asleep. Wobbled.
Yeah.
Came back up.
Right, right, right, right. No, this is not those extenuating circumstances. And it was, you know, just an extraordinary event that my nervous system remembered. My conscious brain did not. Right. And then I'm going to tell you one more experience at 6 years old that I recall was I was laying in bed one night, and suddenly and unexpectedly the walls just started to expand away from me. And it was a very like, you know, it started and then it started to get faster and started getting faster, faster. And then I shook it off. And I was. I remember being absolutely terrified. Like, it was just like. And I shook it off. And I think, you know, we live in this right now reality. Right? And that's what we've formed to. That's what we're tuned to. But there's also. This time.
Your mom didn't sneak psilocybin in your macaroni and cheese, did she?
I'm not aware if she did or not. I don't think so. I think that would have been.
By the way, my boys are. My boys are making mushroom risotto upstairs and they do some wild plant foraging. So you might. You might have a repeat of that.
All right, tonight, I'll take a small.
Bite at first way around the mushrooms.
But there's a timeless time. There's a lot of mystery. There's other frequencies. There's other, you know, dimensions. There's a lot that, you know, we as human Beings in this realm don't understand. And I think some people tap into those things and I think, you know, you're surrounding here without all of the electrical noise, those sort of, you know, the. I don't know.
No WI fi.
Exactly. Yeah. Most of, I mean, look, carry your phone in your pocket and you know, you've got your Bluetooth earphones and you got all this stuff. I mean, it's just. I mean, there's a ton of noise in this modern world that we live in. Right. So. And I think what that does is.
Distracts you from the ability to tune into the circadian rhythm, the, you know, the more natural thing. I mean, perhaps years ago this remote viewing concept may have been possible. Maybe you could raise stones if you knew where the nodal lines are in the earth and you know, you could resonate energy.
Yeah. Actually I interviewed Paul Check. Who invented the original ball, which you bastardized.
He did not invent the ball.
What do you do? He invented like ways to.
Yeah, I mean he made it very popular. Like I would say that, you know what you say?
He listens good. Okay. Hi, Paul. So yeah, he does a lot of that remote viewing stuff.
Okay. Right now he probably lives in the same, you know, you guys are from. In the sense there are very few people have carved out the sanctuary that you guys have.
Yeah. And for those who don't know what remote viewing is, it's like, you know, being able to use extra sensory perceptions to know what's going on, like far away, like where you know, what, whatever. Like your family member who's in Virginia is doing, and you're up in Idaho and all of a sudd, you realize that whatever, they just crashed on their bicycle. And you just sit there and you know it and you call them on the phone, they just crash on their bicycle.
My in laws, my ex wife, her father in the house. Someone used to come into the parlor. You know, it's now called the living room, but you know, living room because that's where you had to wake. And when they'd walk through the house and pass through the parlor or the living room, they would smell flowers and they knew somebody had died in the family. And it were. And it was true every time. So anyway, that's sort of, you know, and I think about that experience when the walls were going away, I was able to shake it off, like. And I can't help but think that, you know, you know this the rock opera Tommy from the who, you know, it's such a beautiful like story, right. This kid Sees his mother having sex with another man and they, you know, beat that out of him and he becomes autistic. And the eyes detect the light, the dials detect it.
That's what Tommy is about. Yeah, yeah.
He hears but cannot answer to your call. And then he becomes aware. Right. After being this pinball wizard. It's a great album.
That's crazy. You're going down a deep rabbit hole, dude.
No, no, no, no. Bring it back, bring it back.
All right. Bring it back. Six years old, right?
Bring it back. Six years old. All right, so I liked girls, you know. Show me yours, I'll show you mine. Got straight A's in school easily. And, you know, after first grade comes second grade, and that was my life. Yeah. So, yeah, that's. That's six years old.
Okay, so. So you obviously, you're into sports. I know you had some success in football. I've seen you move. You obviously are very into fitness. When. When did sports enter the scene?
Oh, but I wanted to run like the wind since I was born. I love to just run like the wind. It's just pure joy. And then I fell in love with football, you know, I just loved the sport so much. And my father didn't let me play organized football as a youngster, so, you know, it was just, you know, watching it.
Why not? You didn't want to get hurt.
He didn't want me to get hurt.
So he has the neighbors come over with the gloves and the masks on and then doesn't look.
No, no. It was weird because I, you know, I. I rode a bike as a, you know, child. I used to ride wagons down the.
Hill, skateboards, and it was kind of funny. I did too. Like, I had a motorcycle. Yeah, we lived out in the countryside. I had a mountain bike. I was a super active kid. I go on these 10 mile hikes out in the countryside. But my mom made me wear a bike helmet to climb trees. I had some of that going on too. We'd have these certain things where it just didn't even make sense. And also my parents did not allow me to play organized football. They said that I would get hurt and kids get concussions and they didn't like the attitude of the football players, so they. They got me into the preppy sports instead. Or like, I played tennis.
Yeah. Golf lessons, the lifetime sports.
I played basketball too, but yeah, but yeah, I didn't play football either.
Well, anyway, football was my passion. I wasn't allowed to play formally until high school when, you know, I would have rebelled to the point where it was like, look, I mean, I'm either playing football or that's it, right? So anyway, sports were always in the equation. And I think this sort of dilemma that I had of, you know, being surrounded first, you know, exposure to life, you know, the universe revolved around me realizing that, hey, wait a minute. No, it doesn't. Not at all. And then, you know, wanting to be the best at things in sports. So I had sort of this, you know, the OCD aspect of, you know, especially baseball, because baseball, such a 0 to 100 game, you know, you're sitting there and then you got to go hit a pitch, right? And it's a very precise thing. And I was very good at it. You know, I had the best batting average in the league.
And in high school.
No, it was prior high school. So it was, you know, the. The senior little league.
It was before you got into football, before you were allowed to play football. You're playing baseball.
Well, I played baseball, basketball, you know, soccer, you know, they didn't have lacrosse in. In my day. I would have been great at lacrosse. But anyway, I did. Didn't play it.
So sports always. But, you know, I used to have to ascend the staircase a certain way, and I had to look down the field three times. And so I had these, like, OCD things that I did to just, you know, psychologically maintain an edge that I could play. You know, when you watch no more Garcia para, get into the batter's box and, you know, the, you know, undo the batter, you know, batting gloves, zip, zip, zip, drip, zip, drip, touch this, touch that, tap, tap. So baseball is a very OCD sport because the pressure is so intense and it's such a 0 to 100 thing, right? And they say hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things you can do. And that's why some of the baseball players aren't like.
Unless you're a baseball player. Have you read the sports gene where they. Where they'll take a professional baseball player, they tell this story, okay? And they put them up against the best softball player in women's softball. And because baseball players are so used to not watching the ball, right? They watch the pitcher. You watch the pitcher. You know, when the ball is going to get to you and how the ball is traveling by what the pitcher is doing. So when you swing, you're not actually tracking the ball. You're tracking more of the pitcher's motions. And so what they did was they took some of the best hitters in the league. In mlb, they Put them up against a women's softball pitcher. And because these guys weren't accustomed to that type of movement on the mound and the ball was coming at them in a completely different way, she was striking them out.
Yeah, I think that's an acclimation issue because I think, you know, you give.
Them some time, obviously, eventually they'd be able to figure it out. Yeah, yeah.
Right, right. Yeah.
Okay, so. So baseball was your sport. Your dad wouldn't let you play football.
Football was the sport.
Football became your sports. What happened as you were playing football?
No, I just. I was the guy who, you know, I died trying. I would sacrifice myself. I would jumble my sentences. In high school because it was a badge of honor to, you know, cut a whole, you know, cut. Carve a big, you know, groove in your helmet with a big hit. If you broke the face mask off, that was, you know, another thing. Drinking beer on the weekends and, you know, headbutting the wall and headbutting your butt, you know, just that sort of rowdy football kind of thing. Right. So I did all that and captain of the football team and football is what got me into Williams College, though, so.
Yeah, but you told me you got into some trouble in high school too.
Yeah, pre. High school is when I really got into trouble because, well, I would hang out with friends and we just like to be, I don't know, sort of delinquents, you know, terrorize the neighborhood, Go out at night, you know, just steal stuff and, you know, throw all the crap in the pool. And, you know, eventually I was. We used to just go into cars and take stuff like cassette tapes or whatever. And I, I was in front of the town hall.
Was like, sober or. You guys doing drugs too?
Oh, no, no, no. I. The only things I've ever done is beer and pot. No other drug. I mean, I've not, I've not had another drug. Aspirin or whatever that was. But not mind altering.
Right. So until you have my kids risotto later on.
Yeah, exactly. With those mushrooms. Yeah, you can't wait. Yeah, yeah. So I, I just got into a lot of mischief and it was the excitement of it, you know, and here you are, you got, you got a lot on the line. You're an honor roll student, you know, you know, to all intents and purposes, viewing me from the outside, you know, this kid's a good kid, you know that. And so there was a tremendous amount of excitement in, you know, doing that kind of mischief. And eventually, you know, I got, I. I broke into a police car and was taking a pistol and a, and a magazine of clips and you know, they came around the corner and then I, you know, I got caught and I had to do community service. And you know, that basically put a, a stop to most of it at that point in time.
But so, so eventually. So you were, you were a little bit of a trouble kid. Yeah, but, you know, no, not that different than a lot of. A lot of American high schoolers. What about what you. So you're already into fitness? What nutrition were you in a. Nutrition?
Not really. Not really. I mean, my parents, like, my house was the boring house where we had like the whole grain wheat bread and you know, we had the smuckers peanut butter.
The same as me taking baked pizza Jiffy peanut butter, iceberg. Iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. 29 cent hamburger day.
No, we were, I was exactly the opposite. Growing.
Oh, really?
Oh, no, no, I, I'm, I'm. My stuff was. I. We didn't have wonder bread, we didn't have Jif. We didn't have any of that stuff. It was all like the healthy versions of stuff. I hated it when I was a kid. Now, now I prefer it because we're.
Ahead of the curve.
I guess so. But, you know, I, you know, we didn't have Captain Crunch.
Oh, dude. I grew up on peanut butter Captain Crunch.
Yeah. So there's hope for. So there's hope for people who grow.
Up like that flavored milk kind of. I don't know how many years I took off my life. I've done telomere testing and, and I'm 35 years old chronologically, but 36 biologically. So it was either the peanut butter Captain Crunch or 13 Ironman triathlons.
Oh, really?
Yeah. I don't know which one takes more years off your life.
Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. I had a buddy, I had a buddy who did the iron man five years in a row. And he, he said that, you know, he had to eat ice cream otherwise he'd just emaciate so had to eat it.
Yeah. And he said a copious amount of calories. Yeah. You said you were eating 10,000 calories a day easily in high school.
Yeah, in high school. That's a lot. I've had a huge appetite my entire life. Like I could eat. Just eat and eat and eat.
I could have cooked more food today for you.
Well, I'm fine.
You know, I got up today, I knew you were coming over, and I made crock pot chicken. I can't wait you know how to do this? I take a. And then we'll get back into your story. I take a cast iron skillet and a big pat of butter. I do onions and some cremini mushrooms, some diced tomatoes from the garden, and then some thyme and cilantro from the backyard. Salt, pepper, little bit of cayenne. And so I stir all that together and saute that with just a little bit of red wine. And then I take an organic bone broth and a bunch of organic pasture raised chicken breast. I put that in the crock pot. I dump all the vegetables over the crock pot. It's been cooking now for five hours upstairs. And, you know, we'll eat in a couple hours if we finish the podcast. Just melt in your mouth. Crock pot chicken.
Well, you're talking.
You got to get a crock pot for easy, because then just walk away and doesn't stink.
Exactly. Now you're talking to someone who can appreciate food and good taste. All right, I'm the guy. You line up five wines. You know, blind test that I'll tell you of all five every single time.
Good. Well, I'll break out the good sea salt and the good wine, and we'll eat good tonight. But anyway, so. So back to football. So you went on to Williams College because the reason I'm asking these questions is I want to kind of get a background, give background people. I know you have a fantastic history, because Chris Holder, who introduced us, and by the way, if you guys are listening and you gotta go listen to the podcast with qigong master and strength conditioning badass Chris Holder, who connected me with David because we had a great episode. He also came up to my house. We did kettlebell swinging and qigong. But he said, get David's backstory, because it really leads into this whole invention of the BOSU ball and his crazy ideas about reinventing fitness. Why a lot of these biomechanists and coaches are wrong. So you played at Williams College, and what happened there?
Basically, I played above my level by using brains to augment my brawn. Film study was my big thing, and it was more X's and O's than it is, you know, biomechanics, which is, you know, what I use film study now for or video study now. And so I had an advantage because I, you know, could read plays and I could put my body in a position to make a play, you know, whereas I didn't have to react as fast because I knew what was coming. And then in the summertime, so you're.
Saying you weren't as natural an athlete, but you were using more your brains or you were a good athlete who was throwing brains on top of that?
No, I was a good athlete. 4, 6, 40. Could dunk a volleyball. You know, I could catch volleyball. Yeah. That's palming. Right?
You know, I used to bring up, you know, dunk a tennis ball. Yeah, yeah. And then I. And I actually got to the point I could dunk my senior year of high school, my freshman year of college, and then I started to do bodybuilding. I kind of heavy.
Oh, yeah.
So I lost the ability to dunk and then went straight from bodybuilding into endurance sports and completely lost my vert. Right. I turn on my fast fish muscle in the slow twitch muscle.
Exactly. Yeah. But. Yeah, so I was a good athlete, but I certainly wasn't the best. But I played, you know, I played above my ability using the brains. And so I've always. You know, I come from a very smart family. My. Both of my brothers and my sister basically have. Everybody's entrepreneurial. My brothers are just, like, crazy smart in math. Crazy smart. They got it from my grandfather. And my smarts are. I think whatever brain power I have is augmented by what I'll say. Fearlessness and honesty. So I. I don't take anything. Common sense is my greatest evaluation of anything. So if it doesn't make sense to me, I don't give a. I don't care who you are, what you, you know, your background is or something. I want to know. I want to know what it is. It's got to make sense to me. I gotta, you know, if I don't understand, I'm never gonna pretend that I understand it, and I'm going to understand it, and I could be wrong. And then I'll understand better when I, you know, understand it. But I'll keep going.
Got it. So you. So you were studying film?
Yes.
In football to get good at football?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
So. So what happened at Williams? Did you. What were you studying over there?
I majored in political economy. Okay. Sophomore year, you're supposed to declare your major. I didn't even know the day that you were supposed to do it. I hadn't thought about it. Once somebody came around the dorm, said, hey, you got to declare your major by tomorrow. I'm like, oh, geez. I started looking at my previous classes, and.
Political Economy was considered a very prestigious major. Oh, yeah, that's a hard major. But econ and math and poli sci, there's a lot less Reading than say, English. Right. And so you can do math fast compared to like, oh, you have to read 90 pages of this book. And the poli sci. I basically taught myself to speed read so I could just get through it.
Yeah.
So my strategy academically was cover my butt so that I could go, you know, work on Wall Street.
Yeah.
You know, be the consultant.
Yeah. That's actually how I learned to speed read too. Yeah. I moonlit at a Christian liberal arts college during my study in kinesiology while I was attending University of Idaho. And you'd show up for that particular institution, which was a lot of like great books and like logic and Latin and all this. And you get a stack of like 12 books and see you next Monday.
Yeah.
So I literally like the pen and the tracking and never letting yourself turn the page backwards. Like I had to work that muscle. And now people ask me how I read a book a day. And I was telling you this upstairs, it's a frickin muscle. Right. If I quit reading, I slow down. But as long as I tell myself, you got to read a book a day, I get through a book a day, it's just like lifting weights.
That's incredible. And you're right because. And I have, you know, I've tapped into, you know, extraordinary things with some of my experiences in the. The most extraordinary speed reading I experienced was like flash. Like, you know, holy shit. I read it and I know it, you know.
Right.
And, but. And I used to lay in my bed, I would take post it notes and I would put, you know, 52 post it notes all over and then put ones on the fan, the ceiling fan spinning. Right. And I used to like, you know, count randomly, like, you know, try to find, you know, it's Lomachenko kind of training.
Right.
Where you're doing that stuff. And then in one of my manic episodes, I actually could control REM and do the cardinal directions with the eyes. Wow, it was wild.
What do you mean, cardinal directions?
With north, south, east, west and then the 45 angles in between.
You did that to learn how to read?
No, no, no, no. I had already done a lot of the learning how to speed read stuff, but going into this manic episode, I didn't sleep for like six days and you know, stuff, weird stuff starts to happen. And at one point, like right before the, the end of that episode, I, you know, it was just in so much incredible power. I could take my eyes and I go, make them go, you know, consciously, consciously.
That's hard. There's A vision reading method called the Bates method or vision fixing method called the Bates Method that teaches you how to, how to take control of your ocular muscles. Like have this amazing. And people will go from like glasses to not wearing glasses with that method.
I have that book and I studied that book way back in the day. You see, now I'm.
There's these folks from, from a nervous system training institute called Z Health, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
And they do the same thing. They have this thing called, yeah, Eric Cobbies they call the Vision Gym. And I ordered it for my wife because she wanted to learn how to not wear glasses and she doesn't do supplements, she doesn't do programs. So I ordered it and got shoved into a closet and then I pulled it out and started to mess around with convergence and divergence and all these techniques. And I have 2020 vision, but I'm a bow hunter, right. So I wanted to work on my eyesight. It's pretty cool, like the way that you can train your eye muscles. But anyways, we digress once again. So you're at Williams College, you got a political, you said political science.
Political economy.
Political economy. What'd you do with that?
Nothing. I mean, I look at sort of the way that I view the world is sort of framed by that education, I suppose. And I think we're in a very fascinating, interesting time where sort of we're going to have to have some post capitalistic solution when the machine replaces the man in terms of labor. So what do you do when nobody has a useful function in terms of a job? The jobs didn't go to Mexico, they went to the machine. So, okay, well what do you do? And if the means of production can be plenty, it's not like the Soviet Union where only guys drinking vodka and nothing's getting built, but now you got machines going to build everything super efficiently. You know, perhaps there is a different political economy that needs to be established because, you know, wouldn't it be amazing if you had the means of production, very productive, and you could give people, you know, a living stipend that allowed them to shop at Whole Foods because, you know, means of production. And then you could go pick your kid up at 3 o' clock and go play baseball, go surf, go, you know, read, go do whatever. Right. Instead of, instead of some mindless, meaningless, you know, nail the rivet in or whatever, you know, agony that makes you drink at night, you know.
Right.
So anyway, that's, I don't want to digress too much, but that's what political economy. I think, you know, I'm much more interested in it now and I can sort of reflect back on the education and draw, you know, insights from that framework. But I just did it because you could get a job as a banker and it was easy for me. And I graduated with honors, so. And I worked on, you know, Wall street the summer before my senior year. And that's when I realized, okay, well, I'm, I, no, I can't do that.
You don't want to work on Wall Street. Same thing happened with medicine. I, I studied pre med at University of Idaho. I went and did a full year in emergency rooms and in hip and knee surgical sales and just got immersed in medicine. Walked out the other, the other side of that, completely disillusioned with western medicine. And I walked across, I quit my job, walked across the street to, to the gym across the street from my house and ask for a job.
Yeah.
And, and I, I've been immersed in the fitness industry ever since. But anyway, so, so you didn't get into Wall Street. What'd you wind up doing?
I, I just dove into acting, so.
Acting.
Acting, yeah. And basically, you know, sort of the, you know, the, the, the method. Right. You know, if you study Marlon Brando, James Dean and the Actors Studio. And it's basically self therapy for, you know, people with angst, you know, to be this method actor. Yeah. And so I got way into that and my senior year, my senior year, I met the drama teacher and he gave me a one man play or one man show. That was an hour and 15 minute monologue and it was called Chucky's Hunch. And it was about this, you know, essentially this loser who lived in upstate New York with his 85 year old mother. And he was writing letters to his second ex wife. Wife. Okay, that's, that's who the guy was in an hour and 15 minutes of that. And so in order to get myself into that role, to be capable of doing it to the standard that I had for myself, I didn't shower from the first rehearsal through the end of the run. So I didn't take a shower for six weeks. And, and I wore this sweater and I wore these weird wool pants. And you know, I just, you know, that's how I went to classes. That's what I did. And it was after football season, so, you know, I had no sort of, you know, containment and I, you know, I was, I've always just, I don't know, gone for it, I guess.
Yeah.
And so, and it's weird when you don't take a shower for six at that age anyway. It's like you go through phases where your skin peels off and then you're almost clean again. Like it's weird, but.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah. So, I mean, the extreme nature with which I just have approached life, those are just sort of, you know, stories, indicators or whatever they are.
Yeah, yeah, I don't shower. I shower about once every four or five days, but I'm not, you know, I jump in cold water. And the reason for that is that I'm a big fan of, like I said, the hygiene hypothesis.
Right.
Like let the microbiome grow in the body and if you eat shit food, then you can't. You smell shitty. But if, I mean, if you eat good food. Yeah. Actually you don't stink that bad. Yeah, I don't think I stink that bad anyways, though. So you, you got into acting. It's crazy. You're a football player. Yeah. With a political economy degree. You get into acting. Obviously you didn't make it because I haven't seen you in any big movies.
Hey, you didn't watch One Life to Live?
No. No. Did you watch Teenage Dirtbag? Because I used to do acting too. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Anybody listening in watch Teenage Dirt Bag. And I'm the. I'm the dude. Basically, they hired me for the make the make out role. Right. Like, I said to basically make out with girls over this filmed, actually over in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. Yeah. I was married and, you know, my wife's like, well, if you want to make us an actor, you can do what you got to do. And she watches the movie. She's like, I don't know if acting is the thing for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I had it. I played those roles in commercials. And, you know, let's put it this way. I lived 10 years in Manhattan as an actor. Oh, yeah. I, you know, I've had my living. There's no midlife crisis in that sense.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Okay, so. So what happened after Manhattan, dude?
All right, so Manhattan, rollerblading. Personal training, acting.
So I was rollerblading.
Yeah, rollerblading. So again, back to effortless power, Right? I discovered. Here's what happened. 1993, I had a knee operation to fix an injury that I had from football the year before. And I'm walking through Central park with a buddy of mine and I, you know, I'm gimpy because I literally had surgery two days prior. And I see these Guys rollerblading in Central park and they're jumping over trash cans and they're, you know, just, just. And I'm just like, holy, I need to do that. And so the next day I went and bought a pair of skates and I started skating before the knee was better. And pretty soon I got very, very good at it. And then I existed in skates. And it's a.
Not blade skates.
Rollerblades.
Rollerblades.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the roller blades. Not, not the, not the, not the.
Ones with the four wheels on, like the roller blades.
No.
That's kind of funny. Like, that's how I got into rollerblading. I saw some dude in Miami.
Yeah, right.
And he was beating us. We were in the car and he was like beating us through the traffic on his rollerblades. He had his shirt off. And you know, in Miami, that was like. I think I was like 13, 14 years old. I asked my grandma if I could get some rollerblades. We were there for like a week. She bought me rollerblades.
Nice.
And I got hardcore in a rollerblading for a little while. And then I got into roller hockey, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's a fun sport.
Oh, yeah.
But, but why was rollerblading so big?
So, okay, so. So rollerblading first of all is fascinating. Central park and you're rollerblading. There's just. And rollerblade was big then. It was before skateboarding sort of surpassed rollerblading. Rollerblading was more popular. Popular in the skateboarding back then. And you had this social dynamic in Central park where you'd have a CEO of a Fortune 500 company hanging out with a 14 year old kid who lived in the projects. And they're, you know, on a, you know, from a skating standpoint, the kid's much better than the guy. So they're sort of, you know, on even footing and they can have a conversation and it's really cool, like to have that kind of dynamic.
Yeah.
But I love the skates. I loved it because you can go so fast. And I skated everywhere. I literally. I'd go out to a club on Saturday night and I'd wear my skates and I was good enough to walk around. You didn't even know I had them on. I just, you know, it just. I lived in the skates because I didn't walk. I didn't walk. Walking slow.
That's crazy. No, you just went everywhere in rollerblades.
Everywhere, everywhere. And I'm not, you see, you know, I'm Pretty intense guy.
I mean, there's no impact. Don't your feet get weak?
That was what happened. My feet got new bioweak. New by a week. I could not. I had to crawl off a rocky beach in San Francisco.
Like the Princess and the Pea. Like, I could be standing on a thousand mattresses. You could put a pee under it, and my foot would bruise. Okay. I had to crawl off a beach in France because it was a rocky beach. I went to the community swimming pool one day, and I had to sit down after about 25ft of walking on cement.
You overdid rollerblading.
Oh, God. Way overdid it. It. And I had no idea back then that the feet were so important. I wore cowboy boots.
It's like a cyclist. They, they have this huge lungs and zero bone density.
Yeah, yeah. Right, right. So the feet caused a back problem. I, I bought a motorcycle, and the starter motor didn't work, so I used to jump start it down the wrong way, 56th Street. And, you know, when I'd ride it, I'd have to jump it. And I dropped it one day and I, I picked it up in a big hurry and wrenched my back a little bit. And then three days later, I was training with a client, and we came in from Central park where he rode his bike, and I was rollerblading and crossing the threshold of his front door. I just collapsed. White hot pain. And spent the next more than a year in pain every single day because my feet were so weak that there was no resolving the back pain. Yeah.
A lot of people don't realize. No, I, I just, I just read a book called Barefoot Strong. Yeah, no, feet like that, feet are.
Your, you know, your feet are the interface between you and the ground.
Yeah.
And the more work your feet can do for you, the less work you got to do up top. My feet couldn't do any work for me, so there was compensation built into the equation, and I had no idea.
So you threw it. You threw it back carrying a motorcycle.
No, I, I, that was like the event. That was like, okay, you know, wrenched it and then, then, you know, just the wear and tear on top of that. And the weak feet, it, it sort of went out right. You know, like that moment when it's just like. I mean, the pain is like I, like, passed out from the pain.
Oh, yeah.
You know you hurt. Well, you're cold and you're sweating.
I mean, like, like five weeks ago, and I'm just now recovering. I was in Iceland, and I went to, like, a strongman training facility. And I bent down to flip a tire at like 7 o' clock in the morning. You know, my body's still waking up.
Yeah. Nice and hydrated discs.
It was about a 450 pound tire. And I bent down, I got my hands under it and strained to pick it up. And it felt like somebody took. You know when you like rip a curtain apart or like felt like that going up my spine or like somebody's ripping a piece of fabric apart. And it was up until. I mean, you saw me now on the driveway.
Oh, yeah.
Okay. But I couldn't tell, like two weeks ago that I was, I was hobbling.
Yeah, well, but it hurt a lot. I mean, if I had had that back injury now, I could fix it in no time because I know what I'm doing now.
Let's talk about pot. I was taking like 100 milligrams of CBD a night. Well, the past three weeks. Then I felt the pain.
Okay. So. So what I did, my solution was, you know, I was getting up at 5, 5, 5:30 in the morning, go personal training, staying out late at night. I had four to six drinks a day. Just regular, you know, just drinking alcohol. It was normal.
Four to six drinks a day was normal in your personal trainer.
Oh, yeah.
You know, that was bad for you.
No, I was an actor, not a personal trip. You called me a personal trainer back then. I thought it was an insult.
I thought you just now said personal trainer. No, no, no.
I was a personal trainer to make money.
I got you.
But I wasn't an actor.
Okay, okay. Your identity was an actor, A drinking actor.
Yeah, yeah. And. And like back then, like, you know, if you call me a trainer, I'm not a trainer. I'm an actor.
Yeah.
Trained so that I can act. Right.
I gotcha.
So it was early mornings and late nights and, you know, no sleep.
And then it was a leave Naproxen. Right.
For the back.
Further back. And I. I used to buy the bottles, Ben, that, you know, they're four or five inches tall, you know that version of them.
Yeah.
And I used to take them like tic Tacs. And it was very bad.
I don't know what your liver looks like, dude.
Oh, God. I just had blood work on Monday, on Friday to, you know, to. To. I keep tabs on it very closely, but. And my body went toxic and it was horrible. And I still suffer from it.
You ever done like a cleanse or detox? Like that?
Not. I did all that, all that stuff. I mean, I did so many things. You know, I, I pooped and put it in the bag and sent it off and I did the, you know, the. I, you know, the nurse came and took my blood and I've done so many things. I think what I did was I bored so many holes in my intestines and my liver, you know, it was like Bernard Hopkins just hitting it over and over again. And so when we go in the hot tub, you're gonna see my belly button. You're gonna see psoriasis on my abdomen. That, you know, it's just. I deal with this now.
Wow.
And when you're enjoying that risotto, I'm probably gonna.
It's all right, dude. I'm Mr. My wife had a C section scars on Abs.
Minor is. Mine's not scars. It's more like scabies. It's just gross. It's just, you know, it's.
It's crazy.
And I have terrible dandruff and that.
That's from like, like a candida type of thing. Yeah.
Candidia.
From excessive alcohol consumption and liver issues.
Yes. Wow. Yeah.
And that was all because that back pain.
All because of the.
Started with the back.
It started with the back pain, and then my belly button started oozing, like, stench.
What?
It was horrible.
And you weren't still on the six week. No shower stint?
No, no, that was years earlier. No, no, no. I'm. I'm like 28, 29 years old when this is happening. Yeah.
That's nasty.
It was horrible. Okay. And I still deal with the, you know, the ramifications of that today.
Wow.
And so, you know, and I've done so many things and I do everything that I do. I do it pretty intensely, as you probably gathered, and I still suffer from that. And if I had one thing to do over in my life, I would have not done that.
You would have not consumed all the alcohol and all the Aleve and all the things that, yeah, probably knocked out your liver that's developed your. Your inability to be able to detox your body because your liver is your major detox organ.
Correct.
And you, you, you went full on toxic. Candida, everything.
So toxic that, you know, I was probably near, you know, I don't know if you'd say fatal, but, you know, I was, I was, I was more toxic. I stopped because I had to. Because I, you know, I, I'm. I'm sort of an oxymoron because, you know, I'm, I'm. I cherish the way that I move and my health and capacity to do that. But I do, you know, I've gone through phases in life, you know, biting the filter off the cigarette and, you know, smoking it that way. And. Yeah, you know, I used to have a cigar every single day. And I'd have. You know, I loved beer, I love wine, and I love whiskey.
Wow.
So the four to six drinks, you know, have a couple beers and, you know, have nice red wine with dinner and then maybe have a cigar with a, you know, with. With a scotch or a whiskey.
So what'd you do? How'd you fix this?
So what I did was I saw Paul Check. Standing on the stability ball. Squatting weight, buddy.
Paul check. Yeah, on the show before.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So I saw a picture of him standing on a stability ball. And I had. I had recently purchased the stability ball because my last session of physical therapy, you know, insurance isn't going to pay for it anymore. This shit's not. This stuff's not working anyway, so I bought a stability ball, and that training started to make my back feel better. And then I saw a picture of Paul Check. Standing on the ball, and I said, hey, I'm going to do that. And when I started standing on the ball, that was the catalyst to make my feet strong. And as soon as my feet started to get strong in that way, the back started to get better very quickly. And, you know, one. To always progress the challenge, I started, you know, jumping onto the ball, Jumping from one ball to another ball.
You know, jumping from one stability ball to another ball.
Oh, yeah. It's hard.
Yeah.
Well, yeah. And, you know, you bust your butt.
I wish I had two balls here. I'd have it. Show me.
Well, yeah, I don't. I would. You know, it's like that muscle, right? I haven't. I haven't exercised that muscle. Yeah, exactly.
I got you.
But so anyway, and then I was really into Feldenkrais back then. So I'd always had an interest in martial arts. And, you know, I took, you know, wing chun and, you know, studied a little bit of boxing in New York. But the wing chun was. It was just, you know, terrible training compared to, you know, what I understand now.
Feldenkrais is like a movement pattern.
Yeah, Feldenkrais.
He.
Feldenkrais's work. Moshe Feldenkrais. If there's one book that you haven't read that you should, it's called Awareness Through Movement.
Awareness Through Movement. I'll find it and link to it for you guys@BenGreenfieldFitness.comweck. Okay, so, so, so anyway, Felden crisis, you're also doing this.
So the idea of Felden crisis, you want to reduce the effort so that you can discern the distinction, the gradations of force, and then, you know, iron out the inefficiencies and build on a fish.
Like a body awareness kind of thing.
Yeah, that's what it is. Right. And so I. It's a very minimalist approach. And so if you are standing on something and you close your eyes, it instantly the challenge goes up. So I used to stand on the stability ball and close my eyes, and now, whoa. The challenge. And what I would do is I'd seek to relax despite the challenge. Right. So. And then I tilted my head back one night, you know, with the eyes closed on top of a ball. And this was a big one, a 75 centimeter ball. And I fell, I bounced on the ball, I did a backflip and I landed. I was in a 200 square foot studio apartment. I landed, you know, from the living room in the kitchen. I started kicking my feet to make sure I could still do that. And I was scared and I was like, okay, I'm not doing that anymore. But my back's getting better, my feet are getting strong, but I'm not doing that anymore. But what am I going to do? And I went to bed and this was like 12:31am and it just hit me. I was like, what if I cut the ball in half? And now I just knew because by that time I had like seven stability balls in that 200 square foot apartment. I had a loft where I had to put them up in the loft during the day and take them out during the night because, you know, this ball and that ball and the other ball. And so I knew the metrics on stability balls. You know, there were probably at that time, you know, 2 million units annually sold in the U.S. alone. And then a worldwide market that was.
Larger than that because you can't just cut. For those of you who haven't been with one of these stability balls, you can't just cut in half, right? No, it's an inflatable ball.
Well, and physics. Physics abhors the, you know, if it's inflated, it wants to go round. So, you know, the, the physics are working against the Bosu ball. So to make one is really challenging to make a good one. And so, you know, that was an engineering feat to sort of make it robust enough that I never really thought.
About that much, like how you actually. Because, because you do Inflate it when you get it.
Yeah, right. The forces acting on that platform are tremendous.
Yeah, tremendous.
When I built my first. The next day after I thought of it, I built my first prototype. So I canceled everything. I got on a train out to New Jersey, my father's house, went to Home Depot. I got a pine tabletop that was round, two feet in diameter, right. I took a stability ball and, you know, I had to sacrifice it. I was, you know, oh, God, I gotta cut this thing. So I cut it about an inch and a half beyond its center line. So I had something to wrap over. Then I got staples. And I figured, okay, if I just put a staple right next to a staple right next to a staple, right? You know, I do that 250 times, and then I just cover my tracks with glue. This thing's going to stick on it and it'll be sealed. And, you know, I just. I inflated it the next day, and it worked. And I was like, holy shit, this is. This is my ticket.
Did they already have, at that point, like, the little foam things that you stand on at the gym and the balance boards and all these other balance devices?
Yes, they did. And the timing.
What year was this?
This was 1999.
Okay.
And so the timing of it was perfect because at that time, stability balls were all the rage.
Oh, yeah.
And here was something that had a lot more utility than a stability ball.
But it was still riding the wave of that stability ball. And so I. It was literally ready, fire, aim, like I just went. And I. You know, when you're an entrepreneur inventing things, you gotta have, you know, several trains have to leave the station at the same time. So your IP has to leave the station. Intellectual property. You gotta, you know, you gotta be working on the patent and file that patent, because if you can't protect it, then you're not going to reap the reward. Okay? So you got to do that. Then you got to do the manufacturing. And that's going to take time to find, you know, the manufacturer, do the industrial design on it, you know, duh, prototypes and blah, blah. So that takes time. And then you got to market it. And so the key is you got to put the IP in place before you hit the marketing button. And what I figured is, I'm. As soon as I had the IP in place, I'm just going to bang a drum on this thing. And when I get the manufactured one for real, I'll start selling a real one. But in the meantime, I'm going to make prototypes. I'm going to get this thing off the ground so that when I have. Have the finished product, I've got a market that I can sell to. I'm not gonna wait.
Right, right.
And so October 4th, I was patent pending, and October 14th, I sold the first two units to the US Ski Team. I flew to Park City.
My acted fast.
Oh, so fast. If you're not you. Hey, early bird gets a worm, baby. I mean, you just gotta go, right?
Yeah.
So it was so funny, too. The guy's name was Andy Walsh. He was the head of their, you know, training at the ski team.
Where'd you have the money to build these?
The money?
Yeah.
Well, at that point, it wasn't that much money because it was, you know, it was. You know, I would. I would take a router and I would cut this Baltic plywood out. Yeah, the shellac. It took me about six hours, every unit.
So this was like the cheap ass, ugly bosu ball.
This was a staples, duct tape and glue. Yeah, that's what this was. But it was functional. It let me get the story off the ground. And then it was funny because when I got to the ski team, Andy Walsh, he shows up late. It's. It's snow on the ground. He had ridden his motorcycle in his. He takes his helmet off and his rose. His nose looks like Rudolph. And he's like, you know, sneezing. He's like, you got a cold? He comes in or he opens the door. I go in this room and I see all these products, like, on the walls, like shelves. And I'm like, man, you got a lot of products here. And he goes, yeah, people send me this shit all the time, and they want me to validate it. You know, what do you have?
Right?
So he. But he got it right away. He loved it it. And we became an official supplier to the US Ski Team. Like, right then and there, they. They bought. They bought two of them, and then they bought 12 of them. And they bought 12 of them, and they bought 12 of them like it was a big deal. And then with that in hand, I took it to the Yankees, I took it to the Lakers, I took it to the Devils, I took it to the Ravens and the Rams, and it was all the championship teams from the Big Four. I'm going to validate this thing. They bought it and I had to sell it. I didn't give it. I said to them, listen, here's how it's going to work. I'm gonna leave this with you here. And if you use it, then I'm gonna send you an invoice. I'm not gonna give it to you. It has to, you know, this has to be valuable to you. And I don't, you know, I'm not just gonna give it to you, but I'm gonna leave it here. And if you don't want it, then I'll, you know, get it back. But, you know, if you do want it, I gotta send you an invoice. Right? So I just built the story, and then by the time I got to like the fitness market, you start at the top of the mountain with the elite athletes, you make them better, then you bring it down into fitness and the, you know, that professional market. And then with the bosa ball, you.
Go to consumer feeling. That's how you do it. If you're going to invent a fitness device, you will go, you go to the influencers first.
If you're going to do it organically, then you have to go to the influencers. If you're going to do it the other way, where, you know, the infomercial route, then you're going right for the consumer market. And that's a different ball of wax. That's. That takes a lot of money. Yeah, you know, it takes a lot of money and if it hits, you make a lot of money. But it's sort of like you're taking this big cauldron that's going to cost you a lot of money to build and fill it up with water, and then you got to put a lot of fuel underneath it, a lot of. A lot of coal, and you got to light it on fire. And you know, that costs a lot of money to make the steam rise. And if you're fortunate, the clouds form and then it rains and you've built the buckets to catch it.
All right, if you're doing all the cool things that David and I are talking about in today's show, then you may or may not need some joint support. So there's a lot of different ways to support your joints. Right? So collagen is one thing that's been studied quite a bit. Like type 2 collagen is a specific, specific structural protein and cartilage that has been shown in double blind, placebo controlled studies to help out with joint function and joint pain, especially after strenuous exercise. And then there are a whole bunch of things that can shut down inflammation naturally, like cherry and ginger and turmeric and white willow bark and hyaluronic acid, boswellia. A lot of people will use these Things all by themselves, but once you put them all together, it's like a frickin anti inflammatory shotgun for your joints, for recovery, for a whole host of anything that has to do with inflammation in the body. Now once you combine all of this with two other things, minerals and enzymes. See enzymes break down fibrinogen which is one of the things that also causes soreness after workout you have a really potent, almost like a shotgun formula for knocking out inflammation. So that's where this stuff comes called Flex Fits in. So I have a bottle of Flex in my pantry. I don't take it every day. I'm gonna shoot totally straight with you. But anytime I'm injured or anytime I've crushed myself with a hard workout, I pop anywhere from four up to on some days I've done 12. These bad boys and you wake up the next day feeling like you got a full body massage like from the inside out. It's crazy. And this is, this is one of the brand new formulations, this Flex formulation that I have over at my new website where I'm releasing a whole bunch of new formulations that I'm designing. It's called Kion K I O N Kion Flex. And to get it just go to getkion.com getk I o n.com automatic 10% discount on the stuff. Once you get there, there's a coupon you can use. So it's getkeon.com and the stuff I just talked about is called Kion Flex. See, see what I did there with the name Flex? Like flexing a muscle. All right, I'll shut up now back to today's show, getkeon.com check it out. Keon Flex. Never be sore again. Or at least be sore a whole lot less.
But you, you obviously made it with the BOSU ball though.
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
Like you, you made a lot of money on that thing, I'd imagine. Yeah, see it everywhere. Well, still do. Yeah. So is that it for you or you're just like done it for that? Is that passive income and now you're retired or like. Well, do you have a family at that point or what happened?
I, I married my wife 2003. We have two kids. We're divorced now. Very amicable. But you know, it'd be. It. I can understand. You know, it'd be hard to stay married to a guy like me.
Yeah, you're kind of crazy.
Well, let's. Yeah, I mean crazy, yes. But I think, you know, there's, I would say intense and Just different because I don't think I'm crazy.
Yeah. And your belly button isn't like oozing toxic sludge anymore.
No, it's.
Understand.
No, it's just red.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah.
You got married, you divorced now.
Yeah, yeah. I, I have enjoyed a passive income for long time. And what I did was rather than focus on the money, I licensed it to have a passive income where, you know, I've had no deliverables due in. In, you know, I, I mean, I still work with the project, I still have things that I have to do. But yeah, you know, in a, in conventional S, or for all intents and purpose, I'd have no deliverables.
Yeah. That said. So Bosu ball is on cruise control now.
Yeah, yeah, for me.
Okay.
So. So I went to Chinese medical school. Like, you know, I would go up to Esalen Institute for two weeks stints and you know, study with, you know, Ed Mopen and you know, he was one of the first students of Ida Rolfe. And you know, I'd go to China. Like, I, I invested in my education is what, that's how I spent my time. I was invested in my education.
How long did you do that for?
I still do it. I've been doing it.
So you obviously started inventing things again.
Yeah, yeah, Right, right. I mean, you know, you, you, you know, I, I'm. All I care about is results. So if you keep on exploring, then you. Okay, well, what, what am I, what's the issue that I'm trying to enhance or fix or make better? And then how can I do that? And then that leads to the inventive process.
You told me you got through a period of your life where you're like getting really heavy into pot. Yeah, that actually led to other, I guess, breakthroughs. What happened there?
Okay, so I was an east coast guy who thought the pot was for losers and stoners. And you, you know, you were burnout.
If you did this was after you'd invented the Bosu.
No, no, no, no. I'm talking high school now. Like, you know, drink drinking beer, crushing Budweiser cans on your forehead. You know, like red blooded, you know, that's who I was. Right. And potheads were potheads. Then when I moved to San Diego, I just encountered so many people that weren't losers. They were very productive people. And they smoked pots. And I'm like, wait a minute, you smoke pot? You're a lawyer.
Like how Silicon Valley executives now are doing LSD and psilocybin.
Right, right. I mean, it was sort of like, you know, it was like, wait a minute, you're a lawyer, you've got a family, you're, you know, you drive a, you know, Lexus and you smoke pot every day. And so it sort of lost some of that negative connotation for me. And then I started it and basically what it did for me, it acted as a stimuli. It works differently, I think, for everybody.
Yeah, it does, does.
And for some people, they function better. For some people, they function more.
Knock some people out and start some people on freaking fire.
No, it started me on fire. And I'm talking the deeper Purple.
Same thing with alcohol, really. Some people just knocks out, so they get super social.
Exactly, exactly. So for marijuana, for me was a stimulant, like crazy stimulant, and.
Just brought me to sensitivity in my body and I could feel everything thing. And so my Tai chi practice was just like, you know, I would, I would do pot to, to basically exist. With the Tai chi, I could feel everything and then play push hands where you're. Yeah, you know, you're manipulating, you know, someone else's body. You're not letting them find your center. You're invisible. You know, you yield, you neutralize, you issue. And with marijuana, I got very, very good at it. But the marijuana also was catalytic for bringing my mind to some dangerous places. And that was exciting too, you know, to sort of go off into the, you know, those outer realms and, you know, sort of play with the fire. That was fun in a regard and, you know, really led to, you know, just a lot of places that I wouldn't have gone otherwise. And it gave me a somatic receptivity that I wouldn't have had otherwise. So it was, it was beneficial in the sense that it taught me a lot about movement because I of kind could feel the truth, you know, better than ever before.
Yeah.
And it also led to three psychotic breaks from reality.
Did you overdo it or.
Oh, God, yes. I mean, did I overdo it?
I know I get the impression all or nothing kind of guy.
Yeah. I got to the point toward the end of it, I no longer do it and I no longer crave it because I got what I. I guess I got what I got from it. And in the past, like, after the psychotic break, you know, my family's like, look, are you going to stop doing this? I'm like, all right, right. I'm not going to do it today, but no guarantee I'm not going to do it tomorrow because, you know, because I wasn't Done. And then I always went back to it and I got to the point where.
Very addicting substance, especially if you're using it for productivity like that.
Yes.
You feel like it makes you a better person, so it's easy to excuse. Just like doing it all the time.
Of course. And I got to the point where, you know, I was getting, I don't even know how many hundreds of dollars a week I was doing, but you know, getting the most intense concentrates I could get it.
Oh wow.
He, you know, I had an electric nail that, you know, you don't have to heat it up with the torch and you know, hit it with this, you know, glass thing that cost 500 bucks.
And yeah.
You know, I had a volcano back.
Yeah. Back there behind me. I've got like this, some fancy vaporizer and I'll drag that thing out like once every couple of weeks.
Yeah.
You know, when I got, when I go out to the hot tub or something like that.
Right, right.
But you, you were doing the super expensive stuff every day.
Saturation.
Wow.
Because your tolerance always goes up like.
Morning to evening or.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Holy cow. When I got like high. All the time.
All the time. Wow. All the time. I would go lecture at San Diego State University and I would be stoned out of my mind and I could just sling, you know, from the hip because I know what I'm talking about. And the pot just like all these dots. Like you can connect dots from here to there to there to there to there. Right.
You're having these like psychotic episodes.
Well, what. Not all the time. Time. So they ramped up. The, the psychotic episodes ramped up. You know, where you go on a mania run.
Yeah.
And then, you know, I crashed three times and the last crash was like catastrophic. Like it was like I was catatonic from a long manic rolling, rolling, roll.
It was all just for being psychotic. On thc.
The THC brought, what it would do is it would bring my mind to these places where, you know, I, I was exploring the outer realms and, and going, you know what they say when they say, you know, someone who takes dmt, it's that life changing. I've never done it but you know, they say you take the DMT and you're, you know, mother Ayahuasca has now revealed to you the Graham Hancock, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, and it takes your ego away. Right. So your ego self is no longer there and now you stripped it away and now you have this insight and you're forever different. You Know, and it's amazing. Right, right. So what I did was I was going into those outer realms through, through marijuana, thc, but with my ego fully intact and, you know, leading with the ego. So I was going into those outer realms and trying, you know, getting in tune with weird things, but, you know, full on ego, which is a very dangerous combination because then you start feeling power and then that power becomes very enticing and then you start to da, da, da, da, da, and it's not a sustainable thing and. And then you crash. So, but, but now I, I figured certain things out, made certain discoveries I otherwise wouldn't have made, and it came out the other side and I, you know, October 2016 is when. That's when life crystallized for me. 2016 of October.
Oh, wow. So at the time of this recording, like, like a year ago.
A year ago is when.
And you were like heavy into THC until then?
I was heavy into THC until the beginning of 2016 and then I just stopped it and I was catatonic. And I have an amazing psychiatrist who really has saved my life. And he's, you know, I've seen him for 11 years. He's amazing. And the treatment that got me out of the funk was called ect.
Dude. I just did a podcast about electroconvulsive therapy because I have a device up in my bedroom called the Circadia.
Oh, yeah.
It's like mild electroconvulsive therapy to help you sleep at night.
Oh, wow.
It shuts down cortisol and increases dopamine. It's like baby ect, but it's very, very similar. I'll. I'll link to that podcast in the show notes. So you're listening in. But I would imagine what you did was a little bit heavier form of, of ect.
As heavy as it gets you like.
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest kind of heavy.
It's One Flew over to Cuckoo's Nest with a very civilized. We're going to anesthetize you and we're going to paralyze you. You so your body doesn't jump off the table and you feel nothing.
Is that a common thing people do for. For things like THC addiction?
No, no. This, it's. It's like the last resort, but apparently it's the gold standard and it's very, very. You know, I think One Flew over the Cuckoo's Ness sort of put it in a perspective where most people just think of it as savage. And, you know, okay, that's cr. You know, that it's almost a punishment. But if you are severely depressed and nothing else is working, that's what you do. It's like a reset.
Yeah.
My doctor told me that if, you know, if. If someone got raped and you know what, you know, let's say a 16 year old got a girl, got raped, what he would do is he would prescribe ECT immediately and then that episode would no longer exist for that person.
Well, where'd you do this? California.
Oh, yeah. California. Yeah. Ten minutes from my house. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And it's weird because, like, I have just chunks of time that I don't remember.
Yeah.
But crazy. But I'm better, so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happened after the ECT last year was that like, because. Because you have all these things you brought to my house, like this club and this new thing we can't talk about that you've invented to help make.
Well, no, on this pod, on this podcast, we can talk about it.
Oh, yeah, because this podcast isn't coming out.
Yeah.
Until after it's been released.
Exactly.
Gotcha. So, so did you. When you jump back into inventing once you kind of like got off the THC bandwagon or.
Well, what happened was that long manic run led to certain profound insights about tensional balance in the body. And if you think about tensional balance. Tensional balance. So if you think about balance, the best way to think about balance is coordination. Okay. It's an orchestra. It's where and when. That's what balance is. It's homeostasis basis.
Okay.
Right. You know, the cellular respiration that you and I are, you know, doing right now has found that homeostatic point. And yours is, you know, is balanced and tuned as just about anybody because of all the things that you understand and you do, Right. Other people, it's a different balance where. Oh, well, maybe I, you know, I have the alcohol or, you know, too much or whatever it is. But you always come to a balance. Right. And as far as physical biomechanics, it's about the tensional balance. It's the interplay of tension and relaxation orchestrated as efficiently as possible. So that's what balance is not. Oh, yeah, don't fall down. Right. That's a low bar for most of us to not fall down. It's. How efficient are you? And most people have. Well, everybody has inefficiencies in their tensional balance. And most people, the busy, you know, electricity everywhere, you know, I sit in a chair all day.
They have very little awareness of how inefficient they are. And if you don't walk with your head over your foot, meaning over your right foot, over your left foot, over your right foot, every single step you take is not tensionally balanced.
That means that your lower back on the other side has to squeeze just a little bit harder than it otherwise would have had to do if your head was over your foot. And so now add them up 25 years. Talk about millions of reps. Oh, why does everybody get back pain? That's one causal factor. Not the only, but one causal factor. Because so many people walk poorly. And then couple that with the fact that shoes, which I'm a big believer in shoes like, you know, I'm not gonna walk New York City barefoot, right? I mean, that's, that's dangerous. But shoes are. They, they don't. They. Most shoes prevent you from walking optimally. You can't do it. It's. People say heel, striker, midfoot striker, forefoot striker. No, you want to be a spiral striker, striker. You want to go from the outside, which is strong. Fourth and fifth metatarsals, that's strong. Too long. The inside, the pronating roll through. And you want that to be smooth and efficient as possible. And shoes don't let you do it. That hard edge on the outside creates an accelerant for the pronation. Okay, so if it's, if, if you have a transition that lets you go according to the right pace, the where and when, then you have a chance at walking, right? But if you wear a shoe like most shoes, you don't even have a chance of walking, right? That's where we are. And for most people, who gives a right, it's too much to think about. I got other things to do, right? You know, Monday Night Football's on. Fuck that. I'm getting a beer, right?
That, that or a lot of people have just switched to minimalist shoes. Like I wear, I wear, I wear a pretty minimalist shoe, but I don't move the way you were just showing me up in the driveway.
Here's what you do. Because when we were introduced, I then went, you know, did my homework. I listened to a ton of your stuff, right? And I'm very glad that I have. I've learned a lot. But I saw a video of you and your family, and you were walking, and you're a head over foot walker, Ben Greenfield. Because I can't help but look at the way you walk. That's the first thing that I see. You know, I. Before I see the tna, I see the way she walks, walks.
So the concept of tensional balance, I got this esoteric, crazy, you know, using the six degrees of freedom and, you know, the. I drew all these lines and diagram the feet, and, you know, I sort of came up with these lines and these angles and this geometry or sort of figured things out. But that was in the crazy time. And then coming through the, you know, so the low and then coming out of it, I was able to just simplify it. Two green dots. Initiate with the green dot. Right.
And tell people what the green dots are.
So the green dot is a green circle that is located on what's called the fourth and fifth metatarsals. So the metatarsals are those bones that are forward in the feet, just behind the toes. And the outside ones, the two, the fourth and fifth. So the pinky toe and then the next toe, those bones literally come back to the foot and they connect through the heel bone and the big toe, second toe, and third toe, they connect up to a bone called the talus, which is on top of the heel bone. So the green dot leverages the power of your heel and your posterior forward in the foot. So it gives you the best mechanical leverage to produce the most productive ground loading force to initiate the contact. And you go from strong, the outside to long, the inside in locomotive, you know, gate cycle, if you're doing.
That's what you're talking about when you're talking about spiraling gate. Yes.
Spiraling gate is basically that outside strong to inside long. So it's. You don't want to think of flat transition.
Yeah. I know some of this can be hard for people to visualize, but I'm going to link to a bunch of your videos in the show notes and also the Facebook Live video we just shot on the driveway. So for those of you listening in, that'll be really good for you to watch. To understand what David's getting at, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com WEC and you'll be able to watch it. But why don't more biomechanists or coaches or running instructors teach this style of movement, this spiralizing style of movement?
It's because in this world that we live in, we have to produce right now results. So there's tremendous pressure to perform in this world that we live in. And that means that it essentially has an effect to stifle innovation because you can't take risks, you can't take chances. The strength coach can't come into practice and say, or, you know, the Weight room session. Say, you know, guys, I got a theory today, you know, we're going to test this out out, right? Can't do that because if you fail, you're fired and then your credibility's gone and blah, blah, blah. So what you have to do is you have to listen to the guy who's had more time in than you, right? You gotta do. And you haven't lost your mind three times and you haven't gone off and you haven't just. I have absolutely no fear socially now. And I used to be. I used to sweat my armpits, you know, OCD being all like that right? Now I'm not afraid of anyone, not afraid of anything. You can't ask me a question and be prepared because you might not be able to handle the answer because I'm just going to tell you the truth, right? And so it puts me in a position where I'm just extremely honest. Most people put on that eminence front and I still comb my hair and put gel in it. So I care about that social mechanism. I don't want to be that awkward. But when it comes to. Okay, well, so and so says this, so it has to be right. Well, no. What are they saying? It doesn't have to be right. What's right is right. And so I, and I had no deliverables due. I could get off to Chinese medical school, I could go, you know. Right.
You've got time in your hands because you kind of got independently wealthy from the Bosu ball things. You've got time to explore a lot of this time.
Listen, listen, money is time.
So tell me why you, you said, I think in an email to me, you said that so much of what you see in training today is complete nonsense.
Yeah.
Does it go beyond just this fact that people are trying to teach front to back movement versus moving in the spiralizing fashion?
No.
The weird arm swinging thing that you were showing me.
Yeah. Great questions, Ben. You're awesome. So let me take it back to locomotion. Sort of deepest, most ancient ancestors. You know, the idea is we climb down from the trees. Okay. So in order to locomote on the ground and catch the rabbit and not get eaten by the wolf, you got to carry sticks and stones. So that means that locomotion itself, bipedal locomotion, is contingent upon your ability to swing a stick, throw a stone and then eventually, you know, string a stick and then shoot an arrow and sling a stone and blah, blah, blah. Right. So those are your first tools. They're Your first weapons. And they're necessary, they're essential for walking bipedal.
Okay.
Okay. And walking bipedal is the fundamental and universal function that is a foundation for just about everything else that we do. Even swimming and cycling, activities that you think might not be so related. They're intimately related with the function of your body's core to do these things. Okay. Now the three planes of motion. There is a sequential order or a hierarchy of these three planes of motion that can be looked both macrocosmically and microcosmically. And I apologize to your viewers if I'm getting a little, you know, I'm going to try to go slow and you know, you'll attach my contact to this so people can ask me questions.
Yeah, your contact and your videos are all going to be over there.
Right, Right. So basically, if you look at the first animals on planet Earth, they were in fluid and they wiggled, they side bended to get from here to there to eat and not be eaten, basically. Okay. And what that did, that mechanical stress led to a segmented spine. That is the, you know, evolution happens. It builds on what came before. So, you know, our foot looks remarkably similar to the foot of a dog. It's just, you know, they're standing on the metatarsals, we're standing on the heel kind of thing. Right. So that segmented spine in the frontal plane, side bending is first. Then you have the amphibians and the reptiles that come up from that. And now you have this transverse counter rotation to, you know, limbs are coming out the sides, you're side bending, but then you're counter rotating to locomotive in that manner on the ground. Because in the water you don't have to deal with that gravitational force to prop yourself up. So fish, all they have to do is side bend. Right. Okay. So the amphibians now add, they start and initiate with the side bend and then they do that transverse counter rotation. You know, that's that and that's the root of our motion because the mammals just prop themselves up higher and, and made that sagittal movement, the flexion extension, to potentiate more energy.
That's really interesting. I never thought about that way.
Yeah. So I mean, think of like the.
Troop when you had me up on the drive on my belly on a Bosu ball moving like that before you showed me how to do it upright. Now I understand why.
Yeah, exactly. There's a method to my magic. I get it. Right.
Okay.
Yeah. This is fun talking to you, man. I like you. So basically, the mammalian strategy is create the potentiation by raising the center of gravity. And that costs energy. Right. You're warm blooded, right? The true Paleo diet is sit on a freaking rock and let the sun heat you. And you don't have to eat for six weeks because you're a lizard and you just sit there. Right? That's all you gotta do. I'm not spending a damn drop energy.
No cookie dough protein bar required.
No, you don't need anything because you're just not spending energy. And in nature, efficiency is life.
The guys in Ohio, they look at the guys in California banging tires with a sledgehammer, they go, what the hell are you doing? You're working as hard as you can without working. We're chopping wood. We're doing the same thing, but we're getting a job done. Right, right. So efficiency we now, okay, so now that's sort of the macrocosmic frontal plane first, then the transverse counter rotation next and then the sagittal extension flexion next. And so it works in your body the same exact way. So the curvature of your spine means that when you side bend biomechanically, it's going to create this counter rotation. And it was Grackovetsky, Serge Grackovetsky, who basically coined the term spinal engine. The core is the genesis. The core is the originator of your rotational power.
But most people, when they're training their core, don't train it the way that you were showing me. Even if they know the core is supposed to rotate or the core is supposed to brace. If I'm take Stu McGill, who I'm actually getting on the podcast, who has all these back pain relieving exercises where you're planking or you're doing a quadruped exercise, but there's not that, that, that side to side spine, at least I haven't experienced that.
Well, here's, here's what it is, okay. And Stuart McGill is the perfect example because he holds a very special position in the fitness industry.
Yeah, he's like considered to be like the, the father of spine biomechanics.
Yes.
And core.
And core.
Yeah, core.
Right. And he's, you know, he's not in the trenches the way so many people are. So that, you know, and he has all the peer reviewed studies and the 30 years of experience and da, da, da. But he, when it comes to locomotion, throwing, swinging, those activities, he doesn't know or understand those activities. So what he studies and what his bias is is basically weightlifting. You know, the squat, the deadlift brace and Stiffen the core. The power comes from the hips, it doesn't come from the core. Right. Stuart, you are right when it comes to deadlifting and squatting. But when he equates the deadlift with sprinting, he's made just a cardinal mistake because you cannot brace your core and limit the bending motion of the spine to run fast and efficiently. And if you look just on the.
And this is where it's like the king isn't wearing clothes. And this is why I bring up Stuart McGill. And it's a contest of ideas. Okay? I mean no disrespect, and I'm not a personal attack, but there are personal feelings associated with your positions. Okay? So when somebody tells you that you're wrong, there's a natural reaction to that. Right. And so many people in the fitness industry sort of, you know, take stabs at other people and it's more malicious than it is. Just wait. Let's put the ideas in the arena and we don't have to fight. Right? Our ideas are in the arena. And what I've done is I've figured it out. Nobody knows locomotion like me. And I'm not being conceited, but nobody knows it like me. And the invention that I showed you earlier, that we can talk about now, that changes the game for everybody.
Yeah. And we talk about the club in the video that I'm linking to in the show notes and the Bosu ball and the royal coil. And so you guys go watch the video for this, but explain to me this latest thing.
Okay, so basically, let me just talk about coiling the core real quick versus bracing the core.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's just. We'll clarify that. So coiling the core, basically your most important core muscle, your lats. Okay? The lats have the most origin points, the most real estate. They span the, you know, the hips to the shoulders. They are capable of contracting upon their own origins while lengthening the insertion. So other muscles can raise and lengthen the top of the lap whilst the bottom of the lat is contracting. Name me another muscle that can do that. And Grackovetsky has this wonderful video where he has a man with no legs who is walking by side bending and counter rotating.
Fish, you're talking about.
It's like the amphibian who became a million who stood up. Yeah, because it's the spinal engine. Now, Grakovetsky himself both didn't understand it fully because he put too much emphasis on the multifidi and the small central proximal muscles. Those are Non volitional muscles. Okay. Right now, ready? I want you to flex T7 Multifidus, right? You can't do it, right. It's reflexive. And so basically, the multifidi. That's like they're. They're playing the orchestra, they're playing the piano, and it's like Rachmaninoff. And it's right here, right now. I got a micro adjustment to maintain the balance, the rhythm, the harmony between these spinal facets and the different vertebrae. That's what they do. They're the fine tuners that make sure that the global movement is okay at that micro level. That's what they do. And it's reflexive, and they're playing the piano. Gorgeous. And then you come along and you do an exercise like the Paloff Press, this anti rotation exercise where you're bracing against a twist, not even a rotate. And it's like going chong on the piano. Because you don't want to light up every multifidi muscle and, you know, make it just brace and squeeze as hard as it possibly can. There's no coordination in that. And this is what's being prescribed. And Stuart McGill is one of the most influential people in the entire world when it comes to these practices, because he's the guy that the best and the brightest listen to. He's the guy that the best and the brightest sight. He's the guy that the best and the brightest base their programming choices on. And he's telling you that the cord does not generate power, rotational power. He's telling you that you have to brace it. He's telling them that a fundamental law of human movement is that proximal stiffness is how you move the distal extremities fastest, most powerfully. That's incorrect. And the irony is that it violates common sense, because these people are too smart, that they missed the forest through the trees. And so if you ponied up, you know, at the bar with a high school buddy of yours, you know, you're having a beer and he's a contractor, and you say, hey, you brace your spine in neutral. When you hit a baseball, he's gonna look at you and say, what are you talking about? Right? Think of hitting a baseball. You bend your spine.
Yeah.
Right. So. And locomotion bracelet.
You bend it.
There's. And here's the other thing. It's not like bracing as opposed to wet noodle limp.
Yeah. For me, I'm a tennis player, right? So for me, think about it. When I'm serving, I don't brace when you're freaking bend, there is no time.
On the can, there is no time on the tennis court when you are stiffening your core on purpose to mimic a deadlift. Yeah, okay. Never. All right, so anyway, now to get into sort of this new device. Okay, so the coiling core is contingent upon lat function. You want to train it with an ipsilateral focus. And it's basically you just train the lat to optimize itself, which optimizes the spinal engine. Every other muscle in the core, in the body is gonna come along and play nice and do their job if the lats are optimized.
So in layman's terms, you're teaching the body with this device how to engage the lats while you're moving.
Here's the thing. The coiling core exercises teach you to use the lats to harness the spinal engine, which is the setup. That's the proxim, the center of the body, the core. To now use this new invention that I have that is the distal. It's in the hands. Okay.
Right.
So basically what I've discovered is you don't want to swing your arms to run. Okay. And this goes back to when our ancestors had to carry the sticks and stones. If you're forced to carry a big, long stick, it's very hard to pulse your arms. It's just carrying counterbalance with the arms. Right. But if I remove the need to carry a stick and my hands are empty, I don't want to swing them them because I'm not optimizing the, the function of the connective tissue, the fascia. If I swing them as the arm comes forward and up, the braking force is now muscular, not fascial or connective tissue. Because I can keep raising the arm up, up, up, up, up, up. And my elbow and my, my humerus get, you know, even with my ear before the connective tissue stops it. And that's not fast, it's not energy efficient. So if I'm a sprint, I have to to pulse the arm down with a very specific arrangement of the arm, the elbow, the wrist, the hands to create a fascial stop, a terminal range of motion, down, that creates a pulsing force up. So the up is now free and you're using the momentum and the body weight down to hit the ground harder, to get off it faster for spring sprinting. And if you're going to teach somebody how to run faster, regardless of distance, you have to teach them how to sprint their fast.
Yeah, it's really interesting. It looks like you're moving your arms in a spiraling motion while you're running. Almost.
They. There's. Yeah, there's no straight lines in the body. Right. And you definitely want them coming toward the midline. So this idea that you got to keep your arms, you know, perfectly sagittal.
Yeah, that's, That's. That's just wrong, too, the way most people are trained to run.
Well, that's. I mean, you know, and the luminaries. Right. Kelly Starrett, who is extremely intelligent, his contribution to the mobility and the release. He's an expert in the world. Right. But when it comes to his book, Ready to Run, I mean, it's just. He doesn't understand it. He just doesn't understand it. So he's telling you to do things that are incorrect.
And again, it's just a contest of ideas. And I invite people to scrutinize.
Oh, yeah, they will. I mean, like, if you want to scrutinize, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Leave your ideas especially. Absolutely. Especially you, Stu, and Kelly, if you're listening in, because I know you guys listen a little bit as well. So these things that you hold in your hands, what are they called?
Okay. Right now they're called pulsers. Okay. So you all that are listening to this interview.
You'Re hearing about these device when, by the time you're hearing it, they're out there and they're starting to be marketed and people are going to know about it. But right now, as we're taping this podcast, they're still private, they're still secret, okay? So they're called pulsers. And the technique for sprinting is called the double down pulse. And for distance running, you use either a passive double down pulse or a wing pulse. Okay? And this new invention is a hand weight with a shifting load inside the chamber, this steel shot that allows you to harness the momentum of the weight without the inertial force putting on the brakes, because it shifts. So when you pulse down. And it's very specific. And you picked it up pretty darn quick.
I picked it up. And. And, dude, that was running more efficiently within, like, three minutes.
Bingo. That's what makes this so special.
Down the driveway.
That's what makes this so special, is that this invention takes something that's extremely difficult to do, and it makes it relatively easy to do. You'll get it if you try. Let's put it that way. Right. And here's the kicker. You can actually run faster holding these hand weights than you can not holding Them. So training with them will pattern the muscle memory and give you the ability to run faster than you could before. Faster than you could before without holding them for all the activities where you can't hold them. But if you want to run your fastest, holding these weights is faster. And that is the most counterintuitive concept that there is, that you could add mass to the distal extremity. Right. And be faster.
Right. They're not. They're not super heavy. But at the same time, you're like, yeah, I'm holding these weights and I'm running faster. It's actually quite weird because you're just changing. Changing your entire biomechanics.
Correct, correct. Now, there are natural athletes who do these things like the double down pulse. And I'm the guy who has literally thousands of hours in studying video, Okay. I have files and files and files of. Okay, here's running, here's jumping. Here's punching his. Da, da, da, da. Right. I want to understand it. And the only way that you can understand it is frame by frame, frame. My college football coach used to say, the eye in the sky does not lie. Okay. It can be misinterpreted, which it is when you don't understand it, but it doesn't lie. And when you understand it, then you. Oh, yeah, now it makes sense, right?
Yeah.
What was not obvious all of a sudden is obvious. Okay. And there's tremendous resistance to change. The best example of a paradigm shift in sports is Dick Fosberry doing the high jump.
Right. So switching to the Fosbury flop.
Yeah. So Fosbury flop. So it was. It was the western roll. You went over the bar with your front facing it, or you scissor kicked over it. And what the problem with that is your center of mass has to go over the bar. What Fosbury discovered was that if you go over bending your back and your back faces the bar, your center of mass doesn't have to go over the bar. So the center of mass is now lower than the bar, but you're getting over the bar.
Yeah.
And so it's an advantage that you have to exploit. It is impossible to jump your highest without that technique. Now, Dick Fosbury demonstrated it in 1968 in the Olympics. He won the gold medal. In 1972, the Western Roll won the gold medal because you didn't have social media and the powers that be didn't like the Fosbury flop. And so Dick Fosbury could have a conversation with Ben Greenfield back then, but it stayed in that room and you go to the authorities, the head of the, you know, whatever the track, and blah, blah, blah. Well, no, we disagree. We don't like it. So the message we send out is, no, that's nonsense. It's bad. It's dangerous. It's a fluke. Four years after a man demonstrated that it's superior, four years later, they're doing the old technique. Guy's a superior athlete, and not enough guys got in the game to do the superior technique. So you want to talk about, you know, when the king's not wearing clothes and he's walking down the street, there's a vested interest in, hey, if I've been saying that those robes are gorgeous and oohing and ahhing at the king's clothes, when the little kid says, hey, he's naked, well, maybe that's difficult for me to reconcile because now I feel foolish, now I feel wrong, Now I don't feel vindicated. If I'm in the fitness industry, what am I trading on? I'm trading on my expertise. Why do you have expertise, Ben Greenfield? Because you live what you teach. You can discuss the subtlest little nuances of everything that you teach because you do it. That's like Steve Cotter teaching the kettlebell bell. He can give you the subtlest little cue because he does it.
Yeah.
And expertise. Feeling is knowing. Now you bring me back to pot. Right? Feeling is knowing. I could tell you if a fly landed on my body and it would set me into motion when I first started doing the pot, and that's why I love this, I would go to Esalen Institute. I'd be standing down at those pools. I'd be naked in the sun, and I'd be like drew.
You know, being.
One with gravity, it's a good visual, man. Send me that photo. I'll make it the featured image for the podcast.
Oh, and, well, back in those days, I was ripped. I looked like you back in those days.
That's funny. Hey, so we're coming up on time. Coming up on time. And you've highlighted these pulsers that you've invented.
Yes.
Now, when I put together the show notes for everybody, by the time this podcast comes out, are those going to be available on your website for people to get.
Yeah, let me tell it real quick. So I'm doing it the same way I did the Bosu ball. Remember I said earlier that the trains have to leave the station? All right. The reason why they're going to be public by the time this publishes, because IP will be in place. Okay. That's how it works. The IP is in place, patent pending. Now I can start to share it. Okay.
Right.
So the manufacturer, that train has left the station, but the next station isn't for a while because you got to prototype it. You got to, you know, draw the CAD files. The 3D printing, it takes time, but the marketing that stop is, you know, the next second away, social media. So what I'm doing is. I'm doing the same exact way I did the Bosu ball. I'm building handmade prototypes. In the beginning, they function fantastic. You felt it?
Yeah. The one up on my garage is ugly as hell, but it works.
Exactly, exactly. And so basically what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna market it completely organically. You know, I'm not a big old. Throw a bunch of money at it, put on the. I suck at marketing. What I can sell is I can sell the truth. That's all I can sell. You make me a marketer and sit me around the table, and I gotta come up with an idea to sell something I don't give a crap about. Well, guess what? You don't want me in the boardroom, okay? My ideas aren't good that way. So I'm marketing this thing as, look, you want to do it now? You want to do it better now, buy this thing, and it's from my hands to yours. I will not be doing the whole process because we're going to have to make a ton of these. But my hands will have touched every. Every single unit that goes out. And I'm going to make a certificate of authenticity because these things are going to be collector's items.
Okay, cool.
That's what I'm going to do. Because we live in a world with so much BS that, like. And I can't take it. I can only remain sane if I just. The king's not wearing clothes. Donald Trump is a freaking idiot. I hate Hillary, too. So don't tell me that I'm this or that that. Can't someone tell the truth?
I can tell it. I can tell you. No BS guy. So I. Although, I'm going to talk to you during dinner. We're going to head up to dinner here. Pretty soon. We'll hit the hot tub.
Yes.
We'll go have dinner, and I'm going to see if I can convince you to. To hook my listeners up with some kind of an insider deal on these things.
Ben 10. Ben 10, your discount code. No, no, no. We came up with the rhyme. Hey, listen, listen, I'm. I Last night, I text Mary at whatever time we were emailing. I said, mary, can you set up a code? And, you know, da, da, da. She. She texted me when I land. The code's BEN10.
That's funny, because that's what. That's what I've used in the past. That'll get. That'll get people. If I send people over your website, they'll give them a 10% discount on this stuff.
A 10% discount on basically anything that.
We sell at your we Method website.
Yes.
That's okay.
Cool.
So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com because I understand a lot of this stuff is pretty visual. I've got videos of David demonstrating some moves in my driveway. I've got a link to his website with plenty more videos. I've got the podcast I did with the guy who introduced David and I, Chris Holder. I'll put a link to my podcast with Paul. Check the Awareness Through Movement book, all the things that David and I talked about in today's show. And David, you are one crazy unique guy. And I can tell you want to say something, so go ahead.
Yeah, I want to say two things now.
All right, go ahead.
So the first one is.
That's all yours. Wrap things up for us.
Okay? So there'll be video links on there for these pulsers, double down pulse, the passive pulse, and the wing pulse. Okay? So that'll be on there, too, by the time this thing goes. And let's just talk about crazy, okay? The Apple computer did an amazing advertisement years ago. Thank God for the crazy ones, right? Thank God. And everybody's got a little bit of crazy in them, and most people are terrified to acknowledge it and reveal it. But you know what? Again, we got to strip away all the nonsense, and we got it. The only way that this world goes forward and we make it and we enjoy all of the amazing things that are happening is if we can cut the bs, okay, guys, like Donald Trump is the president can't continue to do that. Okay. Hillary Clinton can't continue to do that. We got to figure out new ways to do it. That's my political economy sort of, you know, coming back into it. What I care about is legacy. I care about what contribution I've made to this world. I care about my kids. That's my legacy. And I care about my grandkids. I care about those. And we're in for, you know, it's either going to be massively wonderful or going to suck big time. And I want to be a force for making it wonderful.
I dig it, bro.
Thank you.
Perfect place to end.
Thank you.
Even though Donald Trump might be a listener.
Good, Good. Trump. Trump, You're a punk. You're a punk.
All right, dude. Let's go hit the hot tub. Have an amazing meal. Thanks for coming on the show, folks. Check out BenGreenfieldFitness.comWeck for all the show notes and more videos. The website for David Weck. Everything you need is right there. David, thanks for coming on, man.
Thank you, Ben.
All right, folks, have a healthy week.
You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.
Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.
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