Episode 179: Challenging the fitness status quo for better health and movement with Andrew Heffernan

On today’s episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, Andrew Heffernan and I discuss a wide range of fitness topics, including the importance of low-level movement, various cardio intensities, and lessons from elite athletes.

Listen in to hear:

• [11:15] The value of super low intensity

• [18:42] Tabata study and zone two cardio
• [30:06] What happens when you work the body at a high level for a long time
• [36:57] Working for effortlessness
• [42:32} The body’s desire for efficiency
• [53:23] Outtakes

Connect with Andrew:

• Instagram
• Email: andrewheffernan@aol.com

About Andrew

Andrew Heffernan, CSCS is a Los-Angeles based fitness trainer, author, and athlete. Since 2003, he has trained everyone from actors and high-level athletes to business professionals and Hollywood luminaries. His balanced approach prioritizes helping people feel their best as they pursue higher levels of strength, performance, and body composition.

In 2013, Andrew certified in The Feldenkrais Method, a powerful tool for improving recovery, relieving stress and pain, and improving performance. He has written or co-authored five books on fitness, including THE EXERCISE CURE, 7-MINUTE WORKOUTS, and FAT LOSS OVER 40 (forthcoming), as well as hundreds of articles on fitness for outlets like MEN’S HEALTH, EXPERIENCE LIFE, ONNIT.COM, and OPENFIT.COM, three of which have won major awards.

A lifelong athlete, Andrew has competed as a triathlete and obstacle course racer, and recently was a top-five finisher in his age bracket at the 2022 DEKA World Championships.

Rock on!

Download the transcript

Welcome to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. And today on the program, I’ve got my buddy Andrew, and we’re doing a wide ranging fitness conversation. Everything from movement strategies of elite athletes and what we can learn from them in terms of principles. To some Feldenkrais work. How do you do the other end of the fitness spectrum? The very low level movement and why that is very important.

We also touched on zones two and even zone three cardio. Even high-intensity cardio, what is really true? High intensity and getting into a discussion of the tabata study study. And much, much more. So I think you’ll enjoy this conversation with Andrew. And as always, this is brought to you by the flux diet certification.

If you all learn more about flexible dieting meets, metabolic flexibility. So you can increase your performance. And still improve your body composition at the same time. Check out flexdiet.com. It will be opening again for sure. And early January 2023. so you can go to flexdiet.com and get on the waitlist there so thank you so much as always for listening and enjoy this conversation with my buddy Andrew Heffernan

[00:01:42] Dr Mike T Nelson: Hey, welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast, and I’m here today with my buddy Andrew. How’s it going, buddy?

[00:01:49] Andrew Heffernan: Very good. I’m doing great.

[00:01:50] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah I guess you should probably, maybe formally introduce yourself and Tell us what you do out there in California. Obviously you’ve been working as a trainer for quite a while, but you do some other cool stuff we’re gonna talk about today.

[00:02:02] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah my name’s Andrew Heffernan and I’ve been in the industry in various ways since about 2003. Been of course athlete in my own right for much longer than that, but certified 2003 in a couple different modalities. I CSCs I did anm certification back then and started at a, one-on-one training business just like most people do from the beginning.

And at that point or right around that point, I was also developing as a writer. I had a fitness blog, if you remember

[00:02:33] Dr Mike T Nelson: blog. Yeah, I remember that. I had a blogger was my first fitness account in 2005, I think. 2006 .

[00:02:40] Andrew Heffernan: That’s about when I started doing it. And It was, I guess a small enough field so that I was as a result of my blog, I was approached by the Jen Sinkler, who was then the fitness editor, Jen.

Yeah. And experienced life. Yeah, exactly. She hooked you and me up actually with Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was great. And so she asked if I’d done any magazine running. I said, no. But she said, do you want to, we said, sure. That was 2008 or nine, and I’ve been writing for them since then, and I’ve since spread the wings a little bit.

I write for Men’s Health. And I’ve written Fort Nation and on it and the now defunct Muscle and fitness and a bunch of other outlets online and off open fits beach body. I have this sort of sideline as a freelance writer, freelance health and fitness writer. And that’s hooked me up with a lot of great people, again, yourself included.

It’s been great because I get to have personal one on one calls with some of the best people in the industry and just pick their brains under the guise of , researching article. So I do that. And then around 2009 I, I had worked with clients for about six years at that point, and I felt like there was something missing in my skill set in that I would have people who would come and say, I have this or that limitation.

and this or that pain and this or that difficulty. And I would throw everything that I knew at them, but it wasn’t enough. It was, they would still leave in pain or I just didn’t have a subtle enough or complete enough picture of how to work with people who were not only in pain, but also who wanted a, more refinement in the way that they were training.

And so I thought back to a previous life in which I, and I’m telling stories in all kinds of the wrong order here, but a previous life when, which I got an MFA in theater back in the uh, late nineties.

[00:04:25] Dr Mike T Nelson: I didn’t know that.

[00:04:27] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. So I’m an actor as well as many other things. And I remember this guy who had come in and done this thing called the Feldenkrais Method, and he laid us, all US actors down.

We were all like super, like charged up and all done all this exercise. We were all super fit, hit us, lay down on the floor and do these really subtle, small movements. And of course then we’re head in our heads we’re just going, what is this? What’s the point of this? Let’s go up, let’s do some pushups.

Let’s jump up and down. Just look into a movement class. And there’s about half an hour of different little movements, very subtle, and you’re just spinning off in your head about, how useless this all appears to be. And then we all got up and. We looked around and everybody was standing in the most kind of beautifully open, neutral, relaxed kind of posture imaginable.

Faces were relaxed, the breath was dropped. And all of a sudden, the, I mean if you’re talking about it in terms of, theater and acting, it’s like you were much more available, much more open. And you were like, oh my gosh, now I want to get on stage and do something. Cause I’m like, I’m open, I’m free.

And all the guys, had all their tension, their upper body tension, big neck and all that stuff, they just totally drop you look like athletes as opposed to jacked up, bro types. Yeah. And this is true of the women. The women as well. And so anyway, I thought back, now jumping back again to, the sort of early two thousands.

I was like, I want to explore more of that. And so I looked into it. It’s a four year certification program. It’s pretty intense. It was actually in San Diego. And you go down to the training center for about a week every two months or so for four years. Wow. And you learn to teach this methodology of the movement on the floor.

You learn to work with people hands on as well. So there’s that modality as well. It, in some ways, formally, it resembles massage, although the people are clothed and you’re not really trying to work on you’re not using hard pressure in the muscles like you would in roughing or even regular massage.

You’re more, lifting and moving and it’s a learning or teaching process as opposed to a, you work on the nervous system as opposed to working on, soft tissue and muscles and really trying to effect changes there. And I’ve had really good success with it as far as helping people feel better, reduce pain, reduce stress.

The funny thing about Feldenkrais is usually people come to you when they’re of at the end of the line. It is, they’ve had pain that doesn’t stop and they’ve done everything. And so they, okay, they decide to do this weird thing that they can’t pronounce, and I’ve, again, I’ve had very good success again, chronic pain people, back pain, certainly.

But what I also, I like just as much is working with people who, don’t necessarily have those issues. Who are coming to me from with performance needs, right? They wanna move better, they wanna be stronger, they want to they wanna be more flexible. They want to perform better in any kind of any number of different ways.

And when you work with someone like that, like I’ve worked with high level martial artists, black belts, third degree black belts and aiki and such. And the great thing is that I don’t have to be an Aikido master to get that person better. You know what I mean? I just have to, move them around a little bit, coach them through, how to feel their shoulder blade and their ribcage and how these things all work together.

And they stand up and then they apply all that kind of learning to their expertise and they go, oh my gosh, now it’s. 10 times easier to move this person or to execute this throw or to do this jump or whatever it is. And I don’t really know why Feldenkrais hasn’t broken through in the way that say Pilates or yoga, even acupuncture or certainly pt, all these different kind of modalities of body work.

I don’t know really why it hasn’t broken through. Cause I was sitting there during the training going, oh my gosh, this is the undiscovered country. This is the missing piece in in, in, in fitness. Because it’s about efficiency. It’s about providing that foundation of efficiency and ease of movement that you can then apply everything above it.

So you mean you could apply it as a, and you, your nervous system would just do it. But if you had a Felton price session, you went out kite. You would suddenly feel the board underneath you with much greater acuity. You would feel that kite more your sensitivity to where that kite was and where the wind was would just be off the charts.

You would suddenly, and you would suddenly feel like, and at the end of your two hour, three hour, whatever it is on the water, you wouldn’t feel as wrecked. You would feel like, oh, wow, I feel good things work together well. So as a brief introduction to what I do, that one little piece of what I do we can talk more about it, but that’s the big picture.

[00:08:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. No, and I think it the, and we’re talking today an interesting discussion about I think body work maybe, or movements, and I think from the outside, a lot of these things appear very different, right? So I’m biased. I do a lot of reflexive performance reset or deactivated training, which is Doug Heals stuff, depending upon where I’m at and what the legality of it is and all that kind of stuff, but, Looking at it from me working on someone, it looks horrible.

It’s incredibly painful. Yeah. But yet to me, I’m trying to get this to the same place you are at the end of a session. It’s just taking a different route, even though it’s still working on the nervous system. Yeah. So I always find it fascinating how physiology, there’s multiple routes to the same outcome, but I think there’s a lot of probably too much debate online, which I try not to participate in of my methods better than your method.

And I’m trying to do this and you’re trying to do that, and it looks like you’re not doing anything because you’re just standing there barely moving people. And I’m doing this high pressure a r t, stripping the muscle, altering the fascia, whatever. But I think in reality a lot of the methods are probably more similar than they are different, but they appear quite different.

Does that make sense to you at

[00:10:18] Andrew Heffernan: all Complete? Absolutely. And you it’s the people who have the modalities that’re really close that get into the biggest

[00:10:26] Dr Mike T Nelson: arguments, right? Oh yeah. By far. ,

[00:10:29] Andrew Heffernan: like I said, as a death metal fan, I’m sure you there’s verses this oh, this band that does things like fits is so much better.

This one that does

[00:10:36] Dr Mike T Nelson: it just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. This tech metal band’s better than this death core band. I’m like, I don’t know. They’re both pretty cool to me. .

[00:10:41] Andrew Heffernan: Everyone’s just trying to stake out their territory. And it’s funny cuz Feld Price, mostly Felden Price, the founder of the Method he got into he and or his students got into a pretty intense debate with this guy FM Alexander.

Do you know the Alexander Yeah. Alexander Technique, which is kind totally a slightly better known version of dealing with very similar principles. Yep. And of course, thumb Christ and Alexander’s people just, it was like, I don’t know the Monague and the capitals, they just like getting

[00:11:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: into the most, the Catholics and the Lutherans.

You’re almost like the same religion. And I know that pisses people off, but, I grew Catholics, so I can say that

[00:11:15] Andrew Heffernan: human. No, I think you’re absolutely right. guess the, I guess the territory, the zone that, that Feldenkrais operates in, that I think is valuable that I think that particular people in the fitness world aren’t exploiting as much as they could or using as much as they could.

Is that super low intensity? I This sort of the theme that you came up with for this podcast That there’s value in taking that background noise of effort down to almost zero. And what that allows you to do is to sense with much greater sensitivity what’s going on in your nervous system.

That’s why so people ask why you’re rolling around on the floor? It allows those extensor muscles and those posture muscles to just completely relax. So you can make really fine distinctions between levels of effort. That’s essentially what you’re doing. Again, it’s a teaching learning modality.

It’s not about, so it’s nervous system out as opposed to muscles and, peripheral nerves in, right? So you are you’re teaching those nerves to sense much more finely what’s happening. And as a result you can refine your movement skills pretty much, in unlimited way.

In, in fitness, I feel like we’re in many ways addicted to intensity. ,

[00:12:29] Dr Mike T Nelson: right? Oh yeah. Cross Fit. Other. Orange Theory, a whole bunch of places I should stop naming before I get sued. . Oh, they’re

[00:12:38] Andrew Heffernan: come all over us. No, but it’s true. That’s half the reason CrossFit became so popular is that we go and there is a dopamine response to that.

There is a a hundred percent. Absolutely. And I was interviewing Kelly McGonigal recently, a psychologist from Sanford as she was talking about how you learn to love. Those friends of ours who don’t care about fitness or don’t really care about exercise, they’re always looking at us funny going why do you do that?

I, I did 10 sets of 10 on the deadlift or whatever today. I go, hi, why? Why? It’s you don’t understand. It actually is weirdly pleasurable. And that’s something that, that you develop, you get more and more sensitized to those reward hormones, the longer that you do it.

But but there’s a danger to that, right? Cause you, you do too much intensity and it’s very strong medicine, right? You do, you, you start doing that more and then your progress just totally tanks and or you get injured, right?

[00:13:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: I think the big thing there is measuring effort, not output.

And I think, and I love CrossFit. I love all that stuff. I think it’s great. I think CrossFit’s done a ton of positive things for the fitness industry. There’s no question. But I think because of the modality and the amount of variability in it, it’s very easy to get lost in effort and not output, right?

So with clients, I always try to associate, and I’m sure you probably do the same. One of the reasons I love using the rower is you can’t run from the output. Like it gives you the output automatically. You don’t have to calculate it, you don’t have to go anywhere else. And if your average lot’s on a 32nd, on 32nd off you’re doing for rounds and it’s just tanking, it will feel utterly horrible.

But then you have to decide, am I doing this just because it’s hard or am I, do I really want to get better? Yeah. Cause at some point you’re actually getting better at getting worse and just doing things that are hard .

[00:14:29] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. That’s a great point, Mike. Yeah I think that’s totally true. And this is and you totally sold me on the benefits of HRV as well, oh yeah. This feedback, this, objective feedback from Rodney that says, how you doing today? Yeah. And you can get up and be like, I’m gonna go and crush it in the gym. Your HRV. Don’t do it, buddy.

[00:14:47] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And you might be able to do it that day, but you’re correct that you’re not gonna do that day in and day out.

Right there. There’s a cost that’s gonna be paid, and at some point it’s just gonna keep coming. Cause your body’s just eventually gonna be like, okay, that’s it. We’re pissed. Like your output is gonna be so dog shit. Now you’re gonna be shut down whatever word you want to use, that it’s gonna make you pay attention, or you’re gonna get pain, or you’re gonna get injured, or, you, you can only run from it so long

[00:15:13] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. No, true. And who’s it? Dan John who said the goal of a trainer the job of a trainer is to keep the goal, right? ?

[00:15:20] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yes. So

[00:15:20] Andrew Heffernan: I know that. Yeah. It’s, and it’s such a simple idea, but if the goal is to get stronger, better, build more muscle, get whatever it is, and your body’s telling you your output’s crap today.

It’s not gonna help you to just keep bashing away at it, yeah. Yeah, and so yeah, there’s a, with, without those objective measures and forms of feedback like you said, there’s just this tendency to think, all right, as long as I’m going to the gym and crawling out, covered with sweat, I’m doing the right thing.

And in fact, it’s not always true. I, the other joke that I had, That there’s no low intensity modality that the fitness industry can’t stick the word power in front of and play heavy metal music and make that a thing. So power yoga,

[00:16:09] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that’s what I first thought.

[00:16:10] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah.

There are power yoga, the foam rollers, not just foam rowers, but foam rollers with like metal spikes, . Yep. And to literally today, not to go off of men’s health cuz I write for them, but I saw an article today on, in the new issue that was like, we’re doing a meditation class.

That’s it, combined with high intensity and training. And I go what’s, isn’t the, anyway, it just seemed like madness to me. And you’ve talked about this as well, that. We have this idea that the highest intensity like exercise is best at its highest intensity. And then if you can’t handle super high intensity, you gotta go down to the easier stuff, right?

That, that high. And this is a erroneous CrossFit idea that if you do high intensity stuff, it takes care of everything underneath it,

[00:16:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: right? Yeah. And takes care of a lot. But , not everything.

[00:16:58] Andrew Heffernan: Absolutely not. And then if you wanna get better, that high intensity stuff, you need to go back and do some of that low, at some point you need to go back and fill in those gaps like that, that the aerobic stuff and do a little bit more of the e stuff so you can get that parasympathetic system going so that you can find those peaks at the right time.

Is Joel Jameson? I don’t know if he’s

[00:17:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: brilliant. I love Joel. Yeah. I’ve known Joel for years. Yeah, he’s amazing.

[00:17:22] Andrew Heffernan: And what he talks about, I dunno if you saw his. Breakdown of this not too long ago. He he put out a just a, an email, just something his website where he take he accrued all the data from his Morpheus users, his app, which is about, yeah, just for listeners, it’s it’s an HRV tracking app, and it tell, gives you feedback on your performance day to day.

And he’s he’s got, hundreds of thousands of data points, workouts, and then people’s progress over time. And the people that are making the best progress conditioning wise are not the guys that are going in five, six days a week and crush, on, on high intensity training. They, the people who do hundreds of minutes of low intensity stuff that, that boring old zone two stuff.

And then maybe 30, 45 minutes of medium intensity, and then maybe 11 minutes of the high intensity stuff a week. And those are the people that over time, this isn’t just grandma, these are like, MMA athletes. These are the people that are making the best progress over time, are the people that are working that aerobic system, just low intensity.

And then now, and then just hitting that high peak to say, okay, we can do this. And the rest of the time they’re doing easy stuff. It’s it is just a good reminder that you gotta back off, you gotta pump the brakes, , and that, that easy stuff isn’t just a filler, isn’t just kind of junk miles.

It’s actually, it’s actually very efficacious in terms of building fitness and performance.

[00:18:42] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I, my cutoff again, if you use a rower, you could use a bike, you could use whatever. Yeah. To me, like high intensity stuff, right? So everybody goes, oh, the Tabata study, right? Yeah. Which I’m sure you’ve written about probably many times and heard about.

I have to do a whole article on this because it still bugs me. And it’s one of those things they’ll never go away. But if you read the actual Tabata study, it was designed for high level athletes, and the output that was measured on a bike was 170% of their VO two max. So very high. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off.

So not only is it’s less than one to one rest. And it was designed for high intensity athletes to literally not finish all the rounds at that output. Yeah. And I don’t think people understand how hard 170% of your VO two max is on a bike or a rower or something like that. It’s ridiculous.

And to me, that’s like the highest of high intensity, like a hundred percent to 170%. And if you’re really doing that at that output, whatever, it’s normalized for you. So everyone’s gonna be different. Even 10 minutes in a session is absolutely horrible.

[00:19:53] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. And those, yeah. I think there was feed skaters, right? And they . Yeah, they collapsed and they were doing, I think they were doing six, so they were doing, yeah. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off six of those. So three minutes, right? Yeah. And like you said, high level elite athletes and they could not complete it.

So Yeah. Oh, let’s dobo curls.

[00:20:13] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, Tabata preacher curls. That’s my favorite. ,

[00:20:17] Andrew Heffernan: right? It’s like you’re so far off base. Yeah. And the only, yeah. Three minutes, right? So it’s not like you’re gonna do a whole, you, the idea that you could do an hour of that is just, is laughable, right?

Yeah.

[00:20:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And do you think in fitness now there’s, I, what I’m seeing is almost an overreaction to zone two stuff now, right? Because the fitness industry is prone to these massive pendulum swings from one side to the other side. And I’m seeing like, so I’ve had a few people now with just questions of I don’t know.

I’ve been doing my zone two stuff at my heart rate, and I’ve been doing it for, three to four hours a week, and I’ve been doing that for a year now. And I’m thinking, holy crap. Like it, what I’ve seen with people is, yeah, I think that’s helpful for an aerobic base, especially if your VO two max is low.

I think it’s good maybe to go back and do a few periods of readdressing it for 4, 6, 8 weeks in some cases per year. Totally makes sense to me. Yeah. But it seems to be this idea being perpetuated that to be healthy and for longevity, that you need to do, two to three hours a week for the rest of your life.

Yeah. And to me that seems also insane at the same time.

[00:21:24] Andrew Heffernan: No I agree with you. One of the big ongoing discussions that I have with editors in my at the fitness magazines where I work is talking more about the. The sweep of what to do over the course of months and years. Yeah. As opposed to, here’s the cool workout you can do today.

Yeah, great. Do a cool workout today. That is so awesome. But the fact is, as you were just saying, it’s O what, what is happening over time? What is happening over the year? What is your long term goal? And it’s it can’t just, again, most people just go with the immediate feedback of, I feel sweaty and tired and sore.

Awesome, great. But as we just discussed, that’s not gonna get you where you want to go over time. Yes, I think you’re right as far as the zone two stuff, and as far as the high intensity, and there’s a time and a place. So the question always is, again, the Dan John thing, what’s your goal over, over this year, this six months?

Is it, is it just to lose fat and gain muscle? I What most, that’s most what most people default to. But can you break it down a little more specifically and can you think, okay what can we do these three, three months that’s gonna get us closer to that and this three months and this three months?

And then the same thing over time. I just did a I just did the, do you know what? Do you wanna decorat erase this? You,

[00:22:40] Dr Mike T Nelson: I’m familiar. Is that the one where it’s like the, it’s supposedly like 10 different events, is that right? Exactly, yep.

[00:22:45] Andrew Heffernan: It’s 10 different events, hence the name Decca. And it’s all gym based.

So you’ve got a rower, you’ve got a skier, you’ve got a, an assault bike, and you’ve got a bunch of other things, oh, a sled that you push and some burpees with a heavy brand and stuff like that. And so I just participated in the world champions of that in Oh, nice. In Atlantic City. Very fun.

And I worked with a guy, I’d never really worked with a trainer before, and he. I was like, I want, my goal is to be in the top five in my age group at the World Championships is, okay. So I started in August, and it’s pretty simple, as far as the the format of the training.

Started out with some fairly low intensity stuff, just building that. And then over time, I can get more specific, faster and faster. And then we’re doing, race mock races and then went into the race and and I was number four, which

[00:23:33] Dr Mike T Nelson: is great.

Nice. That’s awesome. Congrats.

[00:23:36] Andrew Heffernan: Thank you. But I, at this point I’m like, I don’t wanna touch anything high intensity. I don’t do my risk , but I wanna get away from that. I wanna lift some heavy weights. I wanna, put some muscle back on, and then in four months or so, I’ll start climbing that ladder again.

So it’s, it’s a pretty a pretty well known idea, the periodization idea, where you sweep through the whole year and then you reach a peak and then you go back again. How do you do with your clients, how do you do it as when people just have the general goal of, the aesthetic goals that most people have?

Do you work with a year long kind of idea or how do you work it?

[00:24:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I switched, man, four years ago now to the minimum I worked with people is six months uhhuh, and in reality I probably should have changed that much sooner. Yeah. And I haven’t, any one on one spots open for a while, but I’m even thinking of changing it potentially to a minimum of a year.

So I’d either six months or a year. And then after that it’s just the month to month so they can stay as long as they want. And what I found was it’s much easier because I’d run ’em through whole freaking week assessment in some cases, right? So everything from, a hundred meters on the rower to, if they’re a moderate level athlete, maybe even a 5K or a 20 minute on the rower.

And you do different days, you do lactate stuff, you do a two K, a bunch of breathiness s movement, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Cause what I’m trying to figure out is exactly your question. What is the right limiter, right? So for some CrossFit people I worked with, their med con times weren’t getting any better.

One guy in particular, it’s if you wanna go to regionals, here’s the stats of the people are lifting in regionals and your main lifts are, about 150 pounds below their one rm. So I’m hey man, it’s probably gonna be one, two, maybe three years. You’ve been lifting for a while, you’re obviously strong, but that kind of strength is gonna take years, not months.

And he ended up not hiring me. , curs the telling the truth. Yeah. And some other athletes, it was like, Hey, your aerobic base just sucks because you’re met, coning yourself to death. And yeah, you can beat people in your gym, but when you compete outside your gym, on a multiple day event or even a long single day event, you just get the floor mopped because you can’t recover.

Your aerobic base is so low, you just can’t recover, and a couple of them who did stick with the program went back, worked ’em up to high intensity, did really good. A couple of ’em, their ego couldn’t quite handle it. Cause I told them like, Hey, the reality is I know you’re a gym owner and you like beating people and med con’s at your gym, but during this phase, they’re all gonna beat you like pretty much every single one of ’em because it’s not gonna be our goal.

You have a limited amount of time, you’ve only got an hour to train each day, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And the one person, she ended up firing me like two months into it. She’s I just can’t do it. And she went back and just started doing metcons at her gym. And last I heard, she’s still doing metcons at her gym, , so it’s a hard thing to figure out, okay, what is the rate limiter?

And then from even the psychological standpoint, how do you address that? and then if the goal is, gain muscle, lose fat, yeah, you can do some re for a while. If they’re, nutritions a floating trash bin, fire on wheels, then yeah, you can definitely see some benefits there. But at some point you’re probably gonna have to prioritize, right?

You’re gonna say, okay, let’s take this period of time. Let’s keep bumping up calories, let’s try to add some more muscle. You’re not gonna turn into a fat slab overnight, but you’re gonna probably need to be in a caloric excess. And that’s gotta be the main driving goal. And then, take the old school bodybuilding approach 2, 3, 4 months, whatever, work on more fat loss as a goal, keep as much muscle as you can.

Kind of rinse and repeat. Yeah. And I’ve just noticed you probably noticed the same thing that the higher people get in terms of closer to their genetic potential, especially without drugs, then you just have to be more and more intentional. If you’ve never really lifted before and you’re like even moderate, Yeah, you can probably keep doing a recom thing for quite a while and to do pretty good.

So I think the art is trying to figure out how specialized do you need to get, because in a perfect world, if you can have somebody re recap with what they’re doing, that’s better, right? Most people like that. They’re like, I’m getting bigger and leaner at the same time. But the reality is that’s probably not gonna happen for most people.

So then you gotta, you can’t ride two horses with one ass forever, so you gotta pick one horse and go in that direction for a period of time, and then of change directions.

[00:27:54] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. It’s, and I think that’s, as you alluded to with your CrossFit athletes, that is a challenge for people to take their honor.

Oh, hundred percent. It’s oh, I’ve got a six pack. Okay, now we wanna gain some muscles. So you might, that six pack might get a little blurrier for a while. Ah, I can’t handle it. Yeah. Or like you said, you might have to, your med time might slow down for a little bit. I can’t handle it because they’re so attached to these, their current capabilities that, getting a little bit away from them, from, I just freaks ’em out too much.

And then, it’s interesting that they, they hire, you know what, to my mind is one of the, one of the smartest trainers out there, and then they wind up firing you because they’re not getting, because you had a different way of getting there, right?

[00:28:37] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I’ve gotten better at telling people up front okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.

Especially after we’re running through the assessment, and I’m like, it’s gonna suck. Like in, I’m like, there’s no way around it, or you can just go back to doing what you’re doing before. That’s fine. It’s not my goals , but yeah, it’s hard when. And I also get it because it’s much harder when it’s your yourself.

You’re, and it, I find it’s harder when you’re a trainer because a lot of trainers that’s your life. You’re a gym owner, you’re a trainer. This is your whole identity. And that gets into the whole other thing of maybe you should think about changing your identity to I’m X person who enjoys training, happens to be a gym owner, likes doing CrossFit, and not have it be just the only thing you’re all about, because that’s gonna come to an end at some point for everyone.

Yeah. And then I think if it’s. Not their whole identity, and it’s just something they do. And love those people. I found it’s much easier for them to change gears. And there’s been a lot of very, top level, Chris Henshaw’s worked with a lot of top level CrossFit people where all he did was go back and readdress their aerobic base and it, they had a whole year in some cases, a two year plan to do it.

Yeah. You In some cases that meant not competing at the games. And these are people who were placing very well, top 12, top 15, top 10 sometimes. Yeah. And so I always think it’s interesting to see, do you have the mental discipline to trust someone to take time away to readdress the things you need to potentially be that much better in the future.

That’s a hard thing to do. It’s not an easy thing to do. No,

[00:30:06] Andrew Heffernan: totally. I totally agree. And CrossFit is so demanding in that regard. Because you’re asking the body to be great at so many things, to be high level, close to elite at so many different things. This was, this, the Decker race was hard enough, but it’s basically of one idea of working at anaerobic threshold for about, 14 or 15 minutes.

And so aerobically and conditioning wise, it’s that’s fairly fairly standard in terms of how to train for it. But then if I was also supposed to snatch, 275 pounds , and do, 20 pullups and all this other stuff I totally need a loss. I Those guys are just are total freaks.

And if you had Mark Marcus, Philly not too long ago, do you know he, he was 12th in the games. That was his peak. , I think in 2017 or so. And. The kind of things he was going through. And he was already elite level before he even started doing CrossFit. He was an elite, soccer player, golfer, just a really fantastic athlete.

And then and also the way he is built is just like freakish, just like the level muscle mass and the level conditioning he can sustain just year round. You just don’t see people like that. And and he talked about how, he got his 12th and basically after, so 12th is the highest he got, he gotten after that he was.

I had to just completely, basically do nothing for six months because, just asking the body to do so many things at such a high level is so intense on the body and so stressful. So anyway I’m glad I never went into that. Yeah yeah, what else do we got? What else do you wanna talk

[00:31:32] Dr Mike T Nelson: about?

I think going back to the Feldondkrais thing, what do you think is a role for ultra low intensity? My perspective, I just had a call with another guy this morning. Yeah. Especially the fitness professionals. And I got this, my buddy Dr. Ben House talked a lot about this too. My main go to question now is Hey, what do you do for fun?

Do you do any recreation at all? No, man, I love lifting weights. I love, doing interval training, all this hard stuff. And I’m like, I do ice bass twice a day now. And I’m like, cool. I love all that stuff. I think that’s awesome. But. Do you meditate? Do you chill out? Do you walk in the woods and then learn a new sport?

Like obviously I’m biased to kiteboarding surfing, play golf, tennis, play pickle ball for all I care use other parts of your brain to put yourself in a unknown random environment that’s not pegging your max heart rate all the time. Cause I think there’s a lot of benefit from that. And on the low end of the spectrum, I think there’s a ton of benefit from low level movement walking even no movement, meditation.

Do you feel like felt in Christ plays a role in that sort of ultra low end learning more just about movement of your body without being in this huge, stressful environment?

[00:32:48] Andrew Heffernan: No doubt. Yeah. I mean I’ve been pleased to see that, meditation has. Started to come up as a beneficial thing for, fitness people across the board actually to become more and more accepted.

As soon as you get the hardcore people saying, meditation is great, then yeah, I dunno. Then it allows the pros to go, oh, it’s cool because that whatever Tony Robbins or whatever says it. Yeah. But yeah, felt crisis is totally in that zone. If you, if I feel like everyone who says, oh, I meditate, they always add, I’m not very good at it.

Which is,

[00:33:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: no one’s very good at, I don’t think .

[00:33:19] Andrew Heffernan: It’s, maybe some shallow monks get pretty good at it, but No, I think that’s the idea is that you’re not supposed to get good at it, but it’s self-observation, right? You learn just how much crap is going on in the mind at any given time, and then you get maybe a little bit better.

Calming those voices and getting a little objective about the, your internal state. And what’s cool about Felton Christ, especially for people who have. Who find that challenging? Just that kind of to look at, look into the void and just keep focusing on your breath is it gives you a different point of focus.

So you know, if you’re, if you know you’re just sitting there or lying on your back or whatever, and you have the coach, my in my C class forces me just direct your attention to some particular sensation. Maybe it’s something in your foot, right? Or your toes, your hand, whatever it is, so you could just do it just sitting there. You could go, okay, what is my what are my big toes doing? Where are they? How much sensation do I feel? Do I feel the contact of my big toe with my second toe? Do I feel the contact of my big toe with the bottom of my shoe or with the bottom of the floor?

And you can get very specific, just dialing up the radar in a way on that particular part of your nervous system. And then, so this is even before you even bring any movement into it, most film crisis sessions start with a scan of your body, just how much sensation is coming in. So you can start with again, if you’re lying on your back, where do you feel the contact of your back with the floor?

And that in itself can be a really fascinating kind of exploration because people’s backs contact the floor in totally different ways based on time of day, based on injury history, based on your mood, based on how much stress you have. So you can feel, your upper back is typically gonna be on the floor, your pelvis is gonna be on the floor, and then people have a little bit arch in the low back and then behind the neck as well.

You lie there, you do a few little movements over time. Those postural muscles start to gradually lose their tous, right? Or relax a little bit and lengthen out a little bit and then you can lie down and go, oh my gosh. Back is more fully on the floor. Okay, how does that feel? And that’s a whole, and just, so basically what’s happening is your whole spine is lengthening out.

And it’s not because you stretched, it’s not because foam rolled it with a spiky foam roller, or got in there with some tool and crammed in the muscle. No, it’s just by bringing your awareness, your attention to what’s happening in the spine. And maybe you’re doing some small movements, but it’s never stretchy.

It’s never the intention isn’t to affect the tissues. It’s to affect the nervous system and go, these become more aware fundamentally of what’s happening, what, what, how much tension, how much effort is running through your system. And all of us walk around with way more tension than we need all the time.

Most of the time we’re just not aware of it at all.

[00:36:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: Most of we’re unconscious to it.

[00:36:04] Andrew Heffernan: Completely unconscious. It’s it’s like we’re walking around with 60 pound. Stone on her back and then oh, I feel fine. What Alcon Christ can do and go, what if we just put that down? What’s gonna happen?

Not not scolding, not like you’re doing something wrong. Yeah. . It’s just let’s give you the experience of walking around without that on your back. And you go, why? Why do I do that? It’s just, it just, it’s habit, right? It’s it’s what we do, all the sitting that we do, it’s stress, right?

And that’s like socialization. Guys wanna walk around looking like they have a huge neck or big arms or whatever. And so they walk around tension, right? The bodies,

[00:36:41] Dr Mike T Nelson: my wife told that a friend of ours did that once she entered a room and we were trying to remember his name later when I was explaining to him and she’s oh, you mean sunburn armpits guy?

[00:36:51] Andrew Heffernan: Exactly. The imaginary

[00:36:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: lap syndrome. Yeah. I, yeah, we’ve all done it. We all,

[00:36:57] Andrew Heffernan: we don’t wanna look cool, and Jack. But so fine flex a little bit, but don’t do it all the time, man. Just put, learn to put that weight down, learn to have a little more awareness of what you’re doing with your body at all times.

And life just improves. So yeah, back to your question, is this as far as the benefits of ultra low intensity movement it’s just to get you to make the rest of your life so much easier, right? Why walk around like that all the time and then take that level of sensitivity awareness into the performance stuff that you care about, type, boredom, CrossFit.

Olympic lifting, martial arts, dance, whatever it is, and you realize that even in those endeavors, you’re working way harder than you need to, right? And so you take away that, you take away all that extra what film Christ called parasitic tension. And then everything else becomes so much easier.

I often point people to if you’re looking at a great athlete, there’s some brilliant, Roger Feder, Michael Jordan, Seren Williams, whoever he is you don’t necessarily admire the effort you admire the mastery and the degree to which they make a hard thing look really easy.

And they make a hard thing look easy cuz it is easy to them, relative to you or me trying to blast 110 mile serve across, they can make it work cuz everything’s working together, right? So if that’s the ultimate goal, right? If we’re all on some level shooting for the pinnacle of. Really high performance, really high efficiency.

Then our training should include an element where we’re working for effortlessness, we’re working for greater ease, greater efficiency. Not just, okay, how many bench presses can I do with the crappiest form imaginable to get this weight up? But rather how much effort, how much work can I do with as little effort as possible?

Cause that’s what Michael Jordan can do, that’s or could do back in the day. That’s what all this great athletes could do. And you go, you can immediately recognize that as human beings, you immediately can go, that’s really good. That is beautiful. Just like we can recognize someone who’s not doing it well, right?

Who’s got asymmetry in the way they move, or some kind of hitch or some kind of limp or something we can recognize. The beauty and the coordination and the balance and the ease as well. And I think that’s where we should all be trying to go. And low intensity work is I think, a very efficient way

[00:39:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: of doing it.

Yeah. The examples I always think of is the high speed film of Usain Bolt or high level sprinters running where everything is super fluid and yes, he has a little bit of asymmetry, whatever but even their face, like their lips are moving around because their face is so relaxed, but yet they’re destroying everyone on output.

You know what I mean? It’s not like they’re slow, right? Cause it, a lot of times I think there’s this thing where effort equals outcome, but yeah, it’s true, but only to a. Where their sport is all designed about efficiency and everything is timed right. So you, it’s very clear who won the race and who didn’t for whatever race.

Yeah. I also think of like American football of a receiver catching a pass with both feet and bounds just falling out bounds or even outstretched as they’re doing. It’s, they just make it look like, oh yeah, this is just what we do. It’s okay, that’s crazy to see or Yes. Even certain running backs.

Obviously I’m a Vikings fan, so Delvin Cook does crazy jump cuts and stuff that he makes look easy, but then you realize he makes other elite players miss. So it’s wow, that’s, or I always think of Barry Sanders back in. Right how far he could be overextended on just like his left big toe.

And he played for the lions. The lions were horrible and he still did really well. . Yeah.

[00:40:43] Andrew Heffernan: With not a lot of help. Yeah. Yeah. And add to, American football, just add to that, that it’s. That it’s in the moment and it’s improvised. Iain Bolt gets to practice that a hundred meters.

Yep. Basically in, in competitive conditions, pretty much whenever he wants. Whereas Barry Sanders back in the day or these amazing running backs, they could practice, but it’s like you said, is it gonna be exactly the angle that you know, Kirk Cousins or whoever just throws the ball with?

Exactly. No, it’s never gonna be. So they’re figuring out in the moment it’s split second time. How to keep their feet in while they’re catching the ball, while they’re avoiding the tackle, and everything else, and how do I keep my contract for next year? And, everything else that they’ve got going.

Their lives. It’s, yeah, it’s quite astonishing. But yeah, so when you’re talking about athletes of that kind of level of elite performance it’s a kind of a whole different bag. But I do think that you and I and normal mortal people can get closer to that. Yes. If we just keep refining

[00:41:42] Dr Mike T Nelson: principles are the same.

[00:41:43] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. Principals absolutely the same.

[00:41:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. So would you say that Feldinkrais is working to paradoxically increase unconscious feedback by using a conscious method? Because it, correct me if I’m wrong, but the practice is very conscious, very focused, driven. Little bit that I’ve seen and worked with people.

Yeah. But I don’t think that is the end goal. I think the end goal is to take that information, have it is a matrix word, upload it to your nervous system, uhhuh, so that when you leave that practice, You have a better, maybe map of where your body is better appropriate deception that your physical map of where you are in space is much better so that your unconscious movement is easier.

Would that be a fair statement? That’s a very good

[00:42:32] Andrew Heffernan: statement. Yeah. I think you go from breaking things down very consciously. So you, you dial up that awareness like, what’s the big toe doing? What’s the ankle doing? What’s the knee doing? And then when we add movement to it, how do those pieces come together?

How do those all those disparate 625 muscles of the body, how do they all kind of orchestrate? You can’t walk around like that, right? your head makes explode, right? So yeah you’re practicing. I mean it’s akin to, I play piano badly, but alright, if I first start playing a piece.

It’s a mess. And I gotta go OneNote at a time and one finger at a time, and one little, one, one little, little note at a time. I’ll tie together. But if I work on it for, way too long, but for me, in my case, really long time, then it can actually sound pretty good. It sound like music.

I’m not thinking about what those what all those fingers are doing. It’s a, it’s very much the same kind of principle, but again, it’s not a principle that we often apply in the fitness world because we’re thinking of the separation between the mind and the body, right? We don’t typically we typically think I’m working this muscle.

You’re not thinking, I am teaching the conductor in my head to conduct all these 625 musicians of muscles with greater to put them together with greater harmony to have them having them behave and activate in in a more synthesized way. So yes, in the film price session, if I’m coaching someone or if I’m moving that we’re not even working with language and I’m say, moving your arm.

Or just gently turning your head or something that immediately is gonna draw your attention to, okay, how do my cervical vertebrae kind of all work together? How does this one affect that one all the way down? And you might not consciously understand quite what’s going on, but you’re naturally, you’re sensing things with just greater awareness, greater attunement, so that when you stand up and you leave the session, absolutely that carries through because your body is attracted to efficiency, right?

Yeah. It’s if you drive home a really circum, cute roundabout route and someone shows you, you know what? There’s a service road that just goes in a straight line. You’re never gonna do that route again. It’s gonna go on the service route. So in the same way with the nervous system, it. I show you, I show your nervous system or practitioner shows you, or you learn it yourself through through an awareness movement lesson where I’m just coaching you through and you just are aware and you go, oh, wow, my, I can move this shoulder blade in this kind of cool coordination with my ribs and I can get way more extension on that arm than I could before.

That’s new down or uploaded information, usually your matrix word. And so you’ll never do your your habitual parasitic tension way ever again. You’ll go, I can always, I can have six more inches of reach on my, maybe it’s just reaching across your desk, or maybe it’s throwing your jab, you have way more reach than absolutely.

Yeah. So the nervous system lights up and goes, oh, we like this. This is easier, right? As opposed to some methods where it slows actually the opposite. So you have to constantly be thinking, I mean some postural methodologies are about like, pull the shoulder blades back. Yeah. Sit up really tall and put up a lot of tension in your lower back, and then two seconds later you’re gonna be slap.

But if you spend a few minutes, or an hour doing a film press lesson where you know which is about the position of the pelvis or about the position of the shoulder girl, then your body’s immediately gonna fall into that much more easily than it would if you’re doing something with a lot of tension.

[00:46:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I’m, years ago I used to get in these debates with postural people and the pain people, and my question was, okay, so if I don’t have the best posture in the world, and I’m sitting like this, yeah. And my scapular retract are so weak, how come I can pull myself into the right position? How come it doesn’t stay there?

And they’re like, oh, they’re just so weak they can’t hold it there for long periods of time. And I’m like, Eh, maybe in some cases, but I don’t think that’s true in most people. And so I agree with you. I think it’s the nervous system trying to find the most efficient position for you. That doesn’t mean that’s the most efficient position for physics, it just means for your physiology.

You’re wiring, your connections, your nervous system, whatever, that’s more efficient for you at that time. Yeah. But like you said, I think there’s always another level, and if you can do something and demonstrate and allow the body to have a greater capacity, the amazing part to me, especially with breathing even, it’ll want to be more efficient, right?

The fact that I can work on someone for two hours and that breathing pattern will stay pretty good for a period of time and it’ll, you’ll watch it immediately switch over because you’re, do you want to be more efficient? It just, it couldn’t do that thing before, right? So now you’re enabling it like, the service of analogy, which I like.

You’ve given it another thing to do, and it’s going to take the thing that’s more efficient, because that’s just how we’re wired physiologically.

[00:47:24] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Save energy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the postural thing is interesting. Film press talked about posture and he was like, he didn’t even like the word posture.

He he, he tried to create a new word, which was actor . Posture is a position, a held position. And he just believed, and I think it’s true, we’re always in movement. We’re always in motion. To some extent. And so he was like is this a good posture? If I’m trying to reach over and lean and grab something from the ground, that it’s a really good posture year.

It’s absolutely perfect posture, right? So with him, it was never like, most postural things, it’s like they show you from the side what the person is supposed to look like. Your head’s supposed to be over this. , your children’s supposed to be like okay. And maybe certain limited situations.

That’s a good posture. But if you’re emotional all the time and you’re trying to accomplish things and move and express yourself, then you might move through that. But then there are many other postures and positions that are perfectly acceptable and good.

There’s something, I think it’s just something a little bit like it’s too aesthetically driven, , we’re supposed to be like this because this is how medics stand or something. , a good slouch feels really good sometimes, as long as you have other options, right?

As long as you’re not forever stuck in this, thoracic flexion kind of thing, then I think you’re okay.

[00:48:36] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And last part, that’s just the p i Iranco talked a lot about can you reciprocate, can you get into the position and get outta the position? Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

We, we tend to look at static stuff, but we’re always in motion. We’re a little bit as asymmetrical, but can you get into a beneficial position or to tie your shoe, whatever, and then can you get out of that position? You don’t wanna get stuck in any one position, whether that’s a gate, left stand swing phase, whatever.

You wanna be able to get in and get out and have that amount of variability.

[00:49:05] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s absolutely true. Yeah. And you, it’s interesting when you, what’s the modality you practice or you work on

[00:49:11] Dr Mike T Nelson: with people? I do primarily rpr reflexive performance reset, and then I do some, it’s called deactivated therapy, where I do more of the hands on portion, which is Doug Gill stuff.

[00:49:20] Andrew Heffernan: Nice. Nice. Okay. I’ll have to look into that one. It’s not one I’m terribly familiar with, but when you’re working with the film trust method, you are so at the beginning, if I’m working with someone hands on, I’ll have ’em stand and I’ll typically stand behind them and you just do a little shift, put the hands on the hips.

I dunno if you have this in your method, but you do a little shift left and right. And you do maybe a little shift to the shoulders left and right. And maybe just a little bit of the head. And at the beginning, most people are really rigid, so they don’t have a lot of, one of your, one of your phrases fine scale variability, right?

Yeah. There’s not a lot of fine scale variability. They’re too rigid, so they can’t, they’re, they don’t shift. Left to right or rotate. Or do lateral movement, either lateral selection and then you do an hour, 45 minutes, whatever it is, a film, Christ with them.

And then they stand up and they’re like, they’re like a sapling, right? Yeah. So is soft. So it’s like they’re not, if a strong breeze were anybody to hit them, they wouldn’t fall over. They would just roll with it. And then, like you said, that’s restoring that degree of that of fine scale postural variability, which I, it is, really important as far as just function and and health.

And injury prevention and all that wonderful stuff or try to get

[00:50:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: at. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for all your time and great discussion today. When can, where can people find out more about you?

[00:50:36] Andrew Heffernan: I’m fairly active on Instagram, Andrew Heffernan Fitness is my handle. I did wanna say that if anybody listens to this, was want, wanted to get some direct experience with the Feldenkrais method, they can hit me up.

Just send me an email which you can put in your show, but it’s andrew heeran aol.com speaking. Oh boy. AOL being the last person in California, most the last person in AOL hein@aataol.com. And I’ll send you you can get access to thumb price lessons on my Patreon page and I’ll give you that for four weeks if you’re interested.

So those are the places.

[00:51:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome. I highly encourage people to check that out. I think it’d be very useful for a lot of people, and especially if they’re in your area and they can get some practice in person, just like training, just like anything else. Obviously online stuff can be useful, but I think if you can get access to somebody in person, that’s even more valuable.

So I would highly encourage people to check that out. So thank you so much for all your time. I really appreciate it. It was pleasure. Great chatting with you again. Likewise. Take care, Mike. Cool, man. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thank you so much to Andrew for coming on the podcast today and hope you enjoyed our kind of wide ranging discussion here. As I said, at the end, if you have the opportunity to work with him in person, I would highly recommended. He has other services too. I would recommend checking out. So thank you so much as always for listening to the podcast.

We really appreciate it. For more information on a nutrition regarding the flux diet certification. You can go to flexdiet.com. For all of the information there. It will be opening again in early January. 2023. So make sure to sign up on the wait list there for all the information.

Go to flexdiet.com. Thank you once again, as always for listening to the podcast. If someone you think may enjoy this podcast, please forward it to them. We appreciate any and all reviews as it helps bump us up in the old algorithms thank you again talk to you next week

[00:52:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: And if you wanted to hang around and listen to some outtakes from the start of our conversation, I decided to leave them in. And I just stuck them here at the very end of the outro after the out-tro. So if you’re interested in some fitness, Stuff and what’s been going on here in south padre kiteboarding dolphins et cetera they can enjoy these last few minutes here of the outtakes from the podcast

And cast.

[00:53:23] Dr Mike T Nelson: . Good morning. How you doing? I’m good. How are you?

[00:53:27] Andrew Heffernan: I’m excellent. How’s life in Minnesota?

[00:53:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: Pretty good. I think we’re still down in South Padre .

[00:53:31] Andrew Heffernan: How’s that? How’s the how’s the kite morning?

[00:53:34] Dr Mike T Nelson: It’s been good. It was windy yesterday. I wasn’t able to get out just due to work stuff. And we’re headed to, we’re leaving here tomorrow morning.

Oh, okay. But it was good. I got in a fair amount of sessions. I feel like I got to go out most of the time. Schedule wasn’t too bad, having to work in the evenings is fine and stuff. But it was good. I didn’t quite get, I was trying to get a goal of a 20 foot jump vertical. Now I got close, I broke my PR on a small kit.

I got a 17.2 on a tiny nine meter, and then I got a 17.7 on my bigger 13 point a half meter. So that was progress. And yeah, got a new distance PR and got more jumps over 10 and 15 feet. So definitely made a lot of progress and got close got to kiteboard with dolphins, so that was pretty amazing. Oh my God.

Yeah,

[00:54:23] Andrew Heffernan: that was like, dolphins were kiteboarding as well.

[00:54:24] Dr Mike T Nelson: That’s impressive. Yeah. Yeah. They were next, they were like 200 feet from me, nice.

[00:54:29] Andrew Heffernan: Now a question does everybody who kite boards, is it a, is it an activity that a lot of people are really into the data for or are you more unique in

[00:54:38] Dr Mike T Nelson: that.

It depends, like there’s this like little bit of a penis waving contest of who can dump higher than somebody else. So there’s, there definitely is some of that. And it’s nice to have a metric to actually compare and you’re using the same metric, so it’s like, hey, so it’s of fun.

Some people don’t. It just depends. I’d say more people do some basic measurements now which has been fun because it’s like, A fun competition. You actually have data to say who actually won and who didn’t, cause otherwise, like you could be like, oh, I did this 60 foot jump out there.

It’s yeah, sure you did buddy. Nobody saw it. Nobody, can vouch for it .

[00:55:12] Andrew Heffernan: Yes. It’s the straba thing, right? You gave, absolute rights, bragging rights, but you also lose some of the kind of big phish stories. You should have seen me, last July

[00:55:21] Dr Mike T Nelson: or whatever, yeah. The caveat is it doesn’t tell you if you landed it. So there was this, I even had this in my own head. I’m like, man, it’s pretty tempting. If there’s high enough win the next day just to do one, just to say I broke it and have no prayer of landing it. , Ah, God, I don’t know.

I’m past the point where I don’t know if I want my body to cash those checks that my ego wants to write. .

[00:55:45] Andrew Heffernan: Yeah. Yeah. No, after a while there’s definitely, yeah, I just went to a my son’s really in a basketball. Oh, nice. Yeah. We went to a he’s, he’ll be in high school next year, so we’re doing the LA nightmare of trying to figure out where he’s gonna go to high school, and to some extent it’s about pulling strings and about, anyway, it’s a whole nightmare. But we went to, we’ve gone to a couple basketball games, and, in la I guess maybe just all over. Eighth grade basketball is it is really fast. They’re Oh, wow. Yeah. Kids are practically dunking at that age.

Damn. That’s crazy. When you’re talking about those big high schools of 3000 kids, some of who have recruited kids from all over, you get a team that looks like a mini D one team. But anyway, I was watching and I was going, I’m in good shape. And I was like, I would not wanna throw it out with those kids like

It’s like my knees just cry out in pain just watching them, but I’m looking forward to my son being able to do it.

[00:56:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: That’s a good, yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. And you’re one of the rare people I know who still lives in la. I think you might be the only person I know who still lives in California, other than a few holdouts in San Diego, but that’s like a different country now, almost yeah,

[00:56:52] Andrew Heffernan: that’s true.

Yeah. San Diego’s a big fitness area. Yeah. Ben Bruno still lives out here. Do you know him?

[00:56:58] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, that’s right. He’s number two. But yeah, I heard a rumor he may not be staying for long anyway, that was just a rumor. Maybe you’re more, I shouldn’t be saying

[00:57:05] Andrew Heffernan: anything than I am. He’s he came in and he really made an early impression.

He was, he’s training like Justin Timberlake and all these Yeah. Makers and everything. And I was like, man you crushed it. Right off the bat. That’s interesting. He’s thinking about leaving and then Chad Waterbury is

[00:57:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: still around. Oh, he is? Okay. I haven’t heard from Chad in years, so I know he was out there quite a

[00:57:22] Andrew Heffernan: while.

Yeah. He goes under the radar and then he’ll resurface and go, Hey, you go. Okay. Still around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, those are the two kind of big industry guys that I know. And then of course there’s a bunch of trainers and stuff, swinging their little shingle out

[00:57:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: there.