Episode 142: Training for Life Outside of the Industrial Fitness Complex with Chip Conrad

This episode of the Flex Diet Podcast includes an interview with Chip Conrad. We talk about the philosophy of weight training, exercise, and movement. We discuss the things you should consider for your training beyond goal setting, like physiological cost and life transfer.

Episode Notes

• Our mutual love for music

• Chip’s background
• Body Tribe on Youtube
• Chip’s movement philosophy
• Training for a life outside the gym
• How will your training make you a better version of yourself?
• The physiological cost of training for certain goals
• Challenge doesn’t have to be suffering
• Mental state
• Transformation recipe
• Measuring risk
• What’s next for Chip
• Find Chip at bodytribe.com, Youtube, and Instagram

This podcast is brought to you by the Physiologic Flexibility Certification course. In the course, I talk about the body’s homeostatic regulators and how you can train them. The benefit is enhanced recovery and greater robustness. We cover breathing techniques, CWI, sauna, HIIT, diet, and more. The course will open the first week of April 2022.

Download the transcript

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Dr. Mike T Nelson

Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we discuss all things that help you increase your lean body mass, aka muscle, increase your performance and improve your body composition, all without destroying your health, and done in a flexible manner.

Today in the podcast, I’ve got Chip Conrad, and we talk about the philosophy of weight training, exercise and movement. Overall, we get into different and unique movements. We also have a discussion about music, of course, because chip likes awesome music, such as I do. So we talked about that at the very beginning. And then we get into what things should you consider for your training.

Obviously, the first thing that pops into mind is goal setting. And that’s a good start. But how do you go beyond that? Like, what are other things you should consider with your training? Things like cost? Obviously, I’m a big fan of measuring that with heart rate variability. But there are other ways. And we talk a lot about transfer. So are you getting just better in the gym? Does that transfer to other aspects of your life, be it recreation, playing with your kids, maybe even just getting better cognitively at work. So enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Chip Conrad. I really appreciate him coming on here and taking the time as he’s currently traveling throughout the US.

This podcast is brought to you by the Physiologic Flexibility Certification. It goes on sale again, April 4. So depending upon when you’re listening to that, maybe it’ll be on sale, then the Phys Flex Cert is the level two to the Flex Diet Cert would be level one, which is how to increase your ability to recover, focusing on nutrition, also light movements, such as walking, exercise, sleep, we talk about fasting, kind of all the basics that you need to get down pretty darn good.

Once you have those down, then I would look at the level two, which is the Phys Flex Cert. This includes interventions such as cold water immersion, or just cold water in general heat, such a sauna, low intensity aerobic work, also high intensity interval training, breathing techniques, things you can do to increase your performance, think better cognitively. And also do a pretty deep dive into fuel systems, everything on the glucose to a ketogenic diet, including a very deep dive into ketones themselves, as is all wrapped up in a framework that shows you how to use these things. And when you should use them.

A lot of what he’s seen out there has some very good information within those areas. But I wasn’t able to find a complete system of how all these things fit together. And that is done via something called homeostasis. That temperature, we maintain 98.6 degrees. But we can get better via adaptation in hot environments, we can get better V adaptation to cold environments, we’re not necessarily looking to change our core body temperature. But we can expand our capacity, then each one of these areas, one would be temperature, two would be pH. Three would be your fuel systems. And fourth would be oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Those are all the main leverage points that the system is set up on. And if you get better and expand your capacity, and each one of those areas, I believe that’s going to make you a lot more robust and resilient, increase your ability to recover and just generally make you a lot harder to kill. The nice part is, for most of them, you don’t have to spend a ton of time in each area because for a lot of people that are going to be relatively novel, and I cover ways to use technology and also no tech options.

For each one of those, there’s options and you can do that don’t require any technology. Do you don’t need to spend, you know 1000s of dollars and get a sauna. If you’ve got one great. There’s also no tech options there. It opens April 4 and will be open for one week until midnight April 11 2022. So if you want to enroll in the physiologic flexibility cert go to physiologicflexibility.com. If you’re listening to this outside of the time of April 4 through the 11th, you can still get on the waitlist for the next time that it opens up.

Enjoy this wide ranging conversation from music to philosophy of training, old time, strongman lifts and much more with Chip Conrad.

Welcome to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m here with Chip Conrad. How’s it going, man?

Chip Conrad

It’s going well. How are you?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Doing good, doing good. We just off air here had a little chat about music which will stick at the end of the show if anyone is interested. All good stuff. So you just got to see Gary Numan, which was the last man you saw before the shutdown and then saw him again.

Chip Conrad

They book ended COVID for me.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I had the same thing with August Burns Red. So last time I saw them was I think almost three years ago and I saw them the other day with it was August Burns Red with light the torch from sour Jones and then Killswitch Engage and it was phenomenal. It was a amazing like the the performance of August Burns Red is probably one of the best performance I’ve seen from them. The sound wasn’t the greatest the mix was a little weird, but you know there wasn’t anything they had to do about it per se. And then yeah, Killswitch Engage was amazing.

Adam Berkowitz was obviously the guitarist is so funny just to see the antichi he pulls out on stage. And so like at the start of the second song, he’s like, Hey, this looks like a brand new club. Everyone’s like, yeah, he’s like, we’re here to take a huge Sonic shit on your brand new club. Yeah, and Howard Jones came out did a couple songs with them too, which people are saying obviously the former singer from Killswitch Engage kind of an intermediate in between so yeah, was amazing.

Chip Conrad

Was awesome to see that they put anything out new recently. I haven’t heard much from them.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Oh, God, I lost track because it COVID It seems like all the albums got lost in a time warp was a year or two years ago a tournament? And yeah, it’s it’s really good. Like the first three tracks are still kind of my my favorite audit. Yeah, Jesse leach did an awesome job and all the vocals and why that was, it was really good. It was, yeah, was interesting to go back to live music after almost three years, which is by far the longest period of time I’ve ever not been to a show by far. So it’s also good for the artists to actually start to make money again, too, which is got to be incredibly hard on them during this time off.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, I mean, these days, I can’t, with with Spotify and all that stuff. I can’t imagine album sales are making anybody money these days. So it’s got to be a lot of shows.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I mean, the only thing I’ve heard from people working in the industry is that if you own all the rights to everything, you’re kind of doing it on your own. You may make some money from streaming, if you don’t, I mean, you could have like millions of streams, and you’re still probably not even making enough to make a living. Yeah, so most bands make most of money now off of you know, merch and other stuff they’ve got going on, which, if you can’t tour, it’s a lot harder to sell merch to.

Chip Conrad

What was the quote I saw recently, if you see us, if you see a small band on tour, go buy the t shirt, because that means they’re gonna eat mac and cheese tonight or something like that.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, that’s pretty true. I got a sample tour the other night. Which was amazing. I got one of the shirts for 15 bucks. And I was like, why is this shirt like, half like over half price of the other ones? And he’s like, Oh, cuz we printed them for the tour and 2020 for The Quadra album. And they put all the dates and everything on the back. They had everything ready to go. And then the tour obviously just got shut down. So they were just, you know, they’ve got all this merch that they’re just trying to sell. I’m like, Yeah, I’ll buy a shirt for 15 bucks. There’s a $5 tip was great.

Chip Conrad

It’s nice. That’d be fun. Yeah, I guess he settled her. That’d be fun.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

It was good. Like I saw them first four or five years ago. And that was the first time I saw Derek green on vocals, which he’s been doing. I think he’s been with the band for like, 10 years now. But I always think of, you know, Max was the main guy for years. And that was kind of I was like, hesitant. I was like, Yeah, I don’t know, but my God supple tour, I’ll go. I was like, Holy crap. He He was amazing. He did a phenomenal job. And yeah, this time, same thing. He had broke his ankle. So he was up there with a little bit of an air cast on it. But he like the bass player, the guitarist, their drummer is fanatical. Like he went bananas like the whole set like almost no stops. It was. Yeah, let’s know. We already heard your music.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, I know. You’re gonna get sucked in. So hey, let’s let’s talk about something else. I was thinking I was just thinking the new bloody wood album. Have you heard the new bloody what else good. There’s like little Sceptile tour shout outs on there, like, you can hear these riffs and you’re like, Ah, I see what you’re doing.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, one of the cool things I did in the pandemic was it’s this kind of small things kind of somebody related to training to where you, you do something you’re like, I really didn’t cost me that much money. Why didn’t I do that so much sooner. And I bought a subscription to XM radio.

And I hadn’t when I worked for a medical device company for a while to get the rental car and I tried to get the one that had the Sirius XM in it. And a couple of times I drove when I was in salt pod, red took a flight down there. And so I got a car. I was so excited when they had the XM radio because I couldn’t listen to liquid metals. I was going out kiteboarding. And then I realized I just kind of forgot about it. And then later I was like, oh, I should probably check into that again. I was like, oh, it’s not even that expensive. And lo and behold, I found out our car has a stereo that you can get satellite radio.

So last time before I drove down to South Padre, which takes about two three days, at least. They got the subscription. I remember getting in the car and just tooling around all the stations. And there was a live concert of Bruce Springsteen, like a two and a half hour concert. Oh, it was phenomenal. I was like, Holy crap. This is like, I like his album stuff. But I haven’t gotten crazy over it. But the live stuff was phenomenal. So I was like, Huh, why don’t I do this later? And of course, you have the apps like this on my computer playing in the gym? And yeah, so it’s been a lot of fun lately.

Chip Conrad

Good to know.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. One small investment, help your training, because sometimes you go to the gym, and you’re like, I just don’t know what to listen to. I can’t decide and like, put on some liquid metals like, oh, it’s always always good stuff on there. It’s also a good way to hear new music, too, because it’s kind of live in your own little hole. It’s hard to find new stuff once in a while.

Chip Conrad

There’s a listener tip for you. Yeah, there you go.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Give us a little background on yourself there.

Chip Conrad

Oh, yeah. I’m supposed to talk about me now. I created a training, philosophy and which eventually turned into a gym, called body tribe. And that was, I started the Body Tribe concept about 3-4 years ago. And then I opened my gym. And then right, as the pandemic hit, I realized this isn’t going to work. And so I decided, I’m going to leave the gym and then just sort of travel the country. I put my training online, teach here and there if I can, you know, in person and visit my mom where I am right now in North Carolina and bounced around the country. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a year and a half now.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Very cool. Are you doing an Airbnb? Or did you do like all the cool kids and get a van or just kind of roll?

Chip Conrad

It’s a Subaru and I can sleep in it. And every now and then yeah, I might get a motel room. But yeah, it’s sort of like Van life. I have I have a recently adopted dog. Who’s with me who I would show you but she’s under the bed at the moment. Okay. And she travels, she travels the country with me now. So that’s, that’s yeah, hit the road and take my training philosophy with me.

So I’ve become very active on on YouTube. I try to put a new video out every week and I have one of the oldest fitness YouTube channels around. I think I started in 2007 like right after YouTube started. But nobody watches it so much my videos that are pretty good. I mean, every day I got cool drone footage. And I’ve gotten me teaching stuff and with my philosophy that I do.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

How do they find the the channel for people want to listen in? Or watch?

Chip Conrad

If you look up body tribe on YouTube, you will find me.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Nice, what kind of videos do you normally put up there?

Chip Conrad

Generally, it’s me traveling somewhere and doing something interesting. There might be a gym, it might be outside, a lot of them recently over the last couple years has been me outside, you know, just saying, Look. It trained to give new insight into how movement and training could be, because we are. We’re locked in some real dogmatic nonsense right now in the training world. Yeah, I like to think that I’ve stepped us. Yeah. I’ve stepped back from that what I call the fittest industrial complex. I can look into it, and I can see what’s going on.

But I’m kind of finding the people outside on the fringes who are sort of doing their own thing and I’m, I’ve been doing I mean, my gym was the weirdest gym I’ve ever been in. And I can tell you stories that actually there’s some stories I can’t tell you that we did at my gym that were just, you know, prayers, but the training philosophy behind what I do and everything is by far an invitation for people to think freely rather than to live that investment that they’ve been putting into with that with the fitness industrial complex. So my videos are like, Hey, come, come move in weird ways. They’re like the slogan is move in many ways for many reasons.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

And that’s the goal. So you mean you don’t have to go to the global gym and benchpress on Mondays is what you’re saying?

Chip Conrad

Exactly. And it’s interesting how many ways you know that is that’s a, that’s a prime example. But how many ways that movement has been packaged and sold to us like that? You know, that’s one of them. The benchpress is all important. It has to be done this way, this way, this way. I want us to think you know, what, there’s so many ways to move why are we expressing all those ways and training to support those ways?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

So what was the weird about your gym? Was it just different movement patterns are what made it different from most gyms.

Chip Conrad

So one thing I’ve noticed in gyms and again, being an outsider to the whole thing, I get some flack for talking like this, you might appreciate I was once dubbed the Henry Rollins of fitness.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Oh, that’s right.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, well, I got a lot to say I do a lot of fist shaking. But I’m, but I’m not near as cool as he is. But I don’t see too many gyms that that are spawned from an actual philosophy. You know, like, for instance, you have a CrossFit philosophy page, that’s not a philosophy, that’s a training protocol. That’s something completely different. You know, they call it philosophy. So when a gym calls what they do a philosophy, it’s not, it’s basically their program designed. And that’s not a philosophy.

And so I very rarely see gyms started in somebody’s brain from a from a profound thought process. Instead, it’s usually, you know, I like to train people, therefore, I need a space for that, that’s as deep as most people go, or they buy somebody else’s thought. That’s what a lot of certifications are, it’s like buying somebody else’s prefabricated thought, or that’s what a franchise is. That’s what a lot of the training certifications are and, and therefore, what you’re doing as a trainer is you’re buying somebody’s thoughts, so you can turn around and sell that thought.

And that’s, that’s not so that made body tribe feel like a very unique place, because it came from a space of something that I spent many years thinking about and been brewing in my own own head. Granted, there’s a lot of influences. I’m not saying it was, you know, my, there’s nothing unique about it, except for the fact that it was filtered through my own brain.

But it had, it was a very unique setup to we had, we were, I mean, I started back in the early 2000 2000, to 2003. At that point, very few people were Miss smashing a lot of stuff together, it was basically, and this is still the case today, people seem to want to do the one category that they’re invested in. And that’s, you know, the bummer of fitness is that it’s sold as a bunch of categories. So you’re you do CrossFit, or you do powerlifting, or you do yoga, or you do kettlebells or, you know, whatever you do. TRX it’s very rare that people just look around and go, Well, you know, there’s, there’s basic movement offered in all of those things. Why don’t we just teaching movement and letting it manifest in all those different ways if we want. And so I was the only gym, and I still don’t see this too often.

I was the only gym for many years, especially where I where I live, so was in Sacramento, California. That did, we had a, you know, a movement, mobility, tumbling yoga style, practice, but we also mixed it with competitive powerlifting competitive strongman, competitive weightlifting, we did clubs, we did kettlebells, I was the only person doing clubs in in Northern California for many, many years, or at least in my area. And, and it wasn’t that I was trying to master these things.

It’s just that they all have very similar foundations, all these programs, all these ideas, whether it’s yoga, or powerlifting, the foundations can still be the same. And that is we’re trying to find movement patterns that are going to make us better at something hopefully. And so I created this concept of strength being far more metaphysical and physical. And so how are we going to manifest strength in our lives, and therefore, how are we going to train so support the manifestation of strength in our lives.

And I ended up writing some books about it and doing some DVDs about it and touring the country teaching workshops about it and, and all that I just I didn’t see a lot of other people giving that kind of thought to it. And I don’t want to say I’m unique. I’ve come across some wonderful people who do think a lot, but you don’t see a lot of Jim’s manifesting from that. It’s kind of a bummer.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

People get very into systems and I think, for good intentions, but they can’t think their way out of the system. And that has a lot of limitations. Yeah. So for example, I’ll pick on kettlebells because I did RKC, early on, learn from Pavel was assistant for a couple of years. And it was cool. Like I learned a lot of stuff was a great community was awesome.

The downside I saw on my left was that there was a lot of broken people who kept showing up. And after a while, I’m like, Hmm, maybe there’s some aspects that are great. I like kettlebells. I think they’re a lot of fun. They’re definitely a useful tool. But do I really need to create maximal tension with a light kettlebell as a form of training? If I want more tension? Why don’t I just use a heavier kettlebell? Like I get it, if you don’t have one? Go when you have one, it should be like appropriate tension, not maximal tension, right. So there was some stuff like just on the basic philosophy, that was things I didn’t agree with. And then when I kind of played around with it, I didn’t feel so good.

And then I started seeing more people get kind of injured, even when they were very injured, like trying to explain to him that he you shouldn’t have maximal tension and grit your teeth together and contract your maximal hand when you’re trying to press the 16 kg as a grown man, right? I just pick a heavier kettlebell, I think your life will be better. But even just something like that simple for a lot of people are like, Oh, my God, that’s, that’s heresy.

What do you you can’t say that that’s not part of the system. That’s not what Paul’s teaching, you know. And so it was this weird thing. And I think a lot of numbness, not just dripping on them.

But a lot of systems fall into this where the people following it are like, Oh, but you’re going against what they’re saying. I’m like, it’s just the tool, like learn what you can apply what you want tested for yourself, see what works and move on, if you want to keep parts of it. Great. If you don’t, great. Um, I agree that the reason I left and wasn’t teaching is because I disagreed on some of the principles. And I said, I’m just not teaching those. So therefore, that’s part of the system.

So I’m out which, okay, fine, whatever, I get it. But this is not unique to kettlebells, that’s powerlifting, CrossFit, whatever, like their single system, every single system is, is almost like that, which is always weird to me.

Chip Conrad

What’s what’s interesting is we’re weird, as there’s a human condition of investment. And so if we invest in something, we kind of have to go all in other way and create this cognitive dissonance in our brain to support it. Otherwise, we’re going to feel like we’re, we’re letting somebody down. I don’t know this, there’s this weird concept that the more time and energy and money we put into something, the more we have to believe it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, almost like a sunk cost fallacy thing, too, is just that you’ve invested so much time and effort into it. And I’ve done this with other multiple systems too, and just was gonna teach for him and just walked away, because I like, a lot of stuff is good, but, and some of the culture was scaring me, because people wanted to do the most complicated thing known to man to impress other trainers.

Yeah, and not the person who needed the result in front. I’m like, dude, just start with the simplest thing. If the simple thing gets the result, then that’s easier. That’s better. But that doesn’t look good to your peers. And it was just some of the cultures got weird. And so I’m like, Yes, I’m out of this one now. Yeah.

Chip Conrad

And that was one of the interesting kettlebells were one of the first times I started really noticing that were the kettlebell communities really kind of took that route that you were talking about. Yeah, let’s let’s do the advanced stuff and show off to each other. And I was kind of in that boat. I was one of the early kettlebells. And I was yeah, I’m throwing stuff around.

And then I realized I’m actually not getting any stronger, nor my clients were just getting better at doing the kettlebells and so and I really saw it a lot with with clubs and meses. And then you start seeing it with the mobility stuff and and basically, it’s people taking whatever they’ve invested in and trying to see how what they can squeeze out of it, but it’s not actually making them stronger or better. It’s Just making him better at that particular thing.

And, and to the to the often detriment of the other things. Yeah, I call it I call the 800 pound squat syndrome. I see so many people chase squat numbers. And yes, that’s going to help you for a while. But there’s a point where the squat is not helping you do anything else except squat more, and everything else that the squat was originally helping you with the explosive power, the whatever your you know, whatever benefits you got from the squat, they start falling away, as you start working up that squad member.

And, and you can replace the 100 pound squat with anything. I mean, you know, people do that with yoga, where they get so obsessed with it that the other stuff that the yoga was supposed to be helping suddenly, is falling to the wayside. And it’s a bummer that when we, when we invest in these categories of movement, we’re not investing in their empowerment, we end up investing in their limitations. And we’re buying their limitations.

And that’s, and so my, my original Jim concept was, you even mentioned it earlier, you know, take what works, or as Bruce Lee said, take what works, discard what doesn’t. And there is kind of an underlying foundation to all of them that we can borrow from and create our own thing. And so the body tried template became, let’s find what works for us. And let’s pursue what we want to do. And so my entire program design is centered around skill building, and thinking of everything in terms of skills. The squat, for instance, is a skill, but it’s a fairly low level skill, it’s not something we’re going to do on a daily basis. Unless we’re unloaded and unloaded. Squat can be a daily skill.

People do it all the time. But a loaded squat is not actually a skill we’re going to pursue. So what is the benefit of it? Well, it can help bigger skills. So let’s look at the squat as a movement, as you know, the lower level skill to help bigger skills, but you have to put programming in place for that to happen. A squat doesn’t automatically help these other skills. So when we start looking at skill building, first of all, we stop worrying about anything like esthetic trends training, because first of all, you’re going to look better when you train Well, kind of it kind of happens.

Now, if you want to look your best. That’s a whole different story. But let’s work on being able to do more stuff. And that’s the big goal with my training is let’s let’s do I want to I want us to get good in the gym. So we can get the hell out of the gym and actually have a movement practice. And it to me, it’s kind of a bummer that a great majority of people who are gym goers, which by the way, it’s such a small percent of our population anyway, it’s only 15% of the population that’s actively involved in purposeful movement. Now you take that percentage and and you realize that most of those 15% don’t actually have a movement practice beyond the gym.

The gym is their movement practice. Well, I always thought the gym was supposed to train us. So we could go do other stuff. Now, if I’m just training get better at the gym, well, that’s a sport that’s called CrossFit. But if you haven’t actually training in the gym, to be able to leave the gym and have a life that involves more movement, then you really need to look at your training and realize and think about, is it based on skill building?

Or am I simply following some dogmas that had been in place for many, many years? That’s, I think that’s important. And yet I don’t hear people talking about skill building a lot. It’s all about movements and muscles, movements and muscles. That’s great. What’s it leading to? What’s the what’s the big plan?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, it was announced, even when I do seminars now, especially more lately is especially the rip on fitness professionals, because we’re both ones we can rip on our own people. And I’m like, How many of you have anything you do for recreation? I don’t give a crap what it is play ping pong, like, obviously, I’m biased to kiteboarding, surfing, mountain biking, snowboarding, that type of stuff. But I don’t care what it is golf, pick a sport. And it’s amazing to me how many people train a lot but have nothing else that they’re really interested in.

And even within training, a lot of times, they can’t give you a specific goal, right? Because on the outside looking in general population, but assume that if you’re in the profession, then you must be competitive in some nature, powerlifting grip strength, CrossFit, whatever. Even if you’re not competitive, you’re just looking to look better gain strength, which is cool, too.

I don’t think it’s killing me an old like to what end? Right? What is it going to transfer to an AI? You’ve probably heard of the analogy of the sea slug before. So the sea slug like floats around the ocean all the time, and it finds a rock and it sticks to the rock and that’s where it stays the rest of its life and it eats its own brain because it doesn’t have to move again.

Chip Conrad

That’s the fitness industry as a whole.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Exactly. I’m like, I feel like the industry is becoming even more like sea slugs, where it’s just like don’t do recreation, just do this one thing. And then you’ll be fine. And I just, I doubt it the sport of fitness.

Chip Conrad

Oh, definitely. Come on now. I mean that you, you hit the nail on the head when you see all these fitness pros, through their social media, and you see them always in their posts working out. And my question always is, what are you gonna do with that? Mm hmm. I rather golf.

Yeah, I’d rather see people showing me how they’re living their life, you know, I’m out whether whether it’s physically, or maybe even more importantly, they’re taking that that strength and ability and skill and applying it to their life in other ways, you know, if I see a trainer, showing me how they work in an animal rescue on weekends, okay, I get that, I get that that’s, you know, I trained to be able to help.

I think that’s one of the big purposes. And I talk about purpose all the time in my books in our workshop. And we don’t often define what our purpose is. And so if I see people just posting about their workouts all the time, that’s like, don’t be like, following a student on Instagram, who’s always showing you that they’re doing the equation, but they’re never showing you what the end result of their math actually is. And, and I don’t want to see the work being done, I want to see where you’re applying it. And now it actually is manifesting. And that I talked about this in my more recent book, where our training should reflect our value system. And I see a lot of abusive or disrespectful or disconnected training. And yet, I’m going to guess that’s not part of their value system.

And so I would like people to start training through their value system. And when you do that, then you can actually take what you do in the gym, and live your life with it, take it with you. And you know, a lot of people talk about how they live for the gym. I’d much rather use the gym to go live. And that’s a whole different concept.

And so hopefully, as a trainer, if you’re looking for a trainer, see what that trainer does in their life, see how it manifests? Are they? Are they doing physical activity? Are they manifesting their strength through other means, like, like, charities or helping families or being useful in their community? How is that strength manifesting itself? That’s the trainer you want. That’s how you want to assess your trainer, not through certifications, or how much they can benchpress

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and I think even for potential clients to think even bigger of busy work, a lot of clients like it, especially when I work more general population was I you know, I want to get a bigger benchpress or, you know, I want to look better, I always just keep asking him like, Well, why, like, why do you want to benchpress?

And at some point that if you go deep enough, like most of the time, they’ll admit they’re like, Well, you know, I’m getting older and I want to get down on the floor and play with my grandkids. Right? Or it would I’m trying to get to the point where it would be some life skill, or hobby or recreation or something else other than I just want a bigger benchpress.

Right? Because for me, especially for programming, yes, I’m going to get you the things that you want. But I have to keep in mind, what does it transfer to? Right? So if you say, I want to get off the ground, when I’m older and play with my grandkids, and I’m prioritizing exercises. Maybe I prioritize a Turkish getup, then over a benchpress assuming you don’t have any, you know predication to like in one or the other. Right? Because it’s going to give me the, the level to program to get you to your higher goals.

And I think a lot of times for people they haven’t actively thought that far ahead. And maybe it’s just guys seem to be a little bit more stuck in the past of, well, when I was 18, I bench 225. And the bar causes me pain, right? There’s always sometimes things they want to get back to, but I always try to relate it to, you know, like you said their life and you know, 510 1520 years down the road, what do you want to be doing? Like, what is all this leading to like, well improve your numbers? That’s great. But, and you see this in sports, too, right?

I’ve talked to my buddy, Coach Cal Dietz a lot about this. If you’ve got a high level college athlete, yeah, yeah. Maybe take their squad from 315 to 405. Are they going to run faster? Me? I’d say the 405 was a grinder and took four seconds. Yeah, I would argue you might have made them a little bit slower. But maybe just stay with 315 350 Whatever arbitrary cutoff we’re using. Maybe just move that load a lot faster. Or can you repeat that? load at that speed with 30 seconds recovery, right? If you’re a lineman or whatever, right? Is it going to transfer to the sport that you’re trying to get better at? But even that’s hard, because it’s way easier if you’re a strength conditioning coach, to show all your before and after numbers to whoever is grading you than it is to be like, yeah, definitely made him a better football player. It’s like, yeah, sports that are measured, you know, track and field swimming, that type of thing where it’s all measured.

Yeah, you can determine pretty fast if it transferred. But, you know, hockey, tennis, whatever those sports are, like Dan, John says, a lot more fuzzy. So you probably made them better, but it’s a lot harder to determine if you did or not.

Chip Conrad

You want to just hold up the sheet and says, that says lucky bench, this and every bench that right, the squat? And so I had a my two books ago was called Are You useful? And that was like that, that was a big thing that I started realizing, as I’m looking at all these posts of people who are that are pointing at their sheet and going look at what I can do and my workout now.

And the question kept popping up in my head. But But yeah, now what? You know, let’s say you got to that 800 pound squat. If I saw that video of you squatting, My instant reaction would be great. What are you going to do with that? I mean, it took you how many years to get there, how many skills had to fall away so you can get there, that strength doesn’t necessarily have any transferred anything. Tonight, how has that made you a better version of yourself, because that is ultimately, the goal of every single person who comes through the door of any gym is make a better version of ourselves.

And yet, we get some really twisted ideas of what that is. And you were mentioning, you know, goal setting. One thing that it’s it’s tough to, to mention that it’s tough to talk about is beginners people come to a gym, actually not even just beginners, but people come to the gym in general, but especially beginners, don’t know how to set goals. Yeah, because we can only set a goal as far as our experience allows us. And if our experience is simply what the fitness industry has been selling us, we’re going to believe that all goals are going to be based on this scale or the mirror, you know, this thetic style goals.

Or if we’ve been going to the gym for a while, we’re going to believe that the goals are going to be based on those numbers in that and that, you know, that clipboard of our squat or bench or whatever. And yet, those aren’t really, truly fitness goals, or strength goals or whatever, you know, those aren’t necessarily useful goals.

So I hate to say this, but if I get a new client, I’m just going to assume they actually don’t quite know what their goals are. So one of my big jobs as a trainer is to start introducing them to what possibility is out there as goals, you know, these are things that you can choose. And I’m not necessarily bombarding them with this, I’m just kind of hinting at all these directions of how life can be lived. And it all points to outside the gym.

Look at that big life out there that you can go live and all these things that you can do. There’s so many possibilities of movement, that aren’t included in this gym. And so what we can do here is give you a foundation to then go explore. And that’s I think that’s the best any trainer can do is give a foundation of ability and skill. So they can then go explore that if they start exploring. They want to get more specific, that’s fine. But such a great big beautiful worlds possibility out there. Why are we limiting to what we’ve been taught in the gym for so many years?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and that’s kind of one of my not so secret goals anymore now is, yeah, if I’m working the new client, we will have you know, distinct goals of, you know, whatever it is you want to achieve, because I think people do need markers of progress, and you do need something to move towards. But like you said, I get even more excited when I shout out to one of my clients, Dr. Rachel, who started wake surfing this year started doing a whole bunch of different things that she had never really done before. I was like, Nah, that’s so awesome.

That like got me more excited than her hitting PRs in the gym, which was still great. But it’s like, Ah, you’re now able and you feel confident to do these other recreation things, which she probably wouldn’t have done a couple couple years ago. It’s like it’s me more excited because I think again, maybe because I’m getting old is that you those experiences that you have doing other things like those are the memories you’re gonna have, like forever.

To me that’s like a huge part of what makes people happy in life. Like yes, enjoying the gym, you know, training and all that stuff. It’s great. But, you know, the memories, especially doing something active, you know, with friends accomplishing other skills that you didn’t think you could due before, to me that’s like kind of more of like a ultimate purpose that I don’t think it’s talked about a lot.

Everyone kind of intrinsically knows it, but they do kind of assume that I, you know, I’m older, I won’t be able to do that. And like, even like kiteboarding people are like, Oh, no, I can’t do that. I’m like, anybody can learn. You’re good your ass handed to you. Yes, probably not a lot of fun to learn. But a buddy of mine learned when he was 71 years old, right? You know, so the you can, if you’re functional, you can do a lot more things.

And you you think is possible. And as you expand that base, you have that positive transfer to do other things that you didn’t think were possible. And it’s just kind of like the upward spiral that instead of the downward or upward ascension instead of the downward spiral.

Chip Conrad

Well, why aren’t we more curious? I mean, that’s a big thing that the industry does not promote curiosity.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Oh, no, that’s not good. What do you ask?

Chip Conrad

Aren’t we asking what the hell do we do? Why aren’t we looking at the world and going, can I get up on that? Can I go through that? Can I pick that up? Can I go do that? You know, that I want us to see the world from the eyes of an eight year old child because you know, children have that non judgmental movement approach where they approach movement, sounds judgment, just curiosity.

So I just want to go try stuff we can we can apply the adult system of training a foundation of strength for that. But let’s keep that curiosity so we can take that foundation and strengthen go do something with it. And like, like you mentioned, there’s this almost belief that it happens automatically. Yeah, it doesn’t I call it I give a shout out to South Park. In my book, where I talked about the underwear gnomes.

Do you remember the underpants? So the underpants gnomes they stole the underpants they stole the kids. And so the kids followed the underpants known to their lair, and asked them why are you stealing the underpants and they busted out this chart? And it said step one steal underpants step two, step three profit. And so everybody asked, What’s step number two, and everybody looked around and said, step three profit. Just automatically assumed that step one lead to step three, step two is blank.

And that’s how we treat fitness. It’s like we’re sold the idea that go to the gym, step two, step three, a better us, you know, a better version of us somehow, magically happens. But no one talks about what step number two is. And I go into several chapters of it in my book about you know, what, what is that step number two? Well, first of all, I can guarantee you that going to the gym doesn’t automatically make you a better person, because I’ve been in dozens, if not hundreds of gyms and met 1000s of people who have done this training stuff. And not all of them are particularly great people are any better than they were when they started. So it doesn’t necessarily make you that better version.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

So it’s not automatic.

Chip Conrad

So what is that step two? And that’s I think that’s an important thing that we need to look at in our own programming and our own training, especially for trainers. What are we doing to actually get people to make a better version of themselves? What is? How is that going to manifest outside of our perimeters and dogma, so that they actually are the best version of themselves that we can get them to? Like you were talking about the client, when you’re hyper boarding, you actually gave them opportunity? How cool is that? You said, I’m gonna help you here. And it’s going to manifest this way. When we can give people opportunity. That’s what we’re doing our job, but it doesn’t automatically happen.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I think of it as similar. Giving them base skills that also transfer. So like I said, when I’m setting up a program, like, yeah, we’ll get you to the thing you said. But I’m also want to make sure that it transfers outside of that. And I’m going to have you measure the cost of doing whatever said thing is to so you have like your kind of your your guardrails, and if the cost starts becoming exponentially high. That’s not for me to decide, but I’m going to make you aware of this.

And then you have to re examine if it’s going to be worth it or not. Right. So if you use example of an 800 pound squat, yeah, I know some people who squatted 800 And that’s cool. It’s extremely impressive. It’s way more than I’ll probably ever squat in my life. However, on a day to day basis, what I want their movement patterns and level of pain that it took them to do that. Oh, I don’t like pain at all. I’m kind of a wuss in that category because it limits me doing other things. But I think a lot of times we forget what the cost is to do the thing. And I’m perfectly fine. If someone says I want to squat 800 I don’t care. If I have to live with a pain out of eight to 10 this is what I want to do.

Cool if that’s what you really, really want to do. Okay, that’s your choice, but I think a A lot of times people say stuff like that. But when it actually starts getting closer, then they start reevaluating. A lot of times, we don’t ever mention the cost, whether it’s heart rate variability, eating foods, sleeping, related race, relationships, time away all these other things. It’s just one of those things that just gets kind of swept under the rug. And it just, it looks better to be just just more hardcore, and just try harder.

Chip Conrad

We’re in a strange situation in our world where we don’t have the rites of passage that we had 100 1000 2000 5000 years ago, yeah, that’s, that’s another human characteristic that I think we we need is somehow we need rites of passage. And since we’re not being swept up into into wars, every three or four years, like we might have done 2000 years ago, if we lived in Greece or Macedonia. You know, the rites of passage that were culturally accepted, aren’t there. And so we’ve been we had to create our own.

And I think the training, workout is, is the modern rite of passage. And we also come from a culture that believes that the greater the suffering, the greater the reward. And so the rite of passage has to be suffering. And somehow that’s, that’s good for us. And that’s kind of ridiculous. So I’m hoping we can understand that training is supposed to actually make you better, a better version of you. And it doesn’t necessarily have to kill you in the process, that idea that we have to be chewed up and spit out to be better, I think is, in this day and age, we have to understand that maybe that’s not the way it is anymore.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and I think there’s still a place to do hard things. And we need more of that. And challenge. But again, it comes back to I probably harp on this too much is that what is the what is the cost of doing that? Right? So I’m big into, you know, cold water immersion, things like that, you know, horrible shit you can do on the rower, go push your car, all that kind of stuff. But the reason I like those is because they’re hard. But the risk isn’t necessarily very high. Right?

There’s a pretty large safety margin there. But it’s still hard, it sucks. It’s not something you’re going to choose to do all the time, compared to things that are very difficult, but carry a very high risk associated with them. And if you’re 100%, fully aware of the risk, and you take a progressive, radical manner to get there, and that’s what you want to do. Cool. That’s awesome.

But I don’t think a lot of times people take into account the risk and not to remind CrossFit again, but he will see CrossFit and they’re like, oh, yeah, I’ve never Olympic lifted, I’ll do snatches for high reps under high levels of fatigue. It’s like, Have you ever done any skill under fatigue? No, but I’ll be fine. I probably not. That’s an extremely advanced skill to be able to pull that off, like the people who are doing that and not, you know, destroying their shit are really good at doing that. And I’ve put in years, if not decades to practice that specific skill. But that often gets lost.

Chip Conrad

It’s going back to the suffering challenge is the one thing that creates change in our lives. All change tends to come from challenge. But again, we’re going to believe that challenge has to be suffering. And it doesn’t challenge is challenged. But but it suffering is a whole different animal challenge can be suffering. But like you’re saying, we don’t have to associate great deals of risk with challenge. I know one thing you’re trying to do is you’re you’re gearing up for you’re trying to build up to a Thomas inch dumbbell lift. Yes. And you’re up to the smaller Thomas inch dumbbell, which was 130 something like that like.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I got a I tilted the shit out of it the other day, but I got a lift with two plate mates on it with the 135.

Chip Conrad

I have three dumbbells and the heaviest one was 172 which I think is your ultimate goal. Yeah, I got a 175 Yeah, okay. But I think the lighter to around what you’re doing now. So you know, you can say you’re doing your Thompson’s dumbbell is just not the biggest one. Right? But but that challenge right there. That’s a huge challenge.

People probably won’t grok how hard that actually isn’t. It’s really quite hard. But what’s the worst that’s gonna happen to you if you fail? Or even if you succeed, and you have to work really hard to do it. It’s not like what you’re talking about the high rep snatch scenario, where you’re, you’re putting your body under potentially dangerous, weird load that it needs years of training to catch up. too. So yeah, challenges is what makes the world turning what makes us change as human beings. But it doesn’t always have to be utterly, painfully suffering Lee dangerous.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

And that’s why I like with a lot of clients like having obviously I do group stuff, so I like programming it, but it’s a way to challenge them that’s actually low wrist, right, which I don’t think people generally comprehend, right so I could drop the 170 275 pound inch on somebody’s feet, not hit him be like, Hey, bro, just try to pick this up. And you know, for people listening, like 175 pound one hand deadlift, it’s not that hard for people who have trained, right, that’s very doable ish.

But when you have the globes on the end that don’t rotate, and the handles the size of a Coke can. Narrow, pretty narrow, right? It’s wide, it, it just the rotation, you need to stop that rotation support with your fingers is just exceedingly high. Yeah, but if people don’t make it, like and I’ve got 100 pound replica, and it’s like, you have a duty to lift, I’d say it’s a 50/50 chance if they can even get 100 pound replica up. But if they don’t make it, they just can’t lift it, they don’t move. Right.

It’s pretty safe. So when I did more in person training here, I would have, you know, some younger guys would come in. And the deadlift, like always scared me doing their eval. me years ago, I’ve told this story before we did the the tactical strength challenge. And a buddy of ours came down from North Dakota, HE round back to 455 for a single, my buddy Adam Glass and I were sitting next to each other looking at each other, he walked away and he was fine. And we’re like, on one hand, that’s extremely impressive. He did that and didn’t blow a disc across the gym and just fine.

On the other hand, that’s so scary, I never want to see that. Like pretty high risk. But yet, if you go double overhand, and you put a two inch like non grooved axle in some of these hand, their grips gonna fail way before they’re going to get close to their deadlift strength. So for a lot of times, I’d have people do double overhand axle, like all the my deadlift isn’t gonna get better. It’s like, you need to work on your form first. And this is kind of a stop gap to make sure that you don’t load it so heavy, right? I’ve always seen one guy, my buddy Tanner, who’s like one of the top grip athletes in the world who his grip is legitimately so strong that he could do some damage to his low back.

But I mean, he’s a freak, right? I mean, there’s just not that many people out there that can do that. If they have they train long enough. So they have all the supporting musculature. It’s not a big deal. But yeah, I think there’s ways you can challenge people without necessarily assuming that you’re going to add a whole bunch of risk to them either.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, yeah. And if, if we take it to something that’s not as weird as the Thomas inch dumbbell, you know, we can create very challenging programming for people without it being particularly dangerous. And again, if I’m talking about trading for my value system, I value respect, I value appreciation and value love. I don’t value abuse.

So why would I pick a particularly abusive relationship with my body through a training protocol that manifest that as the way to create a better version of me? If that’s not what the system is? And that’s, that’s why I don’t like seeing people beat themselves up. Because it makes me think, what, what do you think about yourself that you’re doing that to yourself?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Do you talk about mental state when people are lifting? I’ll leave it as a vague question.

Chip Conrad

I ask how do you feel? And I asked a lot about during and after, because one thing I noticed, everybody will tell you, you know, they might come to the gym grumpy, and then they leave feeling better. That’s, that’s sort of the cliche. I came here feeling her and I leave feeling great. What about during what’s happening during. And so I found that, for me, this worked really well. And a lot of my clients started to pick up on it, that if I can, during the process of whatever challenging thing I’m doing, let’s say I’m doing a squat, and I’m doing a pretty heavy squat, and it’s challenging.

Can I actually be present? And just think to myself, wow, look what I can do in this moment. You know, maybe it’s not my heaviest weight, I don’t care. I’m fine. A human being who’s doing this thing. And that’s pretty cool. So why can’t we smile during challenge during an exercise? I find that that turns people around so much. That smile on your face that acceptance and appreciation of what you can do in that moment. Just makes not just the set better, but it’s going to make the entire Workout have more more grounded more part of your actual experience, instead of letting it make you feel better, so you leave feeling better.

I think we can actually be more present and get that mental state where we can appreciate Hey, fuck it, why I can do this is so cool. Um, and that way we don’t defeat ourselves that much. You know, I see a lot of defeatism in the gym, was the old term will you should on yourself?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Don’t should all over yourself.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, yourself. And I see that a ton in the gym where people think that they’re always supposed to be making progress, progress progress, and what they don’t understand is showing up might be all the progress they need that day. And if we can manifest that feeling of wow, look at what I can do, not what I think I’m supposed to do. Or or you know what somebody else’s idea of what I’m supposed to do those those charts and everything that say you’re supposed to squat double bodyweight, you’re supposed to do the deadlift, two and a half, whatever, we can bypass all that and just understand in the moment, I do some pretty cool stuff, you know, then our I think our whole mental attitude will change.

Now, I got to point out though, for some people, and this is totally cool, I get it. I’m sort of like what music probably is for you and I in many cases, we need what I call the tension release valve, or the anger release valve. And sometimes you got to go to the gym and you got to tear something up or, and you have to get angry. Because that’s how you manifest your anger. So the rest of your life isn’t angry. And I get that sometimes it’s just good for your mental state to be angry in that moment. And and that’s, you know, that’s I’ve seen that work for a lot of people. I’ve applied that myself when I compete. In US, I compete in this weird sport called moss wrestling.

And when I competed moss wrestling, I actually have to go to that place. And it’s a real scary place. And I only reserve that for competition days, because it’s a really frightening place. But I can see how people sometimes need to do that. It was was a Dave Tate that had an alter ego named zippy. Yeah, he was this crazy madman, and he had to release it be when he worked out, and that will be calm and normal Dave tape the rest of his life. That works, too. So I think we’re all we’re all going to have a different journey. But we have to define what that journey is and what works best for us. Because we’re often told what that journey supposed to look like.

Like certain gyms have atmospheres that you sort of have to obey. I see this a lot in CrossFit, but it’s also very prevalent in powerlifting. And even yoga gyms don’t have to be a certain way at a yoga gym. There’s these tropes that we almost have to follow when we go to certain situations. And that’s, I think what we need instead is a space that allows us to find what our own journey with our own vision is going to what’s going to work best for us.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

With clients, I often tell them that if you need to do a hard workout for your mental sanity, cool, I get it. Right. That’s in terms of a release, that’s probably the best place to go. But in my head, I’m also thinking to Mike, hmm, could you do that less than less and find other releases? And can you at least be a little bit aware of the, like, we talked about the risk? Because my, my fear is what I’ve noticed, anecdotally is that those people tend to get injured a lot.

And I think it’s because they’re, they’re in that state where they’re not thinking about the risk, and again, not as a pro and a con, right. I mean, if you’re trying to do something very difficult, you don’t want to be under a heavy bar thinking what could go wrong here, right? I mean, that’s not the time in place to to think about that. But I do want them to be aware of the cost and think are there other outlets they could use also or potentially live in less risky movements? Right, maybe get on a rower and do a two kg or a 500 meter. Maybe not pick a heavy back squat in, you know, like a battle.

Chip Conrad

Again, maybe you want to do battle ropes at that point instead? Yeah, triple bodyweight deadlift. Right.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Right. So that’s one thing but at the same point, it’s I don’t want to deter them from doing that because that is probably way better than a whole list of other things they could do that would take them down very dark, not so good, beneficial paths.

Chip Conrad

Yeah. As long as it doesn’t perpetuate itself and become another type of abusive loop.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Right. That’s my fear is that they’ll create some chaos in their life that they can solve in the gym, and that pattern then sort of repeats. And then my biggest fear is that if they get injured and they can’t lift the way they used to, or what do they do that, and I’ve had that happen to a couple of clients in the past.

And one of them scared shit out of me, like I referred the personnel, just psychologist and like you need you need to talk to someone, because they got so stuck in their own head that they couldn’t lift the way they did before and exercise their own demons that it started becoming a big thing. And again, I’m not saying it’s gonna happen, everyone.

Chip Conrad

That’s common enough that we do have to keep an eye out for it. I’ve dealt with similar situations.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

And then even transitioning from college to working like I had to get used to lifting again, not being stressed out of my mind. Right, most of my college career was spent lifting was just the Escape to get some movement so that I could feel sane. And I could actually concentrate again to get any, you know, homework or anything else done. And once that was removed, it was kind of like, oh, this is weird. I don’t know what’s going on.

Chip Conrad

I’m on my own. Oh, no.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. And you’re playing about I think, buddy of mine Frankie’s various said it was like state before skill. So the one thing I think I did correct when I was training here, people more often is that, like you said, my whole goal was that they just leave better than when they came in. Yes, we’re gonna work on stuff, yes, you’re gonna make progress. But I love myself as a flexibility.

So as long as they walked out the door, and they felt better, even if they didn’t do anything more productive, or we didn’t, you know, obey the laws of progressive overload or whatever. I knew that they would feel better, and they would come back. And a longtime client came over once he drove like an hour across town and traffic to my house here. I opened my front door, and he just, like, passes out in my living room floor, curls up in the fetal position. I’m like, dude, like, What?

Are you gonna throw up on my carpet? Like, what’s going on? He’s like, Man, I don’t feel good. I’m like thinking, you could have told me like, you can’t make the session. You could come another day, we could reschedule it as a client at that point for a year and a half. I’m like, it’s cool. Like, why did you drive an hour in traffic to come over here, and just lie in the fetal position on my living room floor? And he’s like, because when I leave, I’ll feel better. And at the time, like, I, I didn’t quite get it, you know? And so I’m thinking, What the hell am I gonna do with this guy?

So just had him started doing some floor mobility, did some z health stuff, some joint mobility, got him up walking around wasn’t nauseous. I said, Okay, let’s let’s go to the gym. Like, what do you want to work on is like, I’ll try some benchpress. And like, I will just stay lighter. Now, like an hour later, he said, like a PR and like, skipped out of here. Like he felt amazing. And I realized, I’m like, holy shit. Like, he didn’t even know I talked to him about it later. Like, he didn’t even know what he was saying. Unconsciously his body learned that whenever I left, I felt better.

Because I just get to this weird dude’s house and collapse on his living room floor somehow. I’ll feel better. Logan? Yeah. Yeah. But I think that’s also good business for trainers, right? Because you want people to come back. Like, even if you have a session that on paper wasn’t that good. But they leave feeling good. odds are they’re gonna come back the next day, and you can do more things with them. But if they get frustrated, injured, they quit. They’re out of the process. They may never even do formal exercise again in their life, who knows, you get another chance to work with them. I think that’s progress.

Chip Conrad

Their workout with us that day, might be the only to whatever degree it is, might be the only success they have that day. No 100%. And so it doesn’t have to necessarily be huge, you know, if that’s why you don’t have to PR every day, you just have to move. And again, that’s why I say showing up, there’s your first success.

And you know, I can picture the guy on the floor, something in his body was just like, if we show up, we did that. Yeah. That that’s, we can chalk that up, because everything else fell apart earlier in the day. And and so I get that, that’s awesome. And if if so after a while of training people for I thought, Well, now let’s see if we can do this. We can have them focus more during the workout to see you know, why they’re feeling good, and why how we can build that appreciation.

And maybe that’s one of the things they can actually take with them too. So if we can build the presence of that, like I mentioned, the appreciation, I’m here doing this thing, look what I can do. I’m hoping they can take that through the door in their day to day life and think I got up this morning. That’s I showed up that way. You know, I’m doing stuff I live a life. This is cool. I can appreciate things better.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, my big thing lately is just violent consistency. Right? It’s like if If you look at anyone who’s achieved anything, yes, there’s broad talent, there’s outliers. But if you go to a high enough level, like no one got there without just showing up, day in and day out, yes, you have to do, you know, intelligent things don’t get hurt, all that kind of stuff. But you have to show up.

And I even think about the example I’ve used for clients is Oprah, you know, very public person obviously has gained weight, lost weight, many times in her life, has a whole bunch of money, she can hire someone to be a chef, she can hire someone to walk around to basically do everything for her. But no one can replace her doing the work, lifting the weights, eating the food, whatever, right.

And you can substitute in with elite athletes, drugs, you know, whatever, that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Like no one is ever going to do the work for you. There’s no magical drug that’s going to do all the work for you. It’s just one of those things where you, you just have to put in the effort, day in and day out to, to see the reward. And there’s just, there’s shorter ways to get there. But there’s no way to circumvent that entirely.

Chip Conrad

You know, I like to say that the recipe for transformation is three key things. Consistency, intensity and purpose. Yes, I like that. Because consistency, intensity would be would be the spark that starts the flame consistency turns into a fire, and then purpose directs it. And if you lack any one of those, you might not quite get where you’re going. For instance, the big one that people don’t talk about is purpose.

You can you know, the transformation is not always a good thing. Sometimes we transform and a good wizard to the dark wizard, you know, it’s, there’s there’s a historically a lot of bad transformations. And so that’s where we have to dial in our purpose, what what is it exactly we’re going to transform into? And then you need that intensity, as long as it’s not the, you know, dangerous risk that we’re talking about. We’re not perpetually throwing dangerous risks at ourselves. And then, like you said, got to do it again. And again, light that fire again, and again, and again, and again and again.

And so those Yeah, that in my one of my books, I talked about that. That’s the transformation recipe. That’s not much intensity, simplest, intensity consistent in purpose. Not what do you just have to define what that means?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and purpose. I know, Dr. Brian Walsh just talks a lot about this to like, people who don’t have a purpose in terms of impact on longevity, it’s I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it’s, it’s pretty high. Right? So. And you see this in people who generally I think, maybe I’ll use the word happier. Most of them that I know, are pretty passionate, and are pretty clear on what their purpose is. I don’t think you have to be 100% clear on what you’re doing for the rest of your life, you just have to know enough to do the next step.

I think you can get too caught up in that trying to think 20 years down the line of like, Oh, I’m doing this job I hate now. And I’m, you know, marking pet food cans on an assembly line or whatever. And, but you may have enough purpose to just think, what is the next beneficial thing I can do? And I think for a lot of people, that’s enough. So I don’t think you need to be super worried. If you don’t know what your grand purpose in your life is. I think it can be a smaller scale thing, too. And, yeah, we don’t get too hung up on trying to know everything into the future. And that’s not helpful either.

Chip Conrad

You don’t ever have to know what we’re going to be when we grow up. No. We just have to kind of want things What do I want to be? What do I want? What feels like, like you said small step? What, What’s tomorrow gonna look like? What’s the next day? Like? What would I like that to look like what my purpose be. And that leads into, you know, goal setting with clients, we have to start asking them, one of the things I like to do with clients is define what strength means. Because we’re fitness you use the word fitness to because we start defining them metaphysically beyond physically, they might have very similar definitions. And I mean, you know, you can talk about the physical definition, the ability to generate force.

But if that’s not usually how we use strength, when we’re talking to each other, you know, in day to day life, we’re talking metta beyond physical ideas of strength, strength of character. And so, I asked people, what is strength mean? And the way we get there is I asked another question, which is fairly simple. Why is it important? And once they start answering that they have their definition of what it is, it’s that simple.

Once you to answer their question, why is strength important? That’s what strength is. And then, oh, look, look how easy it is to set goals from that place. If I say if I asked you why strength important and you say, like you mentioned earlier, I’d like to go and play with my kids. That’s what strength is, you know, your ability to be useful and playful with your family.

Cool, I know how to train you for that we got goals now. You know, what, what, you know, exercises and movements and stuff that’s easy to figure out. But when you have that purpose, and then we’re going to add the consistency you were talking about, I’ll create the intensity, boom, there’s your little recipe for transformation. And you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have your purpose.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I think that also gives you sort of top in numbers to like, I’ve had this discussion, my buddy, Dr. Tommy wood, and Dr. Ben house, a bunch of other people have, if my purpose let’s say, as to increase longevity, right? We’ll just use that as an example, to live a longer life to do more things, whatever things you want to do. We know that like lower body strength, muscle mass as part of that, but we don’t really know how much is enough, right? If you can deadlift 225 315 400 500 600. I would guess that once you start hitting 400, you may be on that part of the curve where it just starts to flatten out. Right? We see this in all physiologic systems. If you look at something as simple like Panzers published stuff on step count and energy burn, once you hit about 15,000 steps, if you go from 15,000 steps to 20,000 steps a day, do you burn more calories? Kind of but it’s pretty damn flat, right?

Your body just gets more and more efficient. You don’t really burn that many more calories. Now if you go from you know, 2000 to 7000. Yeah, that’s a big difference. Yeah. Right. So I think the assumption is always that it must be this linear thing that if I did the 405 100 is even that much better. 600 is gonna be even better. It’s like, man, you, you might have enough already.

And now your cost, your risk starts escalating. Now, I think it’s a different thing, if that’s what you want to do, right? If you say, like, I want to lift the Thomas inch dumbbell, why don’t want to do that? No, the reason that I think it’d be fun, yeah, like, I don’t have any big existential reason, it’s not going to transfer that much to my kiteboarding. At some point, it you know, I probably have enough grip strength for longevity. It’s just something that I want to do, because I think it’s cool. And nothing wrong with that. As long as people understand that. That’s the reason why you want to do it. That’s a good reason.

Chip Conrad

Well, that takes us back to the 800 pound squat. To get to the 800 pound squat. Yeah, it probably lost all of its potential to help you with other things. At 400 or 500 pounds. Yeah, probably not going to get any stronger at anything else. But the squat past that point, you know, like those steps, those extra steps are not really doing anything.

So what do you have to sacrifice to get there? And we mentioned earlier, everything from other skills to speed to relationships to money, because you’re gonna have to eat more food, I mean, all these things. So you know, what does that inner pound squat mean? And you’re talking about the Thomas inch? Yeah, there’s not a lot of sacrifice there. It’s not like you’re going to make a worse, pained, struggling version of yourself by getting there. But you would with an 800 pound squat, most of us would with getting to big numbers like that. So we have to really define what the purposes are more.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. And as I get older, too, I always, I think more about what constraints I’m gonna put on myself, right. So one of my goals is, you know, to lift the kidney stones, and it’s still on my list. But if I’m honest, I’ve transitioned more to the Thomas inch dumbbell would be a higher goal. So I spent more time doing that. I think part of it is just for the reasons you outlined, it’s there’s less risk. You know, honestly, if I want to do the Denny’s, which I can Christ, 140 pound female just did it at the Arnold, which was oh, crazy to see, I don’t think people understand how batshit crazy it is to do that without straps. So is it possible? Yeah.

But I also know that I don’t want to get up to you know, highest ever God to embody what was supposed to 250 when I did a couple of novice strongman’s was back in school. That was pretty fat at that. You know, so I think there’s also limits on what I want to do to get to get there. Right. And I think, discussing what those limits of what people want to do to get there is useful because again, that gives you kind of your guardrails, whether it’s performance enhancing drugs, health body weight, you know food like you said, relationships etc.

And I think as the older I get I’m more in tune with goals that are still difficult are still a challenge. But you know, my buddy Adam glasses, been picking up the inch dumbbell for years and he you know, he did it a body weight of like 210 Right. So for grip stuff, adding a ton of body weight is not necessarily going to transfer to make it better.

And if my goal is not to Get super fat than that, that kind of lines up a little bit better with kind of where I want to be in the future to. So I think taking into account the costs and everything else, somebody else may say, I want to squat 800 pounds, and I don’t care if I weighed 320 pounds to do it. Cool, great, you know, each person has to decide what those limits are. But again, having that discussion around that now versus later is more useful.

Chip Conrad

And then, and that’s one thing experience trainers can do, we can tell you what it’s going to take to get there, and how much it’s going to suck and what’s good, what you’re going to lose on the process. And I mean, you know, my book was called, am I useful? Well, it’s called, Are you useful. And that’s the big goal is I want for me personally, and how I teach people, if you come to me, as a client, chances are that we’re going to work towards making you the best version of yourself.

And my goal, I say this a lot, I want you to be your best, not the best, because those are two different things. And if I’m going to be useful, I’m going to be a useful tribe member, then that 800 pound squat is not going to help. It’s not it’s going to get in the way, it’s gonna isolate me, it’s going to hurt me, it’s going to probably lead to choices later that I can’t even have like the one of the things I say a lot is better choices now leads to more choices later. And the opposite of that is true to poor choices. Now you have less choices later.

So I want people to start realizing what you’re choosing to do now is going to dictate how your journey is going to go the rest of your life. So if I want to be useful, my training is going to have to reflect that part of my value system, that 800 pound squat. And again, we replace 800 pound squat with a bunch of different things. You know, the pinnacle of any movement practice might not be where you want to go, you maybe don’t want to, you know free solo that cliff over there maybe you know, maybe doing a one handed whatever, whatever in your yoga class is not going to be the best thing for you because it’s going to take ages to get off reminds me of the Saturday Night Live skit was a Will Ferrell who’s trying to try to go down himself in a yoga class. And he stays in that very room for months and months and months, until he was finally able to do it. His whole life fell apart around him. And yeah, so anyway, there’s there’s that where you lose so much to get to that thing. So be the best be your best and not necessarily the best. That’s something I like to really drill into people.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I remember talking to powerlifter AJ Roberts about this a couple of years ago, and we’re out to dinner in Vegas and the document, Louis Simmons had just come out which if people haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth watching, I think. And I asked him, I said, Hey, aren’t you going back to Westside to lift again, at some point, I was just kind of joking. So I knew he wasn’t. He kind of looked at me. He goes, he’s like, I saw the document come out. I was, I thought about it for a while.

But he’s like, right now with a family and everything. His wife was sitting across the table, and you can see her, like just shaking her head. He’s like, it’s, it’s just not possible with where I’m at in my life now. Because he’s like, I know, if I did that, like, I wouldn’t be back to where I was before. Right. And he’s like, I, I went there, I did the goal I want him to do. Yeah, he’s like, I probably got closer to paying a high cost than what I realize at the time.

But I did the thing I wanted to do. He’s like, and I know if I get anywhere close to that environment, again, he’s like, I can’t self regulate myself, to not want to do crazy shit again. So he’s like, I just stay away from that entirely. And that was a very wise decision, because you could tell he had thought about it and put a lot of thinking into it. And knowing that it’s just, I can’t even start down that path because it’s not gonna end well.

Chip Conrad

I’ve come out have gone into income out of strongman competition retirement multiple times now. You know, I’m 51. So I’m, you know, theoretically not supposed to be doing any more, but I’ve never been, I’ve never been at this, you know, crazy level where I’m at serious risk. Unless I’m a small guy. I’m 170 pounds, never going to compete. Heavier than that. I have no desire to. I’m never going to compete at a national level I’ve been. I’ve qualified for masters. I’ve qualified for nationals multiple times.

And I’m like, that’s a level I don’t need to go there because it’s going to hurt me in the long run. And a couple of times I tried to retire from the sport and then it funded local meat pops back up and I’m like, ag I’ll go do that one. I got one coming up this weekend. Actually, it’s a it’s a fundraiser called relentless Nashville. And it’s a fundraiser for hope kids, which is an awesome organization. Oh, nice. And so yeah, a friend of mine. Chad was putting it on and he’s like, You want Got to do it.

Yeah, look, it’s within my wheelhouse, I don’t have to train super hard for it, I’m not going to sacrifice anything. So I can do that. And that, that keeps things fun. But that, that keeps things fun. And it allows me to also be able to do the other things I want, you know, thankfully that I’m at a level there, or where I’ve trained long enough that I’ve, I’ve understood the Journey well enough that I can hop into meat, but also still go climb the trees and do the weird shit I do.

And, you know, make these videos of me exploring the world. That isn’t a competition of some sort. And, you know, move in many ways, for many reasons. It’s not just about lifting everything. You you’ve got a whole slew of sports that you do the everything from the kite surfing to the mountain biking. And that’s, that’s the manifestation of your training. Yeah, so if our training can manifest in eight in a layered, joyful and profound movement practice, then I think ultimately, we are more useful human that way. Whereas if we’re doing one thing, and we’re trying to be the best at one thing, we’ve narrowed ourselves down so much that we’ve actually become if to use the term kind of useless. And that’s, that’s, that’s potentially dangerous.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and I think the environments you decided to play in, make a big difference in terms of risk and accepting that. So yeah, I tried to reduce as much risk as I can, you know, kiteboarding, falling safety, and, you know, all those kinds of things, even practicing. Looking, if conditions are not the best, you’re not feeling good of just walking away, which, early on was very hard for me, because your thought process is like, are you just a big pussy go out and do it? Versus Am I scared? Is it unsafe? You know, how, how far to, to kind of push that. And I think I’ve gotten better with that.

But I’ve also gotten better with accepting the risk that, you know, if I’m going to jump 20 feet in the air and something goes wrong, then there’s a huge potential that it’s going to go really wrong. You know, versus in the gym, which I feel is a more controlled environment where I have very little, I mean, freaks things happen. But for me, personally, I have very little tolerance of creating any pain or injury in the gym, because to me, that’s a controlled environment where I’m the only person affecting it. I don’t have outside factors that could change things. So for me, if I catastrophically injured myself in the gym, that’s, that’s an unacceptable risk to me.

But doing other things, mountain biking, whatever, there’s, by nature of that sport, there is just more risk. And yes, you want to modify, but I think you’ve also have to be okay, with what amount of risk are you going to, except for what you want to do? And again, I think most people are starting training. I just see a lot of people get injured in the gym, who are not necessarily competitive, and it wasn’t in a competition. And normally, you asked me like, Well, why did this happen? Well, you know, I had this pain for like nine months, and I just thought it would go away, or there’s usually some warning sign that they just chose not to pay attention to.

And, and I’ve done that many, many times, in the past myself, so I’m by no means immune to it. But the question I was asking when I asked you this question, too, is that if someone comes in is usually typically a guy who’s like, 22, do you think you could train them or work with him enough that he would not make many mistakes where he would get injured? Or do you think that it is just almost human nature where you have to make mistakes, no matter what anybody else tells you.

Chip Conrad

So I like to think that within the system that I’ve created, first of all, by the time they come to me, they know what I do, you know, they’ve seen my videos, or they’ve read my books, or whatever, you know, they’ve been to my workshops, and they know that I want to help them manifest a better relationship with their body. That being said, I think, I also like to think that my training promotes that idea. And you know, we have that conversation between you and your body.

But that being said, I also do like to foster curiosity and exploration. And sometimes if we’re not careful, that can manifest in a gym and so yeah, you take a 22 year old, and if they’re curious, and they want to see what they can do, that might happen in a workout. So the best I can do is say, Look, I’m going to teach you the fundamental basis. and you’re going to master those where you take those. If I’m involved, I’m going to help guide you. If I’m not you, you might go crazy. But I’m hoping we can create a scenario where they, where they, where they choose the wiser, but it’s really hard to tell a kid that that the concept of better choices now leads to more emphasis later. That’s, that’s a tough one. And and so yeah, I don’t because I, she put me as a 22 year old. I was dumb as fuck, and I still am, but without the experience to back it up.

So that’s a tough one. I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of kids. And I liked the fact that I worked with everything from, you know, teenagers into with people who so Gen pop is my jam, because I like to say I work with the misfits. The people don’t like the normal gym scenarios, and a trail of high level athletes, but generally, they’re the ones that are are disenfranchised, as well in some aspects. So I get a lot of the people would not want to go to a normal gym. And so I like to think that I would, I would present a good path and be a good mentor on there. I like to call myself a movement doula, where I just helped guide the birth of the journey.

The 22-year-olds are stupid. I mean, let me rephrase that 22-year-olds can be reckless. Oh, yeah. And so here’s hoping. And again, we crave that rite of passage, no matter how many times we’re told, yes, that longevity is important. We crave that rite of passage as human beings, and so we might find it. So the best I can do is say, I’m going to help you lay down a foundation. So if you do try stupid stuff, you’re less at risk.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, that’s kind of my thought. I would like to think there’s a system or a philosophy or a way to prevent it. But I guess, my thought currently, and I was like asking other people this question too, is that? Can I set up enough guardrails? So they’re gonna put the car in the ditch at some point, it’s just gonna happen. They just put the car in the ditch and not go off the cliff. Right? Can they get enough of an injury that they learned, but not so much that they do something catastrophic? Right. And I, I would like to think that people could learn before that, but I know, I still have a hard time doing that now.

Chip Conrad

Well, our greatest expertise as people have been in this for a while, is understanding how many how many lessons are involved in hurting yourself?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. And usually that happens, because you’ve heard yourself unfortunately, yeah. Cool. As a wrap up as you’re traveling around, speaking of misfits, if you’ve been out to Mark Fisher fitness and New York City yet?

Chip Conrad

No, but we’re in contact with each other right now. Because they market his partner as business partner.

Yeah. And he and I, I found that we’re in a book together. Oh, we both did this, this podcast. And he is the people who ran the podcast put it together in a book form is it was Dan John. Myself, Frank forensic Keeler. Eric Canyon. It’s a bunch of people I’ve taught with before. Or, you know, I knew he was the only one I didn’t know. And so I reached out to him. And I said, Hey, we’re in a book together. And we’ve been chatting back and forth. So I just sent him some copies of my book. And I’m hoping to head up there. I want to teach it. They’re trying to do some workshops in autumn on the East Coast, make a little East Coast tour.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Nice. Yeah, he’s awesome. He’s one of my clients too. And just awesome guy, and you’re mentioning about the first time I ever met him was at the fitness Summit. years ago. I was asked him I said, How are we and what do you do is a common trainer. You know, I own a gym in New York City. And I’m like, Oh, well, what is the gym and box like?

Oh, it’s like, the Island of Misfit Toys for people who hate fitness. This is like describing the gym and I’m like thinking this is weird as hell like this guy is like, bizarro. And then we have like a conversation that night for like two hours about like, some obscure like Russian periodization method. And I was like, Oh, this guy actually really knows his shit too. Well, yeah. Awesome, dude. So that’ll be fun. Yes, let me know how it goes.

Chip Conrad

Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

What anything else working people find you. Are you traveling up the East Coast now or were you off to next?

Chip Conrad

Currently, I’m in North Carolina. I’m heading to Nashville this weekend. Then I go down to oh, this is fine. I’m going to go down to Alabama, Auburn, Alabama, to talk with the author John Fair. Who wrote the the really great book about Bob Hoffman? It’s just called muscle Town USA.

Anyway, John and I have known each other for a while because he’s a historian that I respect and I met him through Jan Todd I believe that oh cool, hung out with him several times at the Arnold’s into the stark center and things like that. I just found out he wrote a book about Tommy Cotto. And Tommy Cotto and I were friends for the last 10 years of Tommy’s life, he Oh, wow.

Gave workshops at my gym. And I knew him pretty well. And so I was looking at I forget why I was online, looking up Tommy kono. And I came across this new book about tiny car. It’s not out yet, but you can preorder it, and I saw it was written by John and I’m like, Oh, my gosh. So I contacted John, I said, I got to talk to you on film about this. We got to do a little interview. So I’m going to go interview him next week. And then I’m going to go down to Alabama. My buddy Dave Hall runs a gym down there called a squat tree because he’s the Alabama Sasquatch, hang out with him for a while. And then who knows where I go next.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Very cool. I assume you’ve read Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors by Randy Roach.

Chip Conrad

I even had an email exchange with Randy for a while. Good. And easy. You know, he’s, he’s blind. Yeah, yeah. Man, I only skimmed the second and third one in that series. But that first, first one that series the muscle smoke and mirrors. So good. In fact, here’s the thing, just quick about books. There’s three books that work really good in order a camera, they were the first ones about Bernard McFadden, who started physical culture magazine back in 1899. And it’s his history. And then you follow it up with muscle Town USA, which almost takes picks up exactly where that one left off. And then you follow it up with muscle smoke and mirrors which which gives us great overview of what happened with Hoffman and after Hoffman. If you want to know, physical culture history for the last 120 years, you get those three series of books and fantastic.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

That’s awesome. Yeah, I would highly recommend anyone who’s into that kind of stuff to, to read them because you’ll but I always amazed is that there’s nothing really that new, like stuff has been almost all done before. But yet at the same time, you’ll still see things or think of things you’ve never thought of before. There’s a guy on Instagram, you probably knows strong man archeology, I think I’ll figure out what his actual name is.

But he was demoing a global squat the other day, you basically do like a people listening, you do like a curl, and you hold it with your palms facing and then you squat holding in that position. And I’m watching it and I’m like going, Why have I never seen this before? And I thought I’ve seen most lifts, you know. So it’s this interesting thing of like, most things have been done before. But that doesn’t mean you still won’t find these little gems to just play around with using basic tools again, which again, makes it fun.

Chip Conrad

There’s a there’s a fun example of that. That the history I think is interesting. The sots press. Yeah, where you press from a squatted position, named after a man named Victor, Victor thoughts. And I was because somebody saw him doing it in a training session and wrote about it. And Jim Smith’s the weightlifting coach, well known weightlifting coach in California, who train some of the greatest American weightlifters in the last 4050 years. Jim was telling me how there’s a good chance that Victor sots showed everybody that lift to distract them from actually getting he’s like that he’s like, Victor probably thought that that didn’t actually do much for you. But he thought how can I just make people do something stupid to waste their time? And he did that?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, those little things too. Like I heard a rumor. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I think it was from Sam Brown and Elite FTS that the Z press or the Vicus press where you’re flat seated and you’re pressing a barbell overhead that supposedly is a Wikus never did and he thinks it’s like just a stupid lift.

Chip Conrad

Why did you guys name that after me?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. Well, I always find those little tidbits are fascinating, too. So I, I wanted to figure out like with Assad’s press, if, like a big lifter was doing this weird, esoteric lift for that reason, that he never really did it, but he’s just trying to, you know, like, psychological warfare. You’re just trying to distract all the competition and have them think you’re doing this magical thing, but it’s actually making them worse.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, apparently that’s been known to happen.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. Cool, man. So where do people find out more? Thank you for all your time, I really appreciate it.

Chip Conrad

I feel like we should be doing this daily. Bodytribe.com is my website where people can join or just read my blog or you know, buy programs or whatever. YouTube is where I put a whole bunch of my energy. So mostly what I do is I make videos these days that are either going on my website for my members, or going on YouTube for the general public. So I travel and film and travel and film and hopefully teach a workshop here and there.

And so through my website, or through YouTube, or through Instagram, by the trade ship, you can get a hold of me pretty easily, it’s not hard to find me. And I love opening dialogues with people I get, you know, I get an email or two, every few days from some random stranger and I just love communicating. So now I’ve through that I’ve friends all over the world who have not necessarily clients or anything like that, just people who reach out.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I really appreciate that. That’s awesome. And to get your books, are they on the website is the best place to pick them up.

Chip Conrad

I think you can also get them on Amazon. They’re just you know, self published on lulu.com. So one of the two that are most popular right now is are you useful, and more inclined towards adventure is the is the most recent one. But yeah, I did a DVD with Dan, John many, many years ago, that’s still available, I think, down on Lurie dreams website. But yeah, I’ve put a lot of stuff out there. But I think the two books right now are the ones that are really wanting people to read.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Cool, awesome. Well, thank you so much, I’d highly encourage people to go check those out. I really appreciate our discussion here. And it was I was thinking the other day, I’m like, wow, I felt like I’ve talked to you already in the past. And then I was thinking about podcast stuff. And I was like, I’ve never talked to him for more than just a few minutes here and there. So I really appreciate all your time. And this was awesome and love to have you back out in the future. Maybe we’ll talk about some old timey strongman lifts and some pointers and tips for people looking at a little more variety into their training.

Chip Conrad

I have an idea next time you’re in South Padre, you should go up to Austin, and we can meet at the Start Center.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

We will be driving through Austin.

Chip Conrad

So let me know next time I’m there live. We go.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

We definitely have to do that. For sure. That is on my bucket list. For sure. I’ve done that with Dan, John. So now I have to do with you. Oh, that’d be great. But that is not on my list. So we’ll definitely make it happen at some point. Cool. Cool. Thank you so much. Most welcome. Thank you. And thank you so much for listening to the flex diet podcast. Really appreciate it.

Big thanks to Chip for all of his time in sharing some of his philosophy with us, I would highly recommend you check out the books that he has published. I like them because they are unique. And he’s talking about things that I feel are very important, but as we mentioned in the show don’t really get discussed a lot. So make sure to check out his stuff. And this is brought to you also by the physiologic flexibility cert, which is open April 4 through April 11 2022.

So if you’re listening during that time, go to PhysiologicFlexibility.com for all the information. This is on how you can set up your life to be more robust, more resilient, and just generally harder to kill. I also believe that most of these interventions will help with longevity, and just feeling a lot better. So if you’ve done well with the basic nutrition and exercise, as covered in the level one flex diet cert, then I would highly recommend the level two which is the phys flex, physiologic flexibility, certification.

If you’re listening to this outside of that time period, you can still go there and get on the waitlist, they’ll put you on to the free newsletter with a ton more information also go to physiologic flexibility, calm. Thank you so much to chip for all of his time. Thank you to listening to this podcast. Once again, if you didn’t hit the little subscribe button or download, and then also share it with a friend who you think might enjoy this conversation. Leave us a review that helps us out a ton. So thank you so much for your time and listening. I really appreciate it. Talk to you next week. I just wanted to come on your chat. Give a little bit of your background and yeah, probably chat about some old timey strongman stuff or just pretty much whatever you wanted to chat about which way to put the toilet paper roll. You know all the important stuff in life.

Outtake

Chip Conrad

We’re gonna be talking about music, I’m sure. Oh, yeah,

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I got my civil tour shirt on today. So very cool.

Chip Conrad

This is my this is my I speak machine shirt. Oh, I think she is a woman who that she opened for Gary Newman. Oh, wow. She’s got kind of if Nina Hoggin or Grace Jones used more 808 kind of

Dr. Mike T Nelson

interesting. Yeah. Ah, how long ago was that? Or is this recent? That was just a week or two ago? Oh, I didn’t know Gary Newman was touring again. Yeah, that was it.

Chip Conrad

It’s it’s the best sounding live show. I’ve seen him. He was both the last concert I saw pre pandemic and then the first concert since the shut since lockdown. So I’ve seen him twice in the last few years. And it’s it’s the best sounding show I’ve ever been to. I don’t, it’s hard to explain. But he creates his massive full wall of sound that takes the sounds of his albums, and then just it feels like he just compresses them so they can expand and expand. Hmm. Yeah. Amazing.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’d love to see him kind of somewhere. I’m sure you’ve heard of Devin Townsend. Formerly a strapping young lad, huh? Yeah, his life stuff is always just like, all these just amazing overlay of sounds and the fact that they can, you know, pull off most of that live obviously, they’re playing to a track a lot of times, but it’s still, that always just blows me away when it’s that complex to do it live.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he had full band, guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. Nice. Just Mm hmm. Wow. Just kiss

Dr. Mike T Nelson

reminds me of years ago, a few months the band industrial band from line assembly.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, I’m supposed to see them open for ministry soon. Yeah, me too. Oh, keeps getting pushed back.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’ve been rescheduled three times and Frontline assembly got kicked off the bill. So Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if that was due to Uncle Al. Or who knows. Depends on who you believe in the industry. So.

Chip Conrad

So I was introduced to ministry through Jello Biafra. Oh, yeah. And later, the next time I saw jello, I said, Yeah, I’m seeing frontline assembly open forum, and he said, Oh, I don’t even think he likes them. So there’s, I mean, he did a song with them. I don’t know what happened since but maybe they fell out.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I don’t know. That tour has been rescheduled so many times and I think it’s still going on in Minnesota, though. I haven’t heard anything. It’s supposed to be on an April and I’m going to be gone. I believe COC Corona conformity is to run with them now who I love. I love COC. I saw him live years ago, and it was freaking amazing. But it’s not industrial. I wouldn’t say that’s like a big industrial package too.

Chip Conrad

I mean, you know, if you were to pick a metal band, I’d say voivod would be a better fit or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, that’s still not okay. I mean, there’s so many other choices. But

Dr. Mike T Nelson

yeah, I’m a nice size from that assumption there live wire tour, which they did the DVD for, like years ago. They the rumor was and I think it’s true. They did everything live on there, like all the samples, like they had two or three keyboard players like all live guitars, all live drums. It was. Yeah, it was amazing.

Chip Conrad

skinny, skinny puppy pulls off for good live show that way. They do a lot of this stuff live.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. You seen them? I assume a couple times. Yeah, I saw them years ago. And it’s so funny to see people who have never really seen them before and didn’t really know what their live show was about and see him just kind of freaking out halfway through this set, not knowing what was really going on on stage.

Chip Conrad

Yeah, I think that’s the point. Yeah, I knew it would devolve into a conversation about music.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I know. And I think skinnypop is still doing newer music currently. I know they had an album out with God four years ago now. Maybe so

Chip Conrad

yeah. And so they’re just a quick aside, their producer has a YouTube channel, which is really cool. He talks about producing industrial music. But But and you know, even if you’re not into the production side, he’s still he’s still so enthusiastic. And he shows all these cool things that he does with the songs and you’re like, oh, that’s fine. Is

Dr. Mike T Nelson

the producer I should know. But I don’t. I’ll send you a link. Yeah. Yeah. To cut out there for a sec. Hello? January

Chip Conrad

I muted sorry. Oh, you’re back. brushing hair off my keyboard. Yeah,

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I mean, I remember back when I was a DJ in college. I remember playing a skinny Puppy was at the rabies album on vinyl, like back cod early 90s. You know? The good guys, the good old days back in

Chip Conrad

the day, what else are we supposed to talk About today

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I’ll just do a short little pause and we’ll just start going we already started anyway we’ll just stick this at the end for people want to geek out on music