Create Your Future: Building a Stronger YOU with Charles Poliquin - Genius Network Episode #15

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Welcome to the Genius Network show. In this episode, you'll discover how to create your future, how to transform your health, and how to build a stronger you with the world's most successful strength coach, Charles Poliquin. Charles is the founder of Strengthsensei.com and is regarded as the world's best strength coach. He's trained more than 800 Olympians and is the expert on muscle strength and sports performance and can help you make the most of health, fitness and nutrition. Recorded live from a Genius Network gathering. If you would like access to the full feature interview, the video presentation, special resources, and the show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 15 that's geniusnetwork.com 1 5.

Okay, if you don't know who Charles Poliquin is, let me give you a quick background. Charles Poliquin is recognized as one of the world's most successful strength coaches, having coached Olympic medalists in 22 different sports ranging from bobsled to long jump. His two latest successes at the Rio Olympics were Helen Morosis, the first US Woman to win a gold medal in wrestling, and Will Clay, silver medalist in triple jump. He is known for making athletes faster on any surface, whether it is ice, water, grass and track. He's also trained world record holders in 10 different sports, from powerlifting to speed skating. His name is also well established in pro sports, having coached athletes in every major professional league, NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, UK premiership league, etc. He's lectured or consulted for a variety of high profile organizations such as the US Secret Service, Walt Disney Corporation, Australian Sports Institute, to name a few. He's the author of 14 books on strength training and his work has been translated in 36 languages. His first appearance on the Tim Ferriss podcast is still one of the top 15 most listened to episodes and I think it's maybe number two on the most downloaded or something. Number 10. Okay. And he's constantly requested by listeners for a round two. So give it up for a very smart dude, my friend, Charles Polkman.

What's up? All right.

So how do you, how do you describe yourself? If I didn't have like a bio, like people come up and without being a smartass because you can be kind of like, you know, sometimes I would.

Say most simple lies. Most successful strength coach in history.

Yeah, so what is. Okay, so strength coach, what do people come to you predominantly for? I know a lot of things from everything from bodybuilders to winning. You know, I mean, but what, what do average people come to you for?

Well, I Don't really work with the average. But the average athlete that comes to see me basically is interested in winning. So probably my biggest success in my career is Ellen Maroulis, who became the first American to win an Olympic goal in wrestling.

Okay.

But when she came to see me, to be politically correct, she was a bit fluffy and she could do zero chin ups. Zero. Okay. So for somebody who had been on the national team for eight years, that wasn't so good. So nine months later, she could do two chin ups with a 55 pound dumbbell, and she only weighed about 125. And then she won the world championships. And then by the time she went to Rio the Tuesday before she left, she did two chin ups with 66 pounds on the rings, which is much harder to do. So when she defeated Yoshida, who had only lost twice in 20 years, she was a big ticket in Japan.

Oh, speak up is what they're saying.

Okay, so what happened is that she defeated a girl that only lost twice in 20 years. But I was trying to watch it online, and then I kept getting texts and WhatsApp from my students going, hey, congratulations. And in every media around the world, whether it was Sweden or the Emirates, they said Ellen Maroulis won because of strength. So it was probably the best marketing I could ever do for myself. Even Yoshida, she went on national TV in Japan. She said, my opponent was much stronger than me at the concede defeat. And now Ellen texted me yesterday, and she's a celebrity in Japan because she's the first person to defeat. And then when she fought Yoshida last time, Yoshida turned her into hamburger meat. So the second time she fought her, she says when she grabbed her wrist and pulled her, she goes, whoa, she's much weaker. I said, no, it's not. She's weaker. You're much stronger now. And that's what made a difference. But she goes, it was a shock to her when she made first contact in Rio. Interesting.

Very cool. Well, okay, so what does it require mentally and physically to perform at that level? Because I think it's a combination of both.

Yes. I mean, but the thing is that Ellen Maroulis is probably the poster woman for dedication. I mean, she went 18 months without having dessert. She didn't have Christmas dinner. You know, and we have a saying in sport. What does third place taste like? Cake. Right. So the thing is that she was very, very committed. But she, for example, learned Japanese so she could understand what the coach was telling her on the mat to her opponent so she could figure out the next move. Wow. So, you know, Helen, of all the athletes I've coached in my life, is probably the most detail orientated athlete that did every single thing. She watched YouTube videos of her fighting. She could understand her moves. And now what we see is that not everybody's copying Ellen, so they're trying to see what she's going to do next. And we have a plan for Tokyo for that.

Okay, awesome, awesome. So for people that are here in the room, which are like a bunch of driven, successful entrepreneurs, male and female, I want to talk about some different advice and recommendations for people here to get in as optimal condition as they can on all levels and things that anything you want to talk about to improve not only their physical bodies, but their sleep or anything that you think is important. I first met. Okay if I tell the story how we met? Yeah. So we both have a friend named Janet Atwood who actually invited both of us. Unbeknownst to both of us, we had heard about each other because I had been Bill Phillips marketing consultant since 1996 and Charles was writing for Muscle Media magazine. He's written for pretty much everyone. And basically I'd heard of him and he had a big reputation in the world of fitness and bodybuilding and powerlifting and you name it. But I never met him in person. And so we go to Fairfield, Iowa and we both go through meditation training for TM training. And that's how we met. And so we spent four days together with five other people who were all my friends going through meditation training. And it was kind of funny because we were in a hotel where there was like nothing to eat except a bunch of carbs. Right. And you were like ready to kill somebody while going through meditation training.

Yes.

And we shot some funny ass videos at the grocery store and stuff. But so that's where me and Charles met. So you've explored a lot of different areas of the mind and the life. So what are some just fundamentals that people need to do in order to get in great shape?

One of the biggest myths is that it takes a lot of work to get a good physique. And I mean, Tim Ferriss wrote a book called the Four Hour Body. But I think that four hours a week is plenty. Even my top level athletes, as far as strength training is concerned, it's about four hours a week. But there's no messing around when I train. And I think what people should realize, the room is full of entrepreneurs. But the difference between you and an Olympic gold medalist is not that big because you're very driven. But the problem is that the way I explain to people is that you're like an oil lamp and the flame is the yang energy. So the bigger you can burn the flame, it's great. So people spend a lot of their energy, but the problem is they don't take care of the oil. That's what we call the yen reserve. So executives should be really focused on on building the highest possible yin reserve to be as yang as they want to be. Because how many of you work 16 hour days? It's quite common. And then you cut back a lot of things. And I think that the modern trend is to say you have things like the one thing or Tim's philosophies, but you should try to shorten your workday and take care more of your yin reserve. And sleep is the limiting factor. 72.8% of Americans complain of sleep disorders.

Wow, 72%.

Okay. So where do we have most accidents in the US Is when we put the clocks forward and we lose an hour of sleep. So they put more cops on the road because there's going to be more accidents. Just one hour of sleep makes a huge difference in accident statistics. So I think that we have to take care of or verse sleep patterns. And there's also what I like to say to people is that the two biggest stressors are related to their mouth. In other words, it's the things we say, it's what we put in our bodies. And the thing that happens is that you never had somebody say, oh man, I was so stressed last night, all I could eat was Brussels sprouts, right? So people will say, okay, I was so stressed last night I went through three, three boxes of Pringles, two kilos of chocolate chip cookies, blah blah blah. So we tend to self medicate with carbohydrates.

You've been listening to the special presentation with Charles Poliquin. We will return shortly. If you would like access to the full feature interview, the video presentation, special resources and the show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 15 that's geniusnetwork.com 1 5. Let's get back to the presentation.

Why?

Because we found out a long time ago that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, is lowered by insulin. Right? But the problem with insulin, it's your friend sometimes. But for most of us, it's the enemy because insulin is the hormone of aging. So the more insulin you make, the faster you age. And controlling the fat loss process is managing insulin, the more you can control your Insulin, the better you will do. Great.

So when we were outside at lunch, I was doing a Facebook live video, and I said, what's the best piece of health advice you could give to people? That would be a total game changer. And you said, if grains were eliminated from the planet. But the caveat being that half the world's population survives because of grains and people. If there weren't grains, people would die. If you have the availability of food, like most people in this room, how would you eat?

Okay. I've worked a lot with the hockey players, football players, and I got to make it very simple for them. So I say, ask them a question. I said, ask yourself that. The food you're going to put in your mouth was accessible to caveman. And I run a test. So I go, like steak? Oh, yes, A caveman could have that. And then donuts. And they go, ooh, is there a donut tree? No. Pop. Is there a pop river? So if a caveman had access to food, he can eat it. So that's a very simple rule to simplify our eating habits.

Did cavemen have. What about grains? They did have access to some grains.

Very little. Yeah. Grains are more linked. The grains start to get popularized in ancient Egypt. And then what we saw, though, if you look at skeletal remains, is that that's when we start to have degenerative diseases. We used to be much taller, much more muscular when we were living more off a paleolithic diet.

Yeah. So when you travel, as most people here, they travel a lot. How do you eat when you're on the road?

Well, the thing that you have to realize is that I actually do a lot of my teaching schedule based on the countries where I can find the proper food. That's why I don't go to England. Right. It's like a third world country when you look at food.

And all those of you in England on Facebook Live. Hi there. How are you doing?

In all seriousness, to be productive, you have to eat properly. But one of the things, for example, with jet lag, I just did a post today in some of my pages is that the food you eat when you land in the country will make a big difference. Your brain's going to be so. So, for example, as they land and say, we're now going to prepare for landing, well, you should drink about 1.5 liter of water. Why? Because have you ever noticed it's really hard to fall asleep if you got to pee? Right. So basically, when you drink a lot, you activate the kidney meridian, which is the Energy meridian. So you drink a lot of water, then this thing you should pull out of your briefcase or your purse is caviar. Caviar is probably one of the best brain building foods and you have to reset your neurotransmitters. And the yang neurotransmitters are dopamine and that's still choline. So you could have caviar or you could have, if you don't like fish, you could have roast beef, but there has to be a meat or a fish that contains a lot of tyrosine because to make dopamine you need tyrosine. So that would be a thing. And the second thing I would eat is macadamia nuts. Because macadamia nuts contain a lot of levels of choline and choline will fire up your brain. And you know, and also when you look at sometimes I teach, I land, let's say in Estonia at seven in the morning, at nine o' clock, I'm teaching and people go like, when did you get in? Last week? No. And they say, how come you could have so much energy teaching? Well, a lot of it with jet lag is actually your mindset. If you keep saying, for me it's three in the morning in Boston, hey, fuck, shut up. Like you're in Estonia, you're in Estonia, Live like an Estonian, shut the fuck up. So, you know, that's my philosophy.

It's beautiful. It's very, very sweet. So what is your fitness routine? How do you exercise? How do you work out when you're at home and when you're on the road?

Basically, I wake up early, I do meditation for single. Then I take my book and I write what I want to be most proud of before I go to bed. So that sets up my mind and I write what I'm grateful for. But it's not repetitive. So he talked yesterday about lowering the bar. So sometimes I say, hey, it's a really great bed at this hotel or whatever. So I simplify it and then I say, what am I going to do then write this down. This is the most important sentence of this interview. The first thing you put in your mouth in the morning, provided it, it's food. Okay? So the first thing you put in your mouth in the morning, provided it's food, will dictate the neurotransmitter cascade for the whole day. So that's why I'm a big advocate of the meats and the breakfast, because it provides you with the raw material to make the proper neurotransmitters. For the whole day. And there's lots of research from Even the early 50s on the the content of your protein and the ratio between proteins and fats and the quality of the protein you ingest in the morning dictates the energy even in the later afternoon. So with children, what they found at Harvard is that if they eat, let's say oatmeal or even worse, microwavable oatmeal. Yeah.

Or cereal or something.

Yeah. What they find is that when you give them lunch and they have to self select the food they will eat, they make worse choices if they had a carb only breakfast. Also, for example, if you give kids pancakes with that fake syrup, French, can we call that telephone pole syrup? Because telephone poles don't have SAP. So if you have, let's say telephone pole syrup and then pancakes, kids score 20% less on IQ tests because temporarily their brain's in a fog. Okay? So it's very important to set up your day with the right food. Then typically an hour after I've eaten breakfast, I train and shower up, take a post workout shake and go to work. Whether I'm at home or I'm on the road teaching, that routine doesn't change. And I think it's really important to have very steady habits in your life. And then this way you never have an excuse for missing out in the gym. You know, you don't miss your dentist appointment or you don't miss your appointment with your tax lawyer. Well, you shouldn't miss your appointments with your fitness because you got to take care of your body.

So as you age, out of all the different things, say, you know, because I do a lot of yoga and I lift weights, which is why I'm, you know, bigger than you. But basically. So strength training, stretching, cardio, good, bad, how to go about doing it.

The problem with cardio is most people do long slow distance, right? But if you look at research, the athletes, Olympic athletes who've done the most long slow distance cardio have the most brain damage in later age. A lot of cardiovascular training is actually brain damaging. And you can find it up in the research. So I prefer that people do interval type of training. But the most important thing is that you show up. Okay? So if your thing is yoga or if it's Tai chi, or if it's taekwondo or you want to play hockey four days a week, that's great. But you got to be active, you got to sweat, right? For busy executives, I've got certain types of workouts which I call German body comp. Training that people can do a lot of work. Basically it's a fat loss through weight training. And strongman training is very good. CrossFit, if it's done in a proper box, is very good. Some people need external sources of motivation. You need to be in front of a group and you got to be. Here's a very simple rule about exercise. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. So if you don't enjoy it and you're just doing because you need the discipline, that's bullshit, okay? And I don't believe in discipline. That's a myth. I wrote an article, the most popular and most plagiarized article I've ever written. It's called the Myth of Discipline. And the basic message of this article is that you make the choice and you gotta decide what you love more. You love your brain more than donuts, then you'll exercise. Okay? Do you enjoy healthy joints more than Kwasa and Nutella? Right? So I don't know anybody that's ever been mugged by a dozen donuts. It doesn't happen, okay? I mean, have you ever eaten anything by accident? It doesn't happen. So this is the type of conversation you need to have with yourself. And then when I tell people, just make a conscious choice. Is this the best thing for me now? But don't tell me you don't have discipline. What you're telling me is you love donuts more than having a great physique or a healthy physique. Does that make sense?

So when people body fat and stuff. Some things I've worked because I've been through several of your workshops, like multi day trainings and stuff. Is people's ability to cause so many people, it's a vanity thing. They just want to lose weight, they want to look good. And it's almost like secondary or circulatory system or how your heart's going to be or how your brain's going to function. I mean, it's like we live in a culture that is so much about how they look. And what I've learned so much from you is hormone levels. And so that people can really have maybe good workout rituals and stuff, but their hormones are all jacked up. So if people are really putting forth a lot of effort and they still feel lethargic or they cannot lose weight, or they don't feel stronger, they're mentally foggy, what should they do to discover how to fix it and what is causing that? I mean, other than obvious things like the environment, if you're working your ass off and you're giving your no time to rejuvenate. I think what you've talked about a lot is stress. Human stress can cause so much of. So what should someone do if they're either in a state of like, I want to work out. This sounds good. I've always wanted to, but I can't stick with it. I can't stop carb cravings, I can't stop sugar or, or I'm like tired. I have no motivation. I mean, just being in a place where they're stuck. How do you get unstuck?

Okay, the first thing is I always tell people to do this. The best day to change a habit in North America is Saturday, so you don't have to rush to go to work. So you say, okay, I'm going to commit. But I think people over commit. So I say, just go to the gym. 10 minutes. Okay. So it's better to undersell, right? And then after that they could work it out. But the thing where people should, where they would have the most impact is actually sleep. Do you really need to send that extra email? Do you really need to watch the news? Do you really need to watch that TV show? Okay, you could tape it. You could buy a Netflix subscription. There's a lot of research out of Germany that shows that the earlier you can go to bed actually, the better it's going to be for your hormones. And one of the problems we have with our lifestyle is actually lights. So the more we can offset lights. And there's a lot of technology out there for controlling the effect of light on your brain, but also gradually diminishing the amount of lighting in your house as you prepare to go to bed makes a huge difference. There's stuff you could put on your computer screen so that there's less stress on the brain and your eyes. So managing the electronics in your life will do a lot for your sleep. And simple things like don't watch CNN before you go to bed. I mean, have you ever seen great news on CNN? It's usually 99% tragedy. And the thing that the.

Yeah. TVs in bedrooms, I think are incredibly unproductive sort of devices, especially for entrepreneurs. You know, if you have nothing going on in Your life and TVs your biggest highlight, then maybe. But, you know.

Yes. And then, you know, simple reading and book reading and journaling will do a lot for your sleep. Because one of the things with sleep is that people can't shut off their brain. One of the most common disorders I see in executives is the inability to shut off the brain. So journaling is one of the best ways to get out of your system. And I like people to journal before they go to bed. But having a grateful log, in my opinion, is probably the biggest step for sound sleep. And you have to have what we call a sleep routine. So you have to have a countdown of what you're going to do and the activities you choose before going to bed. And if you go to my website, strengthsassay.com, i've got lots of sleep strategies. But for example, there's a botanical called reishi mushroom. And one of the names in Chinese means the mushroom for the professor lived too much inside his head. So reishi mushroom is actually an anxiety lower, it's an anti exiolytic. And then if you consume reishi mushroom extract before you go to bed, you actually have better sleep. There's a lot of different amino acids that can make a huge difference on the quality of your sleep. Like theanine that comes originally from green tea. How much magnesium you take before going to be makes a difference. A lot of people have inflammation because of stress. So for example, taking a probiotic with glutamine an hour before they go to bed lowers inflammation. They sleep better. I mean, the amount of sleep strategies that are possible for anybody are limitless.

Okay, so I have a person who is in this room that I've been trying to. I'm not going to say who it is that I've been trying to encourage them to quit drinking sodas because sodas are pretty much like liquid Satan. And I don't consume hardly any, any sugar unless they sneak it in the foods. And I don't eat dairy and I try not to eat processed foods. I like eating foods that have a single name, like broccoli, not Doritos, because that's not the same thing. So let's take soda. A lot of people just consume a ton and there's a ton of sugar, waters, juices and stuff. Good or bad?

I mean, horrendous.

Horrendous.

Okay, so horrendous is the best word. The thing is that Americans consume 50% of their calories through liquids. So I think that one thing we should do is tax the hell out of.

Tax the hell out of liquids.

Sugar liquids. Yeah. So if it costs $97 to buy a bottle of Coke, the consumption will go down pretty quick.

Well, and that's where many of the healthcare costs are going to people that are consuming.

Exactly, exactly. And then so basically water Teas. I'm really big on coffee. But it's the timing of your coffee that makes a big difference. Right.

When you said first thing you eat in the morning, I was going to ask you, what about coffee?

From what the research shows, with MRIs, you can see which areas of the brain lit up when you consume certain foods. I recommend that you eat solid food before you take your first sip of coffee.

Okay. Yeah. Because I know many people that the first thing they do is they drink coffee in the morning. Then they get to the other stuff if they get to it, and if they're too busy, the coffee becomes the way that tides them over. And these are the same people that are usually stressed out of their fucking minds.

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. So going back to soda, what does it actually do to the body?

Well, one of the things it does is changes the alkaline balance in your body. One thing that, for example, a very good orthopedic surgeon from the Valley showed is that the more the kids drank soda, the weaker the bones are. Okay. Because it contains a lot of phosphates, and if you consume too many phosphates, you actually leak calcium of your tissues. So when I was a kid, I never heard of a guy playing football who broke his patella. Right. But Nowadays, since the 2000s, kids who break their patella playing American football is epidemic. And the main factor associated with broken bones in teenagers is actually soda consumption. So besides. And then the thing is, there's all sorts of artificial sweeteners and additives that we're not even sure if they're healthy. I mean, I would like to see the science behind it, but there's not such a thing as a. Well, one of the things we know is that one of the most common additives in soda is sodium benzoate, and it is the chemical most associated with prostate cancer. So if you consume a lot of sodas, you're more likely to get prostate cancer. So that's enough of a reason not to drink them for males. So they're quite evil, to be fair. Right? Yeah.

That's good. Now, by the way, so Tim Ferriss has written about you in his latest book, which is Tools of Titans, and he basically considers you like the guy. So there's a bunch of pages of stuff which is kind of funny. And he has a quote from you. What you put in your mouth is a stressor. And what you say, what comes out of your mouth is also a stressor. And so, yeah, so it's a very good book.

600 pages. And you got. Basically, it's the top 30 of his most downloaded podcast.

Yeah, so listen to the episodes with Charles.

They've downloaded already over a million copies of that podcast. It's the 10th most downloaded podcast of the Tim Ferriss series. And I still get emails every day about that first podcast. I just did another one and I think they already downloaded 700,000 copies. So it's a very good medium to deliver the information.

Totally. Well. If you were to get in a physical fight with Tim, you think you could take him?

Yeah.

I'm going to say someone could tag Tim Ferriss so he could watch however far is that still going? Okay, good, Good. Awesome. Awesome.

Thanks for listening to this episode with Charles Poliquin on Genius Network. If you would like access to the full feature interview, the video presentation, special resources, and the show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 15 that's geniusnetwork.com 15 don't miss out on more insights, strategies and wisdom like this on Genius Network. Subscribe to Genius Network today by visiting geniusnetwork.com subscribe that's geniusnetwork.com forward slash subscribe.