In this episode, I connect with writer and podcaster, Brock Armstrong, to talk about the functional approach to fitness and movement he has formulated by drawing on his extensive experience in the fitness, movement, and wellness industry.
By utilizing his understanding of functional movement, endurance training, muscle building, and the ever-important balance between performance and health, Brock helps people all over the world achieve their goals and improve their quality of life.
Brock always brings an exceedingly sensible and balanced perspective to the table, and this episode is no different (click here to listen to his previous interview on the B.Rad podcast). He breaks down how he has been using his background in Cognitive Behavioral Theory to help his clients, and reveals his recent discovery: he can actually make a much bigger difference for his clients if he doesn’t just give them a plan to follow, but instead helps them discover a plan of their own. Brock says, “Truth be told, most people know what they need to do – they just need some help figuring out how to actually do it!”
TIMESTAMPS:
Brock Armstrong is full of information on all areas of fitness, health, and helping people lose weight as well as coaching and providing mental health therapy. [01:35]
Brock’s new podcast is called Upgraded Fitness. He talks about people’s relationship with food and movement. [05:06]
Brock has learned a lot since he was a ballet dancer about the harm he was doing to his body. [07:51]
After having an infection in his heart, Brock’s awareness of his anxiety over the illness, taught him some good lessons. [09:51]
How does our mindset come into play with our concerns about diet and exercise? What beliefs do I have that are not serving me well? [16:08]
Do you tend to take pot shots and see yourself as right and the others are wrong? Do you have all or nothing thinking? [25:21]
Sometimes the question you have about your behavior is not the real question. [34:37]
Ask why. Ask five whys. [39:11]
When you have a goal, try things that you like to do. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t enjoy. It won’t sustain. [48:30]
When you have a cold or an injury, you need to stop what you are doing. [52:49]
We all have beliefs whether we realize it or not. Ask yourself why? [01:00:36]
LINKS:
- Brad’s Shopping Page
- BrockArmstrong.com
- Upgraded Fitness with Brock Armstrong
- Weigh Less
- Hacking of the American Mind
QUOTES:
- “We are afraid to do things wrong – to the point where we don’t do anything.”
- “Our society has shaped us and turned us into people that think of exercise as punishment, food as reward, and everything in between is just a balance of those two things.”
LISTEN:
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B.Rad Podcast
Brad (1m 35s): Brock Armstrong is back for another appearance on the B.rad podcast. I love talking to this guy. He is so simple and sensible and gentle and kind and has such a wonderful approach to fitness, health, helping people lose weight. He’s all over the place. He’s had a wonderful career in the progressive fitness ancestral health scene because of his audio engineering expertise. He was actually the man behind many popular podcasts. You can imagine mastering these shows over many, many years time from some of the leading podcasts, like The Primal Blueprint podcast, like Katy Bowman’s move your DNA work. Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof podcast, Ben Greenfield fitness show. Brad (2m 18s): He used to co-host the Q and A with Ben and the Mark Divine Navy seal podcast. So he’s had a breadth of experience from some of the leaders and has built up such an incredible level of expertise and awareness himself, which he puts to work with his coaching clients. And he has a wonderful program that we talked about in the last show called Weigh Less. And you can learn all about that at his new and improved website, Brock Armstrong.com because he’s busting out on his own after co-hosting shows and doing a show for Scientific American. Now it’s all about Brock and his continued progress toward being the most effective coach he can be. Brad (3m 2s): And one thing that’s really interesting that we spent a lot of time on this show covering is his recent certification in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT it’s a popular form of therapy. He realized when he was doing all this work with weight loss enthusiasts and dispensing the proper diet and exercise information on his great videos and articles and podcasts content, that there was another element here that was kind of missing. As Brock says, it turns out that if I make a bigger difference, if I don’t just give people a plan, but instead help them discover a plan of their own because most people know what they need to do. Brad (3m 43s): They just need one someone figuring out how to actually do it. So getting through those blocks, those negative behavior patterns, those program, beliefs and behaviors that kind of sabotage your success when you’re armed with the knowledge and the inspiration and motivation out of the gate. So I think you’re gonna really love this. A bit of a departure from the nuts and bolts of a, should we eat this food? Should we eat that food? What about this workout? Which is mainly Brock’s life’s work, but now he has a beautiful overlay on this. A great show with Brock Armstrong. Here we go. Brock Armstrong. I got ya. We are rocking and rolling. Brock (4m 23s): I am here once again. Good to be here. Brad (4m 26s): Listeners. We got to admit we’re warmed up because we just recorded a session for this amazing new podcast called Upgraded Fitness with Brock Armstrong. So I would love to kind of flow into what you’re doing with the new podcast, how the idea came about, and especially the topics that you’ve been covering with get fit guy and this kind of world that you’re existing in, where you’re trying to seemingly broaden the discussion and kind of embrace a bigger population than the fitness freak who listens to Brock and Brad talk about marathon training and ultra marathon finish lines. You know, so let’s, let’s hear about upgraded fitness. Brock (5m 6s): Yeah. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been biting my tongue like crazy, cause I know you are also probably glued to your laptop or your tablet or whatever, watching the, the Olympics right now. I, and yesterday was the, the race walkers 50 K race walker race just under four hours. They, I could, I could just talk about that all day, but we know now that this is not what I mean. There is a niche audience. There’s definitely a bunch of people out there who are nerds like us that would really get excited about talking about that kind of stuff. But I found more myself to serve my community and to really make a difference in, in people’s fitness world and people’s what I’d like to say, their relationship with food and movement is much more accessible, much more low level than, than all of that stuff. Brock (6m 3s): And I can take everything that I’ve learned from being a ballet dancer, from being an endurance athlete, from lifting heavy, from doing crazy diets, to jumping from Keto, from high carb to Keto and to back to high-carb, to medium to all those different things. Take all of that information. And I can share, I can share all kinds of training programs. I can give everybody all of my advice on that, but at a certain point without actually healing that relationship with food and movement, it’s never sustainable and it never quite lands. It’s just an endless series of going from one training program to another. One diet program, to another. Brock (6m 43s): One meal plan to another, and nothing ever really becomes an individualized. It never becomes internalized or sustainable. So with the upgraded fitness podcast and with my coaching these days, and I actually like a lot of people during COVID during lockdown, especially those early days when we really had no idea, like, can I actually leave the house? Is it okay to actually leave the house? Okay, it is, wait, are you sure? I, I jumped online and got myself a cognitive behavior therapy practitioner’s certification. Now CBT or cognitive behavior therapy is something that played a huge role in my mental health life, like 20, some years ago. Brock (7m 27s): And I’ve been using what I learned as being a recipient of that therapy. And now I’m a practitioner and I’ve sort of, it feels like I have brought all of this information together into one neat little package. And I’m really, I’m just excited to share it with people. Brad (7m 44s): Gee, what does my mindset have to do with my diet and my exercise? That seems ridiculous. Brock (7m 49s): Yeah, it does seem ridiculous, doesn’t it? Brad (7m 52s): So listeners, that was not a hypothetical when Brock was rolling through the, the checkpoints of being a ballet dancer. Then it turns out then a big bodybuilder. So maybe kind of hit some highlights along that road, as far as what were the major learning experiences and epiphanies that occurred in your own quest for fitness? And then I want to jump right back into the CBT and how the, the mindset and that type of training does, in fact, frame our, our experience as healthy eating and fitness pursuits? Brock (8m 28s): Right. I, the it’s a to make a long story short because I don’t want to bore everybody with my, my life story, but right out of high school I was a professional ballet dancer. And this is in the 1980s, like the tail end of the 1980s, but still back then, and we were doing our absolute best as a bunch of late teens, early twenties, to be as strong, as durable, as capable, as flexible, as lean as possible without having any of the knowledge that I now have in terms of how our bodies actually work. So there was an awful lot of really dumb things that went on like smoking instead of eating. Brock (9m 9s): Drinking copious amounts of coffee, instead of eating. In fact that I didn’t do this, but there were people in the ballet school with me. So, and especially the female dancers who were so desperate to be lean, they were doing things like shredding newspaper and putting ketchup on it and eating that because it would fill up their stomach. They wouldn’t feel hungry, but wouldn’t necessarily be having any useful calories. So a lot of really dumb things happened back then. And of course I ended up injured as most dancers do and, and probably could have gone back to a dance career at some point once the injury had healed, but got distracted by, by various other other things. Brock (9m 52s): And eventually became a desk worker, got the government job with the golden handcuffs and, and everything, and started putting on some weights, drinking a little more alcohol than I probably should have been an eating out a little more was the, the biggest I ever was and hopefully ever will be in my, in my adult life and through no, even though I’m painting a very grim picture of my lifestyle, unrelated to my lifestyle, I got an infection in my pericardium, in my heart and landed in the hospital near death experience, yada yada dead on the table, woke up, paddles on my chest, all that wonderful. Brad (10m 37s): I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that was song lyrics it, if it is, or you’re making it up. That’s pretty cute. Brock (10m 43s): I’m a song and dance, man. What can I say? Brad (10m 45s): Got the paddles on my chest pedals on my chest, flying through the air here comes the graph and I’m okay. I have to change my golden handcuff life or Brock. Brock (10m 57s): Exactly. Yeah. So luckily I was right as I did come out, the other side of it with a clean bill of health, it was a year and a half of kind of misery in an in and out of like, just not being able to exert myself in any way. Cause my heart just couldn’t couldn’t handle it. So I just felt exhausted all the time. Brad (11m 16s): Was that part of your recovery? Brock (11m 18s): Yeah, I had recurrent pericarditis, which meant that it just like you would sort of clear up a little bit and then it was, it would come back and there wasn’t really anything they could do about it. Just sort of let it run its course, unfortunately in and keep an eye on, on things. But I did eventually get the clean bill of health from my, from my cardiologist. And in the meantime I developed quite a generalized anxiety disorder around my health, which is quite common for people who have like heart attacks, strokes, cancer, any of those, life-threatening kind of, you end up with a generalized anxiety disorder usually around your health. Brock (11m 59s): So I kept coming back to my cardiologist saying like, look, I’m not okay. I still have these crazy flutters and he’d run all the tests and say, no man, you’re you’re okay. Trust me. You’re you’re okay. And then he said probably flippantly. He probably doesn’t remember this. He said, you know what you need to do to prove to yourself that you’re okay is run a marathon or something. Oh. And I went in the back of my poor anxiety brain when marathon equals feeling better. Okay. I’m signing. So like later that day I called my cousin who had done some marathons and said, Hey, could you train me for a marathon? And I was like, sure, I can like give you the book that I used. Brock (12m 38s): And it was like the, the quintessential marathon training book. And I signed up for the marathon later that day and started training and decided that I was going to do everything in my possible in the world to, to try to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again, which was misguided. And definitely, definitely based in, in the anxiety response because it wasn’t anything within my control that infection could have gone to my bladder. It could have gone to my nose, my ears, it could have gone anywhere, but it went to my heart just based on luck being unlucky. Brad (13m 13s): So are you saying the symptoms were real and you weren’t just an anxiety freak or, or were you feeling at that point weren’t real anymore? They were. That was just mighty. Yeah. The, the anxiety, the way my therapist that I eventually worked with described it to me as when you get into this sort of state, especially if you’re recovering from, from a life-threatening thing like that, we are, our security guards are our little, our, our policemen under our head are on guard for a very specific symptom. And they’re on high alert all the time. So normal little things like a little heart flutter that we all have all the time and, and goes completely unnoticed, becomes the focus of the entire day of I had heart flutter. Brad (14m 1s): So that was really what I was, what I was feeling was it wasn’t that I didn’t have things going on in my body. Brock (14m 9s): I was just on high alert and re overreacting to them. And I carried that overreaction to do things like have a tattoo removed because I thought that was going to make me sick and running a marathon instead of just going completely vegan, really like I was eating huge pots of beans soup and stuff to make sure I didn’t have any cholesterol in my, in my body. And all of those now looking back, I know, were misguided things to do. But in the moment it seemed like it was the prudent thing to do to protect my health. But after that marathon, I was, I was pretty hooked on the sport in, in a lot of ways and moved into triathlon and, and, and then started doing some of the shorter races and just really enjoyed the challenge that, that it laid down. Brock (15m 1s): And at a certain point, I met people like you and Mark Sisson and Phil Maffetone and stuff, and started to realize that this isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to live, but there are some healthier ways to do it. And yeah, then I got really excited about putting on as much muscle as I possibly could being a lean endurance athlete. And it’ll be in ballet dancer, put on some muscle and enjoyed that for a while. And now I feel like I, I turned 50 three days ago and I I’m sort of taking all the information I’ve learned from people like you from Mark, from Dave Asprey, from Ben Greenfield, from all the, all the people that I’ve had, the, the luck, I guess, to, to have worked with and for, and, and learn from, and, and really just putting it all into one neat little package of being someone in their fifties are actually what I’m calling it as my second, the second half of my first century on this planet, taking all of that information and just making myself as capable and durable and Bulletproof as I can for the, for the next half of this first century. Brad (16m 9s): And listeners, this is the epicenter of health and fitness information because Brock was a long time podcast, audio producer, and you were mixing with so many great people. Katy Bowman goes on that list too. Yeah, Divine fields. Love it. And so a lot of information’s flown in and out of this brain and this, this headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia. So, oh gosh, we could, we could talk about so many things, but it is really fascinating how, how the, the mindset and your particular training plays such an important role. So when you’re talking about, you know, pulling all your life experience together, and let’s talk about this new layer of the cognitive behavior therapy, and maybe a quick overview of what that is, if people aren’t familiar with it, and then how are we going to, how are we going to shoot that into our eating and fitness goals? Brock (17m 1s): Yeah. Yeah. Well, cognitive behavior theory or cognitive behavior therapy is really learning to identify our own, the role that we play in our own emotions and our own reactions to things, learning to see those moments when maybe somebody’s pushed your buttons or you’re reacting in a less than optimal way to something. And instead of wishing that the world would change looking at yourself to figure out what can I do to change or what this is, this is one of the things I actually I’m embarrassed to say. I just heard about this. And I think it was because of Oprah, but asking the question instead of what’s wrong with me, what happened to me? Brock (17m 48s): Because a lot of the things that I’m not talking about, like severe trauma or something like that, of course, that would play a role, but it can be everything from like, what shows did I grow up watching? What did, what did my parents instill in me? What did I, what did I hear from my teachers at school when I was a kid? What did the church group say to me at some point that has influenced the way that I react to certain situations? So then I can look at those beliefs and see if they’re still serving me. So really you can probably start to see how you can apply that to things like exercise and diet and because our society has shaped us and has turned us into people that think that exercise is punishment. Brock (18m 33s): Food is reward. And that everything in between is just a balance of those two things. I eat too much. So I have to punish myself by exercising. I eat, I exercise a lot. I get to reward myself by, by eating a whole bunch. And it’s of course more complicated than that, but those are sort of the basic beliefs that we’ve been indoctrinated into from such an early age. Brad (18m 56s): Oh, very well-described. And we hear so much these days about this, this concept of a subconscious programming, which largely happens in childhood. Maybe my favorite characterization is from Dr. Bruce Lipton and his book, Biology of Belief and how we’re operating 93 to 98% of the time from subconscious programming that was programming from ages zero to seven in childhood. And so everything, most, everything we’re doing is reactive or repeating the same tapes, the same thoughts. What do we repeat? Like 80% of yesterday’s thoughts. And then 80% of these repeat thoughts are negative or negative 90% are negative, right? So I guess you’re, you’ve described CBT as a way of kind of dealing with this reality that we do have a lot of programming and in the case of wanting to be a better person, the limiting beliefs that we want to address and uncover, and I think they talk about asking yourself, is this real? Brad (19m 55s): Am I really a lazy, no good person? Or is it just a belief that’s been thrown in and can I challenge it and reframe it? Brock (20m 5s): Yeah. The, the cognitive distortions that we, we tell ourselves that things are the black and white thinking or the, the crystal ball kind of thinking that we get involved in late in the middle of the night, thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week a month from now. And it always is catastrophizing is another cognitive distortion where everything is always going to head in the most negative way possible. Yeah. Those are, that’s a lot of the, the challenging of your beliefs. Like, first of all, realizing that you do have beliefs and figuring out what those ones, what those are, because a lot of the time we’re just reacting. And we think that the world is to blame because of it. Brad (20m 48s): Yeah. What if it’s other people’s fault, not my beliefs. What are you talking about? Brock (20m 54s): And changing your believe me, like whether you believe it or not right now changing your own beliefs is a lot easier than changing somebody else. You can probably imagine, especially, but, but, okay, fine. The other side of this pandemic at this point, trying to change anyone’s beliefs around something as simple as like what we’ve, well, I guess it’s not simple, but some of the more simple things that we’ve been asked to do during the pandemic try, but you can’t change other people’s opinions, but you can look at your own belief system. And, and I always think that the easiest way to ask yourself, or the easiest way to, to then take steps to say, is this belief still serving me because a lot of the beliefs sure. Brock (21m 41s): They probably did serve you as a, as a child, or they served you to please your parents or stay in line with your teachers at school or something like that. But at this point, are they still serving you? And most of the time say, well, no, because it actually is. All it’s doing is making me upset or making me resentful or making me choose the food that I’m trying to avoid or making me avoid exercises that I should be choosing to do. And things like that. So asking yourself in those moments or learning to identify those moments and say, okay, so my belief in this is leading me to react this way. How is that serving me? Is that, is that serving me anymore? Brock (22m 22s): And then if the answer is no, which it quite often is what can I put in, in place? What do I really believe about this situation? Brad (22m 32s): That makes sense. I’m also thinking that we have a ton of beliefs that we would maybe analyze and say, these are serving me. I believe of myself to be a healthy fit person who prioritizes healthy eating and good sleep. Okay. So we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about areas where we’re struggling and feel like we’re hitting our head against the wall. And so now when we transition to that and you can keep all your beliefs, people, you can vote for whoever you want and, and think that you should wear a mask or not wear a mask or a vaccination is silly or it’s, it’s mandatory. And everyone else’s disgrace, all that stuff is fine. Brad (23m 14s): And then when we kind of have the chance to sit down and examine those, what would you call them? Self limiting or destructive beliefs. That’s when we can get some real work done. And I’m wondering sometimes it’s difficult to acknowledge that there’s a belief there or behavior pattern, because we’re so used to being reactive and blaming others. Brock (23m 37s): Right, right. Then that’s a lot of the time. And this is when I’m, when I’m coaching people. I do group coaching through a program called Weigh Less. And we, we have hundreds of people in the program at, at a certain time. And once a month we get on, on a zoom call and we all just sort of talk through the things that we’re working on. And every day we go into our forum and, and pose questions to each other and stuff and often the, the language that we use or the phrases that we use to describe ourselves, that can be real evidence into the way that we are deceiving ourselves. Brock (24m 18s): There’s a lot of limiting, like you were saying, the, the limiting beliefs that we put forward in, in, because we’re talking about weight loss in, in Weigh Less tend to be things that people say, things like, well, like I’m, I’m completely powerless when chocolate does around, or I’m completely addicted to sugar, or I’m someone who can’t resist this, or I always get injured when I do this. Those types of phrases. If you can learn to identify those phrases in yourself or have somebody like me identify them for you, what did you just say? Is that really true? Like, do you really think that if chocolate is present, you can’t actually control yourself. Brock (25m 0s): Like you’re not a rational human being that can actually do something else with that chocolate other than eat it? and I guess some people, maybe they can’t. But I’m guessing the majority of people can do that. And by repeating that story to yourself over and over again, that you are somebody who can’t control himself around chocolate, you know what that does? Brad (25m 18s): Why are sex and baby? Brock (25m 20s): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Brad (25m 22s): I’m also looking at our, you know, our, our tendency to take pot shots or commiserate and things like, you know, negative comments about wealth or, you know, income disparity in society. And it’s kind of maybe a way that we’re holding ourselves back if we avoid or an ostentatious display of wealth. And there goes on Lamborghini down the street and what a joke that costs more than a house. And there’s starving people in Africa and, and things like that that are kind of throwaway comments that are widely validated, or for example, like, oh, social media. Brad (26m 6s): It’s so ridiculous how everyone’s parading around in their bikinis on Instagram and using Photoshop and, and getting, getting tanned and looking perfect. And isn’t that a superficial and ridiculous, and it’s kind of a way to keep yourself locked in a undesirable body composition because, boy, if you were to become an Instagram model and, and have your six-pack showing, you’d be so superficial and, and vacuous. Brock (26m 33s): Yeah. It’s, there’s a lot of choosing sides that goes on. And the things that you’re describing right now, like seeing, having an emotional reaction to somebody driving a car down the street, or having an emotional feeling like it’s a personal attack that somebody is wearing a bikini on Instagram is a real symptom that we have set ourselves up in society to be either right or wrong or on the right side or on the wrong side. And again, like, I know we’ve talked about the pandemic more than I’m comfortable with because I’m no expert in, in this, but it’s, we’ve seen it played out in that as well that you’re either on the side of the masters or you’re wrong. Brock (27m 19s): And there’s, it’s, we tend to set ourselves up in these right or wrong situations or taking sides in these situations. And, and when we have the mask is a little more, a little more loaded, but as something as simple as a flashy truck driving down the street, actually eliciting an emotional reaction from yourself. And you immediately write that person off as a jerk or a superficial. I can’t remember the words you used, but like as a superficial individual, that is, we’re definitely telling ourselves some stories there and also engaging in a, in, in a type of thought that is absolutely not productive in any, any sort of way. Brock (27m 59s): But again, that was some sort of belief that somebody exposed us to somewhere. We got told, we got the belief from somewhere that those kinds of people were this way and therefore we’re carrying it forward and we’re allowing it to affect our happiness well beyond its useful time, if it ever was a useful thought to have. So, yeah, I mean, we’re straying quite far from the, from the idea of, of fitness and wellness and stuff now, but it all really does circle together. It really is all interconnected with the way that we talk about other people, the way that we talk about ourselves, it’s all rooted in those, that belief system that tends to just operate very surreptitiously under the surface that we’re not aware of and it, but it does control the decisions that we’re making for ourselves and in, in my particular world for, for fitness and wellness. Brock (28m 56s): In your world too. Brad (28m 58s): So maybe we could talk about some of the common patterns such as someone heading out the gate with great enthusiasm and energy with a fitness program in mind, and then they fail to adhere at some point. And what do you see as some of those ways that we get in our own way? And we, we can’t keep it, keep it going and we kind of fall off. Brock (29m 26s): Well, I think the, one of the biggest things that I find that I work against or work for work with in the fitness and wellness area is the all or nothing thinking like we definitely to have this, this feeling that we either need to be hitting the CrossFit gym. I feel bad. We’ve been picking on CrossFit and in the last few episodes of my show anyway, but either we’re going to, let’s say yoga six days a week or five days a week, or we’re doing our marathon training program or, or we’re doing another thing that is very prescribed, usually has some branding around, it usually costs some money involved, some sort of, some sort of location or some sort of gear or something. Brock (30m 18s): We’re either doing that or we’re doing nothing. And if we happen to fall off of that, one thing that we’re doing, then we go back to the nothing. There, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground. Like we either we’re eating Kateto or we’re eating all the carbs or we’re like, it’s just a very black and white all or nothing kind of thinking that we have where I love that people like BJ Fogg and oh, The Atomic Habits, James clear. Yes. I love that these books are getting a lot more prominent these days where smaller incremental changes are, are actually becoming a little more in fashion to do rather than the all or nothing thinking that we’ve been, we’ve been seeing for so long now, but it really is still very much in vogue. Brad (31m 11s): It’s in Vogue. Black and white are still fashionable. So what is, what is, how is that serving us? Why is it so common? It seems silly. I mean, black and white thinking is ridiculous, but it’s so common. So what’s, what’s going on there, especially as it relates to healthy eating and fitness? Brock (31m 33s): I think it’s a lot of it comes from the fact that we are drawn to extremes. Like as, as humans, we, we want to be doing everything or, or we’re lost. Like we want to, we want to be speeding down the streets or, or staying home. And I honestly, I don’t know where this desire comes from, that we need to, that extremes sell like the, the more extreme, the, the solution, the easier it is to convince people, to do it. In fact, the Weigh Less program, which is very non extreme, we approached a book publisher to, to have it published as a book. Brock (32m 13s): And after they reviewed all of our literature and stuff, they came back to us and said, this won’t sell it’s too reasonable. Brad (32m 21s): Oh my gosh, what a great banner headline for your website? I love it. Okay. Brock (32m 26s): They didn’t say this won’t work. It’s too reasonable. They said this won’t sell it’s to reasonable. And I think that really does sort of cut to the, the whole idea that we just, it’s gotta be big. It’s gotta be flashy. It’s gotta be a huge change. We really don’t get excited for things that are just reasonable. Hmm. Does that make sense? I don’t know where that default came from. I would love to be that, that level of psychologists to be able to under understand that I, I just know it exists. Brad (33m 1s): I mean, maybe it’s, Brock (33m 3s): it’s not serving us, Brad (33m 6s): you know, it’s, it’s like self-defeating out of the gate, you’re black and white thinking you’re going all or nothing and deep down, you know, it’s not sustainable or it’s beyond your capabilities. And so you’re going to fail. You’re setting yourself up for failure and that’s something that’s been programmed in you that you have fallen short in 17 different ways in your life to date. And now you’re going to be, make darn sure to repeat the same pattern. And we have a lot of scientific support for that. And the psychologists contend that we, you know, if we can lock into these patterns. And so we got to make the goal slightly too difficult and too daunting. So that will once again, fail and confirm our belief systems. Brad (33m 46s): This is a possible, I’m speculating. I mean, Brock (33m 49s): we’d love to prove ourselves, right? Whether it’s in our benefit or not. And it certainly isn’t in the way that you’re framing it, but it’s, yeah, it’s true. Brad (33m 58s): So when you get a, a, a client that you’re observing and engaging in these behavior patterns or speech patterns, what is the gentle and effective way to help recalibrate rather than, you know, calling people out in a large zoom meeting groups saying, oh, there you go with your self limiting beliefs. You loser. Come on. There’s, there’s gotta be a way to kind of help people out of this because it is difficult to extricate yourself. Brock (34m 23s): Yeah. Luckily those people who are on the zoom call are there for a very specific reason. I’m not just calling them out in, in an office meeting or a board meeting or something. We’re all there for a common, a common goal. Brad (34m 35s): A safe environment. Brock (34m 38s): And so many people are there for the same reasons that when I attend, when we do dig into somebody’s somebody’s story, it usually resonates with, with the other people. But the, we often need to ignore the symptom and find what’s actually underlying the, the real problem. The question that people usually come to me with, isn’t the question they want answered. They don’t know this, but they tend to ask a question. That’s like, why can’t I resist sugar? And, and okay, well, so you feel like you can’t resist sugar. Can you give me an example of this as I’m? Brock (35m 20s): Okay. Well, I’m at work and, and going through the morning really well, and I eat my healthy lunch and by two o’clock in the afternoon, I’m so exhausted and hangry that I just have to have chocolate. And I end up eating like three chocolate bars and then get a Coke on the way home. And like, wait a second. What did you say? I’m so exhausted and upset that I have to have the sugar. So the question isn’t why can’t I resist sugar? It’s why are you exhausted and upset in that the afternoon, the, the actual playing out of the habitual behavior, isn’t usually what needs to be solved. What needs to be solved is what is causing the situation that leads to you and acting this habitual behavior that is unwanted. Brock (36m 6s): So in this case, the eating of the chocolate bars and buying a two liter pop on the way home. Sure. We could look at taking some supplements and things to mitigate your desire for sugar, or have that there’s a plant you can put in your mouth that makes sugar tastes bitter. So you don’t do that, but that’s not addressing the problem, which was in their statement. They said that they were exhausted and defeated or exhausted and upset in the afternoon. If we remove that, if we can figure out what’s causing that, then we don’t even have to worry about the sugar. The sugar will take care of itself. Brad (36m 41s): Oh my gosh. Yeah. Brock (36m 42s): So I think the, the question isn’t how to eliminate the all or nothing thinking it’s to get further upstream, I guess, from it, and to take a bigger look and see what is the situation that is causing this behavior to manifest itself. Brad (37m 0s): Oh my gosh. I could see that applying to many different areas. Like I’m easily distracted by YouTube videos of high jumpers when I’m trying to focus and get work done. And well, wait a second, you can put a block in YouTube that says Brad’s not on much things. The statement implies that I have an internet connection readily available to pop over at the click of a button. So I think creating a successful environment kind of flows nicely, you know, into, into the next step of, let’s say the, the imaginary client coaching experience here, we’re trying to improve our diet, improve our exercise and get out of our own way and get our mindset. Brad (37m 41s): Right. But part of that mindset getting right is having, you know, a kettlebell within your visual field when you’re working at home all day. Brock (37m 51s): Well sure. But in that particular situation, I don’t know if this is hypothetical situation or not for, for Brad getting video guides Brad (38m 0s): completely hypothetical. Brock (38m 1s): Yeah. I would say, well, in which situation, like, what are you doing right before you, you start watching those high jumping videos? Like, what are you? What’s the activity you’re engaged. Brad (38m 12s): Brad’s getting processed on his own show. Brock (38m 15s): Oh, there’s No better way to do an exam. Brad (38m 17s): That is correct People. I am, I am game. Here we go. Oh, right. So is it, you know, lack of taking appropriate breaks at opportune times every 20 minutes to keep my cognitive function sharp and keep my body energy to stay more? Brock (38m 36s): More, more high level more specifically, like, what do you work? What should you be working on when you’re watching the HighJump? Brad (38m 42s): Oh, excellent question. Yeah. You know what? I’m going to say. It’s the, the, the most cognitively challenging tasks are the ones that I like to jump out of with, you know, abandoned. So it’s like writing a book is probably the hardest thing that I do. I can certainly fire off emails. No problem. While the video is running, you know, on the other side, I mean, so that’s my answer is that when it, when the going gets tough, Brad goes to YouTube. Brock (39m 11s): Okay. So why do you want to be doing those cognitively difficult tasks? Like writing a book? Like what is your motivation to write the book? Brad (39m 19s): Well, yeah, so the, the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and all those wonderful things flow from putting yourself into challenging situations and persevering. And that’s the process of living a rich and meaningful life. And Dr. Lustig talks about this in his book Hacking of the American Mind. You know, we have the serotonin receptors, which are happiness, contentment, fulfillment, all these great things that, that give us a rich and meaningful life. And then we have the dopamine receptors, which are at war with the serotonin receptors. We, we routinely flood the dopamine receptors with all manner of indulgence and instant gratification in modern life. Brad (40m 2s): To the extent that we crowd out our ability to persevere through daunting challenges and struggle over a manuscript. When w w why, why would I do that when I have a chance to see Tim Berry and Barsha team sharing the gold medal, and one of the greatest moments in Olympic history, Brock (40m 20s): But why do you think it’s important to write this book? Brad (40m 24s): I guess, you know, there’s that wonderful part of me that has high values and ideals, and wants to make a difference and make a contribution to the world, instead of just being a dilettante who has, you know, a high competency with watching YouTube videos, Brock (40m 42s): But can you see, like we could keep going like this? I don’t think we’ve hit the, the crux yet, but we call it the five whys. Like, this is just one of the exercises that you can do to, Brad (40m 53s): what am I at four you? Are you going to give me two more? Three and the Brock (40m 58s): we could, but I think we can get into some really personal stuff when we get into, into those. And that is the point of it being five, because usually the first two or three whys are very like, well, like, okay, why do you want to lose weight as a, a really common one? Like, I’m having a lot of trouble, I’m eating snacks and like, oh, well, why do you, why don’t you want to eat snacks? Or because I’m trying to lose weight. Okay. Well, why do you want to lose weight? Well, because I’ll look better. Why, why is looking better important to you? Because it’ll help my self esteem and stuff. Well, why is that important to you? What’s, what’s important about your self-esteem? Well, when I was a kid, I was ridiculed, then it gets very personal. It gets really specific to the point where then we can say, Okay, so in those moments, when you are about to, to look at a high jump video, you know, what’s going on, you know, what the, what the issue is, or what the root of the behavior that you’re about to elicit is. Brock (41m 57s): And often that can be enough to, to shut it down, or we get to the bottom and you don’t know why you don’t know why you’re writing in that book. And so being distracted is super duper easy, because you don’t really care at your root. The book is, is not important enough to you. Watching HighJump videos is much more engaging and exciting, and sure you can get into all the dopamine and serotonin and all of that kind of stuff, but that’s completely irrelevant. If your drive to do something is true and sustainable and stuff, then you won’t experience those kinds of things. Or you can at least defeat them a little bit easier, but often we get to the bottom of things and realize, well, you actually don’t want to lose weight. Brock (42m 42s): You want to heal your relationship with a parent, or you want, you, you want to do something different that has manifested a belief that society is somehow said is going to fill that void instead of actually addressing what the real problem is. So sometimes we write books because we want to feel validated, not because we really think that our, our message is so vastly wonderful and amazing that I need to share it with the world. And so it’s a lot easier to, to get distracted or to engage in, in sort of coping behaviors or, or numbing behaviors instead of actually doing the work. Brad (43m 19s): That’s heavy, man. I love it here, Brock (43m 21s): But it’s really fun when you learn how to do it to yourself, just taking those moments and going, wait a second. That was a really weird thing. Why did I just do that? Okay, what am I working on? What’s going on? And you can ask yourself the five whys sometimes ago. Holy shit. You know what? I don’t care about this at all. Why am I doing this? And sometimes we can’t make that change immediately because it’s how we pay our bills or whatever. Like when people, when I realized that working at the liquor store was not something I wanted to do with my life, which seems obvious now. But when, when I was able to do those moments of wait a second, I’m getting really upset about this job. Do I really care about this job? Brock (44m 2s): And when the answer is, no, the freedom that that comes over you is, is really profound. And then even if you stay, even if you choose to stay in that situation, even if you choose to persevere and write the book, even once you’ve realized that the, maybe the idea that you had in initially was that was something a lot more seemingly meaningful. And it actually, you uncovered that it’s a lot more ego based or something that’s okay. You can still continue to do it, but once you’ve discovered that truth, it just becomes a lot more freeing that you’ve got a much more realistic way of looking at at what you’re doing. And we can just be happier and a little more stress free, I suppose, in some ways, though, it’s not always about changing your life, I guess is the thing it’s, it’s just about changing your belief, Brad (44m 53s): Right. Accepting what have you. So with this example of wanting to get in shape, I think most people genuinely sincerely want to drop their excess body fat, get fitter and actually reach that stated goal, but when it’s not happening and when you know these self-destructive patterns reveal. So now I’m watching YouTube videos instead of going out and working out on my own, my own high jump. And if I go through five whys and all five of them are like, yes, I really want to do this. And I, I don’t understand why, what, why it’s not working well for me, is there, is there another, does Brock have an answer when, when, when we really, and truly, and in, in my example, you know, I really, and truly want to get this book done. Brad (45m 42s): I feel like I have a lot to offer. I have what I think are strong and, you know, intrinsic motivation, nothing superficial or ego-driven, but it feels like my purpose, my calling, it’s very rewarding. I’ve been doing it for a long time, but I’m still stuck at suboptimal then where do I go? Brock (46m 4s): Yeah. Well, that’s what you’ve described, happens an awful lot. And, and sometimes what it ends up coming down to is like, I want to get fit. Why do you want to get fit? Well, I want to extend my life. I want to be healthier. Well, why do you want to do that? Well, because I want to be around for my grandchildren to play with my grandchildren and stuff and say, okay, well, this is all really good stuff. So what are you doing to get fit then. Well,I downloaded this marathon training program, what do you like to run? No. Okay. Let’s start there. If you often we choose a fitness program or a diet or a way of life or a job or a partner or, or something based on beliefs that again, are, are out of date or don’t belong to us or, or a societal. Brock (46m 51s): So we’re actually, it’s our choice that we’re the reason we’re failing at doing the thing that we chose to do isn’t to do with the why is necessarily in this case, it’s to do with you chose the wrong one. So like the marathon, I blow minds all the time. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this as a coach, too. And people say they, I, I don’t know why I can, can’t stick to my marathon training program or something, or I really want to get, get fit. And I go run for three days and then I can’t, I just don’t want to do it anymore. I said, well, do you, do you like running? I said, no, I really don’t and say, okay, well don’t run then. And people are like, what do you mean? I don’t have to run, want to get fit? And like, there are so many other things to do. Brock (47m 33s): Like, let’s look at the vast array of other things that can improve your fitness, that don’t involve running. Making yourself do something that you don’t enjoy is not sustainable, and that’s not going to work for you. So let’s look at like first, make a list of things you, you do enjoy doing that involve moving your body physically, and, and let’s choose some activities that you actually look forward to and enjoy participating in, or at least enjoy the feeling you get when you’re finished, like that satisfaction or the strong feeling that you get after you’ve finished the workout, because then you’re a lot more likely to, to carry that out. So, so yeah, if the, if the why’s don’t play out, if they do play out to be very you’re, you’re acting in line with your greater self or your vision of your greater self, then the problem isn’t isn’t that the problem is that you’re making some wrong choices or you you’ve just made a pick the wrong thing. Brad (48m 31s): Wow. Right. So, so, I mean, it’s kind of like being strong with your word and your intention, choose your goals very carefully, because if you, you know, throw down a stated goal, you better mean it and you better execute. Brock (48m 48s): Well, and also being a lot of this comes down to curiosity and being willing to experiment on yourself. So if you, if you can maintain a level of curiosity, not only can you look at your own beliefs and, and question them and, and find some clarity with that, but being willing to try something and fail, try something. And you’re like, okay, well, no, I didn’t really like that. What, let me, let’s try something else we tend to be. And this is part of that all or nothing thinking, I think is we’re afraid to do things wrong to the point where we don’t do anything and being able to actually accept the fact that, well, you know what I’m going to, I’m going to try Zumba. Brock (49m 31s): Let’s see, like, maybe I’ll love it. Maybe I’ll hate it, but I’m going to give it a try, or I’m going to try training for a triathlon, or I’m going to try gardening for the first time. There’s the sense of curiosity and the playfulness that can come from that can be so much more fulfilling. We can, we can find the things that actually aligned with our greater goals and with our, with our greater vision of ourselves, if we’re just willing to give things a try, instead of being like, okay, I need to get fit. So I got a gym membership, like there’s a lot of societal prescriptions that hardly fit anybody. It’s not only That they don’t fit like these people that I’m coaching. Brock (50m 13s): It doesn’t really fit anybody. There’s a certain amount of the population that can force themselves into that mold and eventually find some pleasure from, from it. But at our mutual friend, Darrel Edwards, the, the Fitness Explorer, he says like, people weren’t meant to exercise. Like there’s, there’s nothing about us that w w like exercising is a very, very modern construct. And so we’re not predisposed to do that. We are predisposed to enjoy moving our bodies and challenge ourselves and, and, and do all the wonderful things that our bodies are capable of. Brock (50m 54s): But exercising in and of itself is a very modern construct. And we’re not genetically defined to, to do that sort of things. So keeping that in mind and just looking for ways to actually let in Katy Bowman or our friend biomechanics, Katy Bowman, is, is the great advocate of that. Just finding ways to do stuff in the garden that uses your body in unique ways. She just released a video about walking down the hill and how to walk downhill. And it blew my mind, like I haven’t been using my hips downhill and what the heck, that’s amazing. And we can find much more pleasure if we have that curiosity and lose the fear of failure. Brock (51m 38s): And I’m sure you get this the same way that I have. And I’ve watched people get this in the past that we get questions as podcasters, like, what is the perfect way to do this? And I’m like, okay, well, what are you doing right now? Well, nothing, what’s the, what’s the perfect way to do this. Like, there is no perfect way to do this. Come on. Just do, yeah. Do something is better than doing nothing. Brad (52m 4s): Yeah. And not obsessing too much about the details. I think I get some wonderful, incredibly thoughtful, intelligent questions, but there are so nuanced that, you know, I could give a flippin’ answer easily and say, just quit eating junk food. And we don’t have to talk about the macronutrient ratios and your, your carbohydrate count keeping under 50 grams or, or whatever. And same with training. Oh my goodness. The ability with all these wearable devices, which, you know, my, my triathlon career predates all this stuff. And so we had a, we had a speedometer told us how far we went and how many miles per hour. And thankfully we had heart rate monitors, and I still don’t see the need for anything beyond monitoring your training heart rate, and then getting a good night’s sleep. Brad (52m 50s): And then assessing Kelly Starrett calls it this metric readiness to train. And it was measured, I think, with science, from the Olympic training center and, you know, the, the very cutting edge of athletic peak performance where they’re testing blood lactate levels and heart rate variability, but readiness to train trumps all of them in terms of accuracy and effectiveness for the athlete to make training decisions. And so if you don’t feel like at one day, or you feel a little heavy in the legs and the first eight minutes of your warm-up before you’re intending to do a sprint workout, that is the, that is the gold standard of saying, yeah. Maybe I better take it easy today. Brock (53m 27s): Yeah. Yeah. I, I don’t know about you, but I’ve shown up gone all the way to the pool changed into my clothes, done one lap or one length and been like, Nope, going home. Brad (53m 38s): Oh my goodness. It takes so long to get to that point. And I remember just starting with, you know, running in high school and we were running ourselves into the ground and it was so challenging and going into college and getting injured frequently, and then into the triathlon scene where the training load is so heavy. And my dad was a big help. He was a physician and I, you know, I’d have a sore throat or getting a little sniffle going, and he’d say two weeks, that’s how long it takes for a cold to run through your body two weeks. I’m like, no, no, I’ll just rest for a couple of days. And then I’ll be fine on the weekend. And I’d go back and look at my training logs. And you would see these patterns of the workout reports for a good two weeks. Brad (54m 18s): Even if you had the slightest little sniffle or sore throat and everything was, you know, everything was thrown upside down. And finally you’d finished coughing and you’d feel a hundred percent around two weeks after a cold. So I finally got smart and realized that when I had the slightest tickle of a sore throat or that slight hot feeling in the head, I would shut down everything and basically go back to sleep. But when I was at my triathlon scene, but, you know, do the best I can to tone things down in modern times. And in fact, in a couple of few days as a healthy athletic person, your immune system can go to work. I like to engage in fasting at these times also, and I’ll come back a day or two later and feel fine. Brad (55m 1s): But if you allow that cold to take hold and run, its course, you are looking at two weeks. The first week is an obvious down period where you shouldn’t be exercising. And then the second week you’re still coughing. You’re still slightly off, but the trade-off of taking one or two days off versus dragging along for two weeks is, you know, it takes a lot to get into a thick head to, to make that good decision. Like you described at the pool, turning around, where are you going Brock you’re supposed to be in our lane. You know, there’s a lot of voices and pressures outside compelling you to keep going and, and, you know, torturing yourself. Brock (55m 38s): Yeah. When are you going to make up that workout? The same thing with injuries too. Like when I was in, basically my career ending injury in the ballet came as a result of being too pigheaded to acknowledge the fact that I had a small injury in my foot. It turned out to be a stress fracture, but it probably wasn’t at the beginning, it was just some old ligaments or something in my foot, but I kept dancing, kept performing, kept going to rehearsal and stuff to the point where I w I know I can see it in my head still, the way I was using my foot was so biomechanically incorrect because I was avoiding the part of my foot that was in quite extreme pain at that point. Brock (56m 18s): So I was using my foot in a very strange way to avoid putting pressure on my metatarsal, which was putting stress on my knee, which was putting stress on my hip and my hip eventually dislocated.. And that was the end. That was, that was basically the end of my career at that point. Sure. I probably could have come back a year or so. I could have maybe in a few months, but at that point, things had sort of accumulated and I didn’t bother coming back, but had I addressed, had I felt that slight sore throat or the, the, the hotness in my head, like you were describing in my, in my foot and said, okay, you know what? I just need a couple of days to, to ice this, give it some rest, elevate it back in those days, it was all about rice, rest, ice compression elevation. Brock (57m 4s): If I, if I had done that for a couple of days, I probably would’ve had a much longer career and, and dance, but instead ignored it pushed through until it became a really full blown injury. And, and yeah, that was the end of that. Brad (57m 20s): I ‘d tease you if I didn’t have a similar story of myself. And so many athletes have the, have the same experience. I mean, a stress fracture is the classic example of the idiot of the year award, because you have so much advanced warning. And I remember when I was, I mean, workout after workout. I remember running on the college team. And of course you don’t want to miss a workout because you want to get picked for the traveling squad. And I was getting this hotspot in my shin, that’s the term for, or they call it a stress reaction. Now when the MBA player has it, but you know, it would be a tight, single spot that would kind of burn and get worse and worse. And on the last workout that I did before my season ending stress fracture became too much. Brad (58m 0s): I lived a quarter mile away from the track and the dorms, and I had to actually limp to the track because the pain was so bad and I got to the track and I told the coach here, my legs feeling, you know, a little rough today, I had to limp to the start of the workout and he said, oh, just go run some strides on the grass. And, you know, warmup gradually not go to the health center for a bone scan immediately. That wasn’t part of the realm. And it probably still is, you know, disgracefully not recognized when athletes are heading over the edge of the cliff, but that was the end for me was, was limping over to do one more workout. And of course, you know that then it was too much. But if we can all kind of, you know, kind of rein it in a little bit, use that intuition a little better boy that opens you up to it ultimately to peak performance. Brad (58m 50s): It’s not the consistency of not missing a workout or, or pushing hard every time out. But you know, being a little more nuanced there, Brock (58m 59s): Right. Yeah. You know, I’ve know you see it all the time at the toeing the line at a, at a marathon or a half marathon or something. You see all these runners out there with the huge knee braces on ankle braces and stuff, Kinesio tape all over their body. Yeah. And I’m not talking about the elites. I’m not talking about the pros. I’m talking about people back in the five-hour corrals and kind of want to do the five why’s on them and say, why are you, why are you racing this? Why are you doing this race? And usually it probably comes down to what you were talking about earlier where it’s like, well, I paid my money. I know I don’t want to miss out on this. My family traveled with me to Chicago to do this race. Brock (59m 40s): I’m I’m doing it. Brad (59m 41s): We’re stuck in patterns. Okay. So the five whys entails addressing an issue and then asking another follow-up and another follow-up to dig as deep as possible. Kind of like you did with me. Brock (59m 53s): Yeah. Love it. Yeah. So that’s a, it’s a nice little tool that you can actually use on yourself. And sometimes it’s actually easier to use on yourself. Cause like I said, you do get pretty real. Sometimes when you get down to the fourth and fifth and maybe six, it can take more than five sometimes to really get to it. But it’s yeah. People should give it a try on yourself, listening out there and see what you are not on earth about yourself, Brad (1h 0m 17s): Pick a topic, any topic, here we go. Brock (1h 0m 20s): Why am I drinking this ice cold coffee sitting on my desk ? Brad (1h 0m 24s): You’ve been podcasting for a while. But before I let you go, I got to put you on the spot, Brock, and ask you for some upgraded nuggets. First. Describe what those are and then lay it on me. Brock (1h 0m 37s): All right. Well, in my podcast, Upgraded Fitness, I’ve started asking everybody at the end of the interviews to give me three up fit nuggets, fit nuggets. Excuse me. Yeah. Cause they’re well, they’re up upgraded fitness. So it’s sort of, it’s already taken on a world of its own. It’s the upfit as the shorthand for the podcast, but, and this can be anything it started out. I was going to ask for people’s workouts, their favorite workouts, and immediately got pushback from my very first guest who is a mindset guy. And he said, well, I’m not going to give you my workouts, but I’m going to give you my mindsets as was like, oh, that’s so much better. So, so basically they’re just things like the, the top three things that I would want people to walk away from this conversation with, I guess. Brock (1h 1m 23s): So I guess the first one would be that you have beliefs. Always all of us have beliefs that are circulating in our, in our heads, whether we’re aware of them or not, that are informing the way that we react to situations, which usually, or which can play themselves out in, in participating in a habitual behavior. That isn’t the one that we want to be exhibiting. So, I mean, I guess like snacking or avoiding your, your exercises, your, your fitness programs and, and things like that. Brock (1h 2m 4s): So don’t feel like anything is broken inside you, your not broken your genes aren’t bad. You’re, you’re not a bad person. You just have some bad programming as the way that I I’m a computer guy. So I, I like to think about it in terms of your, your software’s just in, it needs an update. So by finding out what belief it is that you’re holding, that’s leading down this path. You can, you can often just take care of the problem by changing your, your belief and just be a happier person. And one of the great tools, this is number two, one of the great tools to find that out is to ask yourself why, why you’re doing something, why you believe that this is something that is worthwhile doing. Brock (1h 2m 48s): And usually you can get some pretty real feelings and either understand that, yes, this is a thing that you want to do. And it is something that aligns with your great values. But quite often we realize that this is something that somebody told us we should want to do, rather than something that we told ourselves that we do want to do. And I guess number three would be to not be a stupid idiot. And when you have an injury or an illness to listen to your body. Your body knows best. And, and you can often save yourself an awful lot of pain and suffering by just take a day off. It’s not that bad. Brock (1h 3m 28s): Your body will be, we’ll be happy for it. I’m going to take today off. Cause I’ve been podcasting since eight o’clock this morning. And I like to work out in the morning, but I’m going to go for a walk later instead. And that’ll be, that’ll be good enough because I’ve put enough stress on my central nervous system today. Brad (1h 3m 44s): Big finish. Love it. Brock. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, Brock Armstrong from the Upgraded Fitness podcast. Where else should we check in with you besides downloading that podcast? Brock (1h 3m 56s): I think the best place to go is Brock Armstrong dot. Oh yeah. Brad (1h 3m 59s): The slick new website. Brock (1h 4m 2s): Oh yeah. It’s it’s slickish thank you. I’m glad you think it’s like, but yeah, it’s a, it’s got all the links to you. Like my Scientific American articles, my old GetFit guy podcast, all the, all the stuff can be found there, all my workout of the week videos as well, where I demonstrate my warm warmup routine. I know Brad has got his warmup routine. We I’ve taken some nuggets out of your, your form of routine and started using them in mind as well. I need to do a new video though. I like that you have your, your old version and your new version of, Brad (1h 4m 30s): I like watching you in the Canadian forest, standing on a random log and showing how you can get a whole workout just in the middle of nowhere for all the naysayers that my gym’s closed during COVID I can’t get in shape. Go look at Brock’s videos. You can happen anytime. Any place . Brock (1h 4m 46s): Bicep curls on the beach. Here you go. In the snow. Actually, that was a, that was a special one. Brad (1h 4m 52s): Thanks for listening to every bet. If thanks, Brock. Brock (1h 5m 2s): Thanks Brad. Brad (1h 5m 3s): That’s a wrap. Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support please. Email podcast@bradventures.com with feedback, suggestions and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list of Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with apple podcasts or wherever else, you listen to the shows that would be super, incredibly awesome. Brad (1h 5m 48s): It helps raise the profile of the B.rad Podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? 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