TMHS 845: This Exercise Secret Will Revolutionize Your Health, Fitness, & Longevity - With Nsima Inyang

You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Sean Stevenson. For more, visit themodelhealthshow.com.

Today, you're going to discover a form of exercise that can completely transform your health and fitness. I've been working in the field of health and fitness for over 21 years. And this form of exercise was completely new to me. And I'm telling you right now, it's a game changer. And this is something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life.

Our special guest today is an elite-level power lifter, two times Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Masters World Champion, and he's even competed at a high level in natural bodybuilding. So he has a diversity of physical inputs and an expression of his body and physical potential. I'm talking about the one and only, Encima Iang. And he's the co-host of the wildly popular Mark Bell's Power Project.

and he's contributed to over 1,000 episodes sharing knowledge on fitness, strength and movement with a global audience. And Antima also has a huge following on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. And now he's here to share his insights on this powerful form of exercise that I'm telling you right now, it is a game

It's something I fell in love with very quickly, and it's something that I'm so excited to share with you today. Let's dive into this conversation with the amazing Enseema Yang. All right, my guy, Enseema. Good to see you, man. Thank you for coming to hang out with us. You too. I appreciate you actually also bringing me back out. This was the first podcast outside of the podcast I do that I come onto. Yes. And I appreciate you for bringing me on before and now again. Yes. It's my honor. Truly. I've learned a lot from you, man.

And man, I can't wait to dig in today because there's so many aspects of fitness that people don't think about. And you are obviously one of the most diversely fit people, like you are elite power lifter, Jiu Jitsu World Champion.

Natural body builder the list goes on and on you've accomplished all these physical feats But most recently I brought this into a practice that you brought into my life at the right time that I'm in love with man Even going through a rehab even if somebody's not training to be able to implement this and I'm so excited to talk to you about this about rope flow Yeah, and the value what I'm noticing with my wrists with my shoulder with my movement

With my just feeling more a little bit more bouncy, you know Just and it's like these subtle things and I've only been doing it for a short amount of time Yeah, and just even just hanging out and doing just a little bit with the rope It just and into again bring the conscious breathing to it as well because it's very easy if somebody's learning a skill for example to you know tense themselves up and

but to find myself, to find my breath and all the different aspects, the benefits of this is crazy. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. So number one, what is Rope Flow? And then let's dig in on the benefits. Yeah. So Rope Flow was something that was invented by our friend David Weck. He started doing that back in 2004 because he mentioned that he sees everybody jumping rope and it's this syncopated pattern, but he's like, oh, what if you start doing that, right?

So then he ventured down that and he helped, he pretty much created a lot of these patterns. And, you know, when I met him about four years ago, I think he showed it to me. And when I looked at him like, this is Joe, don't get me wrong. Doing and learning from all these professionals over the years, I've learned how to kind of keep an empty cup with these things and have a white belt mentality.

But when I saw that, I was like knee-jerk reaction knob. But after I gave it a shot is when I was like,

There's something here. There's something really cool here. And then after I started to improve at it, I started to notice that in jujitsu, where I usually do sweeps and maybe a lot of submissions on my right side because that's where I rotate. We all have habits. We reach for our toothbrush with our right hand and we get out of our car with our left foot and we bend a certain way. We have certain specific habits that we always do as far as movements concerned.

But rope flow provides movement symmetry first. So you'll know, you'll see rotating on the right, rotating on the left. Okay, so now we have movement symmetry, we're rotating on both sides of the body. You're standing up, you're shifting the weight on both sides of the body. Now you're shifting to your front leg, back leg, or if you're standing in a neutral position with both legs next to each other, you're shifting to the left, you're shifting to the right. Right. Just for people that are listening. So we're not talking about jumping over the rope, we're talking about

spinning the rope in certain ways on your side and then on your other side. Exactly, right? So again, I noticed that that transfers into martial arts. Like, whoa, okay, my Jiu Jitsu is better just because I'm learning how to swing this rope around. But one of the other big reasons that rope flow is so effective is it teaches people how to tap into the thing that resistance to training in the traditional sense has potentially worsened.

Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of people when we're lifting the gym, we are taught, hold the breath. Valsalva maneuver neutral spine. Everything is neutral spine, neutral spine, neutral spine. You train in that way.

And over time, you stop moving in other ways. You stop bending from your spine to go tires you and then you'll hear a physical therapist say, don't bend at your back. Neutral spine to go down and tires you. You know, you stop laterally flexing. You stop rotating. You stop these movements. And now when you're running, you're running like a robot. I mean, look at a lot of, I mean, honestly, look at a lot of bodybuilders run or look at just a lot of people who mainly lift run. That spine isn't rotating, but those arms and legs are moving them through space.

Have you ever heard of the spinal engine theory? Oh, please. OK, so the spinal engine was a theory purported by Serge Grakovetsky in like the 1980. The book is dense. I don't even understand a lot of the book because when you open it, it is physics-based, OK? But the idea isn't too difficult to understand. Most biomechanists follow the idea that to propel the body through space, you use the arms and legs. Well,

That makes a lot of sense. If we walk forward, we step forward and we rotate. We rotate our arms. But Serge put forward this idea that it's not just the arms and legs that propel the body through space, it's also the spine. Because if anyone were to go to YouTube's spinal engine theory right now, they're going to see a video, that's pretty famous video about that theory, where it's a torso.

Okay. And this man has no legs and he has half of his arms, but he's propelling his body through space. Okay. So this guy's alive guys. Okay. Um, and he's propelling himself through space with the rotation of his spine and the pivoting on his pelvis. So when the right shoulder comes forward, the left hip comes forward. By the way, again, no legs. His left shoulder comes forward. His right hip comes forward. He's propelling himself through space with no arms and no legs. Why is this possible?

Because we have this belief and don't get me wrong, there's this idea that to propel forward, you have to step. But the spine is the thing that helps propel these things forward. And that's what rope flow helps build. Because initially when you start the practice, you're swinging the rope with the hands.

You're swinging the rope. And when you look at it, also you're like, I'm swinging the rope, right? But when you get better and when your spine gets better at moving this contralateral movement of the spine, your spine becomes the thing that swings the rope. Your spine becomes the rotator. You're now moving your spine and rotating your and moving this object through space with something that has been kept neutral for so long.

That's why people quickly find a shift in the way they move, because they're simply beginning to move their spine in a different way. That's the tip of the iceberg. We had this guy, C.J. Klupissa, came on our podcast recently. He told a story, and even people that are doing my foundations course for Robeflow right now,

A few days in, they're like, I'm walking with more balance. 50s and 60s, I'm walking with more balance. I don't feel like as shifty on my feet. The reason is their economy of movements improving. Instead of stepping forward with a neutral spine, they're rotating into that step, rotating into that step. They're now using this thing that's been so static for so long, and it's getting hydration to the discs. All of the, you're starting to tap into that engine that you haven't been using for so long.

I want to mention CJ's story real quick because it's pretty profound. CJ mentioned that he met David four years ago and he did some rope flow for three days. CJ is a great coach, great mind, amazing programmer. He owns this gym called Gymnazo and I think it believe it's in slow. But he comes home after three days of just doing some basic rope flow. He cuts 10 minutes off of his run.

It's not that he has used a new supplement. It's not that he's changed his form. It's that now instead of running like this, like you see most bodybuilders and lifters run, he's rotating and he has better, smoother economy of movement. This is why it helped my jujitsu so much because jujitsu is a movement practice. You rotate when you sweep somebody, you rotate when you throw somebody. And now if you're able to tap into this thing and get it moving and get it moving the moving human being in the way you want to move,

Bam, that's why it can be so powerful. Oh man, so good. Now I've got to ask you about this. The rope itself for people that are listening just for them to get a visual. The people that are watching, of course, you're going to see some actual video of Encima actually doing this, which is amazing. And again, this has become a integral part of what I'm doing on a daily basis. Like I just and I look forward to it, you know,

And I just got a text from you not too long ago and it was just like at the right time and it just fit in and The rope itself, you know, you got me a starter rope to get started because some of the other ropes, you know It took a little while to get to me and so but I was able to get started and our mind especially when you see somebody like yourself doing it who's been doing it for a while I was like I want the big rope and

So I want people to get a visual of what the rope itself looks like. This isn't like a little speed rope that you're doing, you know, for like boxing training. Talk about the rope a little bit. So, you know, the rope can be looked at like we look at the weights in the gym. You know, it gets harder as it gets heavier. But if you want to have good form and learn the foundations, you start lighter. So you learn how to move, right? So if anybody starts at the rope, it's a good idea to start with the lighter rope.

Because heavier ropes will move not necessarily faster, but they're going to have more inertia and they will pull at your spine more.

And if you don't know how to move with that momentum and leverage your skeletal structure to move that rope through space, you can hurt yourself, right? So with the ropes, it's good to start with the light rope or, you know, there's slightly heavier ropes. I have those on my website, but there's a bunch of websites that have ropes. But anyway, you want to start light so that you can learn the technique. Okay, you don't want to start heavier because that's an easy way to hurt yourself. And when you're starting lighter, you can do it for a longer period of time.

Heavy ropes take more energy. So you do it for a few minutes. You're like, oh, my wrists. I've never rotated my wrist that much. I'm tired now. But light ropes, you can do them for a while and you can really get the foundational movement patterns. It's one of those things where you want to, just like Jujitsu, right? Jujitsu is a great example for this. And I look at Roflo like a martial art because when I first started learning Jujitsu,

There's all these videos on YouTube and I wanted to do all these moves. But when my foundations weren't set, I was just making all these foundational mistakes because I was trying to rush the process of learning jujitsu concepts. But when I went and I learned my foundations and those became a part of me, learning everything else became so much easier.

But when I was just seeking out different fancy movements or whatever and like, oh, I can do this and this and this, I was getting tapped by the most elementary foundational BS. You know what I mean? So when when starting rope flow, it's a good idea to start with a light rope, work on your foundations, treat it like you treat it. You don't treat it like a workout.

When we were talking about breath, breathe through the nose, this isn't a practice that you ever hold your breath. And that's why like with lifting and everything I do, I do everything in a way that my breath guides what I do. And if I'm holding my breath, I know something's wrong. I know the weight's too heavy. I know there's there's there's something missing because I should never be holding my breath. So with the rope, it's the same deal. A lot of people have the tendency of when they start, they get a little bit nervous and they start thinking of it and then they start doing what they do in the gym.

It's like, no, no, no, relax, relax, let that spine move, right? And as you get better, you just start to unlock more of your own movement. Yeah, yeah. That's one of the things I noticed. And by the way, just to go back a little bit when you talked about the inputs that you get with hydrating those discs, this is so important because so much of our reality is compression.

Right. And there's an important aspect of reality that where they need that we build some resilience in that. But if it's all about compression over time, you're going to be a compressed mother what we want is also decompression. And there aren't many viable ways to do that in our normal day to day lives. Of course, there are simple things.

hanging from a bar, getting up on a dip bar, for example, but the body has a way to still keep tension around your spine, around certain parts, to not really decompress and let your spine decompress. The rope brings about such a remarkable decompression therapy, really, and to reiterate this point of the disc or non-vascular, so they don't get hydration directly,

It's a process of remote diffusion. Your body has to be so hydrated, have the nutrients, all the things to get to the disc. Also, your disc are not a priority for your body. It's got to run your brain, it's got to keep your blood flow, it's got to clot your blood. It can be one of the last places to get the nutrition unless you're moving it.

That's the key. All this other stuff tends to get moved, not your spine, not so much, even if you're strength training, because of what you just mentioned, that tension that we hold, but being able to actually move your spine is going to deliver more nutrients. It's going to help some of that blood flow and hydration. Again, it's not getting going directly there, like just boom, like that. It's a process, but it gets the process started and facilitated in a way like few things can.

Yeah. And the amazing thing, quite a few ways and things from what you mentioned right there, you get better at moving your spine. The first day you start, you're going to look like this and you're going to like think you're moving your spine, whereas you're really just using your arms. But each day you do it.

5, 10, 15 minutes, whatever you feel like, the goal of rope flow is to do it and feel a little bit better afterwards. It's not to do it and feel like you beat up or just got a really good workout, but after you get experienced, you can get a really good workout. But even so, the goal is to just feel a little bit better afterwards, right? But those small inputs over time teach you how to begin to rotate the spine.

I made a video about Ropo on my YouTube channel and foundational patterns is the underhand pattern and the underhand pattern is like walking and the overhand pattern is actually like crawling, right? And when you do these patterns, you're now getting your spine to move in these human rotational patterns. When you walk, you have this constant, you should be having this contralateral movement that happens. But again,

And I want to say, when I'm talking about the gym, I do not think the gym is bad. And I still do certain traditional things, even though I'd say the normal squat and those deadlifts, that's 5% of my type of training.

The barbell on the back compresses, it's actual compression. It compresses the spine, it pushes you down. Gravity is constantly working against us. And we're fighting against gravity to keep ourselves upright. But if the only things that we do for exercise are compression in the gym with neutral spine, and then we have our life where we're walking and stuff,

We're not doing anything that actually trains our human movement. We're not doing anything that improves it. And you mentioned decompression. You know, a lot of people have ideas about decompression, not being a real possible thing. There's nothing like disc decompression, but it's more about getting your discs back to where they should be.

You compress them in the gym. You feel tighter. I mean, I don't want to talk. Research and stuff is great. But the thing is, is you know how you feel. You know that you feel stiff. You know that you feel tight. You know that when you get out of bed in the morning, you wake up, you're like, you're careful. You take those ginger few steps, move around a bit. You're like, OK, you know what? Let's just wait 45 minutes. This will start to loosen up.

But, you know, there's so many people in there and even myself, because when I used to wake up, I was like that, that wake up in the morning and you actually pop out of bed. Pop out of bed. Not like, okay, let's get the body. You pop out of bed because your body is where it should be. You know, you don't go from the gym to sleep where you're waking up already just feeling tight. You do something that

elongates and you become better at bringing about the elongation as you perform the practice. So you get better at actually stretching your spine through movement, through dynamic fluid movement. Things like the Jefferson curl and these movements in the gym are good to get you training flexion and lateral flexion, etc. But like

The rope gets you doing these things in a dynamic way, both sides utilized. And that's why it ends up, this little swing of rope ends up being such a powerful thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just to add to that a little bit.

the physics of it, you know, especially when the rope gets a little bit heavier. And I noticed such a difference going from the training rope that you got me to when I got a heavier rope, you can feel the force as that rope goes up pulling you against nature, like the power of levity, right? And that's that decompression, it's like, again, but you're doing this while moving in a human way. And what I noticed was,

You know, I tend to catch one of things pretty quickly. I know you do too, you know, especially new movements, things like that, because we train ourselves to do that. We've done that over time. And so thankfully I had your guidance though, because, you know, going through your videos, like I could see, okay, there's this piece of this is like, I feel this, this is, this is natural. And so I was just messing around and you kept using those terms too, which is very freeing for people in the videos. Just mess around with this a little bit. Yeah.

I was like, I can mess around. I don't mess around. And so I was at the park and I was just doing some of the basic road flow. And then I just decided I felt like I need to turn around. And I hadn't got to that part yet. And so I just turned around, which the propeller move, which I do. And I just felt like that was so natural. It just felt right. And then I started walking. Like there are certain things that just felt like the right thing to do. And then I learned about them in later videos, of course. I was like, all right.

I got that one. But then there were certain things that didn't feel natural. Once we got to the Dragon Roll, for example, I'm just like, that seems very simple the way. But when I was trying to piece make it and instead of flowing, getting back, let me tune into myself, then it locked in.

But I needed to know what the action was, right? And so your course, which you got to tell people where they get access to this because it would be criminal not to because it's so good. And you detail every like you go through these little pieces that I didn't think about as well. Like in even popping in and doing an emphasis video of like, Hey, this is another check in to check in on your breathing.

Right? So where can people get access to the course? Yeah, it's school.com and this group is called The Stronger Human. There'll probably be something there, but I made that foundation's course and it's detailed. I made it free because when I was learning Robeflow, I had to piece things together on YouTube. And that's great, you know what I mean? But the thing is, it's like,

It was it was became an inconsistent practice for me because the frustration of not having something just laid out and it took me I believe it took me too long to get the hang of things just because Since I there was no structure. I was just like yeah, let's not do it today, but

You know, I laid things out. Again, y'all can just go check it out. You can go if you want to. You can get a rope from Home Depot. I have ropes on my website, but just get something you can start with now. Go for go to Home Depot, cut nine feet of rope and just start swinging that thing around, right? Don't make it a workout. Just swing it a little bit in the morning, a little bit in the evening and make it a habit because you'll notice you'll start to, it's, when I say it's like a martial art, you learn movements. You put movements together and over time, the big goal is to reach a flow state.

The big goal is to get to a place where you're not thinking, you're just breathing. The movements that you've done and downloaded are now just being performed.

And the flow state is powerful because I can get to a flow state in Jiu Jitsu at this point. I've been doing it for nine years. I have, I can roll with anyone and bam, I'm in, right? But it's addictive. The flow state is addictive. This is why runners, once they get to that place where they call it the runners, hey, that's the runners flow state. They've gone for two hours and it felt like 30 minutes because they're just now locomoting. They're just moving, not even thinking about anything, right?

But it's dangerous when you get addicted to a flow state that really beats your body up. This is why runners get into trouble because they just run, run, run, run, run. They're getting for that high and that high is amazing, but that high is beating up your knees, your back and everything. And you're jitsu. Oh, every day, bohata. And if you guys do jiu jitsu, you get that one. But listen, you know, you get to a flow state with jiu jitsu and you can't fight people all the time.

It has wear and tear on your body. It's dangerous. It gets dangerous. And people will typically train through pain. That's somewhat part of the culture. When a lot of people get their black belt, they're the broken black belt. You don't get there with no scars. You got knee issues, back issues, neck issues, and it's part of the process of getting to the black belt.

But the thing is, first off, it doesn't have to be. I'm a black belt and I have no injuries. I used to have injuries in the past, but when I found rope flow, and again, with the ways that I train in the gym, I'm able to reach a flow state in this activity. I'm able to do martial patterns and martial movements.

And I'm attenuating to this rope. And by doing that, I can now train jujitsu three or four days a week. And every day I can do some form of ruffle that still allows me to achieve this state of no mind, the state of not thinking, just moving this absolute flow where I'm like, I don't need to go to jujitsu today. I can, I can just

I can do my rope. I can do my lifts and back off a little bit. I can feel good. This is the thing that's going to let me do this stuff until I'm 70, 80, 90, rather than being the person who does it for a few years and I'm out because of injury. Yeah. Yeah. Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back.

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I'd love for you to talk about this subject. This is something which is crazy that it's a newer part of the fitness conversation, which is these exercise snacks or micro-dosing exercise. When, I mean, just like most things that tend to work very well for a long time, humans have been doing this for a very long time. And today, again, I think our mindset in coming up much the same way of like,

If I'm not getting in a full workout, what's the point? My workout is going to the gym, get in that 45 minutes or that hour, and that's how I really get growth. That's how I really progress and move forward. Just doing...

10 pull-ups now and then you know doing You know 10 five more times throughout the day. It's pointless like what am I doing? That's it's it's nothing so let's talk about your perspective with micro dosing exercise The goal is just to make movement a part of life It's you know in the past for me when I was focused on bodybuilding and powerlifting and

Lifting was the thing that I had my pre-workout myself mentally prepared I go to the gym I Get that done come back home. I chill sit down chill, right? But the micro dose has been so powerful and it's something we talked about on the power project all the time because I've

set up my environment to serve my movement ability. So you go to my house, you go to my mom's place. I've got her micro dosing stuff too. I have a dip bar here, two planche bars right here. I got a kettlebell upstairs. I got a sandbag chilling downstairs. I got a pull up bar at the door at the podcast office in the podcast room. We got some stuff laying around. I got kettlebells in my car.

And people will hear this and be like, this guy's a workout, not obviously he has workout stuff everywhere, but it's not because I'm working out. It's because when I pass by this thing, I'm encouraged to just give it a quick pickup, do a few squats. Just move it, right? Don't think about it. It's not a workout. It's just movement. Just go move it. Go pick up that 100-pound sandbag right there. It's just right there. Just go pick it up real quick. Don't have to warm up. Just breathe and pick it up.

And the reason why I can now breathe and pick it up is because I've built the habit in my lifting of using my breath to dictate my movement. So now I don't have to hold my breath, hype up and do something. I can, it's movement. I can just go pick that up cold. Why? I'm not saying you should go, she's go do this now, go get some heavy stuff and pick it up cold, but have some things around that all right. Just get a few reps in without having to think. This is just literal lubrication for the body, but you got to think these things add up. I know that

stress and getting close to failure can help with muscle growth and all these things and that is good you can absolutely do that right you should do that at some point but outside of that just gently making this a part of your day

That adds up, and not just in terms of burning calories, et cetera, it adds up in allowing you just to become a better mover, become overall stronger. Because now, over time, you got a sandbag at home or some stuff at home, now you can just go bang out, 15 pull-ups without thinking about it. Because every time you went underneath the door, you did like three or four, but that's stacked up each day. Maybe there are some days where you backed off, because you can't just perpetually do more each day, but there are some days where you listen to your body, and your body's like,

Could you chill a little bit? Just not just do as much. Okay. Okay. I won't do as much. And then you have another day where like, okay, let's, let's actually let's push this a little bit. But over time, there's this slow linear type of progression up and down, but over time, trends up. And now, you know, you just do these things. It's just part of what you do because you set your environment up. And this is just my, my, my movement environment. This is my nutrition environment too. But you set your environment up to serve your body and serve your movement, right?

And I think that's why it can be so important. I tell people that work in office jobs, kettlebell is amazing. Maybe you have a kettlebell and maybe a slant board right there in your office. Maybe you could just pick up that bell and do a few slant board squats or do a few kettlebell lifts or even just do a few silent swings if you're nervous about people hearing it. But just get the movement in.

So that the only time where you're getting in these movements isn't just when you're in a building with, you know, lights and four walls. And the days that you miss doing anything in this building are days that you just don't do any of this activity at all. I mean, obviously we can't neglect how important walking can be. So walks are super important. But that's the idea of microdosing, you know, making movement a part of your life. Yeah. So you can just do it. And the concept of doing something cold or doing something without warming up is a new thing.

No other species on earth warms up before it does something. The line is not warming up. Let me do a little jog before I go after this gazelle. Then we could be like, well, that's all other animals. We're more evolved, all the things. Kids don't warm up. When you get on the monkey bars, when I was going to Bruce school, elementary school, we just got up on that shit.

And not only did we just go swinging on the monkey bars, I was getting on top of the monkey bars. I was doing all this dynamic stuff. And I didn't have to warm up first. It just happens over time because we become more and more. Not just sedentary, but movement deficient.

Sean, I'm happy that you mentioned the kids thing, because the goal that I have for myself and the goal that I have for all the people and the stronger human is getting back childlike movement ability. So it's not just gaining muscle and trying to put on all this tissue and lifting. It's not just that. Slifting can be good, but it's being able to move like a kid again.

being able to sleep like a kid again, right? Being able to have no apprehension in the next step, next movement, next thing you're gonna do because you just do it, right? The monkey bars thing you mentioned is amazing because like, I'm getting a bar for at home so I can just start hanging off something. But that's, you can do that. My friend Joel Green, we've had him on the podcast twice. He's brilliant, man. The first time I met him five years ago, he mentioned on the podcast, he was like,

You know, and he's by the way, 60, I think, maybe late 50s, 60s looks great. I have this habit of doing a five cold sprints a day, five cold sprints a day. And I looked at him and at that point in time, I was in the state where if I took a sprint, I'd pull a hamstring. So I didn't even sprint at this time. You know, I was like, sprinting is not something I'm ever going to do now. But when I heard Joel say that, I was just like, why?

And he was like, well, that's actually one very good sign of youth. Kids like you just mentioned, kids can just do stuff. They don't have to think before they pick the thing up. They just pick it up. They can fall and get back up. Why? Because their tissues are super healthy. And that's a whole another thing, taking care of your soft tissue. But they can just fall and pop back up. And we're like, oh, we could only do that for a kid. It's not just because they're kids because they have healthy tissue. They're supple, they're pliable. I sound so creepy right now. But you know, you can.

You can bring back that supple pliable nature to your tissues so that you don't just move like a child, but your tissues activate. They pop like a kid's tissue spot. And we lose those abilities because, like you mentioned, they're just things we stop doing, ways we stop moving. As humans, we're an amazing species because we are built for efficiency.

We learn certain patterns and habits that allow us to use the least amount of energy. And when we learn how to do that, we learn how to just do things in the most comfortable way. But the most comfortable thing is typically not moving as much, not moving in certain ways as much. And when we stop doing those movements, when we stop moving in those ways,

We learn it's a learned habit to just now sit in a certain way bend in a certain way walk in a certain way never sprint or jump again Most people stop jumping. That's just one thing that they don't do and then after a while they're like Most people don't even think about the fact like think about it. I mean comment down below guys. When's the last time you jumped? Hopped

have you in a while? And if you do it right now, it's probably not a good idea. Because I know people who have been like, Oh, I haven't, they start and they pull something. So again, the thing is, I want people to understand that it's not the fact that you'll never be able to do things these and again, these things again. It's a fact that you need to slowly progress yourself back to these childlike abilities. And it's possible. It's just it's going to take you a while as it took me a while.

takes a while, but you can do it. And then once you get it back, it's maintenance. Yeah. Yeah. This is the process is unlocking, you know, and that's what I love about the road flow as well, is that it gets unlocking all these dormant things. And one of the things that you alluded to earlier is symmetry, right? Because we all tend to do things with one side of our body, whether we're, you know, if somebody's a baseball player or plays golf,

You know, it's obviously very popular, you know, our form in tennis and using a certain hand for a lot of stuff. And so we have a preference towards, you know, and it can be very unconscious using one side of our bodies versus the other. And this is giving us the ability to have more symmetry, to use that other side of our body to complement

both sides of our body and what that also is doing is unlocking our brain because one side of our brain is controlling the opposite side of our body. And so I really feel that one of these capacities is this kind of whole brain functioning or integration that takes place. What do you think about that?

You know, I have my thoughts about this, but I'm excited to talk to David about this this weekend. But I'll give you my thoughts right now. And you alluded to swing sports, baseball, throw with one side. Tennis, baseball again, you swing generally on one side. Some people are ambidextrous. Some people have, you know, both skills with both feet, but most people don't. And the great thing about first off the rope is that you can train those movement patterns on both sides of the body.

I don't know if you've gotten to the modules, but there are single arm throwing patterns. There are two arm throwing patterns with the rope. You learn how to do a throwing pattern on your dominant side. Then you learn how to do a throwing pattern on your non dominant side. You learn the pattern because the great thing about the rope is that when you're doing something on one side, then you do it on the other, the rope will teach you by hitting you. The rope will teach you that, oh, I'm not rotating as much when I do this like I do on my right. So let me try doing that rotation on that side and oh,

It wasn't as good, but it's okay, okay. Let me do that throwing pattern again, okay. Oh, now I'm rotating in a throwing pattern on the left side of my body, and I'm never throwing a ball on the left side body. Let me actually go try to throw a ball with my right and my left. I have this power. That's what it's like, because now you're, man, there's swing patterns, there's patterns that emulate the golf swing, there's patterns that can emulate all these types of swing, but the thing is, is initially you're so goofy on your other side.

But when you just do the reps, do the reps, do the reps, you're now doing the same level of rotation that you have on your dominant, on your non-dominant. And this is why even when it comes to things like punching, I'm not a striker. I'm not someone who does striking sports. But my striking ability on both sides of my body is dangerous. I've, I've purposely started doing a lot of striking on my own just because I felt that rotational power at the ropes. I'm like, okay, let me see what this feels like and a holy crap.

I can actually strike well with my left and my right and I feel that powerful rotation. On the brain side of things, it mentions something interesting because many people have different anecdotes and I have anecdotes for myself too with this. As I started to do more with the rope and learn new patterns, you're literally, your body is learning new patterns of movement. Things that were so natural to you, like for many people throwing a ball is natural, for many maybe throwing isn't.

So you learn how to throw. You learn how to throw on the other side. You learn and your body develops all these capacities. And over time, I'm thinking differently. I'm having new ideas on things. And I'm just like, nah, I don't want to just

say it's the rope, it has to be other stuff. But like, I, many people have said like, I feel like I'm getting smarter because your movement efficiency with your body is improving. So that can't just like, that can't just stop there with the rope, right? The way you move through life is also a reflection of the way you think.

Notice that sometimes body posture plays a big deal on like how you think about people and how you look at them. I'm looking at you like this right now. You probably might be feeling like this guy's creepy. I crouched out a little bit on my heads here, but a lot of people, this is there. This is where they stay because this is where they feel comfortable. It's suspicious. And when we look at these people, we're like, that person is hiding something. There's something up with them. Then there's people where it's like, they're comfortable.

They move through life in that way. They have a different essence of the way they walk. You see athletes, you watch an athlete walk, a football, watch Michael Jordan walk. Watch that, just that, that grace. Watch the LeBron James, watch any of these athletes walk. There's the way you move also changes the way you think, the way you activate yourself in life. It's powerful. So I don't want to say it's going to make you smarter.

But I do have a feeling that as you start to move better, you'll start to think differently. I think we all know that. When you start to feel more confident, you'll start to think differently too.

Yeah. Yeah. A great affirmation for this is Dr. Daniel Ayman. And, you know, he's, he's got the world's greatest index of brain scans, a functional brain scan. And so again, he's actually looking at the brain. He's involved in the big NFL study. And he shared with me, actually sitting right here in this chair, uh, how an aspect of the brain that is really one of the largest areas of the brain

is really responsible for movement, all things movement. Why would such a large part of the brain be dedicated to that? And it's a bi-directional feedback. Your movement is going to grow and sustain this part of the brain, and that part of the brain is sustaining your movement. And so if you're getting these inputs, you're literally creating all these neural connections, and you're keeping the brain, the blood flow, the activity, all that stuff is predicated on your movement.

And so again, if we can start to have more integration on both sides of our body, because we have these two hemispheres and we start to get more integration. And this is so overlooked with, because it's so crazy, man. We've got this huge paradigm with movies where the athlete is the dummy.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I like protein. I drink mussels. Yeah. You got the smart kids who they don't lift at all, you know, and then you've got, and it's just so silly. I can't even tell. I was a scholar athlete, right? I had t-shirt, you know, that got for being a scholarly athlete, little plaque or whatever. And, you know, oftentimes some of the smartest people are also athletes as well. And, you know, it's so unfortunate because

The truth is, when we're training our bodies, we are training our brain. It is, that is just how it is. And our literacy and so many other things, as you just mentioned, like people feeling like their ideas, they feel like they're getting smarter.

It, our physical literacy impacts are kind of functional in our brain literacy, you know? And we've seen this in studies with kids as well. Kids learning and performing better on whether it's reading skills tests, whether it's math tests, if they get some movement and prior to doing the testing, right? Or learning some things and then retesting after doing some movements.

This goes together. We evolved as a creature, a species of movement and learning. They're together, they're one thing. We have a culture today where those two things are separate AF. You go sit down here, this how you learn, and then you go out there and you play a little bit to get the wiggles out.

What do you think about that? Man, I have this habit now, and this is one of the reasons why I love the rope, because you saw I travel with that thing. I keep one with me at all times. I walk with it, because again, they're walking patterns. But the thing is, is when I start feeling stuck, I'll just go throw my rope for a little bit. And then boom, so many people also in that group are like, yeah, I started building the habit of stuck with something. I'll just go do the rope a little bit. I come back feeling refreshed.

And I think about what you just mentioned there, because I never even thought about this, but kids like to swing things, like kids like to throw things. It's like, what if we just had a bunch of small ropes for some of these kids where it's like in classrooms where it's like, okay.

I've seen so many of these clips on Instagram of like these Asian countries where these kids are doing something and then they're out and they're doing there, right? And then they're back in like the movement. I think some of these places understand what you just mentioned, how big of a deal movement is with learning, right? So that's that's that's huge. And if everybody just had something that they could do that was

Not going to impact them, not going to tire them out. That was movement based. I think when you learn to use movement as a tool, you realize how it can let you solve issues that you've been solving with other things. Many people solve emotional issues, spiritual hunger with food.

We're feeling a little bit bad, and I've done this before, too, so I'm not pointing anybody out, but feeling a little bit angry. You have an argument. You do something. You go get a donut. You eat some ice cream. You solve your issue by feeling good and good food.

I call processed food abominations. I still have some, but now then I call it abominations because it's not real food. Let's just be real. Okay, it's calorically has new calories, but it has nutrients, right? But we reach for this abomination because it makes us feel good in the moment.

What if we had other tools, like instead of reaching for that food, we have the habit of going out and taking a walk? Because when you actually go take a walk and come back, you usually feel a little bit better. Most people don't feel bad after coming back from a walk. How about instead of something I like, you know, instead of reaching for the food, you go just, just flow, just go flow, go get into a flow state.

And that's why I like the rope so much because that flow state, man, it's something else. And when you learn foundational patterns, it might not look as fancy of what you see other people doing, but you can then get into a flow where you're not in your head anymore. You're not thinking anymore. You're just in movement. You're in your body.

There's this, we call it flow state here in the United States, because Mihaj accept Mihai. But in Asian cultures, it's called motion. I learned about that idea first from Musashi. He talked about the idea of motion. What's his name? Takawan's show. He wrote, I wasn't hagakure, it was something else. But these martial artists, these samurai's,

This idea of motion means no mind. That's the ideal state. That's the peak state of martial arts. Motion is more martial based. Flow state is more like in the zone. That's why, you know, but when they think about that, you're not in your head, right? You're not thinking. You're now in combat and you're just moving, right? You're free. Now, I know combat can be a stressful experience for many, but when you're in a flow state fighting somebody, it's not a stressful experience at all.

It's actually, it's actually the best feeling because there's no stress. It might look stressful for other people, but when you're in a flow state fighting somebody or grappling somebody, it actually, it feels light. And you can get into that state with a rope or, you know, anything else that you can find that can just allow you to reach that physical flow, find it and do it.

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One other piece that I would like to add to the conversation, because again, you've got such a diversity of fitness experience and inputs and all, again, being able to put it all together towards something, you know, these really incredible, I mean, it's pretty crazy. The fact that, you know, you perform the way that you do in Jujitsu is pretty crazy. Thank you. You know, because somebody would see you like, man, if they just saw you maybe,

Just, I don't know, a certain angle, right? And they're just like, man, that's a big dude. But then to see you move like a cat, you know what I mean? It's just like, move like a big cat, that's been the goal. There you go. And just like to see it all really play out in the success of that. This is something for us to really, again, it's always important for us to have a model to know that it's possible.

but also in that same light being able to have that physical strength, right? And so I want to ask you just a little bit about that and some of the most efficient and effective ways for us to build that strength. And I know of course strength and muscle, they're pretty synonymous. So I'm not talking about necessarily putting on a ton of muscle, but that would be nice, especially for a lot of people.

But building that strength and that functional strength. So I mentioned earlier that the breath is what dictates the way I move in the weight room and what we need to first think about is when you start training and what I'm about to mention and the way about to mention you're going to have to lower weights.

you're going to have to reduce. And the way that we have lifted in the gym, it's going to be hard for people to want to even do this because, you know, lifting the heavy bar belts, you brace, you breathe, and the goal is to put more weight on the bar because that's what's going to get you more muscle and strength, right?

But it's getting you more muscle and strength in a way of moving that isn't going to serve you as a human being, as a fighter, as anyone who wants to actually move well. This is why actually a lot of fighters choose not to lift weights. A lot of fighters, and I'm not saying again that lifting weights is bad, but a lot of fighters choose not to lift because they feel that it makes them tight. They have this inherent feeling and then strength coaches are like, no, it'll just help you build tissue and it'll help you build tissue.

but it does impede their movability and they can feel it when they're moving. These are athletes that their skill is put forward by how good of a mover they are, whether you're a boxer, a grappler, whatever. The better you move and the better technique you have, the more likelihood you chance to have, chance to win. But what can also help you with that is how strong you are. So we got to figure out a way to do that. We got to figure out a way to stacks and tissue, improve our rotational ability