Transcript of #835: Ben Patrick (KneesOverToesGuy) — 20-Minute Workouts That Produce Wild Results, From Chronic Knee Pain to Dunking Basketballs, Lessons from Charles Poliquin, Bulletproofing the Lower Body, and More

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. Wow, that was quite the ejaculation. Sorry for the volume, folks. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Ben Patrick. Ben Patrick is better known as Knee Over Toes Guy, and you can find him on Instagram and everywhere else as Knees Over Toes Guy. He is the founder of Athletic Truth Group, ATG, an online and brick and mortar training system rooted in rehabilitative strength and joint health. After years of debilitating knee and shin pain, including multiple surgeries. He rebuilt his body from the ground up and his performance going from sub 20 inch vertical to a documented 42 inch leap. He's the author of knee ability zero and other books on fitness and recovery. He's become a phenomenon online. And I should note there is a companion video for this episode where Ben and I walk through all of the exercises we discuss together. So if you want to see me with beginner's going through this, asking questions with him, then you can check it out. And you can find that on youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss, T-I-M-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. You can also find a video pinned on Ben's Instagram, that's knees over toes guy. And that runs through a more comprehensive version of what we did in person. But if you want the minimum effective dose, go to the youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss and you'll see what we did, especially making some adjustments for my current back pain. And if you want to see the more comprehensive stuff, you can check out his Instagram. We also get into a lot more than just exercise. Ben asked me some questions about how to navigate different decisions and integrity and so on in podcasting, business, et cetera. And we actually spend a good amount of time on that towards the end of this conversation, if that's of interest. And that is it. Without further ado, please enjoy a wide-ranging conversation with Ben Patrick. And don't forget about the companion videos at youtube.com slash timferris, as well as at knees over toes guy pinned post on Instagram. Thanks for listening. I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. Ben nice to see you Brother thank you Nice to finally spend time together. We did a bit of a workout overview, recorded some video, so people will be able to find that. And we'll put links in the show notes. We'll talk more also about things you might pin for people who want a visual reference here. But let's go back in time. Nicknames. we were chatting a bit before recording. What was the nickname that we were discussing and who gave it to you? I had a high school basketball coach who started calling me old man. I was so stiff, it'd take me so long to warm up compared to other players. I knew I wasn't built well for basketball. I thought I could work my way. I was just doing crazy workouts from the time I was maybe nine years old. So by 12, chronic knee pain. So even by high school, I couldn't get low in my legs. So I think during all that puberty time, things weren't forming right because I was so stiff. I wasn't getting into my legs the way I should. Started calling me old man. So we've got old man Patrick in high school, flash forward, now you're known as knees over toes guy. So something happened And in between those two, what were the, and we can approach this any number of ways. You could explain why the name, or you could talk about maybe catalyzing moments or findings that set you on the path that led you to become Knees Over Toes guy. Absolutely. As you alluded to on my Instagram, YouTube, it's pinned where this kind of stuff we're talking about. Someone can just go look at it and see it visually, like almost in order. So the chronic pains and stiffness, doctors did think around 14, probably something happened. I should have had surgery on. Didn't have surgery. Different things started stacking up. By 18, I then did have surgery. Partial kneecap replacement, like part of my kneecap was just floating there. quad tendon reattached and then had a meniscus transplant. And then it took about a year and a half because I was so extreme, so stiff, I was immobilized and really couldn't even run for like a year and a half. That kind of set off a chain of things By then my right knee was hurting worse than my left knee ever had Yeah I mean that happened when I had my left shoulder surgically reconstructed After the year year and a half it took to finally rehab the left the right was screaming. So I was in a pretty dark place because considering my right knee hurt worse than my left knee ever had, I'm like, I probably need surgery on the right knee now. And I had gotten from the surgeries and I had stayed on painkillers. and parents didn't know. My girlfriend didn't know. It was my wife now. Staying on the painkillers. Yeah. Right. I was just like popping them. And then I stumbled on some stuff from Charles Poliquin, who you had on your podcast. Yeah. Spent a lot of time with Charles back in the day. Yeah. And he had various information that was very clear that it was like, no, no, no. what we've in the fitness world had all been taught of don't let your knee over your toes. He had stuff saying, no, this is actually the athletes. He helps them prevent injury and rehab with training that position. And just for people who are trying to imagine what this means. So if you were to say, be in a squat position, keeping your shins vertical or your knees are aligned over your ankles. That would be the, let's just call it, pre-exposure to Poliquin, sacred cow, at least in some of the, a lot of the sort of exercise science worlds. Do not let your knees travel over your toes. Yeah. Right? Keep your shins vertical. Yeah. So Charles is saying quite the opposite. Yeah. And good point there. It was totally understandable why that occurred. 1970s exercise science is becoming a thing in school. And they found that when the knee goes over the toe, then there's more pressure on the knee. So what went into textbooks was showing when you exercise, don't let your knee over your toes. Now for someone to compare, think about stepping down the stairs and stop. You take a step downstairs, stop. You're loading your knee over your toes. Every single step you take downstairs. So when I started studying Charles Poliquin, because of what I had been through, for me, instantly, I knew there was something here because I had tried all the mainstream methods of no knees over toes So the first thing then that I could tell that allowed me to get off the painkillers was dragging a sled backwards. So every step I take, my knee is over my toes. It's almost like if someone walked backward up a hill to rehab rather than going down the hill. And that's actually the progression of the rehab is walking backwards, trying to add resistance to walking backwards, which is gentler to then I use a slant board, but someone could really, you could roll up a towel to elevate your heel. You could start with your heel flat. Like you don't have to even elevate the heel to start where you actually work on stepping down. So you're actually controlling the motion at your pain-free level of stepping down. Even if you can't, I couldn't do a six inch step. I could maybe control a couple inches and you're using high repetitions as if you were a gymnast. When you say you can only do a couple of inches, can you just paint a picture for what that means? Let's say you're walking down the stairs. Each stair is probably six inches. I couldn't control that motion without pain. I had to sort of clunk my way down the stairs, ease up pressure with the upper body. I couldn't control step by step without my knee hurting, but someone can do less than a six inch there. So the walking backward as a warmup, you're getting circulation. We're talking maybe stacking up 100, 200 yards backward, which didn't hurt, and then was getting circulation, getting some strength. So that was what I felt like, okay, I can get off the painkillers now because I have this way of naturally reducing the pain and getting some strength going in a knee pressure position. And let me just sidebar quickly for folks. I have only in the last handful of years, I'd used sleds a lot, but I was always pushing. It's only in the last handful of years. And you have met these guys as well, but Nseema E. Young and Mark Bell. And of course, Mark Bell used to train with, he was at Westside Barbell, Louis Simmons, you mentioned his name when we were recording earlier. I have come to appreciate just how incredibly therapeutic this pulling of the sled is, which you could do with a band around a harness around the waist. You could do it with a vest. You could simply hold on to, that's typically how I've seen Mark do it, for instance, where you're effectively just holding on to handles with a strap that attaches you. do it with a vest, you could simply hold on to, that's typically how I've seen Mark do it, for instance, where you're effectively just holding on to handles with a strap that attaches you to the sled. For rehabilitation, for prehab, for building in some insurance policy for the knees, it is just incredibly effective, but also so elegant and so simple and hard to hurt yourself. Now, of course, talk to your doctor. I don't pretend to be one on the internet. But that's all I wanted to say was, personally, I can also vouch for this. Did you come across that through Poliquin? Charles Poliquin, he was interviewed for this article where he helped an Olympic athlete who wasn't going to be able to compete in the Olympics. And they started going backward with the sled often because they could recover fast. And he was able to get back and actually win a medal at the Olympics. So I'm not advising someone to rush. but that was a unique case where this might be the guy's only chance you have a constraint ever yeah so that kind of sold me on it and then once i was experiencing it i was like okay i can see there's something here it's not like that solved all my problems that was enough for me in my state to be willing to get off the painkillers and then start exploring further stuff how long did it take you to get off of the painkillers after you started doing the sled work Well, I remember after the first week of doing this, I then intentionally got off. That didn't mean all my pain was gone, but it was like I wanted to experience this route and not try to shield the pain anymore. So within a week, I knew, okay, there's something different here of progressing the knee over the toes rather than avoiding the knee over the toes. I didn't really want to think about any further progressions, but that gave me something I could do. Didn't hurt. And to give someone an idea on the safety, we can't say anything is 100% safe, but real numbers at the gym I eventually made, coached thousands of group training sessions. So it wound up being, I counted like over 100,000 times that I coached people on the sled. No one was ever hurt doing the sled. It could happen. To give you a visual that we actually did, which was, I feel like the best visual to explain people. My mom is 71. one, we put a thousand pounds on the sled. Okay. And had her try to drag it backwards She couldn budget but she was fine People are going to be wondering why you would do that to your mom More people are like oh now I get why it safe Because the thousand pounds that she's trying to drag is not bearing down on her. So when you're trying to drag a weight, it probably has less potential to bodybuild and create that breakdown that turns into new muscle tissue and stuff. but it has more potential for getting into something with safety without pain. That was my stepping stone. Charles Poliquin was, this was before social media. So I didn't actually see any videos of any of the stuff. I had to really decipher articles. I had to self-teach based on information he had put out. And through my just self-experimenting, I was able to get to where I could play basketball really hard without my knees hurting. What other ingredients were added to the cocktail outside of the backwards sled pulls? So you got the backwards sled pulls. Then it was really clear that he was getting people into a full range of motion squat. And that was also something that growing up my whole life in basketball was like, don't do any deep squats. Your knee goes over your toes. So it was sort of don't go below 90 degrees and don't let your knee over your toes were the two prevailing things. And I went to six, eight, 10 trainers. Maybe that was bad luck that none of those trainers knew differently. It does seem like it was the prevailing way. And having been on basketball teams now, having coached, I could safely estimate that 99% of basketball teams don't squat with a full range of motion. Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don't require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. And that's why I love the protein bars from today's sponsor, David. They are my go-to protein source on the run. 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That's 50% off of your first year at Monarch.com with code TIM. i'll throw out a poliquinism he had quite a few of these at some point i'll tell you the origin story how i connected with charles which is pretty funny but this is one of his lines and this is i'll give credit where credit's due this is from outside online but strength is gained in the range it is trained very uh seussian as they put it and you just see this over and over again And I interviewed for instance coach Christopher Sommer who used to be the men national gymnastics coach And you look at a lot of say cases of what people might consider inflexibility and it just the body being very smart to guard itself against injury where it is weak at the extent of your range of motion right And when you start to develop strength at the end range all of a sudden bada bing bada boom your quote unquote flexibility improves right? Because the body is very, very intelligent and it's guarding you against injury. I just want to mention the polyquinism because I think it puts a fine point on some of what you're saying, right? It's like if you're never getting into a full squat position, if you ever engage in anything that puts you into those positions, your foot slips while you're playing intramural soccer, who knows, right? You're going to be potentially in a world of hurt. No, I appreciate that. And I think to make it an effective podcast for people, please keep chiming in. Even for our body, this is the mindset, the efficiency, the 80% of the results from 20%. This is the stuff that helps me make my system. so it's hugely inspired by that and outside of my videos i don't have a ton to say here so please keep it keep it coming i'll make it interesting for people to say i'll keep prompting yeah but please well on the deep squat what i have to offer is lots of experience trying to help people who can't figure out how to apply this stuff deep squats hurting is super common people feeling like they don't have the mobility to get into a deep squat. Elevating your heels a bit can help people get lower on a squat. And holding a weight out in front of you reduces the pressure on the knee. Do you recommend people do what people would envision as a normal squat? So both feet on the ground, same plane, or one exercise that you're very well known for, the ATG split squat or front foot elevated split squat, would you have them start with that in place of the prototypical squat? How do you think about that? I see it in relation to age, almost like a reverse system, meaning my kids are three and five. Their squats are incredible. I'm not like, wait until you, none of them. So it's almost like in youth, my whole system for the knees is if I can have you comfortable and able to be getting stronger, controlling a full range of motion squat, where you feel like you don't have to stop before you get all the way down, but also where you feel like you don't have to bounce to get out of it, like where you're able to own it. You can control it all the way down, pause, and then explode up without pain, able to get stronger. Kids naturally have that. And so when I'm coaching, I volunteer at a school. I've had to coach 50 kids at a time. I set up 10 slam boards. Some kids need to elevate the heel, some don't. They're able to back their heels up, whatever they want. everyone can get down into a deep squat without pain. Some need to hold some weight out in front of them to get down there. But the younger they are, 100% can do it. Like all little toddlers can deep squat. Why does the weight in front of you help someone to get into a squatted position, whether the heels are elevated or not? It's simply a counterbalance. So when you go to squat down and you think about that for someone with knee pain, you think about that pressure, holding the weight on the front, you can actually lean back a bit, not have to go, your knee doesn't have to go as far over your toes. So I'm trying to help people get better at knees over toes, not work through pain in the process, gradually coax that ability. Or if they've already got it, we can fortify it super easily. So a progression using common weights, because it's mostly going to be adults listening to this. Let's say you roll up a towel on the floor and you lift your heels up onto it to simulate some more of that mobility, get low, and you hold a 25-pound plate out in front of you. You get where you can lower down pain-free in a squat. Let's say five reps controlling down. Okay. Now let's say you hold a 45-pound plate, not all the way out in front of you, just in front of your knees. Get to where that's pain-free five reps, let's say. Okay. Now you hold a 45 or more pound kettlebell, not far out in front of you, but kind of above your thighs. Closer to your center of gravity. Yeah. And then, depending on a person's goals, what would be even closer than that would be a bar on front. So, depending on sports goals, I find with all students, I want them to be able to hold a kettle bell and get down in a deep squat without pain. That's a pretty good, I have to get down and pick up one kid, two kids. I got a third kid on the way. I have to squat down. If you got to pick up two toddlers you can just bend your back over You can for one Think about trying to pick up two little bodies You got a deep squat So I got a deep squat with some load Saying everyone has to barbell squat that just not true But I do think it would be a common sense goal for everyone to be able to hold a kettlebell and squat all the way down without pain. I want you to fact check me if I'm off base here, but I would like to come back to the split squat for a second, particularly with that front foot elevated. So imagine that you had someplace in your house, I'm making this up, where there's one step up. Maybe it's from like living room to the kitchen or vice versa. Could just as easily as we did earlier be like two thick 45 pound plates if they're kind of like the bumper plate style. So whatever that might be, six to eight inches, whatever the height happens to be. You've got one foot on that. then you have your other leg as far back as is pain-free and you go down into a squat to the extent that you can be pain-free in that range of motion and your knee if you build up to it maybe you'll get there naturally quickly your front knee is going to project way over your toes and the reason that i wanted to come back to this is a because i've derived so much value from this and so much pain reduction in the back. And the third is from a form perspective, I wouldn't want people who have never explored really deep squatting to jump into doing squatting where they're rounding the low back at the bottom most portion of the squat. So just to paint a picture for folks. Maybe they've heard these terms, but if you imagine your hips, your pelvis, like a glass of wine, if you're pouring wine out the front, that's anterior pelvic tilt. If you're pouring wine out the back, that's the posterior pelvic tilt. If you go into the bottom of a squat, especially if you're loading yourself up with a barbell or something, and you have a lot of posterior pelvic tilt, some people call that the butt wink at the bottom, you can really hurt yourself. And I was guilty of that at one point. And I like the safety profile, and I don't wanna make anything sound risk-free, of course, but of all the exercises that I've seen, especially under control, slow cadence, the front foot elevated split squat, it seems harder to commit cardinal sins where you gonna injure yourself Is that a fair statement I think so And that was for someone listening who is confused on what we talking about Now you understand where I was when I was 19, trying to figure this out without seeing visuals. So I have by far made the most step-by-step free videos on how to do that and how to use. I mean, a stairwell is a near perfect device. You have balance to hold on, to reduce the load. You have scalable steps to use. Which is what I did in the beginning. I had my front foot two steps up, holding onto a railing with one hand, and then just worked the way down. That's how my mom has mostly done them. She's 71. If you see her sprint, it's like, I'm going to need to see a birth certificate. That's wild. 71, your mom gets to sprint. My mom is more impressive. I try. I can't get, my mom can get more views than I can when I talk about her. So just to give voice, certainly this pops into my mind. I'm like, wait a second. All right. So do you just come from thoroughbred genetic stock? I mean, this sounds kind of outrageous. I mean, has your mom been sprinting her whole life? Did she have a period where she couldn't do it? I started training her because her hips were deteriorating. She then had a fall, sort of chronic hip issue began. and so I've been training my mom for going on eight years and I wound up at my gym I had a whole women's class people of all ages grandmas young moms everything in between and then my dad is more like me Mr. Fragile the broken bones the knees the knee tears that'll be my new podcast name the Mr. Fragile show yeah when I was a kid I went to a speed class to try to get faster and he signed up with me and this is a youth speed class so there was no warm-up structure it was just okay here's the first run oh boy and he didn't get to his second step and pulled his hamstring and so i come more from his fragile side yeah my mom's been working from a desk for 50 years so we don't really know what she ran when she was a young girl probably pretty athletic but didn't keep doing sports or anything and generally ate well, stuff like that. But now the hip is deteriorating. I remember going to visit her after she had a fall and I'm like, I was getting worried. Had her start coming to the gym. So she fell in love with the sled. Eight years She been sledding regularly She very gentle with her program She spends maybe 10 15 minutes a day And similarly I work out only twice a week It a bit different for me because I'm raising toddlers, running a business. So it's like, I know I can carve out my time to exercise twice a week. Me and my mom, we do all the same exercises, basically just at different levels. But that split squat, she credits with fixing her hip problems. She's got great mobility with the grandkids. She slowly coaxed my dad along. So my dad does different pieces of the programming to fix up old pains and stuff. So there's some mixture of good genetics. Definitely not like my dad never was able to grab the rim or anything like that. And I was the same. In basketball. I went through my high school career unable to grab the rim. And now not that much proof, but okay, I'm 34. I've been dunking for over a decade without having knee problem. I was your, your video guy filming Duncan out on that concrete court. And for me, it's the fact that I can go play and that's what I trained for. We don't really know genetically. Do I have good genetics, bad genetics somewhere? Yeah. I'm not trying to, I just, it was more like my 71 year old mom is sprinting. I'm like, wait a minute, hold the press. I just wanted to unpack that. So thank you for that. If I were to ask your mom, all right, you can only pick three or four exercises. That's it that you get to continue with. You've had eight years to trial and error and try a bunch of stuff. What do you think she would respond with of the like three or four? I know she would do the sled forward and backward. That became way of life at our gym and she's kept it up ever since. I know she would do that full range of motion, which varies based on the person, what that means. But where you're not stopping short, you're embracing your flexibility. Full range of motion split squat. I know those would be her top two, and then I know she would throw something in for the posterior. I'll have to ask her what is her favorite. Today in the video, I showed the three main different posterior exercises. You just had to hazard a guess. What do you think she might choose? I think she would choose the way that we use that back extension machine because she works from a desk. And so particularly when you put that full split squat, which stretches the front of the hip, with then where you're getting to squeeze those glutes, that sets that pelvis that it's almost like whether someone has posterior or anterior, it seems to benefit everyone because you're getting both sides. glutes, that sets that pelvis that it's almost like whether someone has posterior or anterior, it seems to benefit everyone because you're getting both sides of that equation. I think she would do that one. All right. And again, just a reminder for folks, we're going to link to everything and you're going to have videos pinned and just search knees over toes guy for all the platforms and you'll find those. What else did you pick up from Poliquin if anything comes to mind? let's start there and then i'll trade with you so many gems oh that's a tough question it is sadly charles is no longer with us got the phone call about it pretty much immediately after he died which was very sad very tragic way too early but anything else come to mind okay i could buy you some time if you want he was trying to master everything from right he was helping bodybuilders, athletes. The thing he told me, so only one time when I finally had the money and freedom to go see, he came to America, did seminar. And he said, this was towards the end. And he said, his only regret was not getting into flexibility sooner. And you know, he was a wealth of strength knowledge, a lot of that strength relating to range of motion. And that definitely left an impact on me. Teddy West, he had gotten into that sooner. And the conclusions that I've come to is you can see my style of training. The way I stretch wouldn't be how someone would normally think of stretching, but just the idea of your strength and your flexibility, really getting those into harmony to where the positions that you're flexible in, you feel strong in those positions. And so I've really explored that deeply now compared to, let's say, look people are going to have way more experience in bodybuilding powerlifting strongman these kind of things and charles had way more experience there than me so i think that was if someone goes to my pages and sees the style that i train i feel like that was the gem that was just what i needed that gave me now like the systems that i love and also getting strength and flexibility or mobility and harmony can sometimes mean that you're training both at the same time often can mean that. And we were recording earlier and not that I going to win any gold medals in the split squat but like my range of motion is pretty good all things considered And I credit that to doing the movement And also I gave him a shout out when we were recording Jersey Gregor at some credit where credit is due, who holds multiple world records or did in master's Olympic weightlifting. He is, he's got to be close to 70, if not 70. Now he can still do, he can stand on a balance board like an indo board the fully loaded barbell and do an ass to heels olympic snatch at his age it is unbelievable his wife also holds a few world records she can do the same thing their sustained athleticism is just beyond incredible and for ankle mobility he had me doing basically one or two reps on the minute overhead squats. I'm holding a barbell overhead, but we're talking bar, maybe plus five pounds on either side, very lightweights, just doing one rep on the minute for like 10 to 20 minutes. That's it. And by greasing the groove in that way, I went from basically zero ankle mobility, lots of injuries, still a lot of lateral instability to being able to do what we did earlier, which is frankly, years after I did that training. It's been really durable, which is wild. One of the points that I hear you making that I see reflected in a lot of what you do is that you don't necessarily have to do, you absolutely don't have to do for most things like an hour of strength training every other day, plus an hour of stretching every day or every other day. You just do not, that is not necessary for most people at all. Like the surface area for injury goes up also when you're throwing everything in the kitchen sink with lots and lots of hours. And certainly, I mean, I had conversations with Charles back in the day where we would talk about some of these professional athletes, let's just say NFL players, who have 5%, 6% body fat. You know, they destroyed the combine. They're these absolute phenoms. And I would ask them, what do they eat for their diet? And he'd be like, oh, Wendy's for breakfast, Burger King for lunch, McDonald's for dinner. I mean, you have to be very careful that you're not modeling your training on mutants. So I'll just pull out a couple of things from Charles. So I first met Charles because he reached out to me after reading the four work week my first book And he had applied a lot of it to his business and his productivity And I think at the time he didn realize this but I had been exposed to tons of his stuff just as you had through magazines way back in the day. And he reached out and he's like, you don't know who I am. And I was like, well, actually, that's funny because I do know who you are. And then we connected and Charles ended up in the four-hour body. He introduced me to myofascial release and active release technique. And there's some before and after photos with internal rotation on the shoulder in the four-hour body that are unbelievable. They look like they were staged because the gains in range of motion are so significant. He was right about so many things. wasn't right about everything, but there's so many things that Charles did that ended up being proven out through studies and data collection later and exercise science and other fields. It's pretty remarkable. I mean, he got a lot of things right. He was so dedicated. I forget the exact number, but he learned a bunch of different languages just so that he could read essentially everything that had been written about exercise. Yeah, in the source language. Right. What a maniac. Also cantankerous as fuck. Oh my God, he was so salty. And part of his charm, one of a kind. Who else has influenced your thinking on exercise and movement, just broadly speaking, your way of training? Charles was really cool about crediting where he learned different things. And so that's something I've kept in. And it also gave me the idea that like, Okay, there might be real gems in quite a few areas. So I know you've talked about gymnastic rings. Okay, doing rows and pull-ups with gymnastics rings, I do one set to burn out of each per week. That saves me so much time and gives me a pretty balanced upper back for my goals. So there's a gem that Paul Aquin didn't teach me, but his general mindset of learning. I'm just going to pause to ask you to repeat something you told me earlier. Where did Charles figure out the backwards sled pulling. Oh man, such a cool story. If you want to talk about pulling from unusual places. Yeah. So Charles went to the source Westside barbell in Ohio led by Louie Simmons, who was creating the strongest power lifters in the world And Louie was jealous of these Finland powerlifters of their squats And they said that their secret weapon was their day job was dragging trees So Louis invented the idea of dragging weight as a form of exercise. And then that became a way of life at Westside Barbell. One of Louis Simmons disciples, Dave Tate, who made the, if you've heard of Elite FTS. They made the Prowler style sled, all kinds of amazing stuff. I'm going to see Dave in two weeks actually for the first time. Dave has a quote that's like, we didn't have warmups. It was Louis Simmons just telling him, hey, before you train, go out to the parking lot and drag the sled. He's like, we didn't have shit called warmups. It was called the stuff you do before you train. And people are like, how long, how many sets and reps at? I don't know. It was X amount of times down the parking lot. Oh, how long was the parking lot? Don't know. So it was cool, the history there. But it's cool how Charles Poliquin would just go to the source. He'd go to the source in Europe or Ohio or wherever it was. He would go to the source. And then it was, like I told you, it was this article of where he used the backward sled for knee rehab for this Olympic athlete that kind of gave me a stepping stone to all this stuff. Yeah, if people also want to look up Louis Simmons and his writing online, a lot of amazing tidbits to be found to this day in a lot of his writing. And Westside Barbell, for a period of time, it was just one of those factories for mutants. And of course, there's some selection bias. If people are traveling to the Mecca to station themselves there to train, there's a little bit of selection bias. But the results were just so incredible. And the number of world records broken and the number of innovations, whether that's say chains to provide more resistance as you get into stronger ranges of motion with whether it's deadlift or anything else i mean bands and so i mean a lot of what you see that is propagated throughout the gym universe started there or at least was codified and sort of formalized in some way there so that was a great one one that i think would be inaccurate if we missed. There was a bodybuilder named Bob Gaida. G-A-J-D-A. Bob Gaida. Don't know that name. Okay. He was Mr. Universe like right before bodybuilding really blew up. And now these are his words. He worked at the Chicago YMCA. His passion was helping get kids off the streets, off drugs, doing bodybuilding. He's Mr. Universe. He goes into the lockers one day and sees people shooting up drugs, steroids. Like this was the beginning of steroids. When I say this, people are like, oh no, Bob was on steroids too. Look, this is Bob's story. Bob's story, what you can look up is he was Mr. Olympia when he quit. Not a lot of people are going to quit right when, guess what he was getting offered? The first protein shake deals. So there wasn't money in what he was doing. All of a sudden, there was money in bodybuilding. And guys were doing steroids. And he quit. When someone turns down money, I feel like there's a, you know, I believe what he's saying. And he wound up then getting into sort of like my passion of helping people enjoy life without breaking down. And he invented this device that he called a DARD, D-A-R-D. I think it was Dynamic Axial Resistance Device. Okay. It didn't catch on. It didn't, uh, by the time I was studying this, you couldn't even buy it anywhere. It didn't turn into a business that worked out, but it allowed you to do the opposite of a calf race and strengthen the front chin muscles. Oh, got it. Tibialis interior. Yeah. So one of the things I do that's really unusual and Charles Poliquin did calf training, did tibialis training. Lots of coaches have done this. Bob was the creator and really had a big impact on me. And in my workout style, which I hadn't seen anyone doing. I go from the resistance forward and backward with the sled to then working my lower leg muscles. So with the sledding, you're pushing through your feet in various ways. I mean, you're working all kinds of stuff. My mindset was like, okay, move the body forward and backward, then start addressing the body from the ground up. Let's get some extra built. Like before we even get into the knees, I found extra desensitization before getting into the knee work by doing the lower leg work after the sled work. Maybe it was just because the sled burns your legs and you get a little break But we can say it a bad thing to have some extra ability in the front and back of our shins And so an equipment company reached out said like this is when the knees over toes guy was starting to catch on on social media Like is there anything that doesn exist that you think should exist? I'm like, yeah, like there should be these dart bars, but I told them to call it a tib bar to make it simple for people because it's the anterior front tibialis. Tibia is your shin bar. Just calling something a dart also. I'm going to hell, but I mean, it's a hard one to sell. Yeah. So with the knees over toes guy stuff, I could see, okay, I've got a pretty good skill here at helping people understand stuff. I think TibBAR and now it's a pretty common device. You can even go on Amazon and buy TibBars. I mean, there's like 10 sellers now. I have by far the lowest price for an American made TibBAR. I don't sell the most TibBars. Pretty much anything that I make in America, someone's going to make more money copying in China. And that's actually, at first, It seemed annoying, but now I'm like, it's actually pretty cool. Everyone wins. I can make a nice living pursuing American made on everything I do. And people are going to copy it because the price is going to be higher, American made. All right, everyone wins. You can get it cheaper from someone making it in China. And that doesn't mean all my stuff is made in America. I'm pursuing all my stuff made in America. And anything on my website, I don't play games with people. It says ATG USA. Then you know if it says that it's made in America. So this was a really cool device, particularly for rehab, but even for me, like what I showed you in my video, you can put a butt against the wall with no equipment whatsoever, raise your toes, and do that for a while and burn out and get a reverse calf raise, a tibialis raise. Yeah. If you basically, I'll just paint a picture for folks. So if you have your, you're standing facing away from a wall, maybe your heels are a foot away from the wall, your heels. One to two feet. Yeah. One to two feet. Then you lean back against the wall. now take your upper back off of the wall so it's just kind of your hips and low back against the wall so you're not cheating your legs are locked right your knees are locked and then you're lifting your toes to the greatest extent that you can and the nest point you added to that i was like oh that's actually very smart and it's particularly i would say helpful for someone like me who's I've basically torn everything in both ankles. Too many heel hooks and nonsense way back in the day. That basically lifting the foot as much as possible then going down on the pinky side then coming up and going down on the big toe side and alternating back and forth like that I could see helping also with some of the lateral stability issues that I have. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. Creatine isn't just for muscle. It's essential daily fuel for your brain, your body, and long-term performance. For me, I have Alzheimer's and dementia risk in my family. The cognitive benefits are the reason I take creatine every single day. And today's episode sponsor, Momentus, is the gold standard in creatine. There's a lot of BS floating around, but I choose them. Why? Because they source CreaPure creatine, the purest, most effective creatine monohydrate available. So if you've been curious about creatine, this is your moment to get back on track or try it for the first time. Momentus is also now introducing the Momentus Creatine Chews. Each chew delivers one gram of pure CreaPure Creatine Monohydrate. I was skeptical of these chews. I was like, I'm never going to use these. It turns out that I use them all the time. They're super convenient and they are NSF certified for sports. So you get the gold standard purity without all the mess. Head to livemomentus.com and use code TIM for up to 35% off of your first order. so we were chatting a bit before recording about some of your different pieces of equipment and i told you that i really liked your wrist bar so the wrist bar is imagine a baton like you would hand off to someone in a relay race but at one end half of it is thick enough i don't know what the exact diameter is let's call it two two and a half inches so that you can plate load you can put an Olympic plate on that and then secure it, which makes it very interesting because you can work with progressive resistance, right? And for me, that was important and will be important. I'm six weeks after elbow surgery, so I'm not quite there yet, but for sort of supination and pronation, whether I'm doing isometrics or otherwise. And it's very small, very portable. And one of the advantages, you know, we were chatting to, well, why don't you just tell the story and then I can add some color if need be. I put this bar in Five Bullet Friday, which is my newsletter that goes out to 2 million plus subscribers. There's a few moments I look back at just like sheer luck, like when you won something at the fair that you thought you wouldn done it One of those highlight just lucky moments is we just seeing the wrist bar sales just going nuts So my staff are like what the heck is going on Like, why are we selling so many wrist bars? And we quickly traced down that it was because of you. That's like an old time business moment. And that's made in America. So we were able to basically just make them to order and just quickly service everyone. So that last part is important, right? Because I think you mentioned it was like more units than like the history of the bar up to that point or something. And I try to give people a heads up if something is going to land in the newsletter because what can end up happening as one of my fans termed it the hug of death. So the hug of death can take a number of different forms. It could be a website crashing, but it could also be where someone has a long lead time on ordering inventory. Let's just say they're getting it from China. Not that that's intrinsically bad. I'm not saying that that is. but let's just say for them to get an order they have certain minimums and so on and they believe that the sales from the newsletter are going to continue at that velocity and they only had 100 in stock now they order 2000 because they expect to be able to move those and they don't the hug of death is uh oh I'm not going to make this money back and companies small companies in particular can go under if they misgage stuff like that so you have the advantage where you're making them I mean from a global perspective right around the corner. So you could do just-in-time inventory. Yeah, we didn't even have to order a batch. We were just able to fulfill the orders. Awesome family in Minnesota who does stuff for a variety of people in fitness, but reached out to me a few years back and has really helped me to make some cool stuff American made. What other principles, topics, exercises would you like to talk about? Maybe one way to edge into starting point for that is before coming here to do this recording and we did some movement earlier, I did what I've done a number of different times because your name has come up over the years and I've looked at your videos and watched a lot of them. Sorted your videos by most popular. I'm sure a lot of people do that as a way to produce like a manageable shopping list of videos. So my question for you is, which videos were not anointed by the YouTube gods or for whatever reason have not had the views that you would like, where you're like, if I could point out one video that I wish people paid more attention to, could be any video. But like your greatest hits don't need the help in a sense. Maybe you'd like to mention one of them. But if there's a lesser known video where you're like, man, this one's really, I think, quite important and it hasn't had the visibility. So I just made a video really recapping all my knowledge because of going on this podcast. I didn't say in the video, you don't want to jinx it like, hey guys, I'm going on Tim Ferriss and then you get canceled. But I made it for this podcast and it happens to be doing really well. I found that the videos I put out that really hit home and help people then long-term wind up doing well. So for me, it's almost like my experience has been the better videos do have more views. Because I try to be really careful to never lie in a YouTube title. What I have to look out for, which I'll still have to check it on your video because who knows on your staff who's going to title it, is people have me on or whatever. And then it's like I found one and they've since corrected it. But it said, fix knee pain guaranteed in 60 seconds. The only caps. I won't have a video with that title. The only exercise you'll ever, Caps, need. And so sure enough, the guy, great channel, great guy, very busy, naturally hired a professional company. And then it actually alerted him and he found a bunch of lies like that in the titles. So because of that, you can get a lot of views if you lie in the title. Even for me, I'm not saying this from a point of perfection. There was one that's so hard. I think I've kept it up and sometimes I go back and forth. I had titled it, this was four or five years ago, how to make yourself a world-class athlete. And I use all these stories of people who weren't world-class athletes and made themselves world-class athletes. But still, that was the closest one I can remember that I feel like was potentially a lie. Now, you'll pin the video that you refer to, which is sort of the recap of a lot of what we're talking about visually. Do you recall the title of that? Yeah. Minimalistic workout program with sets and reps. That's how I title things now. Yeah. There's no... No fluff. Yeah. So what's funny is that... So now to get views it really is about the content itself not the title So it doesn say knees over toes It doesn say fix knee pain because there these keywords that you can get views So it just says minimalistic workout program with sets and reps and it's doing great. But that's the most recent one I made for this podcast for someone to not beat around the bush, get all the key information. It even gives you sets and it gives you my actual program. It's not a theoretical program. These are the two workouts I do a week. All the people I train are on very similar versions of this. and I want to give people a taste of some of what we recorded earlier in case they don't see it and in effect I'll summarize but feel free to jump in because I'm a stickler for detail and I like exact recipes could be my OCD screaming at the back of my head which is pretty often but the point you made, or at least that I heard, was you're not really a magic sets and reps guy in terms of some Goldilocks perfect protocol. And the reason I bring that up is that just like you can regress range of motion in a movement, you can regress the volume. and what I would say is that in pain-free range of motion, a little bit can go a long way. So if you look at something and you're like, ah, I don't have time for three sets of this or five sets of that or whatever it might be, okay, fine. Well, maybe you start with one set and I know people who have gotten into tremendous shape coming from a baseline of zero, no athleticism, nothing and they're like, ah, I don't have time to go to the gym, I don't have to do that. And I'm like, what about one push-up before bed? What about one push-up? Is there a reason you can't do one push-up? They're like, yeah, of course I can do one push-up. I'm like, okay, great. Do one push-up. And then it turns into two. And then it turns into whatever. And I know one guy, within a few months, he was doing 50 push-ups before bed. He was seeing real results. And then that was the unlock. So that's a long-winded way of just saying, don't get fixated on your limitations. you can always scale down. My starting system is one to two sets. And then I found for myself, one to two sets I can maintain great. Only on exercises that I'm planning to put more weights on, I'll go a couple more sets just to actually you probably still only talking one or two sets really exerting Like work sets Yeah Just to make sure people safely take their time Now I simply wouldn have believed 15 years ago that now I be like doing only two workouts a week 45 minutes dunking and stuff So I wouldn't have believed it. So if someone thinks we're full of shit, I would have thought we were full of shit. That also doesn't mean that higher volume programs can't work. number one i see all the different exercises as a beautiful freedom with different inputs and adaptations and i like i see all of fitness as positive and then i see even all people's viewpoints of then how to program that up as positive the program you stick with that works for you and your goals is awesome yeah the program you stick with is the best program and i want to reiterate what you're saying because i write books to be references for myself basically. If I can find a book that does the job already, writing is way too hard. The research is way too arduous. It takes way too long. I don't want to write a book. It also turns out to generally be a terrible way to make any money, even if your books do very well. There's just way too much of pushing boulders up the hill for me to write a book unless I feel like I'm gathering things that I need and can't find somewhere else. That was the case with the four-hour body. and this minimum effective dose, the concept, the MED of finding the minimum effective dose, and you can look at many comparables, right? It's like there's a certain temperature at which you boil water. You don't need to get it 30 degrees hotter, right? If you go outside, there's a point at which you start to adapt in the sun and develop a tan. You don't need or want to stay out another hour, right? And you progress and you start to extend the duration, et cetera. It turns out that you can apply this almost everywhere. You can apply it to language learning with the highest frequency words. You can apply it to, for instance, I was asking on X back when it was Twitter, people for favorite chapters in the four hour body, because I was curious about possibly updating things. Although there's not a lot that needs much updating, it turns out. And people gave various examples. There was a, I think it was an NFL player who was benched and got back to playing professionally using the prehab chapter and Occam's protocol. Occam's protocol is like 20 minutes, twice a week resistance training and a handful of other things There another guy who chimed in and I understand he can believe everything you read on the internet but I seen multiple examples of this He got to I think a 475 deadlift using the Barry Ross protocol in the book And Barry Ross coached Allison Felix and many other sprinters. It is the most minimal thing you could possibly imagine. And a crux piece of it is doing deadlifts to the knee and then effectively dropping the bar so that you're not risking any type of hamstring strain and doing two to three sets of two to three reps. That's it. And you're taking big fat power lifter rests in between those sets. The amount of strength that you can build doing that is head spinning. So I just want to emphasize that I don't have enough time doesn't really hold up to scrutiny if you're willing to scale back. And in fact, you can do a lot more with very little than you might suspect. To your point, there are also volume-based approaches. And I mean, Poliquin, we talked about Poliquin. He did a lot of high-volume stuff with his athletes. Not everyone is going to tolerate that very well, nor is it going to be compatible with their schedules necessarily. So you find what works for you. And ultimately, the program you stick with is the best program. I love that. Yeah, the four-hour body had a massive, massive effect on me. in like this phase of life, it's like two hour body for me. And because it's like the strength, the flexibility, the circulation, the cardio, all this stuff wrapped in one, I don't do any other therapies. I don't have to take any supplements. Those couple hours go a long way for me. And then what are my goals? Like for me being a dad and then really focusing on my business, treating people well and doing good, it takes a lot of time and energy because if you turn a blind eye to your business, that's rarely going to happen on its own. Very rarely. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Yeah. So it's like, those are my goals. I also don't want to spend any time having a rehab stuff and knock on wood, it's 12 years now, no knee or back problems. It was like 15 years ago that I got into this. And I would say my biggest mistake was treating it as short-term rehab and being like, oh, great. And then trying to go back to the methods I used to do. Whereas now for me, like you had the question in the video of like, so is this like a warm up for the work? And like, that's the workout. And then you get better at those things. And some of these things we've mentioned, whether it be then finish. question in the video of like, so is this like a warmup for the work? And they're like, that's the workout. And then you get better at those things. And some of these things we've mentioned, whether it be then finishing with a set of ring rows to a good burnout, that's going to take what a minute and goes a long way. So the efficiency of sledding and what I use at home is a resisted treadmill forward and backward. I look at the clock, like three, four minutes I've gone by that I've done three sets, forward and backward, catching my breath between each set. I'm pumped. My lungs have had a great workout. My legs are like warmed up, springy, fast, all this stuff. So for our body, you can see in my passion, this is more along my passions in life, is almost helping people that don't want so much stress on the body to then be able to focus on other things. Or stress on the schedule, right? Stress on the family. and I would say that if I were to, and it's just these things are too long, most of it, the vast majority of what's in the four-hour body, I feel is very defensible. It's become more defensible over time, which has been cool to see since it came out in 2010. But if I were to add a few things to it, I would add sled work or analogs like the resisted inclined treadmill. I would add a chapter on intermittent fasting, I would add a chapter on it might not be a chapter but maybe a sidebar on various hip activities, exercises things like glute medius work things that you can do to stabilize everything else in effect that I did put some of in Tools of Titans with say some of Peter Ortiz exercises and so on I would probably add chapter or sidebar on zone two training, which I still to this day find to be the most boring thing in the world. But if I have to drag myself or whip myself to do anything, that would be on the high whipping scale. And I think that's about it. And there are probably chapters that I would pull out to further simplify things. And that's about it. I mean, these things are so reliable. And I would say to someone, for instance, again, this is going to sound like nothing, but if you have access to a sled and people can look at the resisted treadmill that you have also through ATG How much does that cost 600 600 Right So I mean it on the grand scale of things not just affordable as an investment but also space efficient right Because the biggest knock against the sled is that you need space and the sleds are not cheap. Particularly the sleds I really like, like the Torque sleds, which I own. I love them. But here in Austin, I don't have the space for one. But let's just pretend you have access to one of these. Let's call it a sled for simplicity, just so people can visualize it. Over this past summer, I did sled work where effectively, as prescribed by Peter Atiyah, if I'm doing VO2 max training, I would want to do like four minutes on, four minutes off. You can make it five or six or whatever. It depends on how hard you're pushing. And let's just say it's four minutes on, four minutes off for four rounds or five rounds or six rounds. And I would do that with the sled. and I would push. This is on a gravel driveway with mechanical resistance. You don't need to add much weight. So what we're talking about, just to do the math, let's just say it's 15 minutes, which often it would end up being 15 minutes because I would run out of gas, but 10 to 20 minutes, let's call it. I was doing that every other day, fasted after a little bit of caffeine and my God, can you get in good shape just from doing that. I mean, it sounds, and I'm sure there are some very high-level athletes or people who are doing 600-pound squats or 900-pound deadlifts who are going to laugh hearing me say this, but you might be surprised how much your legs will grow and how much stability you will develop doing this and how much body fat you can lose just by making that the first thing you do. And in my case, I'm getting sun exposure at the same time. for 10 to 20 minutes in the morning, and then let that afterburn work for a bit. I would typically do that in the mornings. And I would take some, like a very, I'm talking like 300 milligrams of essential amino acids, instead of branched-chain amino acids, but that's a longer story. And I would do the workout, and then I would hold off on eating for a few hours, and then break my intermittent fast at 2 or 3 p.m. But feeding that way, and then doing weight training typically before my second and last meal of the day for dinner, gaining muscle mass, not losing muscle mass, and the total I mean we talking about weekly time if I doing it every other day it three or four let call it days a week So that an hour And then the weight trainings probably since I doing some rehab as well because of some current back issues, we're talking about two to three hours a week. That's it. And it's split up also into very manageable doses. It's not like I'm asking you to do a three-hour or two-hour workout at once. but it is really to this day, there's still things I come across like the, in my case, I'm still elevated, but the front foot elevated split squat or the ATG split squat. Or for instance, the exercise that you showed me earlier, which is basically a seated, let's call it more constrained version of like a Romanian deadlift standing. People can find this on your pinned video, I imagine. So I won't belabor the description. or sled work, where I still find these things like, I think to myself, my God, if I just did these and that was it, the sort of return on invested time is so much better than like the long tail of 30 exercises that I could try to do. It still makes me smile and blows my mind to this day how some of these things are just so inherently given their risk to benefit ratio, so high yield. And it's really wild. That's exactly how I feel. It's still to this day, it's like, I do my two workouts a week. I'm just totally stoked. And sometimes I still have that like, wow, every time because I'm like, it's unbelievable. And now I've been doing this for so long that it's not like, wow, I could just train like that. I have been for a while and the results are insane. And you're playing sports, right? I try once a week to play some basketball. Right now, that means like playing with the best kids at the school that I'm volunteering at. So it's two workouts a week, try to play basketball once a week, and raise toddlers. Before you play basketball, any type of warmup that you do for that? Or has your training provided the warmup? First and foremost, the training provides a warmup. I don't have any special warmup. From what I've learned training-wise, I try to at least have systems. And to recap incredibly fast my systems, because you'd actually ask me, what are my total principles? And it's just three total principles as far as I can see which is the forward and backward resisted movement And then the training from the ground up just reminding myself even if it one set okay I going to hit the lower legs before I go to the upper legs And then the third one being the strength through my mobility And then I just flow that to the upper body and I'm done. That's the training principles. If you add all of that up, forward and backward, ground up, because most of us has probably not done as much work for like the lower body and lower legs is for the upper body. So we're kind of restoring some natural balance there. Yeah, I need to do a lot of work on the lower legs. Right, we could say that your body's inputs would think that you didn't want to get as strong in the lower legs as the upper. So by doing that, you're what? You're restoring some balance to the body. Quick piece of trivia for people who might find it funny. Go look at really early photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger posing, and some of them have him standing in water, where water is up to his knees because he was so embarrassed about his lower leg development. Alas, I haven't figured out how to wade through swamps up to my knees to cover my lack of development in the lower legs. Yeah, most of us haven't. It's almost like we're telling the body, hey, I don't want to be as strong proportionally in the lower legs as everything above it. And then the amount of foot pains and different chronic pains that I've had people who had for years that are gone now just from restoring that balance. It's really cool. And then the third one being training the strength through the mobility, as I said. So those three, but what's the strength through mobility again? We're kind of restoring that natural balance because when we go into weight training, our body starts to shift towards strength in certain ranges, but not others. So all of it together just means my whole philosophy is just to have balanced ability in the body. Forward, backward, high positions, low positions, lower legs, upper legs. So that's how I train. that makes me healthy that I can just go play basketball. But because of all that, I try to be sensible about it and do a sort of segmented warmup of like, okay, dribbling in place, then dribbling in motion. Now what's a little more pressure than that might be like shooting. So it's just super basic like that. Someone could do that for any sport. It's like you just take the forces and you just kind of segment them into a obvious warmup. So there's no special basketball warmup. No magic sauce. Well, we've covered quite a bit. Ben, is there anything else that you'd like to cover? Any other topics you'd like to jam on? Anything that comes to mind? I think more for you, which is for me, as or more important than any of this exercise stuff, is you've managed to become this giant without bashing other people, without playing games that you know are lower integrity. So you must have some sort of, because I've had to kind of set up for myself, okay, I need to make sure that my posts don't have any lies to try to start arguments or that there's nothing intentionally trying to start arguments. And there's these things like this that I've had to piece together. But I think of you and sometimes I'm blank after that. Apologies for being blank, but it's like, there's not a lot that I can look to and go, here's a guy who's succeeding in ways that I would want to succeed, helping people, but with your integrity. And to me that's more important than the rest because i feel like that's the trickle down that makes life shitty for a lot of people is the more and more leaders i mean who then lose their integrity like i think that's more important than all the rest because it that affects everything yeah thanks man so what's your it's my process i mean do you yeah like what's your what's your thoughts on that i mean even if you just think about it you'll share some unusual information compared to what normally is going to be on a podcast yeah i'm happy to riff on it i would say that there are a few things that come to mind. And I'll maybe get there by way of example. So there was an episode I recorded a long time ago with a fellow named Balaji, who's very smart. And he's known for a great many things. He's actually been very accurate in predicting a lot of sort of geopolitical events and so on. Also happens to be incredibly technical and familiar with cryptography and crypto and so on. And I did an episode with him, and it just exploded. And there were many reasons for that, but it ended up being, I think at the time, the most popular episode of the year. And there were a number of trend lines at the time. People were at home, this was during COVID. Crypto was on everyone's radar. All of a sudden, people are using various means of finding something to do, including trading or quote unquote investing And I use quote unquote because it wasn always investing So there were many things that contributed to this episode doing well And I remember having a chat with my team internally and they were like here are four or five other guests who are also involved with crypto who we think would be very very strong. And I paused in that moment. And there's this quote, it may be incorrectly attributed. But there's a quote that I have started almost every presentation I've ever given. So it'd be kind of hilarious if it were not attributed properly. I think it's attributed to Mark Twain. But whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. It's roughly along those lines. So I looked at what was happening around me, and I saw a lot of podcasts focusing on crypto. I saw a lot of media focusing on crypto. and I looked at, in my mind, telescoping forward, what would be the implications of me having these four or five people on? There would be a definite short or intermediate term reward. Lots of downloads, very happy sponsors. I could probably increase my rates. I mean, there would be real financial rewards. Okay, what are the trade-offs? There are always trade-offs, always. When you make any decision, just like literally from the perspective of decision, meaning cutting away related to indecision, you're choosing one option among many, there are trade-offs. So what are the trade-offs if I commit to doing four or five more episodes on crypto? One is that I start to filter out anyone in my audience who's not interested in crypto, most likely. Some will be willing to indulge me because they have followed the podcast for a long time and want to see how I tackle it. But after four or five episodes, after a month or two, I will basically have called my audience of anyone who is not particularly interested. That is a very large sacrifice. Number one, because I want a diverse audience. Number two is that I would be training myself to succumb to audience capture. There's some great pieces that have been written about audience capture, but the way I would describe it, actually I'll give, I apologize that I can't remember the author's name, it a really fantastic piece But he starts with this example of a YouTuber whose channel focused on him gorging himself just eating these kind of absurdly large meals And he started off pretty thin and ended up, as he was rewarded for these videos, and as it became the corner he was painted into, as he felt he needed to continue to rack up views serving people what they wanted, he destroyed his health completely became obese put on this mask and if you wear a mask long enough you become the mask i think that's something that people miss and i recall just as a side note because i want to try to answer a question but there's a lot to it i remember i interviewed andrew zimmern who has been on man he's been on tv for decades now amazing guy very smart his life story is incredible for people who want to check out the podcast episode. And he said to me at one point, because I was delving into television, he said, be very, and I'm paraphrasing, but be very careful about what you do in that first episode. Because if you pretend to be something that you're not, and it's successful, you will feel the obligation to continue to do that. And there are a lot of risks related to that. And furthermore, if you're training yourself to respond to audience demands or whims or trends instead of some type of internal compass, and simultaneously, you're training yourself, and these are often related, to basically pursue the option that has the most economic upside. I feel like particularly if you're in the online media game in any capacity, and by the way, you don't need to have a business to succumb to this. You might just have a personal page and you're being trained by the platform to be in the vanity Olympics. And these algorithms are so good. And I know a lot of data scientists and PhDs who work at these companies, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight psychologically. So if you encourage yourself to be captivated by those incentives, you're lost. You're just lost at sea. You're going to be lost. And it's a lot easier to get lost than it is to get unlost. And that has a trickle effect right So if I make decisions based on and it very hard and I not always perfect if I allow myself to be steered by the most extreme things perhaps that guests say what am I going to do? I'm going to optimize for extreme. And then if I'm optimizing for extreme, why am I doing that? It's for views. Why do I care about views? It could be vanity. It could also be for CPMs and advertising, could be for product sales. Well, what's going to happen to my headlines? They're going to become the National Enquirer for people old enough to remember that. They're going to become the most clickbaity, exaggerated, indefensible set of claims you can imagine. And you don't have to be a data scientist to realize this. Just go look at where you're served up in your personal feed on YouTube. And chances are there's going to be a lot of nonsense or a lot of misleading. And what I've learned is that when you develop an awareness of this, not that you're, I'm holding myself up to be some paragon of personal excellence and integrity, but I recognize that it's a lot easier to get hooked on a drug than to get off of said drug. And make no mistake, you're being trained by the platform. You're being trained by your audience. Those are all drugs that are very addictive. And there are lots of rewards for pursuing that. But to come back to what I said earlier, there are lots of trade-offs. And for me, also on top of that, I would say that I have worked so hard to ensure that my audience feels they can trust me. there are certain lines once you cross, if you do not deliver on the promise of a headline, you do not deliver on the promise of a title. If you make a recommendation that costs someone time, money, or God forbid causes some type of injury, you're done. You're dead to that person. And for good reason. I feel like with a great audience, and that could be a small audience, could be a big one, comes great responsibility. And I should say also, this isn't because I'm some type of saint. It's also being long-term ambitious. For me, the greatest insurance plan, the greatest, choose your metaphor, safety net but also propellant for doing well long-term is not doing anything. And you'll make mistakes, but really trying hard not to do anything that will compromise the trust that your audience puts in you. That could be readers, could be listeners, could be viewers, could be anything. And for that reason, I'm very cautious about what I recommend. I'm very cautious about who I have on the podcast. I'm very cautious about chasing any type of trend, hence that what I think is a Mark Twain quote, but could be someone else. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. So in the case of the crypto episode, that was massively successful. I could have milked that, but it would have been the equivalent of killing the golden goose. and those are a few ways that i think about my sort of life that is at this point toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube you can't really put it back in from a public exposure perspective there are lots of trade-offs privacy wise and so on for being public facing although a lot of folks who are long-term listeners and viewers will notice that i am not doing even a tiny fraction of the video that most of my colleagues or peers, certainly the up-and-comers. And there are costs to that. So I have my reasons for doing that. I want to have a family soon. I do not need any more facial recognition. I want to be very cognizant of protecting the privacy of my family. But have I left a lot of money on the table? Yeah, I have. But what are you using the money for in the first place. And this is why it's like, why, why, why? Just keep asking why. Why? So what? Why is that important? Then what happens? And if money fundamentally, it's sort of a story, right? It's like this abstraction, but it's a currency that we can use to trade for other things. Now, having that in savings could provide you with psychological reassurance for any number of reasons, family, childhood, scarcity, who knows? So there could be that. Otherwise, you're trading it for things and experiences, which ultimately translate to feelings. It's like, okay, where else could you get those feelings? Do you really need those incremental dollars with those trade So for me I decided I didn And that also the reason why keep in mind right 4 Workweek details my first real business which was in sports nutrition I know the supplement world inside and out. And when I launched The 4-Hour Body, I had a huge audience from the first book that was waiting for my next book. I could have made tens of millions, maybe 100 million plus by launching a supplement brand to capitalize on every one of my main product recommendations. I'd be lying if the thought didn't occur to me, especially at that time, because even with the success of the four-hour workweek, royalties are very slim in a traditional deal. And the temptation, therefore, to do something like that was huge. I was like, this is how I can secure my entire financial future. And I decided not to do it. Why? Because if I had launched a supplement brand, everyone would have, not everyone, but a lot of people rightly would have said, well, we're asking a barber if we need a haircut. This guy is shilling his bags. He's selling exactly what he's recommending. How can I trust anything this guy says? And I was like, that is too steep a cost. I'll find another way to do it. I mean, that's remarkable because it would have been a shoo-in. Yeah, it would have been a shoo-in. For sure. I similarly, you'll know when I sell out, if I'm selling a joint supplement. But it's not that I have anything against supplements. It's that it wasn't actually part of my journey. So if I now sold a supplement, I want to know what effect I get from the exercises. And yeah, that would be the easiest business route as the news over toast guy. Which is not to knock. Maybe it's just can't teach an old dog new tricks. I consume a ludicrous number of supplements. I do consume a lot of supplements. So clearly, there are brands that I trust. Typically, they've been third-party verified. Things have been tested because, my God, it is the Wild West, folks. There's no enforcement. So really do your homework on the supplements that you take. But that is all just a long way of saying, there are some good players in the supplement sphere. but if I'm combining that in my case with a book that is purported to provide unbiased information you can believe those claims if I selling exactly the thing that I recommending Now that doesn automatically mean that I ethically compromised in some way but people would be right to question it. You wouldn't have. You would have made a great supplement line. You would have been honest, but the integrity point would have been out. That's what I find remarkable. And that's what like, if me going the rest of my career, I see that actually as the, not boasting about just doing things along those lines. Because as you know, I mean, how many young people ask you for advice, right? And then how many of these people become successful? You leave this trickle down impact that at this point for me, it's like, that's really what it's about. And for my kids and then helping them learn these same values, like, I feel like that's a whole podcast to unpack, but I appreciate you digging in there Because it's very unusual. You would have cashed out big, but that integrity wouldn't have been as trustworthy. Yeah, thanks. There are times that I'm like, fuck, that would have been so much money. There are times, it's not easy for me to walk away from that. There are times I'm just like, oh my God. I remember when the For Our Body hit number one New York Times and just kept going, kept going. And this book was published 15 years ago. And even, I'll give credit where credit is due, Gary Brecka put out a video about some components of the four-hour body and had this huge resurgence and like back on a bunch of bestseller lists. And I'm just like, man, can you imagine the annuity of this thing would have been? Good Lord, but I don't regret it. And I'll say two things in addition to that that build on this. Number one is when people think about losing trust, which is losing your reputation, at least for me, there are many ways to think of reputation. I mean, I guess you could have like an Al Capone reputation. Like there are many different types of reputations. But if you have a reputation for being trustworthy, losing that trust does not mean that you do something so bad that everyone says, I can't trust Tim. I can't trust Ben. All that needs to happen is they ask themselves once, can I really trust Ben? Can I really trust this video? Can I really trust this? Can I trust this advice that Tim is giving? as soon as there is a question, you've lost the trust. And as soon as there is a seed of doubt it is very hard to reclaim Now if I talking about long being long greedy or long ambitious because of that trust and for instance, being very clear on situations, say in San Francisco where I lived at the time, having friendies, as some people call them. So NDA, non-disclosure agreement, friendie is basically if someone tells you something in confidence, even if they don't emphasize that you need to keep it confidential, Basically, not sharing things that anyone says to you. And by developing, becoming a known quantity as someone who's very good at discretion, who does what he says he's going to do on time, those were ingredients that led to ultimately the angel investing and being able to invest in a lot of these startups and work with a lot of these founders. Inherently, I would be exposed to a lot of really confidential, private information that's critical to their business success. So developing that trustworthiness through actions over time and people telling other people is what allowed me to do the angel investing, which ultimately returned much more than any supplement business ever would have. So don't overestimate the value of the dollars in your bank account and don't underestimate the value of having a consistent reputation for being trustworthy. And there's so many ways to fuck that up. And who knows? Maybe also, I mean, I'm very hypervigilant. I'm very aware and over-aware and probably over-emphasized dangers in the world. So I think there's also, maybe it's worked to my advantage in the sense that if you don't have your word, if people feel like they can't trust that, you're done. It's just like, it's going to be Mad Max for you. Not in a good way. I'm not sure exactly, but this is how I've thought about some of it. It's a right characteristic. The world would be a lot better if more leaders did that. Yeah, thanks, man. I really appreciate it. I've made plenty of mistakes along the way. Sure, I'll continue to make tons of mistakes. But the question I'd encourage people to ask, and I ask this in my personal life, I ask this in my professional life, It's like, okay, if you continue to do this, if you continue to do X, whatever X is, and let's just say you do 2% more of it or you do it with 2% more intensity every week or month, over time, like three years from now, what does that look like? Be very open. Let's just say you do 2% more of it, or you do it with 2% more intensity every week or month. Over time, like three years from now, what does that look like? Be very aware of the trend line and the way it compounds. So in the case of, say, YouTube titles, okay, if you're exaggerating 2% and people accept that, and you get better results, do you think you're going to stop at 2%? Of course you're not going to stop at 2%. Now it's going to be 4%. and eventually you're going to cross a line without realizing that you've crossed that line. That explains a lot. And that's how my wife and I run our business together. She's really much more of a business genius, and thank God. But even on the integrity stuff, it's hard to explain in a way, okay, if I was in any country, I would want, just based on all my observations of being business, I would want to be supporting local businesses and stuff. So, okay, so we've got this passion for business making stuff in America that really, from observing everything in this last year, and now she's just like off to the races, crushing it in terms of takes calls and networking and finding people and continuing until, because you're told, no, no, can't make this, can't make the, and then you find the person who can make it, you find the factory, you find the technology. And if I was in Canada or if I was in China, I would feel the same way. It's something that's important to us but i like your two percent thing like if we keep putting two percent more energy on that because when you were describing this i was thinking because this is something that's on our minds a lot and i'm thinking three years wow i'm like three years from now life is going to be amazing yeah i don't know what the exact numbers yeah it applies to the good stuff as well we're breaking through all kinds of stuff that people aren't able to make here that now we're actually getting and it's so cool you can go to the factory see the people see the person you can have like how I said, okay, when you blew up our wrist bar sales, it's like for us, it makes us happier. We like it. And I like your rule. What does it look like a few years from now? If we keep putting a little more and I like that a life I really like The numbers won be gigantic but they be good and we be super happy about it And also it like enough is enough at some point And what enough means will differ from person to person. But generally speaking, money is not going to solve all the problems you think it will. And what you need to live an amazing life is much less than most people realize. and then if you cross the finish line, so to speak, with annual income or savings or some combination, invested capital and low-cost index funds, whatever it might be, whatever gives you the sense of psychological safety, once you get close to that or you get there, which can be a lot less than you might realize, and there's an exercise called dreamlining. If you search my name and now you can find it, it's costing all this stuff out. you'll realize that the other pieces of the puzzle that are so important are not in any way addressed by money and you have to work on those separately. And part of the way you work on those separately is doing things that you feel good about, that make you feel good about yourself. And so, for instance, if part of that is making things in the US, that in and of itself can more than offset the additional cost that's incurred compared to doing it overseas. Like the actual benefit, and particularly since you're doing it with your wife, like the benefit to your family collectively. And if you're proud of that, the way you radiate that to your kids, that's a lot. That's valuable. Ben, so nice to spend time together. Really nice to spend time together. As you can see, I could grill you on this whole side of things, but I appreciate it. Yeah, definitely. Where can people find you online? Knees over toes guy on YouTube and Instagram are the best places where you can just go and learn everything that I know. Perfect. All right. We link to those in the show notes People will be able to find that You pin the video It gives people an overview of what we recorded earlier We also link to the video we did together So people can check that out because that was a lot of fun And thanks for taking the time Yeah I really appreciate it And to everybody listening, as always, we will link to everything in the show notes at tim.blog slash podcast. Just search Ben Patrick, or if you want to type out knees over toes guy, it will probably pop right up, but you can search Ben Patrick and you'll find everything we've spoken about. And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to you yourself. Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading books. I'm reading albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. letting you see your full financial picture at a glance You can even have widgets that show you your spending and so on so that you don't have to even open the app on your phone. One person on my team has tried four other budgeting apps and said linking his accounts on Monarch was by far the easiest, cleanest interface, etc, etc. Another one of my employees said Monarch has made it so much easier for her and her husband to be on the same page financially and to track spending as a couple. So why not get serious and get simple about getting your financial act together so you can see everything in one place before year's end and get Monarch. Try it out. Use code Tim at Monarch.com. That's M-O-N-A-R-C-H, Monarch.com, for half off of your first year. 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