Ep #015 | Learn How To Transform Your Relationship with Exercise and Fasting - Ronan Diego

You get the perfect body, but you end up with a worse off life.

Yeah, because this is when people use fitness to serve the ego, not serve the body.

Ronan is the director of health programming at mindvalley and one of the most brilliant minds in health and wellness. He's the creator of mindvalley's intermittent fasting program, beyond Fasting, Mindvalley's home workout program, and one of the co creators along with Lorenzo Delano who of Mindvalley's High Intensity Interval Training program 10X. He has a proven track record of success in the world of fitness and health and is a huge draw on stage here at mindvalley because of his unique, fun, enlightening teaching style. Ronan, welcome to the mindvalley podcast.

Thank you, Vishen for having me here.

And you're no stranger to this platform. Ronan is one of the most watched teachers on Mindvalley. As you already heard in Q1 of this year, you were the most popular teacher on mindvalley in terms of total video views. How does that make you feel?

I think that what it sounds to me is that people are resonating with the message. It's not about something that I want to be or want to become, but it is. People are resonating with the message on health and fitness in a way of conscious connecting with their body through health, health and fitness that it has become. A lot of people are watching the courses that have been working on because they all are embedded with different philosophy.

You know what I think it is? I think it's also your Brazilian accent.

This is something that I always put to the.

And the sense of humor, of course.

Of course. We were in an event once now in Paris a few weeks ago and then any self love was introducing me and when she was introducing me, she did something very nice before I went on stage. I want a few people to raise their hands and what is something that they love about Ron? I said very sweet and there are two people said the lovely accent. I said yes, I knew one day would play to my advantage.

Yeah, so Brazilians, famous for your excellent buttocks, of course, and your accents.

I think that is also part of the assets. The assets. Literally speaking.

So speaking of, of well formed assets, let's. Let's talk about your journey to health. So what I appreciate about Ronan is how he teaches people that there is no ideal body for you. Okay. You conveyed a really important message when I last saw you on stage in Paris. I'd love for you to share that with our podcast audience today.

It starts with unraveling the story. You know, the way that I got into fitness was not a way of inspiration. It was the way of desperation. I was a kid that was bullying in school because I was too short, too skinny, and physically speaking, I was not gifted. And then because I would get jokes and pushed around and slaps, you start feeling unfair, right? If you look at your body and there's a feeling of rejection because other kids are treating you in a way that you don't like it because of the body that you were born. Other people experience in different ways. Some people because they were more round and chubby, some people because of the color of the skin or whatever. But some people are judged because of their bodies and they feel there's something I cannot change. So when I was a kid, there was this dream of being different. I felt like I was a weak boy. And that was this day. We were in the education class, we were doing a stretching assessment. That was the only thing that I was good at. And I could reach my toes. And the teacher was measuring my stretching. And when I reached my toes come this guy Jeff, right? He was the captain of the football team in Brazil. He was a big deal. He was the cool guy, but he couldn't reach his toes because he was stiff. He was sprinting all the time. And he made the joke like for everybody in the front of the room because I was there stretching and he says, ah, teacher, he can reach his toes because he's short. So his legs are short. But I was very logical, said Jeff. But that doesn't make sense. My arms are also short, right? They are proportional. And then he didn't like, he slapped me the back of the head.

So you pissed him off and he came and he whacked you at the back of your head?

Yeah, he said, you keep your head down, you're piece of feces. And I kept my head down. I was shaking. Imagine, probably nine year old child just got a slap from the big guy at school. And I was like, I was shaking. I kept my head down. The teacher didn't say anything. I was looking at his shadow on my left side and I was just waiting for his shadow to walk away so could stand and go to my corner and pretend that it didn't happen. That day I felt like I was less than. And I had the dream of becoming a strong man. It was everything I didn't feel. But then what is a strong man? I didn't have the reference. And the reference came from popular culture. I saw Conan the Barbarian on the TV Arnold Schwarzenegger. The guy was the size of three men put together, and he was slaying dragons with his lap. So that's probably what becoming a strong man needs to be. And that's what I wanted to be.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who can slay dragons with a slap.

With a slap.

That was your definition of a strong man. But again, you were nine years old.

Yeah. That's the best that I could make when I saw a reference of what a strong man was. And I remember there was a little gym close to my house, and I would pass in front of it. I would look at it as kids, look at ice cream, look at the guys training at the gym, because that's what I wanted to do. And my dad never allowed me to do that because he said, you have brains, and people who have brains don't go to the gym. People who go to the gym are. Those don't have brains. That's why they work on their biceps. And he only allowed me to go to the gym when I turned 18. And when I turned 18, I went all in. The day that I turned 18, 6am I was there in the gym, and I started hanging out with the big guys, and I wanted to know what they eat and how they train. There was a guy, Adriano, this guy in the gym. He's like. He's 55 years old. He was so big that he couldn't take his shirt off because his biceps didn't allow. He needed the help of somebody to take his shirt. I thought that was cool. And I started asking what he did, and I started training like he did, eating like he did. The only thing is that he. He took supplements for horses. That's the only thing that I didn't do. I go to the agro shop, buy supplements. Okay, that's the thing that I'm not gonna do. But all the rest I did, but it didn't work for me. You know, my body had. I had constipation. I had bronchitis when I was a kid. Low heart function. Because I also take. Took a lot of antibiotics for the bronchitis.

The. The.

My immune system was also low, so I couldn't train as hard. I couldn't eat all the chicken, sweet potato, and stuff like that. I needed to find my own ways, you know? After a year and a half of training, nothing had changed. I was still frustrated with my body. And then I started studying. I was a mechanical engineering student, so the mind was helpful at that moment. I started studying English because of that, because all the studies that are published on health and fitness, they are in English. And as a Brazilian kid, you don't have access to that. It's nothing in Portuguese. So I learned English and I realized the protocols are there. How people develop strength and muscle mass is there. I replicated those studies on my body and then the body started growing. When the body started growing, I said, watch me become Conan the Barbarian. So it was a two and a half year project. I had my body as a full time job. So I was training twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, before and after university. And I was measuring every single meal. I would cook everything on Sunday, 21 meals. And then I would freeze them. But I would cut, I would count the numbers of grains of rice because they need to be super precise. All my sleep, sleeping routine, all my biohacks, they were like, they were meticulous.

Wow.

Because it was that, that to me, I believed that growing big muscles was the answer to all my problems. Because I grew up as a kid very insecure with my body. I spent a lot of time trying to protect that little kid. To be laughed at, to be slapped again. I said, this is never going to happen to you anymore. And to me the answer was because becoming a big man, right? And so that was not only about having a body that was impressive. I thought that was the problem too. So the, the solution to all my problems. Eventually I got there and I did a photo shoot and the body looked impressive and big muscles, veins everywhere.

And let's, let's put up a couple of pictures from that photo shoot.

You will see that. I will see that. You see.

And that is impressive.

It is impressive. You look at it. Wow. On the day of the picture, I felt very proud because it was a lot of work towards it. But the month after that was the toughest month I've ever had in my life. Because one, I realized that all the problems that I thought it would be solved when I reached that impressive physique, they remained untouched. And if not, life got a little bit worse after that because I just developed a routine that is a full time job to take care of a body that was in a peak state that is for the way that my body is designed, unsustainable. Some other people will get there and may eventually stay there because their body is designed for that. My body is not designed to be Conan the Barbarian. So trying to keep that up and fooling myself into thinking that that was what becoming a strongman meant made a little cage for me. I needed to keep that routine very tight. Otherwise if I. After the peak state is worse.

Right.

Once you reach the peak, anything different than that is worse. So if I couldn't maintain that with a full time job level of commitment, it would be less than what I believed a strongman should look like. And so it creates that type of anxiety towards. If I eat 100 grams more of rice.

Right.

I'm putting to threat what I believe a strongman should be like. I had no social life anymore because.

I couldn't be away from essentially these really hyper restrictive boundaries. Around yourself.

Yeah. And so then what happens is it happens to many people in fitness that the body transforms to its best version, but life gets worse.

Let's add some attention to that phrase. You get the perfect body, but you end up with a worse off life.

Yeah. Because this is when people use fitness to serve the ego, not serve the body.

I like that. This is when you have. This is what happens when you use fitness to serve the ego and not to serve the body.

Yeah. Fitness is supposed to serve the body. Fitness is the capability of the body to go through stress and recover from it fast.

And the point of a great body is so you can truly experience life.

Exactly.

But what was happening to you is that you had created all of these restrictions because your body was about serving your ego.

Yeah.

About healing that inner wounded child.

And this is not something that we do intentionally. We do this from the best part of our hearts. We want to protect ourselves from an experience we had in the past that we say, I'm not going to allow you to experience that anymore. But then we find the solution from. From popular media. Right. If you go on Instagram and put fitness, what you see there is images of very specific types of body for men and women. And you tend to believe that this is what fitness is. But fitness for different people, for different types of body will look completely different. If your body is like a race car type you have its ultimate expression will have is one form. Your body is like a truck.

So for the benefit of the people listening in the podcast, explain the image that you're showing on screen right now.

So this is a book called Athlete made by a guy called Hor Schatz Photographer. What he did is that he gathered Olympian athletes. These are the bodies of people who have become the best in the world in what their bodies are designed.

What strikes me about this image is that all of these bodies look so different. Some are heavyset, some are skinny, some look muscular, some are short, some are tall, some are lanky.

And what is common about them is all of them are super fit.

They're all athletes, they're all Olympians, they're.

All the top in the world. But fitness, the ultimate expression of fitness, will look completely different depending on the beauty of your body.

And so what you're saying is that if we are chasing a Hugh Jackman body, Right. From X Men, or if we are chasing Jennifer Lopez, a Jennifer Lopez body that is an artificial representation of what a healthy body is.

Yeah. No, the only person who can get a Hugh Jackson body is Hugh Jackson himself, because he was born and built for that body. If he. If Hugh Jackman said, I want to get Chris Hemworth body, he would be in trouble.

Right, exactly. Right. And. And at the same time, those bodies are often not sustainable. There's an enormous amount of sacrifice.

Absolutely.

I. I have a friend who is one of the Hollywood A listers who is known for having one of the most perfect bodies. This was like 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. And he was the Hugh Jackman body of his time. Right. And he told me to get to that body. He literally lost his health after filming was done, after the iconic film came out where he had that body that so many men aspired to have. He suffered from back problems, he suffered from issues with his shoulder, he had difficulty sleeping because he had actually wrecked his body for an artificial mirage.

Yeah. And then what we do, we get the body and we put in front of the health magazine and the health is not there.

Right.

There is a portrait of a body that looks impressive, but if everybody tries to reach there, they realize that one physiological health for most people who are not designed to have their body start break down, because the more. The more extremely lean you are. The first thing that gets just down is your sex hormones. So for men, testosterone goes down. For women also go down, sex drive start decrease. Women lose their period when they get super lean to those type of standards. But second, mental health starts to go down. I work with a lot of people that reach their peak state because when in my beginning of fitness career, I was getting to my peak state and were helping people to get to their peak state as well. Once they arrived in the peak state, one thing that they didn't achieve was confidence, was a solid mental health. What they got there was more of insecurity, because once you reach that peak state, when you're comparing your body to others. But also the interesting thing that happens, the mindset that takes you there, the mindset that takes you there is like this. You are two years before that you are in a state and you stay and you tell yourself that this is not acceptable. My happiness is in that version of the future that you're there visualizing the health magazine type of COVID Right. And then you work towards a very rigid process. It's hard for you to do all the diet and all the training with that intensity. So you need to reinforce that mindset that this is not acceptable. The idea of my happiness happens in that future state that over two years the mindset gets so strong that whenever you get to that state that you are envisioning, what your mind is telling is the mindset that you train for two years, assess what is here is not acceptable.

Right.

The happiness in the future.

So whenever you're there, get satisfied.

It never gets.

You never get satisfied.

You just get more obsessed with that. Right.

And. And such an important lesson over here. So I used to be 22 body fat. I did the WildFit program, which is now on Mindvalley, and I went down to 15 body fat, but I was skinny. Then I did the 10X program on Mindvalley, which is what you and Lorenzo Delano teach. And 10X changed my life. Yeah, I went down to 14 body fat, but I also put on a lot of muscle. Right. And my body finally had that shape that I was really proud of. And what struck me was that some guys came to me and said, 14, that's not impressive. Aim for 9%. Aim for single digit body fat. But I know if I did go for single digit body fat, I would never be able to enjoy wine on a date. I would not be able to enjoy ice cream with my kids.

But you wouldn't have the cognitive capacity to run.

Exactly, exactly. I might see my sex drive go down because they're sacrifices that you have to make. Now that doesn't mean that you don't strive to be your best. I'm actually in my peak body right now because I went on a one month spiritual cleanse where I was working with my spiritual teachers. And in that one month, I only ate meat and veggies. I did not take any carbs, did not take any sugar, and I actually lost almost 2 kg. I lost 2 inches of my waist. So now I have a really tiny waist, but it was only for one month. And now I proudly eat ice cream when I watch I love hummus. And I'm here in Dubai and I'm eating hummus every day. I go out for drinks with my friends. I don't have to make those sacrifices. I still have lost that Fat because I've developed metabolic efficiency. But I think the lesson here is that if you are chasing that ideal, very often it's done for ego. You want that 9% body fat because you think, you think that man is sexy. That man is going to give you some validation that there are side effects that you may not be aware of. I'm happy to be at 12 to 13% body fat.

Yeah. And I think that the point here that you made is the most important one. The idea here is not, okay, I will accept my body, so I'll be just negligent about that. It's not that case. What gives people confidence about their body? It's not the state that the body is at. Just get somebody who is in a peak state and put them for a whole week not to care about their body, not to take care, not to show off. They will start feeling at the worst case scenario because they're not showing. The attitude is not there. What makes people confident about their body is the attitude of showing up. Not even if the body is not in the ideal state, but you're showing up to your body and taking care of it and saying, hey, the idea is not that I will manipulate you to become what I wanted to be, but I will show up. I'll give you my best. I will try to understand what my body needs. I'll give the best type of food, I'll bring the best type of exercise. I'll do all the best type of routines for the body to become what it wants to become. If the body will become bigger, smaller, rounder, sharper, it is the body's thing to do. I will show up at my best to fulfill my body's needs and fulfill my body's potential. If you have that attitude, that's what makes you confident about your body. And then that is what allows your body to have that is available for your own type of body, for your unique type of body. And then you may even. The curious thing here is when you let go of an external type of goal and you try to fulfill what your body is trying to become. This is when you reach the best version, right? Because you're not putting a condition on what the body should be. You're just giving your best for the body to fulfill its own potential. It's more or less an idea of parenting, right? What parents do to kids where the formula doesn't work is when the parents determines where the child should be. Are you going to become a doctor? Right. And if the child becomes a doctor, it's an unfulfilled doctor with unfulfilled parent. But if the parent has the attitude of what it will become, you will decide. But I'm going to give you the best. I'll protect you from harm and I'll nurture your innate gifts. And the child becomes an artist, but as a fulfilled artist. And the parents become fulfilled parents because the child has, you know, fulfilled its potential. What if we use the same mindset towards our bodies? When you use that type of attitude, then you realize that your confidence about your health in your body grows and your body reaches its own best version. They'll be much better than that someone else.

So take it. Your body doesn't look like that ripped bodybuilder in the photo we showed earlier?

No, that's not my normal state.

But how is your health right now?

It's unbelievably good.

It's unbelievably good. You're not going for a visual archetype, right? But you.

No, I'm going for what my body can do and what my body can feel like. The transformation of the body can work on. I have my baseline type of protocols, and I have, like an athlete, I can pick for certain my performance or my appearance for certain purposes. But my baseline is something that I need my body to feel good and I need my body to do things that expresses my life. So here's an example. I was working with a lady. She's a client of mine. She's an actress for a Netflix series. She was like, I'm very disappointed, Ronan, because I've been working for four months with you. We develop so much results, and I feel like that everything just fell apart because she has a daughter that has a very serious disease. Since her daughter is very little, sometimes her daughter needs full attention for her family. That requires 100% of their energy and attention. She says, now my daughter is having one of those flare up and I can't sleep anymore. And because that I don't have energy to work out and my diet is falling apart. I just felt that all the results that we had are just, you know, they were for nothing. And I was asking her, let's put this into perspective. Right now you are in the moment of your life that the requirement that you have is to show up for the person that you love the most in your life, that happens to be your daughter. What if at this moment, you were sick as you were four weeks ago, she had this low back pain that she needed her daughter to take care of her? What if right now you had your low back pain that you needed your daughter to take care of you. None of this is happening. Your body is healthy. Your body has energy. Your body has strength. It has prepared you for this moment. All that fitness is to prepare you for the moments in life where really matters. You are there, healthy and strong, ready to take care of the person who you love the most because you have built a body that supports you for that. I think this is health and fitness is for. It's for to prepare you for moments that your body will provide you the resources and energy to show up for what really matters in life. Not only for a body that is good for taking pictures. That's a nice side effect and that's.

Going to be different for everyone.

That's going to be different for everyone.

Amazing. Amazing. I think the key lesson over here is that so often we are chasing archetypes. We're chasing an archetype of an Adonis style body, an archetype of the Jennifer Lopez body. But what is an ideal body is different for each of us as that beautiful photograph you showed of the variations in body shapes of Olympian athletes. And I think that was the key lesson. So that said, let's now talk about your programs on mindvalley so people have an understanding of what they can dive into. So Ronan teaches a number of different programs on Mind Valley. Advanced Home Workouts was a program that we produced with Ronin in the midst of the pandemic where you learn how to turn everyday household items into a gym. And if you cannot afford to actually get a gym membership, this program is incredible. Now the second one is called Beyond Fasting. And this program has changed my life. I've used Beyond Fasting to basically practice intermittent fasting. I've seen increases in cognition. My first day on this program, I did a 20 hour fast. Yeah, I remember 20 hour fast. And I delivered a talk after 20 hours and I was shocked at how clear my mind was and how there was no hunger. But it was these little hacks that you had showed me. Right now, Beyond Fasting is suitable for men or women. But please note, if you are a woman, fasting beyond 14 hours is not advisable. You'll learn more in the program. Now Ronan's third program on Mindvalley is called 10X. And 10X is an optimized gym routine when anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes a week, you optimize muscle growth. Many people work out for hours a week and and just kill themselves and often get sick of going to gym. 10x makes it fun, it's optimized. It's based on the latest science of minimum effective dose. That means minimum work, maximum muscle growth. So, Ronan, take us through these three programs. Right? Just give us a quick overview. So people here who are part of mindvalley membership might have an idea of what they can dive into. Now, remember, all of our programs, we have close to 100 programs on Mindvalley. All are available. When you're a member, it's like Netflix. If you have a subscription, everything is unlocked for you. So if you already are a member, as most of you who listen to this podcast are, know that all of these programs are already included in your membership. Ronan.

So let's think about them. Into where would I start? Depending on where I am in my health, if I am a person who I'm starting to take care of my health right now and there's a lot of different challenges that I'm facing. For example, I have a little obesity tendency to, you know, metabolic disease and a lot of things that. Where do I start? I think fasting would be one of the great ideas. Beyond Fasting is a program that not only teaches you intermittent fasting, but it teaches you all the mindful eating. Why eat when eat, how to eat, all the habits around eating that makes that experience something more intentional and more mindful. So it brings small changes. It's not a huge habit transformation. It's more like when I eat, I'm not changing drastically what I eat and what I don't and my body starts to get better, my body starts to feel more energetic. So Beyond Fast is a great entry level program for somebody who wants to start shifting their health.

One of the things I learned from Ronan is I learned the ability to skip breakfast. So I eat breakfast for fuel. I used to eat breakfast for fuel Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and on weekends, Saturday and Sunday, I eat breakfast for ritual. Ritual meaning with the kids and family. Right. Monday to Friday, I was never eating breakfast with my kids anyway. They were off to school. And when you understand that that so often breakfast is ritual, not necessarily needed for fuel, you change the game. So Mondays to Fridays I just don't eat breakfast. Instead I have sparkling water or just regular water with lemon juice. Ronan taught me this. Lemon juice and Himalayan salt and coffee, regular caffeine on decaf. And then I don't take my next meal until 1 or 2pm so at this point I fasted. So I stopped eating at say nine at night, nine at night. And then after that it's just water or tea and Then I don't eat again until 1 or 2pm, let's say 1pm so that is a 16 hour fast. And what's amazing is that as I started doing this, I stayed lean. I saw energy levels go up. There were improvements in my thinking and my cognition. It was. It's incredible what fasting does. But this is called intermittent fasting.

Yeah.

And I worked my way up. I worked my way up to a five day fast. Five day fast using. I did use Prolon. Yeah. P R O L O N. Prolon is. We're not affiliated with Prolon, but you can look it up. Gwyneth Paltrow did a beautiful episode on it on Netflix. P R O L O N. It's. You're taking between 600 to 1,000 calories a day. But they did a five day prolonged fast. And then I did a three day, a three week wildfit sprint. And that's how I lost two kilograms around my, my waist. Yeah. So two kilograms overall body fat, but two inches around my waist.

And here's when you get well versed with fitness and, and health tools, you learn all those things. Okay, I can I apply them into a sprint.

Yes.

To help my body transform to a healthier vers.

Right, right.

And the fasting has this message to the body that is very interesting. You know, it's a time of the day that you're going without and you are showing your body that it is resourceful. Because sometimes people start feeling a little bit of hunger and they feel that, the desperation that they need to eat. But the body is not that fragile. The intermittent fasting is that practice as body. You know what, you are very resourceful. You can go through 14, 16 hours without food and tap into your own resources that you have prepared for. This is a way of showing the body how strong it is.

Exactly. You're changing your body to burn fat rather than crave sugar. And then there's this concept called autophagy. Tell us about that.

This is when eventually you get to a certain point in a fast that the body needs to find its own resources to keep its cells alive. And you have old cells and you have young cells, malfunctioning cells and very well functioned functioning cells. If some of them needs to die to become food, the ones that will be chosen to become foods are the old malfunctioning ones. That will be a point on your fasting that the young strong cells will eat up the malfunctioning old cells.

So you're literally cleaning your body of.

Yeah. And then you say my body is cannibalizing itself. How come is that healthy? Right. But then you think about what happens after you start resume. When you resume eating after a couple of hours, your body is left with less old cells and more young and well functioning cells. And they are the ones who are multiplying because all cells are multiplying. So you have less old cells multiplying themselves.

So for the audience here listening, feel free to Google Autophagy A U T O P H A G Y Google Autophagy to learn about its benefits. But that's what happens when you fast.

Yeah.

Now let's talk about advanced home workouts. When and who should be using this program.

So this is when people are stepping into fitness. So how do I develop more capabilities of my body? I want more energy, more strength, more speed and more, you know, endurance. This is a seven day program for people who wants to start training at home, but in an effective way. Because if you do a lot of starting to train at home, you may go to some YouTube workouts. Some of them work, but most of them are there for, for the views. And whenever you are there for the views, you need to give people what people want. And what people want is something that is easy to do. There's not what gives the results.

Exactly. Here's a very important thing to keep in mind. Workouts on YouTube and even workouts in many gyms are designed to be an hour long because of algorithms on YouTube. An hour long video will make the creator more money than a 15 minute video in a gym. An hour long workout will make the fitness trainer more money than a 20 minute workout. But you shouldn't be working out for an hour. You're actually wasting your time. In 2013, the New York Times published an article on minimum effective dose workouts. And that's when minimum effective dose workouts came to the forefront. Workouts like Tabata, where four minutes have been proven to be as effective as.

What as more or less a whole 30 minutes of a cardio exercise.

Four minutes more effective than a 30 minute minute cardio exercise. So you want to do the right workout and this right workout will cause you a little bit of pain. It's typically high intensity interval training. And advanced home workouts teaches you how to use everyday objects in your home.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And, and you get an incredible workout in minimal time. And that's the key.

Yeah. And this is, this is a concept that people are familiar in other places outside of fitness. For example, you know that if you spend, you can work a Lot and not be productive. You can spend your whole day at the office, but if you spend the whole day answering emails, you can spend 20 hours a day and not be productive.

Right?

Right. At the same time, you can go to the gym and spend one hour every day in the gym and not be productive. If you're doing busy work for answering emails at the edge gym. If you're doing exercises that are not effective.

Right. So, so give us an example. Let's talk about inefficient push ups and effective push ups based on this principle. Give us. So, so the typical push up would be, let's say a man or woman is trying to do 50 push ups on either on their toes or their knees. Right?

Right.

50 pushups. What would be an efficient, minimum effective dose version of push ups?

It is one that in more or less one minute you can reach to a point that you can no longer lift yourself.

Right.

And then you reach that, that place they'll call muscular failure. Muscular failure is a, is a signal to the body that says we need to be stronger. Because you see, we're trying to do an exercise and we can no longer do it. So whenever you're creating a stimulus for the muscle to grow, it needs to get at least very close to that. So if you're doing push ups and if you're doing push ups in a way that is because you can do maybe too many and so easy, you can do 50, you're not even tired, you can do a lot of that, but not cause the stimulus to grow. On the other hand, if his push up is too hard for you, that you're trying to do with your full body, but even your first push up is already a little bit, you know, kind of the moving, the movement is being cheated a little bit. You're not, you may be moving your body, but not using that movement to contract the muscles on the chest and the shoulders.

So there's a science to do push ups in a super slow method. And you are leaning carefully on one side, then leaning on the other side. Okay. And you are, you are, but you are maximizing muscular failure, thus stimulating your body to grow more muscle. Yeah.

So now get a push up and do this very slowly. First find the form of the push up that you can execute it well. If you cannot do a full push up, you can use a inclined push up. Imagine that if I have my feet on the floor but my hands on top of the table. My, my body is not horizontal, is a little bit inclined. That makes it easier. Once I Find a position that I can do a few repetitions. Instead of doing them very fast, I do them very slow. If I can do 40 push ups and I've got that, do them very.

Slow to see it's about time.

You will do 10 seconds and you are shaky.

And one of the things I learned from you is the concept of time under tension. Yeah. You want to keep your muscles under tension for as long a time as possible before rest. So that at the end of one minute, you just can't do another push up. But that is the stimulus that is going to tell your body, oh, we need to pack on more muscles here.

Yeah.

Rather than doing nonstop push ups for five minutes or resting and continuing and so on. These are some of the principles.

On top of that, they're on top and you kind of rest on your shoulders. Keep your muscle under contraction for that one minute.

Right.

It's not the most pleasurable type of experience, but it's the one that is super effective.

Now this principle is what takes us then to 10x, which is the routine that again, you can do it in the home or you can do it in the gym. It's a form of high intensity interval training. It's unique exercises that you do. Each exercise is one minute and you do it to a metronome sound.

Sound. Yeah.

I'm going to actually play the metronome sound. It's, it's on the mindvalley app. And so this is pretty unique. I want you to explain what's going on here with the metronome sound. This is actually the most common sound I play on mindvalley. Exactly what's going on?

Help you count the time for each one of the repetitions. Because on 10x, what we are doing is that we are applying this idea of the push ups to failure that we just talked about and we apply to the the full body. So we do six exercises that will recruit your entire musculature of the body. And we do this with a pace that is done slowly so you can control every single movement and reach failure in this one single set.

So a chest press, for example, is 1, 2 out and 3, 4, 5 back. Right. 2 seconds out, 3 seconds back.

And then there's a breathing pattern as well.

Right.

Because the breathing regulate the pressure inside of your body.

Right.

So whenever you're making the effort, in this case for chest press or you're pushing, this is when the air is coming out of your lungs. So you're breathing out as you push.

So there's a precision to it and you do the chest press for only 60 seconds.

Only 60 seconds there will be, if you count five seconds per repetition, 60 seconds. There's about 12 repetitions.

12 repetitions. And so you do five to six exercises and you done in 12 minutes.

Yeah. So you go from one and you do each exercise one set. But that one set is to the limit is if. If you could only do one set, how well can you squeeze that thing?

Right.

So you're not able to do two sets. So that's the. That's how 10x is so time efficient. Because the intensity is pretty high.

Exactly. And the results that people see are astonishing.

Yeah. And it makes it very accessible for everybody to train because now you no longer need one hour per day. Five times a week, six times in a week. A person who has 20 minutes twice in a week can do the same muscular development, fitness development in a much shorter amount of time by doing the right techniques with the right intensity.

So you can go deeper into beyond fasting, into advanced home workouts and into 10x. All as part of Mindvalley membership. To give credit where it's due, 10x is produced by Lorenzo De. He is the one of the chief scientists at Mindvalley and he developed this protocol. Ronan is the head of health and wellness at Mindvalley. Ronan is the teacher in the current 10x course because when we filmed it, it was in the midst of a pandemic. Lorenzo was in South Africa and he couldn't fly.

That's right.

You know, flights were shut, borders were shut. Exactly. So I just want to also give a big shout out to Lorenzo, the creator of 10X. He's a brilliant mind to follow. But as a Mindvalley member, these three programs will transform your health. And if you want to go deeper, we also have a program on Longevity. It's called Longevity Blueprint and it's by the legendary Ben Greenfield, who has been on this podcast multiple times as well.

Absolutely.

So, Ronan, thank you so much for being a guest today. Where can people find you?

So, besides my Mindvalley programs, the most active place is Instagram. If you go to Ronan Diego Insta on Instagram, that's my social media profile there. This is where I'm most active online.

Fantastic. Ronan. Go check him out. Ronan Diego Insta and join mindvalley membership. If you go to mindvalley.com and browse our programs, you can see all our programs on health and fitness. And Ronan is the the most prominent teacher there. Thank you, Ronan.

Thank you, Vishen. It's been a pleasure.

I'll see you guys in the next episode of this mindvalley podcast. Please don't forget to leave a comment or leave a review below the Spotify Link or the YouTube video or wherever you're watching this. And give a big shout out shout out to Ronan. Thanks.