#18 From Knockouts to Psychedelics: MMA Fighter Quintin Torres’ Story

[Music] to me is kind of a different animal because your nervous system has this like impending doom feeling cuz you know you're about to take an immense amount of damage. The weird thing about getting punched in a real fight is you don't actually feel it and he just soccer punched straight up and I turn my head and I see his shin like coming to my face. It was like in slow motion. Then all of a sudden it just like hits across my face like this and I hear my nose crunch. A lot of people like thought I was going to do well. I was like a like a really high upandcoming prospect, you know, and I got a lot of hype, but that put an insane amount of pressure on me. And I go into the mirror, I look at myself and my face is [ __ ] up. Holy [ __ ] I can hear my life flowing in my skull. Quinton Torres is an athletic trainer who focuses on nervous system training. That's a different type of training from what most of you probably know about, which is usually just time under tension, heavy barbells, uh, hit training, those sorts of things. This was pioneered by the Russians actually uh and they were trying to measure their gymnasts with their explosive power and they developed this entirely weird training system that really can't be done one to many. You can't be one personal trainer and have 30 students in the room and train them on this because it's very specific and very technical. So he created an online system about nervous system training. He has a couple hundred thousand subs on Instagram and he really focuses on men over the age of 40. I've actually started using some of his trainings and found it really nice in the gym. Uh, a lot of it's focused on feet and getting your feet really strong. Uh, he likens it to having, you know, a really amazing car with a fast engine, but if you have terrible tires, it's just not going to go anywhere. So, it's a new style of training and he's a former MMA fighter as well. So, we got to talk to him about his time in the cage, uh, training older men, and overall, he just has an amazing perspective on life and I'm glad to have met him. I really appreciate everyone on this channel. If you can hit like and subscribe, we're still a brand new channel and it really helps with the algorithm and this is a really fun conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to the Austin and Matt podcast. I want to hear about your first time cage fighting. Are we recording now? Are we are we live? Okay. My first time cage fighting. Oh Jesus Christ. Uh let's go back to like 200 uh 11 I think was my first time cage fighting. And I remember uh I was like I trained for like three years to get ready for it. You know, I kept pushing it back. Wasn't sure if I wanted to fight because I really just love training, you know. I loved the sport. Um actually found out I love training more than I actually like competing, which is why I became like a coach. But I remember um my opponent showed up to the weigh-ins and I was a lot bigger than this guy. Like he was not in shape. He was not it, you know? And I even could tell I'm like, "Well, I guess I'm just going to have to kick this guy's ass." Like, bro, he could have should have came in in better shape. He didn't show up the night of the fight. He totally backed out. You know, he knew what was coming. And it's like amateur MMA in Michigan, like 2011. It was basically a free-for-all. And so, I'm like sitting there and I'm like, you know, so much anxiety. Like, when do have you guys ever competed in MMA before or martial arts? Uh, I was a wrestler for about a decade, so I've done that. You know, like you get the butterflies before like, you know, a big a big competition or a big meet, you know, you're like, "Okay, like here we go." Like we're going to compete. And I've felt that before for like football and track, but MMA is kind of a different animal because your nervous system has this like impending doom feeling because you know you're about to take an immense amount of damage potentially. And so like your your threat detection is really high and you're just like like your first amateur fight you're like just so like you're either really amped up and you ready to do this. Usually wrestling kids are like that because they've been competing for so long they lose their fear or boxers they have like they kind of been through the fire a couple times. But I never did any no boxing uh no grappling no just MMA just going straight into it. And I was had so much freaking anxiety. And I remember when I showed up, my guy, my opponent backed out. And I'm like, well, [ __ ] Like, okay, I guess I'm not competing tonight. And they're like, hey, we got this other guy. He's like four and two. He's away class above you, right? He's like, he doesn't have an opponent either. He just showed up and he's just looking to get some more experience. Like, do you want to compete against him? And I'm like, this doesn't seem like a good matchup. And all my friends were like, "Dude, you could kick his ass. Like, how? He's only four and two doesn't mean nothing." And I'm like, "Are you sure? Are you sure, guys? Like, four and two? Like, that's a [ __ ] ton of fights. Like, that's way more than I have." Well, and what if he lost the first two and has won the last four? So, so I'm like, and he's a weight class above me. So, so he didn't cut any weight, nothing. And I'm like, and I'm like, you know what? Like, fine. Like, I I worked this hard. I've been building this up for years. I'll take the fight. I'll just go for it. And I remember uh when I got into the fight, he was a little bigger than me. He's a little taller. He's a little bigger. Uh but I just I just like went for it, you know, and when you first do your first cage fight, the first thing I ever noticed was how hot it is, you know, like your skin's kind of like burning. Well, one, your adrenaline is going, you're like your vasoddilation is through the roof. Like all your veins and arteries open up to supply your body with blood, you know, and because of the adrenaline. The second thing is the lights are hot. You know, I don't know if you guys ever been on stage before. Like those lights can get hot. Like they'll beam them on you. And I just remember feeling hot as [ __ ] I started sweating immediately. And then I I remember like I'm like getting myself fired up. Like I'm in the cage and I look at him and he was pretty chill, pretty casual. And then he started like feeding off my energy and then he noticed how fired up I was getting and he started getting fired up and I'm like I'm like I don't even I don't remember what I was thinking after that. you kind of just don't really think uh until like the fight starts. And I remember the first opening couple minutes I was doing really good. Like I was moving around. I was landing strikes. I had good footwork and I I don't remember anything. I my I was on autopilot. And then all of a sudden he kind of like he wakes up like a minute into the fight and he just starts throwing punches. And the weird thing about getting punched in a real fight is you don't actually feel it. Not really. You can sense it like you kind of sense like like your like these flashes start happening and then all of a sudden I can like I kind of like I remember like turning my head and I saw some blood come out like laying on the canvas and I'm like oh [ __ ] I'm bleeding like [ __ ] he's hitting me. I was like I'm like like I like like you're trying to like I never been punched in the face before like like full contact in MMA gloves. You're always sparring with like boxing gloves. It's a totally different feel with MMA gloves. And here's another trippy thing is when you hit someone, it does not feel like the heavy bag. It feels way softer. And I couldn't tell if I was hitting him. Like I'll throw my strikes and I was like, "Did I hit him?" And but there'd be blood on his face. I'm like, "Okay." Like I'm hitting him. Like it's we're fighting, right? You You don't get that feedback that usual feedback you get from the heavy bag where you just it hit it punch it stops your fist. You kind of punching through it. And it's it is really soft and you don't feel it on your knuckle. Like when you hit the mids like you hear like the pop, you hear the crack in the resistance. With this, you don't really feel that. So it's really deceptive, you know? I almost couldn't tell. It was like, have you ever tried fighting someone in a dream and you just like you can't like do anything to it? Felt like that a little bit. And next thing I know, he's bleeding and I'm bleeding and he freaking just starts storming me. Like his adrenaline really kicks up and and I was not used to that kind of like pressure. I started like I started to panic a little bit, you know, and then he throws this crazy head. It wasn't really a head kick. It was more like a soccer punt, you know, where you hold the ball and you punt it. And I remember I tripped onto the cage and I tried to like do this to get out of the way and he just soccer punts straight up and I turn my head and I see his shin like coming to my face. It was like in slow motion. Then all of a sudden it just like hits across my face like this and I hear my nose crunch. And I remember thinking like this came to my mind. I was like, "Holy shit." Like I was like, "Oh my like, wow, that really hurt. That was really bad." And then and then after that, I kind of froze up a little bit the rest of the first round because I've never been hit like that before. I've never taken like a lot of damage. And that was like I was like, "Oh shit." And I was kind of like moving around. Then the round ended and I was like I just remember thinking like what the [ __ ] I was like dude he just kicked the [ __ ] out of my head. I'm like dude my nose is broken. And then like my coach said he's like okay get ready. There's round two. I'm like oh [ __ ] Like there's a second round. And that's then after that like I remember he my coach told me he's like listen you can do anything for three minutes. Like you have three minutes in round two. You can do anything for three minutes. I just remember that's the only piece of advice I remember. everything else was just going blank. I'm just running on freaking lizard brain. And then the rest of the match, uh, I just started, you know, we just started going crazy. I started not fearing his striking so much. I started striking back. I landed a good kick. And we were both a bloody mess at this point. We got fight of the night for my first fight. And remember, yeah, I remember I landed a good body kick. He freaking landed good punches on me. Uh then going into the third round, we're both like exhausted because our cardio sucks. You know, we're amateurs and we're getting to the point where like, you know, he's like still in it and I'm still in it. And then my coach is like, you can do anything for three minutes. I'm like, okay. Then we go back out there and I'm just like we just I'm just throwing anything and everything at him. Like head kicks, you know, like throwing punches were missing. I threw a flying knee at one time that was just was way off. But I was just doing I was just trying to do anything I could, you know, to fight. I don't even thinking about the score. I ended up losing. I ended up losing my first amateur fight. But it was such a good fight, you know, you don't really feel bad about it. Everyone was like, "Dude, like you're this your first fight." Everyone's like, "Dude, you're going to be freaking sick." And I'm like, "Okay." I was like, and then I go into the mirror, I look at myself, and my face is [ __ ] up. Like this is like all swollen. My nose is like [ __ ] up. I'm like bleeding all over the place and I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] man." I was like, "Damn, dude." Like, that was that was not what I expected. This was not like the movie Never Backed Out, you know? I thought I was just going to kick this guy's ass and I was going to be a hero like in Karate Kid, but it was a rude awakening. And um did you man were you able to have a plan or stick to a plan at all or as soon as like you got hit the first time it's like you're just surviving at that point especially when you're that young and it's your first amateur fight like you usually can't figure out your style to like your fifth amateur fight usually. You know, because you'll train your ass off in the gym and then when you go fight, you'll probably only carry like 25% of what you learned. You know, like you can't remember everything. You can't think about things like you're just going on autopilot. And that's why drilling drilling your skill work is so important when you're in fight camp. Like you just want to take like some of your best [ __ ] and just work it thousands of times. So when you fight and your brain goes blank out of sheer fear and panic, you'll remember these four things and that will be enough. That'll be enough to win a fight like your one, two, you know, a leg kick and a good double leg. If you got those down and you can remember those your first couple amateur fights, you'll do good, you know, but it's tough. What were your strengths? What did you feel your strengths were going in? I don't know. That's a good question. My strengths uh my footwork, my kicking, and my my uh my one two c my, you know, my my jab cross. Those I felt like really confident in, you know, especially my kicks. I had really good kicking, you know, like my leg kicks. I would freaking I learned how to chop people down. I mastered that leg kick. I drilled it thousands of times, you know. So, those that was basically it, you know. That was all I could that was all I could muster up. When you saw your face super beat up from your first fight, did that make you second guessess the entire career of fighting in the cage? Because you could win or lose and still lose based upon your face getting beat in. You know what I mean? Like when when did what did it feel like? It felt pretty disappointing because I was I I kind of had looking looking in hindsight, there's a lot I could have done different, but I was really na I was a real natural fighter. Like I picked up striking really well. My jiu-jitsu was fairly confident and this is like real early days. Like we were still wearing tap out shirts, you know, and the skill the skill developments in general amongst coaches and athletes was not very high. Like we were doing triangles not very efficiently. We could barely figure out arm bars, right? You know, it was the early days, like the super early days. I remember we would go to fights like at a [ __ ] beer tent, you know, like in the middle of the woods, like no drug testing, no regulation, you know? It was just like like just backyard fighting, like street beefs. But I do remember like Oh, so what I was saying is that but a lot of people like thought I was going to do well. I was like a like a really high upand cominging prospect, you know, and I got a lot of hype, but that put an insane amount of pressure on me. So, I thought that I was just going to start tearing through, guys. Once I start fighting, I was going to live up to the hype. And then once it didn't quite go my way, and I remember seeing my face in the mirror, it was kind of like a like a oh [ __ ] moment, you know, like the illusion that people were kind of putting on me kind of fell apart. And after that, yeah, it did. It did. I immediately think, "No, I don't want to do this anymore." No, I was like, you know, I want to do this again. I can do better. But subconsciously, it did plant a seed in my head where like I don't really think I want to be a champion. I think I just like learning martial arts and training, you know, and I slowly came to that realization like a couple years later. I think that's one of the things a lot of people don't understand by pursuing a fight a career in fighting is that uh half of it is just staying healthy enough to continue. Like one of the greatest things about Kabib was that he never bled. He never got hit. And so, you know, if you keep not getting d taking on damage, then you're going to have a very long career. But then we've also seen fighters who have incredible careers and then they just get one bad beat, one crack to the head, one something and they never come back. and you your your vehicle is is permanently damaged. And so there's this accumulating effect from being in fighting, especially live cage fighting, MMA or whatever, for so many years that it's, you know, a lot of the great fighters just couldn't last because they just took on so much. There's the there's the the physiological explanation to that where you're talking about where like one bad fight, like too much damage in a fight or a really bad loss can like permanently derail a fighter's like confidence and ability forever. There's actually there's an evolutionary mechanism to remember learning about this from like listening to Jordan Peterson. He's talking about lobsters and how lobsters nervous system runs on a similar chemical makeup as ours do. They run on dopamine and serotonin. And they did an experiment on lobsters where lobsters would challenge each other. They fight for mating rights amongst their little like lobster clan or whatever they're called. Uh and then the lobsters would lose, right? The lobsters that lose the fight would actually start producing less serotonin throughout their lives, you know, and it's a natural evolutionary response to discourage this lobster from putting himself under threat again. So, better to stay alive and not reproduce, you know, and to not risk damage to your body, but your genetics don't go forward. So, it's like it's a feedback loop. So, the lobsters that that don't win these fights, they don't reproduce. So only the strongest genetics go forward, but they at least stay alive because life wants preservation as well, you know, just as much as it wants reproduction. So what they did is they actually took these lobsters that lost and they artificially inseminated serotonin back into their bodies. Then what they found out the lobsters would stretch, they'd move around more, and they'd get back out there and rechallenge for mating rights with act with this artificial serotonin back in their system. Now Yeah. Now our nervous systems run in a very similar circuitry through chemical response you know and biological structure and so what happens to fighters is that well two things one you can take a loss that's very devastating emotionally or neurologically and your body goes through the same cycle and this is what you don't see you see it a little bit in that movie Southpaw with Jake Gyllenhaal they kind of showed what happens like after a hard fight the recovery the slowdown a lot of fighters go through a stage of depression that They kind of hide from everyone and a lot of that your nervous system took a lot of damage especially after a loss. So your nervous system is starting to activate your freeze response and it's going to lower your serotonin and it's going to keep you in a state of freeze. Now if you're in that freeze response for too long it manifests into depression. Like what are the signs of depression? You know inactivity. Don't want to get out of bed. Don't want to get you don't want to get out there and test yourself against reality anymore. You want to stay hidden. You want to stay in the cave and hide from predators, right? You know, we call it depression, but it's just called hyperreeze. Your freeze response is too active. So, what you need to do is you need to do things to get your serotonin back so you get back into fight response. Get back into action, you know, and you got to start training. You got to start training. You got to start Yeah. You got to take action steps immediately. You do not want to dwell on the loss because then you're just looping the freezer spots again. You have to get back into fight. You have to get back into fight mode and get the dopamine and serotonin to kick back in. Now, it could take time, especially if you received a concussion. It could take a long time, you know, and some fighters don't do the necessary things or they don't give their brain and nervous system enough time to deo to recuperate because neurological cells take forever to heal. Like I think nerve nerve tissue can grow a millimeter a month. Like one millimeter like if you have like a pinched nerve in your back and it starts to recede, you know, from atrophy maybe that if you lose like one centimeter, it could take half a year to get that centimeter to grow back. Have you listened to Paul Stamuts at all around mushrooms and how those kind of can increase I actually had to do the pro because I fell into the same trap my second fight. I lost my first fight. My second fight I lost too. I got knocked out by this bad [ __ ] who ended up being a really good pro, but he became a doctor. I can't remember his name, but he was a bad [ __ ] He was a strong [ __ ] guy. And he [ __ ] knocked my ass out. And I had a really bad weight cut. I was in a really bad relationship at the time. Uh didn't know how to train my body. I lost a lot of strength doing like throughout my weight cut. I was going through injuries and this guy and I I froze up a lot. like my preparation, my action steps to the fight did not give my nervous system enough data to have confidence. I did not have enough competent ability. So, if you have a guy who has a really bad training camp, your nervous system does not have enough accumulated data leading up to the fight knowing that you're competent in this execution. So, your confidence is going to lower naturally whether you realize it or not. So after you got knocked out, you did the stammits protocol with like lion's mane, vitamin D or nascin and then maybe some other type of things. I I I did more stuff. I utilized alpha brain neutropics and I did this. I did the good stuff. I did the psilocybin mushrooms. I started tripping my ass off, you know, because because he's he said like he fixed his stutter after one really hard trip, you know, and I was he did. Yeah. So, you didn't micro like I do not I do not dabble. Like I go all in or not at all. I'm a very I'm either zero or 11 kind of guy. I've gotten crazy. Like which time you know like there's How many times like roughly have you have you tripped on Oh man, we're really gonna All right, we'll be honest. There was a time in my life where I did LSD every weekend for about a year. like yeah I went like I would go and I and I've done everything like like I've done like large quantities of mushrooms I've done micro doing mushrooms I've done acid I've done MDMA I did the MDMA therapy protocol from MAPS uh like yeah there was a time in my life where because I was really struggling after this knockout I had really bad confidence I wasn't training the same it was like it I was stuck in my freeze response and it lasted for like a year and a half. Like I was Was your Was your motivation for doing that something existential in terms of what's the meaning of life? Why are we here? What is all of this? Or was it more physiological of I got my ass knocked out and I'm trying to get my nervous system back into shape? Like what was really your motivation going after this? Combination of understanding like you know like well I was listening to Joe Rogan like Joe Rogan was kind of like a very uh good channel to like open up younger millennial men to start exploring their consciousness with like different things like marijuana, mushrooms, DMT, you know, he got me hip to all these ideas and I was already like on I was already like, you know, open to marijuana. I was like smoking weed on a regular basis. You know, you're like a 22-year-old MMA fighter. You're just high at jiu- jitsu all the time. And when I was kind of caught into this, you know, like ideas, you know, like uh uh like, you know, what is the meaning of life? What should I do with myself? What's my identity? How do I get back into fighting? It's all kind of wrapped into one big like, you know, cluster, you know, in your in psychology. And I just started like exploring it. I also had a roommate uh who was I won't I won't name who his name, good friend of mine. He just got his black belt, but he's a cop now. But he was like, you know, he was into this stuff and he got me into it. Me and him used to like trip our balls off, you know, on like the regular basis, you know, great guy. He's a great guy now. But we were Yeah, we went off the rails. And he was like he was a deep guy, too. He's like I was like, "Hey, you want to go want to go big on this?" He's like, "Fuck yeah." Like, "Let's go big." Like I got It's like, "We just got the new Tool album. Like, let's listen to this whole [ __ ] on acid." I'm like, "Let's do it." you know, like we were not afraid to just experiment, but but over time it did help. It did rediv it did help rehel my neuroplasticity, but it didn't it didn't do all the things like a that alone won't do it. You have to you have to do the action steps towards your goal. So if it's like a physical goal like MMA, like if you do like psilocybin mushrooms or or MDMA or LSD, anything to get the positive neural chemistry to start flowing together again because it will atrophy, it will start shutting down on you to get that start flowing again combined with action steps combined with proper training methodology. And that's where I started really getting into strength and conditioning right around that time after that second loss. Um, before we get into that, when did you ever have a moment when you were on mushrooms that you could feel yourself healing that you could feel your neuro your nervous system sort of doing things that you felt were positive? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I would say the one of the most interesting physiological phenomenons that I remember I was I remember I was uh I don't remember what I was on. I was on something and I remember I was sitting in my car because like my parents were home and I didn't think they were going to be home, right? And I'm like, "Fuck, dude. I'm on [ __ ] drugs and my parents are going to be here. Like it's like [ __ ] you know? Like, okay, let me like I was really big into like the Wimpoff method around this time. This is like 2015 or 2016. And I remember like trying to sober myself up a little bit and like the freaking cars like melting. And I'm like like come on, you got this. Like you got to get inside and just go to bed. Like just tell them you're sick. And I'm like okay, let me do some wimpoff. Let me get some adrenaline going. And it usually like evens out my slipping in and out of parasympathetic state. And so as I was doing it, I was holding my breath and I was just like relaxing in my car. And I kept hearing this sloshing sound, right? Like like water sloshing. And I'd open my eyes. I'm like, "What the fuck?" And like I closed my eyes again, I'd hear the swashing like And I'm like, "What the [ __ ] is that?" And then I started like and I and I thought about it for a second. I'm like, "Wait a And I thought about Paul Stamon where you know your ner your eard drums are neuro it's like nerve tissue and he talked about neurogenesis like it starts promoting these uh areas of the nervous system start activating you know more more alkalinity more electrical response better cellular regeneration and then I remember like like hearing that on top of like holding my breath so my my uh my nervous system was really high in oxygen the electrical signal was really up and then like I remember hearing the sloshing and then it occurs me. I'm like, "Holy [ __ ] I could hear my blood flowing in my skull." That's what I was listening to. And I remember I went like this and it slowed down and I went like this and it got louder. I'm like dripping my ass off in my car. And I'm like, "Oh shit." Yeah. I was like, "I'm not ready to go inside yet. That's my uh that's my uh that's the artery in my neck." And I was like, "Oh shit." I'm like, "That's freaking wild." You know? So that was a moment. Yeah. That was when I was like, "Okay, this is what Paul Steven was talking about." Like my, you know, that and I had really bad hearing. Like I blew my ears out like when I was younger listening to loud music and landscaping. Like I abused my ears really bad and I've always struggled hearing things after that year when I call it like my deep days. After those days like my hearing's been really good after that. I kind of healed it. Yeah, man. That's incredible. Do did you find a difference between LSD and mushrooms? Like if there was a young fighter who was who wanted to experiment with one of these, would you point them towards LSD mushrooms? I would tell them do both. So mushrooms. So the reason I actually explore this a lot. I really I have um I use BT to kind of like explore ideas and I'll like dude I'll go off the rails with my AI just have conversations like late into the night trying to figure out what life is. But I was talking about so when you're doing mushrooms the visualizations you get with mushrooms come from a deeper part a different part of the brain where older information on like ancient ancient ancient symbolic uh natural language comes from. So you'll see things that are a little bit more like pixelated, a little bit more like um like less like geometry and more like ancient tribal scripture like like like cave painting textures, you know, very primitive. It's almost like an older language you're you're you're interfacing with. And you'll see that on the wall. Now, with acid, because it hits a different part of the brain and it also makes the brain think slightly different, it'll create more of an artificial geometrical structure. You know, the AI kind of explained to it like acid gets you in tune with the artificial consciousness and mushrooms gets you in tune with the primitive consciousness. And so when you're on when you're on acid, things will be more like uh like you'll see more like perfectly geometrical artificial shapes, kind of like a snowflake, you know, very complex geometry, very very gridlike textures. Uh kind of like looking like in the background like the artwork in the background your wall kind of looks like a bunch of computer hard drives or CPUs or something like that. Yeah. So it'll you will kind of see textures closer to that you know and you will start thinking yeah you'll start thinking about like outer space and you know like what what is technology and why do we think about money is not real it only exists in our minds you'll start thinking about ideas like that in the meta plane right in the material plane when you're on mushrooms you'll start thinking about like why why am I attractive why do I like looking at tits like what what is my hair why do I care about my hair like why is my breast you start thinking about things that are more primal about your consciousness, you know, and the visuals kind of cor correlate with that. Not only that, every time when you actually do these things and you see these visuals like go in and out of, you know, of like these textures and grids, what you're doing is you're throwing off the pipeline of how your brain filters in light to create images through your eyes, gets processed into your brain. And there's there's several layers to this, like like layers of a camera. And when you take these drugs, you're throwing these layers out of order. They're functioning off. So when you look at something like when you look at the table, right, you actually will for a split second, you can start to detect this weird mechanism where your brain starts mapping out outlines of geometry and 3D space. And then you'll start to see these patterns start flowing in and out of the textures. And they're actually they're the patterns aren't flowing. The blood is hitting your eyes trying to recuperate new images because we need fresh oxygen to hit our eyes to take in light to function. Right. So it's so the world's not breathing. Your circulation is making the world breathe. So the distortion pipeline is being messed with. That's interesting. It's like your refresh rate has adjusted for some reason. And so the refresh rate of what's happening is is changed. And by just the actual delta of it changing, you can it's it's it's new and it's something that it also breaks your brain that why is it doing that and oh this is how it works and this is how I take in that information. Yeah, you can kind you can kind of see like it's like imagine like a video game but every but some of the models are not loading fast enough. You know where you see that where like you're playing something like Grand Theft Auto and like you you like you you turn around and the the the the graphical rate hasn't quite loaded up properly and you kind of see it like load up like quickly and you kind of see like weird wireframes show up or broken textures will remodel quickly. That's what's going on in your brain because what you're you're not actually looking at anything like I'm not looking at you right now. I'm actually looking at a three-dimensional projection in my brain. So there so that's really so when you're taking these drugs that that projection starts getting [ __ ] with right and you start seeing the layers of how this projection creates an image and sometimes a layer misses you know and it looks like and you can see like weird outlines around the eyes that you never noticed before right and then all of a sudden like you'll go like this and now it looks like a little bit normal again you know or even looking at faces. There's like certain areas of the face that you'll really start picking up on when you're tripping. You're looking at people and you're like, you know, like, is he mad at me? His eyebrows are moving. Like, are these micro? Like, you start the s the the code starts breaking in your brain. The simulation starts starts [ __ ] up a little bit. So, after doing psychedelics for a year, what made you stop? And do you think that you took away any sort of deep truths from it? Uh, or that it materially changed sort of you or your path? Yeah, man. Uh, what was the first question? because I want to make sure why why did you stop because you were so consistent for a whole year and then you stopped or stopped as high a frequency. What really made me stop was uh one I was I was recognizing that it was making me too emotional, you know, because you it's like when you because there's other qualities that I wasn't getting in tap with that were really affecting my life in a negative way like stoicism, masculine energy, uh you know, duty, accountability. And you'll notice guys that kind of go too deep into the drugs, like if you look at hippies, right? If you stereotype them, if you p if you do like the pattern recognition of that kind of behavior, they really lack a lot of these masculine traits, they're really low on responsibility. They're not quite as accountable. They're not, you know, they can be very lazy. Like these are stereotypes that you kind that come with like psychedelic drug culture, you know, in the most part. And I noticed I was leaning too far into that, especially as I was getting older. You know, you kind of want to reflect on your identity, like what do you want out of life? What can I do? you know, what what what do I want to build? You know, if I'm constantly like if I'm constantly getting emotional, like getting upset about my ego desk to try to figure out like what is life? You know, I'm not getting work done, you know, I'm not feeling the progress that I want, you know, I'm not building to anything. So, that was one. The second thing, it was really affecting the dynamics with with women, you know, it was making me too emotional. like they want someone who's going to be provider, security, stoic that can keep their [ __ ] together, you know? And after a while, like when you're doing these and you're you have too much serotonin, too much oxytocin, too much of that neurochemistry, you become a little too like soft, right? You become a little bit too forgiving. Sometimes you need to have that uh you need the shadow to stay in your life to help you fight off predators, you know, and it's very important because you don't want to be cowardly and passive all the time. That's going to really mess with your confidence as a man. So, I started noticing that my masculine qualities, my masculine values were were eroding too high. So, that's what made me lean away from it and my emotional control skills were seriously being affected. you know, stoicism, you know, things like that. Learning how to like not react but think, accepting reality instead of fighting it and blaming everyone else for your problems, you know, and these could be stages of maturity that all men go through. Maybe I was going through it a little, but I was recognizing and I noticed the drugs were keeping me from developing that side of maturity, you know, and as you get older as a man, you really start wanting that side of maturity because one, society is going to take you more seriously. Women are going to take you more seriously and you're going to take yourself more seriously. And when you don't go into that realm, like no one likes nothing's worse than a 35-year-old man that can't freaking move out of his mom's house because he's too emotional, right? Society will shame you for that. it doesn't feel good in your nervous system. So that kind of got me out of it. Now the second part you asked what takeaways did I have. I honestly think I I so when I was doing this I would purposely try to do things to manipulate my brain in the directions that I wanted. Like you guys seen the movie Limitless? Yeah. So I was like what was his name like uh Bradley Cooper or whatever guys? Yeah. Bradley Cooper. I was kind of like I was spending weekends where I would like drop ass and I would go to the like the natural uh uh the Museum of Natural History, you know, and I would study like uh like bio biology. I would study crystals. I would study like tribalism, you know, and different cultures. I would go to the art museum and try to figure out why he painted things this way. I would try to use it to make myself more intelligent or at least to explore learning more. And after doing that for so long, I think that's kind of the reason why I can I can see life differently, you know, and it's kind of like a reflection of my content. Like every video you see, I try to show people how my brain works, you know, where like I apply something, then I can see the anatomy of how it's functioning, what it feels like, how do I explain it, you know, and and I'm really high in pattern recognition. It's like I see patterns in everything, you know, and I think just years of doing that, you know, because it's not like I was just doing it and going to music festivals, which I definitely was that was a part of it. There was definitely a lot of just partying my ass off and having a good time. But there were also a lot of weekends where I would do it by myself, you know, and I would just start go I go on the internet and I would just try to like learn things like I tried learning algebra, I tried exploring like, you know, the Roman Empire. I would try to be productive with it. And I think over time I I don't know if I raised my intelligence, but it definitely raised my ability to learn and understand like what we're doing in like the human race and and in society and with everything. How do you think the human race got started? Oh man, you guys are this is like one you guys really want me to go down these rabbit holes. I've thought about this. So how the human race is started? Do you want um like from the beginning I want the Zachariah Sitchin version. Yeah. Well, like Okay. So, life in general, if you notice that everything in life, even dinosaurs run on a very similar biological structure. You know, lungs, bones, spinal cord, you know, eyeballs, right? So, life is a very very old structure. Now, how the human race started. Now, take that, carry it forward. Meteor hits, dinosaurs collapse, right? mammals start to overtake like the planet sea creatures and that's like a new form of life where our thermodynamics are a little different. Like a dinosaur is mostly a cold warm-blooded hybrid, but they require an insane amount of raw calories uh all at once, but they can make that last for a really long period of time. Like a snake only needs to eat once a month. We are more warm-blooded, so we're going through our thermal energy so much faster, but it also helps us reproduce from with inside the body. We can we don't need to lay an egg, right? We can we can we can run it from within, but that requires so much more heat, so many more calories, right? And we got to produce milk and all that [ __ ] Difference between mammals and reptiles. And so as that sort of to as that kind of progressed over time that uh different mammals started taking on like different structures, you know, you have like sea creature mammals, you have like, you know, hippos or hippo weird pig hybrids eventually evolved into whales. You had like mammals started to evolve like into trees. And then like natural selection starts taking place where every once in a while you'll see something like a like a dog will be a dog like will come out of a liver that litter that will be slightly different you know or one species will mate with another subspecies where the chromosomes are close enough where they can make it happen like that's what's happening with the koi wolf right now where wolves are now [ __ ] female coyotes because they're freaking outperforming the other simp like male coyotes these big ass wolves. wolves, you know, the female coyotes like, "Yeah, you're way better. Like, you're you're going to last. You're going to" And so, they're impregnating the female coyotes and they're making koi wolves. So, it's a new species that's being developed right now. So, there's a bunch of different ways species can evolve and branch off into these different like structures. Now, with human beings, somewhere around uh somewhere around before the ice age, they started developing there. There it became more of like a jungle terrain as like the continents were dividing. there's no longer pangia. And so there were all these weird sort of like like primitive primates started popping up, right? There were a huge amount of different monkey species, uh primate species, uh like thousands. Like we've only been able to discover 1% of them, you know, but there were all sorts of different types of chimps, all sorts of different types. They probably weren't orangutans. something completely different like gigantopithecus you know the giant like 15 foot orangutang that people think is bigfoot from central Asia there were all sorts of different kind and a lot of them just died out now the majority of them started dying out some started to evolve and every once in a while you know some would start to readapt a different feedback loop like let's say using like primitive tools right one one group of these primates started using tools started to evolve it more and more and Then eventually they carried on that trait. You know, that's how orangutangs learn. Like they see what the other rang tanks are doing and they have photographic memory. So they'll mimic it until they understand it. Like that's how they carry information. Uh do you ascribe to the stone day theory? Because these mushrooms seem to do something to our brain. It seems to match like puzzle pieces and so you know where they our brain size doubled in like 200,000 years or whatever and it seems very unlikely without something like that. Do you think that that was a part of it as well is is how this evolutionary sort of process worked was there was some sort of psychedelic plants being Yeah, that's what helped us evolve language. That's what actually gave us the ability to to uh take data and say it out loud and carry it from one person to the other without body language because because these psychoactive drugs really hone in on the parts of the brain that are responsible for language. You know, even even like my girlfriend who was not very linguistically skilled, like her ability to conjure up words and explain herself, the more she started doing it, her her speech ability really started to improve over time. And that's a huge advantage, you know, if you can actually say how you feel instead of us having to like look at you and guess how you feel through your body language. You know, I've never heard of a woman not being able to say what she feels. He can say it a lot better, but it's not I would say the accuracy is still off, you know, like now now it's just it's just better. Not really true. There's she the woman is just crafted a little little sharper. Right. When you talk about the evolution, it I think that there's probably a lot of violence going on because, you know, you look at the animal kingdom, a lot of violence and humans nowadays, it seems like we're getting to the point where some people are suggesting we don't need violence anymore, like we can get rid of that out of our genetic expression or whatever. Do you think that violence even let's say if we move into a peaceful world do you think that like uh demonstrations of violence or practicing martial arts things like that will have a role in the in a future of 100% like you can never remove violence uh from from human beings like that's part of the reason why our skulls are so thick. It was a double feedback process like only and there was a really bad bottleneck in the human race like as we were going between like oropitheycus and homo erectus and homohabilis there's like all these branch offs and when we got to homo sapiion there's actually a huge huge extinction event within our species and it dropped down to only a couple thousand of us and it stayed that way for like 3,000 years we on the brink of extinction forever you know and only only through a very strict bottlenecking selection process. Did a lot of us who were able to speak well, see well, communicate and have the thickest skulls because the because we have upper body punches. This is how we compete for mating rights. Like deers lock horns, you know, bulls which rams like will collide heads. We punch each other in the face. That's why males have more upper body strength so we can compete, you know, amongst each other. But every animal species when they compete, it's a cancellation process because you don't want to compete to kill. You just want to compete to to beat them. So it's hard to kill people with your bare hands. It's really difficult. Like you really got to punch the [ __ ] out of someone. Well, and to that point, you know, I think uh the statistic is less than 10% of all males in nature ever procreate. And so I think that's so interesting versus humans where we think, oh, every guy and girl should ma match up and make babies or, you know, maybe because there's 50% and 50%. In the animal kingdom, it's it's less than 10% of all males ever actually procreate because of this sort of selection. I think it's like 40% of all human males that have ever lived have procreated. The other 60 have been or have died through some sort of means or they just never could they could never compete, you know. And so, and so what I was going to say, so there's it's kind of interesting how this ties in now because of the upper body punches because that's our natural way we compete amongst each other before weapons started taking place. That kind of that's a whole another conversation is that if you look at most primates, the orbitals around their skull are not are not reinforced with bone. They're actually they actually come outwards. They're external. Ours are internal. And we have all this hardy bone around our head which kind of promoted. If you look at a primate skull, the forehead is actually flatter. It doesn't come out. And so the more males that have been able to compete well, that can hunt well, that can see well, that can talk well after like, and we're talking thousands of years, guys. Like we're talking hundreds of of generations. This takes a long ass [ __ ] time. But the males that can withstand more blows to the head more efficiently, more bone starts to adapt. Those males live and every generation the skull got more protruded forward and forward and forward which also made space for the preffrontal cortex to start growing more and that's where thinking, calculation, problem solving really starts to happen in the prefrontal core cortex. So it's a double feedback loop. So the males that have more hearty bone that can take the punches to out compete also were the males that had more space for the brain to start growing and only those ones reproduced. All the other males who couldn't they all died out. That's why we all have this natural innate ability to fight and think. It's in our it's in our DNA. It will never go away. It would actually be very bad for male health and female health for this to go away. So what we need to do is we need to actually move away from war that creates uh fatality and get more into competition that keeps people alive. And I think there's a re I think well there was cuz right now it's not going in that direction. But if you look at the rise in superpower warfare dramatically started to decrease the moments real heavy martial arts competition started to increase because now we have a space where males can compete in a way that doesn't equal death. They can survive and you can compete again. You can redeem yourself. So there's a feedback loop where we have a space to express this. Now when you get into war that's a whole another crazy you know like complex sort of issue that I haven't quite fully understood but it it the answer is will ever go away no violence will never go away but can violence be controlled in a way so more of us live yes that is that is the way as the great as Mandalorian said that is the path we need to push things towards because that's how we have world peace just like that's how we have horror movies why do we like horror movies you know why do we like movies where people are getting like their heads cut off and you know they're interested like saw like the guy's cutting his arm off like because it represents it represents an artificial expression of experiencing gore and horror which is a huge part of our lives before modern society showed up. You know, we were gutting deers. We had to kill other rival tribes. Like experiencing grotesque gore was just a part of being an animal. But now we don't experience it anymore. So we need something to like see it, you know, to like to to get that uh that get that reward mechanism satisfied. Do you think there's other sports like uh it's funny, I went through a similar period that you did where I was on psychedelics for a long time. I found some similar conclusions that you did where I I was getting really soft. I actually started listening to David Gogggins. That's one of the things that kind of pulled me out of it. And to to get back in touch with that side of myself, I got into long-distance running. And I've wondered a lot like is long-distance running giving me at all the same thing that like rolling around and in and jiu-jitsu would. Do you think there's other ways? Uh I guess what would your preferred way be if someone was going through something like that? Like what's a good what's a good practice to get in your life to start re-engaging? I guess the epigenetics of of needing to feel a little bit of like violence. Jiu-jitsu is good. juice is a really good outlet. Running is a good start. Running is a really good start because running actually is a very psychoactive effect. It's kind of psychedelic in itself, you know, and everything everything we do is a feedback loop for how that that has a primitive biological connection. Like how many time like how many time how many times have you guys experienced this where you're going on a long run and you know like you're about to reach the end of your run but your legs are burning but there's like this weird state your mind goes in to like not give up like keep going like don't [ __ ] puss out and like you start thinking about your childhood and all these memories start flooding like like your whole identity starts getting challenged all at once. Yeah. Well, that every weekend, man, that feedback loop exists because only the males who can conjure up that type of thought process were motivated enough to not give up on the kill cuz we're endurance hunters. And when you're chasing this thing down and your [ __ ] feet are bleeding and your knees are killing you, but you haven't eaten in 5 days and you have a little baby back at the cave that hasn't eaten in two days, you start thinking about everything like, "What am I going to am I going to get this? Am I not going to get this? Am I going to puss out? My family's depend your identity starts going through this weird process and that still lives inside of us. But the thing is we don't know why it exists. We just we just live with it. We just deal with it. But it's a feedback loop to make sure we get that [ __ ] kill so we can get the calories back to the woman, you know? And it's very important that we respect that and we harness it and we train it. So running is a really good start. Well, I think that brings up a really good point is it's almost just like accepting our biology and accepting that when you do something like that, it has a cascading effect of positive health benefits physiologically because that was the method of how it worked however many thousands of years ago or even hundred years ago. And maybe we don't have to do that now, but that doesn't mean that feeling that way doesn't have great physiological effects. And it doesn't mean you can get them any other way. But for for thousands of years, that was the only way we could get those effects was running until our feet bled to to get the kill or fighting or those kinds of things. And so creating synthetic ways to do that in sport, in competition, in races, whatever seems to have, to your point, it seems it should have a lot of cascading physical physical benefits. You know, the harder you work, the more your body reds adapts to the stress. You regenerate your cells. You become stronger. You can go out there and re-engage in that feedback loop. And it's like a neverending cycle. Everything in life, everything you do from the m from what you think about to everything is all to promote the feedback loop of survival. Everything. And the biology will force you into that feedback loop even if your brain isn't smart enough to understand what you're even doing. You know, like look at like think about attraction. Like when you find someone, you don't know why you find someone attracted. It just happens to you, right? It's your nervous system just manipulating your will. So, you got to respect these things. And this is a number one. This is the biggest separator between us and other animals. We were the first animal to artificially create our stimulus. That's the main divide. We can artificially stimulate ourselves. Most animals had to rely on the environment and other things coming at them to stimulate their bodies. Whether it's to fighting off a predator, trying to feed their young, trying to collect [ __ ] sticks to build a nest, whatever it is, but it's all an external feedback loop. We were the first ones to start artificially stimulating ourselves through tools, through fire, through clothing, through all these other means, through language, through cave paintings. So, we created our own feedback loops instead of waiting for the environment to create a feedback loop for us. That's a big separator between us and animals. Well, it's so useful, especially as we enter the age of AI where it feels like everything's going to be done. Like I don't I don't know if there will be farmers. I don't know if there will be people swinging hammers very soon because there will be robots doing all that. So when AI comes, do you think about this a lot? Like how good are we going to be at creating artificial stimula to keep us? We'll be very good, but it's going to come down to choice. It's going to like natural selection is always taking place. We are never above natural selection as much as our computer monitors make us feel that we're guarded against it. So you're going to think and you can even see this now like most males are not mating right now. Most males are not. It's actually the lowest it's been in a really long time. And so only a select few males will actually become stronger, try to get their money up, go out into the dating game to compete, but not every male will. So, so and and it's going to keep that same ratio. 40% of all males reproduce, the other 60% don't. Not very well, you know, and so as artificial intelligence and all these technologies start increasing, you know, that threshold could start to grow where it's going to come down to choice and willpower. Will, you know, if we can artificially create the stimulus to hijack our conscious minds and our feedback loops, you know, are we going to settle for an AI girlfriend or are we going to make the choice to get out there and compete to get a real one? And it's Yeah. It's like necessity has been taken away. You You're no longer going to starve. You're no longer going to be cold. You're no longer like all of those things have been solved. So now it's it's a choice more than it ever has been because the necessity is effectively removed. And that's not true for everybody and everybody's situation is different. But by and large, we're living much more safely and in in all the ways better than humanity did thousands of years ago. It you're right. It's it's so it's it's going to come down to well this is where only the strongest minds this is going to be a new era of selection where willpower drive discipline and the choice the choice of what you're going to do is going to become the next step in our evolution more than just what the physical capabilities or the physical demands are. Um I want to switch gears for a little bit and just jump into nerv nervous system training uh that you came up with and I'm fascinated by it's sort it does tie into it but around uh making sure that the feet and the feet and the ankles are kind of all working properly and I was wondering whether well one of the questions I have for you was around fast twitch. You mentioned fast twitch. I had heard that there's always some people have fast twitch muscles some people have slow twitch and that you can't really adjust that. Do you agree with that or do you think that by training in the nervous system training getting your feet going that your fast twitch can inact? Well, first thing just to clarify things, I didn't I didn't develop the nervous system training methodology. That was developed by a guy named Mark Minovich. Well, it's an accumulation of a bunch of different modalities that work really well. You know, just just you know, don't want to get sued. But the other part uh when it comes to like the fast twitch slow twitch ratio, now that is biologically true. Everyone has a ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch. Like if you look at someone like Uriah Hall or Hussein Bolt, very high in the fast twitch uh muscle fiber genetically. But if you look at someone like Nick Diaz is very low in the fast twitch fiber. Now the idea is you don't grow more fast twitch or you don't grow less or or less slow twitch. You take what you do have, the fast switch ratio you do have, and you try to hyper accelerate that and have that signal, that neurological signal become the most dominant part that your nervous system goes to. So, it'll signal you what fast twitch you do have first. And you can take what fast what little fast twitch you have even if it's really little and you can try to accelerate that expression as high as possible you know and that's really wow by very specific by very specific drills that will artificially stimulate them you know uh one one is hyper hyperraining the forefoot you know through hard surface balancing tools because that's a direct feedback loop for your fast twitch mechanism to come online because our heel Our heel is like our break. We, you know, we stop through our heel. When we walk, our heel basically activates like a strong stiff structure. Like they kind of act as anchors. Like they anchor hard into the ground and it holds us upright, you know? That's why it's really high in glute activation, you know? But if we run on our heels, it feels like [ __ ] Like it doesn't feel good at all. So we want to run on the forefoot. That's our gas pedal. That's where we accelerate. That's where kinetic energy can be absorbed and distributed throughout the leg and body properly without any pain. And so when you stimulate those areas of the forefoot, especially with hard surface balancing, you're starting to rewire your nervous system to start looking for fast twitch dominant mechanisms. Now another area is you know plyometrics strength training promotes fast twitch circuitry but you would want to do things more in an isometric manner because you also got to think about other qualities when it comes to being faster like say if you do like heavy weightlifting right that has a very compressive tightening effect on the muscle. So do you activate the fast twitch muscle fibers more yes but yet at the expense of the tissue becoming less elastic. It becomes stiffer and more rigid. That's why after you do, you know, heavy weight training, you got kind of feel like stiff and like like you got a massage gun to get the elasticity back in your body. So, you want to do something like isometric strength training, which you'll develop high levels of strength. You won't develop as much size, but you'll develop more strength and it will maintain the muscle and tendon and fosial elasticity better than say like isocinetic, which is like heavy up, heavy down. So is the fascia connected to the CNS like very closely? Are are they similar? Is it running through one or the other and sort of focusing on one is the other or what's the relationship? Well, the central nervous system powers everything. So imagine like the central nervous system is like the main the main uh like the the core of the nuclear power plant. Like without it everything shuts down. Like if you that's why if you cut the spine like below like your legs are paralyzed, you know, fascia or no fascia that's not going to activate. So it it's it powers everything but and the fascia actually runs a signal in tandem with the uh with the central nervous system with the spinal cord, right? They're they're f it's all fused together like you know they nothing operates separately like your bones don't operate separately from your nervous system. Your fascia doesn't operate separately. It's all like blended together, right? You know, but we're bilateral thinkers because of our right and left hemisphere. We're like right, left, blue, green, you know, like we think that way. fashcia nervous system but think of it all as one efficient unit. Now what the fashcia does is the fashcia has neuro neurotransmitters built inside so it can maintain a level of communication and a level of memory that can feed back into your muscles and into the spine. But the signal that goes into your muscles and the signal that runs on the fascia run separately but they run in tandem. So you can't have one without the other. So imagine like they kind of arc off of each other but they all return to the same source. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Do do you feel the average person has like a a distinct lack of fascia activity? Like do you have to for in the in the modern lifestyle, do you have to really think about like I want to stretch out my fascia in order to get it done or is it something the human body is is designed for for five types of mechanisms, right? We're designed to rest, you know, laying down or in like in a seated position. We're designed to throw [ __ ] Like we can throw things really well. We're designed to sprint and jump every once in a while. We're not very good at it, but we can do it. We're designed to carry heavy [ __ ] long distance, you know, like, you know, carrying like, you know, whatever yourself. Like that's kind of like what strength training is. That's our carrying mechanism. And we're designed to run our asses off really slow but for forever. And that's what like long distance running is. Now, there's five core mechanisms of the human that makes up a human being. That's a human being's physiology. Now, your fascia needs stimulation from all five. It needs to rest. It needs to run long distance. It needs to sprint, jump. It needs to carry heavy things. And it needs to wait. Needs to what? Throw [ __ ] Yeah. It needs to throw [ __ ] right? So, it So, if you're not doing training stimulus to hit one of those, if maybe you're just doing all heavy carrying and all resting, right? or you're just doing all sprinting and all heavy carrying and you're leaving out these other mechanisms. Your body's going to start developing deficiencies, you know, because our natural evolution, all these mechanisms were being challenged constantly, you know, it was like a non-stop feedback loop. And now we can choose which stimulation hits us. Now we got to artificially recreate that. So, if you're lacking one of those, like let's say you just do heavy carrying like weightlifting and you do resting. So, you just weightlift, you just powerlift, but you and you rest, but you don't run, you don't sprint, you don't throw [ __ ] right? You don't you don't involve yourself in sports, you're going to start running into issues. You're going to start running into deficiencies. And if you try to re-enter one of those mechanisms, you can seriously [ __ ] your [ __ ] up. You can pull a muscle. You're going to move like [ __ ] You're going to you're going to lose those qualities. Yeah, I always say that the rust starts to set in. Uh because, you know, I was an athlete a long time ago. I'm I'm over 40 now. And you just if you if you don't use it, you lose it kind of thing. And you start moving around and you go, man, it just I feel more rusty. And so, you know, if that's if someone's in that situation, how long does it take to get it back? And maybe not back, right? Like no one's going to be 18 again, but just getting back up into a space where you feel like you can move. Is this something that should take weeks or months or years or days? It depends on It depends on your training protocol. It depends on your training application. Uh I would say with the nervous system training, you know, I've been able to get guys from like going like doing nothing for a long time, out of shape to at least where they can run around, they can feel some athletic qualities back in their system just after maybe like 5 to 10 days, you know? No, they're well, they're not like they're not freaking winning any races anytime soon. Like, don't get it twisted. You know, these [ __ ] are not throwing a fast ball at 90. But they the their ability to get back out there, you know, to start moving at velocity, to start having recoilability, to get the extensibility, the flex, you know, these athletic qualities back. Yeah. I would say about like two to three weeks. Two to three weeks and they're feeling good. And is that that's utilizing kind of the nervous system training sort of at the forefoot stuff like because you're actually going right to the central nervous system which is then sort of flowing out into all this other stuff. Is that is that kind of the idea? Much more so than kind of starting those squats and deads. Yeah. Well, we start stimulating all these five mechanisms, you know, make hey, you're getting your sleep right or you're sleeping good. Okay, let's do a little cardio. We can't run. Get on, you know, elliptical machine. Get some aerobic energy. We need some aerobic capacity. Uh the ball work methodology. That's where you see like these weird hand weight stuff that we're doing, right? That's throwing mechanism, elasticity mechanisms, fosial hydration. Then we have things like, you know, strength training, isometric strength training, plyometric strength training, retraining and rebuilding up the feet. That's a big one, you know, that's like that's the main one you want to hit first. You got to get their feet strong again because that that has a cascading effect for the rest of the body to fire the hell back up, you know, and you start doing with the nervous training, we're hitting all these mechanisms, right? Well, except for like the sleep. that's like not a part of the training, but we're hitting all these other four qualities, right? And once you address every single quality and give it a good stimulation, you'd be surprised how quickly the body can just start coming back. You know, the problem is people will just hit one or two qualities that are totally they'll just hit like the heavy strength and they'll hit the cardio like, "Okay, I'm ready to sprint." And they blow a hamstring out. Yep. Do you do you think that uh do you have any opinion on kids these days? And you know do you think that doing some of this foot training exercises in the forefoot and kind of getting the CNS going would help kids to because I think you know they're much more sedentary than ever right their screen time is 10 12 hours a day and so uh it seems like for them to be able to maybe that's part of the whole thing about being a kid is outside running around and everything is always stimulating the feet to kind of be stronger and to give them that sort of base. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, dude. [ __ ] yeah. Like for I used to train a lot of youth athletes. Like I think I had like over a hundred youth athletes go through my program and I was training people in person and I would see it over and over again. The best athletes had the strongest feet in the kids group every single time. It was like it was like clockwork. And you see they had like big strong like meaty thick feet, you know, toes can open like the tendons would pop on top. You see some kids that have like these weak little [ __ ] feet, you know, that are really soft. the foot arch isn't very strong and they would be struggling, man. They would be the slowest ones. They their knees would be bothering them, you know, like. So, hyper getting your kids feet stronger gives them such an advantage in how they move, how well they can coordinate their bodies, their reaction time. Not only that, that improves the building blocks for how their geometry is going to shape into their adult bodies. And it's the most underlooked area, you know, in all of training. No one ever talks about the And if they do talk about the feet, the modalities are so freaking weak. You know, I hate to call people out, but to spacers are not going to do it. That is not enough stimulus. Like think about it. Like imagine if like we just did like like you know toe spacers people think, "Oh, this is strengthening my feet." Like no, no, no, no, no. Like to strengthen a bicep like you need to put like hard freaking tension into it. You got to get those cells, you got to get that DNA to fire the [ __ ] up, you know? You got to do the same thing with the feet. You can't be passive because our feet can take abuse. Like, think about it. Our feet are hitting the ground all day, every day, constantly, non-stop. Like, our feet are very durable. So, you got to hit them hard with like really intense, you know, foot modalities. You do that for the kid, man, it blow these other kids out the water, no problem. What are some of the activities? What are what are the exercises that parents should be having their kids do that you think are just at least low hanging fruit for get to active? Have them sit on the ground crunching towels with their toes. That's super easy, super simple. Uh get them on slantboard training. Like get a get a piece of wood, two pieces of wood, create like a small ramp that's like two to three inches high. Get them balancing on that with one leg on their forefoot. All different angles. you know, something that's really going to leverage strength, you know, and cellular regeneration. Uh, also the PVC pipes, you know, get the get two PVC pipes from a hardware store. Uh, for a kid, you probably want like 3x 12, so 3 in diameter, 12 in long, you know, and start having them like balance on one foot on the PVC pipe. Start like having them roll like a log, like, you know, like they're on a log. Like just do do different things to stimulate and stress their feet out. like it needs stress to like become stronger, you know? Like those modalities alone, messing around with those things, doing on a regular basis, dude, you never you'll never see a kid improve faster. Like I'm talking about like three to four days they're hitting a baseball better. Like they're they're sprinting, they're sprinting better, they're jumping, it doesn't hurt their knees when they land anymore. You know, the improvements are just people have no idea what they're missing out on. Yeah, you got me thinking a whole lot. But I think that the feet are one of the most underappreciated sort of areas to focus on because to your point, it always if you got strong feet, it transfers power all the way up into everything else you're working on. And if you got soft feet, then it doesn't transfer power as much all the way up. And so you can see huge improvements all around the board by focusing. Yeah. I I use the car analogy. I always tell people, think of your body as a car. Like if you if you're if you have a car and you're put on a racetrack, like why would you have your tires flat? Like that would be horrible idea. People like [ __ ] that. No, get the man on those tiny good tires. Are you crazy? But when we think about our own bodies, for some reason, we don't really think about think about the logic when it comes to that, you know, probably because we're not taught to. If you're someone that has like a desk job or you drive a lot, maybe you're a truck driver and you don't have like a lot of time to work out, you're just your life's not designed around working out right now. If you had to pick like one or two exercises for adults in that situation to regain some of their athleticism based on the five different areas that of stimulation that you know the body needs. What would be a couple of exercises to add? Like one or two exercises. Yeah. Let's say there's not a lot of time to add in exercise, but we want to go step improvement from where they're at. Probably Oh man, if I'm only limited to two Jesus. Uh, I don't think it can be done. I don't think it can be done. Well, I would say I would say if you don't have time, [ __ ] carve out time. Wake the [ __ ] up. Get up at 5:00 in the morning. F. You can find time. Anyone can find time. What's the minimum? How many exercises? I would say five. Like if you just had let's say body weight exercises, right? Where we got no equipment like running, sprinting, squats, handstands, and what is the last one? I'd probably say the lower core hold, lower abdominal hollow. You know, that's going to hit your entire front core, you know, pretty well. And you can always just twist to hit the obliques. I would say those things will give you the most well-rounded. You know, the handstands will hit the upper body strength, keep the shoulder blades together. The running and sprinting will give you your aerobic. It'll help develop some muscle mass and fast twitch. Squats, of course, you know, strengthens the legs. And the hollow holds will hit your entire core. And you can always like you can always like shift your body weight to hit these other core muscle groups, you know. That would be a good start, you know. But but the reality is and there's another paradigm shift that I'm that I try to teach people, especially some of my new clients. They say, "Oh, I don't have time." You got to make time. You have to make time. Anyone can find an hour, 45 minutes to an hour. You got to make the time, you know, and that probably is going to have to come expense out of something that you know, you might have to spend a little less time with your kids. You might have to do it. You might have to spend a little less time with your wife, which honestly, you want to anyway. Let's keep it honest, you know, give it a thousand. You got because if you if your body breaks down, if your body breaks down, you know, in your busy life, like everything starts and finishes with the body. It's the only thing you'll truly ever own. You know, all like our clothes, our money, when we die, none of it comes with us. The only thing we start with is our body. The only thing we're going to leave with is our body. So, it has to be number one, you know, and if it's if it's not, you know, you're your life is never you're never going to experience all the qualities of life as well as you could if you're in a weak vessel, you know, man, that's awesome. I know we ran out of time, uh, but this has been so fun talking to you about all of a variety of things. Thanks for taking some time to talk to us. This is this was great. Now you got me thinking about my feet, my kids feet, you know. I'm going to start getting a couple of things here so we can start doing some exercises. I think it's it's really cool. I took some Yeah, we'll do another one. I kind of carved this out like you guys I I amazed amount of C. So we you know, we'll get another if you guys want to do another episode with more time. I've already worked it out like uh Yeah, like in my calendar. So just let me know, man. I I could do this freaking for weeks. Just going. Yeah, right on, dude. Roger that. All right, we'll schedule another one, but for right now, we'll sign on off and we'll see you later, everybody. Bye.