Dr. Shannon Ritchey founded Evlo Fitness and Teaches a New Fitness Approach How to Workout Without Destroying Your Joints | Ep. 106 | Body Podcast

Summary

Dr. Shannon Ritchey is an Entrepreneur, Founder of Evlo Fitness, Doctor of Physical Therapy, wife and transitioned from owning a cash-pay physical therapy practice to exclusively focusing on creating safe exercise programs for those suffering like she was.

The ‘no pain, no gain’ big weight methodology has normalized body-destructive fitness. Dr. Shannon’s mission is to reverse that mindset by providing a joint-safe fitness approach driving lasting results.

Learn how you can have a great workout in 30 minutes and not wreck your joints.

I’ve tried her workouts and they work!

Find Dr. Shannon online
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.shannon.dpt/
Evlo Fitness website: https://www.evlo-fitness.com

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Brandon: 

Hello Friends, Welcome to the show. Today we have an exciting episode with dr Shannon Richie of EV Low Fitness and I have been looking for someone who really understood the difference between stretching and mobility and how to approach workout without destroying your joints. 

Brandon: 

And I’ve been following Shannon on instagram for about a year and I actually watched a few of her workouts. I tried one of her workouts the other day, I couldn’t believe how sore I was the next day. It was leg exercises and you would never guess as a longtime weightlifter that you could get such a good workout out of her method of how you can leverage your weight and not put a ton of pressure on your joints. 

Brandon: 

We talk a little bit about her business in the beginning because I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t do that. 

Brandon: 

She’s done a really incredible job building a membership business in a very short amount of time. So you’re going to love to listen to how she did that and then we really get into the nuts and bolts of her approach. That is pretty incredible about how to preserve your joints, but get a workout and build muscle. 

Brandon: 

Or there’s any women women listening out there, not talking about bulking up, just talking about getting toned and staying strong, which is good for you as you age, you’re going to love this episode. Dr Shannon Richie. 

Brandon: 

Here we go. Welcome to build the business success secrets. The only podcast that provides straight talk for entrepreneurs, whether you’re an entrepreneur, starting with an idea or growing your business. This show is for you. We’ll teach you how to build a strong mindset, powerful body and profitable business so you can achieve success. And here’s your host Brandon. 

Brandon: 

See White, I’m really excited because you know, I don’t know how I think you popped up in my feed. 

Shannon: 

I want to see maybe a year ago and I’ve been looking for someone to have on the podcast that actually there’s plenty of, I don’t know, I probably get in trouble with a lot of my friends meatheads out there, but uh from, from a guy who’s lifted weights since he was a kid and, and used to weigh £40 heavier. 

Brandon: 

But uh, there’s nobody who truly understands, at least in my belief that I’ve seen there are people because I’ve been trained that way, but people out there who really advocate for mobile, I call it mobility versus stretching and and bulking up, so to speak. 

Brandon: 

Um, so I’m really excited and I’m grateful. 

Brandon: 

I know it took us a minute. 

Brandon: 

You’re really busy and you look like you had a terrific vacation and I know you’re recording like crazy. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, I am. 

Brandon: 

I’m excited to be here and talk about some of those things that you want to touch on because I think there are so many misconceptions and people think that they need to do certain things, but they don’t actually know why and they don’t actually have like the physiological understanding of how our body works in function. 

Brandon: 

So I’m super excited to talk to talk about it today, Be here. 

Brandon: 

Well, cool. 

Brandon: 

So before we start, um I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t talk about your business because you have an interesting story. 

Shannon: 

I think just at least for a few minutes if you could share it with the audience, um how you really transition it, will you? 

Brandon: 

And I have never talked before other than instagram messages and email. But uh it sounds like you are a traditional from all my research and reading your website, a traditional physical therapist who really solve some problems with that. 

Brandon: 

And then you’ve transitioned into this really cool online business that you’ve clearly gone gone all in because I saw an app the other day and stuff like that. So could you share a little bit of that story? 

Brandon: 

Yes. Yes. So, um I guess I’ll go back to my schooling and kind of how I got into it. So I was a business major in undergrad and I worked at a software company for an internship and I was like, I can’t do this. I cannot sit behind a computer all day long while I was in an underground. I was teaching fitness classes, so I loved doing that on the side, but I just kind of saw it as a hobby. I didn’t see it as something that would be my career and ultimately I decided this is my life, like I want to do what I’m actually interested in. So I went to physical therapy school the whole time I was in PT school, I knew I was going to be a traditional physical therapist, I just knew I was going to somehow, I’ve always been entrepreneurial, I’ve always started like side hustles inside businesses, so I went to physical therapy school after physical therapy school, I worked at a cash pay, a physical therapy clinic and actually I kind of just worked as a personal trainer and at that clinic, I was dealing with my own chronic pain, my own overuse injuries. 

Shannon: 

You know, I was doing tons of what I would call show off yoga, where like you stretch yourself to the very breaking point and do all these cool tricks and my body could do all of that, but my body felt horrible. 

Shannon: 

Um and I was treating patients who felt the same, they were very fitness minded, they getting them to the gym was no problem. 

Shannon: 

Mhm. 

Shannon: 

But their bodies felt like crap and I just thought there has to be a better way where we can be fit and work out and our joints don’t have to feel like they’re falling apart, we shouldn’t have to get all of this body maintenance because of our workouts, our workout should build us up, not break us down. 

Shannon: 

And so when I moved to north Carolina, my husband goes to Duke for his NBA. 

Shannon: 

So we moved from Kansas city in north Carolina and I opened my own physical therapy private practice here and was dealing with the same thing here, all these crossfit people, all of people doing more functional movement and runners or whatever. 

Shannon: 

Everybody had all of these issues from their workouts and I just thought this is so backwards. 

Shannon: 

So my my practice was going really well. 

Shannon: 

I felt like I was, you know, I was wait listed and then the pandemic it and I thought this is the perfect opportunity for me to go online. 

Shannon: 

And actually instead of just treating the symptom, which to me the symptom was people’s pain from their workouts, let’s get straight to the cause, which is their workouts. 

Shannon: 

And if we create a workout program that doesn’t cause all those side effects, then these people won’t have to be in their physical therapist office every week just trying to put themselves back together. 

Shannon: 

So I started what was Llevo rebranded to EV low and we can talk about that, but I love talking about business so we can talk about business as much as you want in this interview. 

Shannon: 

But um yeah, we just launched an app. I just launched a podcast. It’s called fit body happy joints. I launched that two weeks ago. 

Shannon: 

Um So life is good. Life is good right now. That’s my kind of my story. 

Shannon: 

So how did you, I mean that’s incredible and I’m not going to hold it against you or your husband only because uh I’m a unc Chapel Hill Tar heel who has his M. B. A. From there and um we got our coach from Kansas who so I’m gonna I’m gonna let him off the hook. 

Brandon: 

I’m only halfway joking but it’s all coming round there. 

Brandon: 

I saw a picture of him I guess watching like three basketball games and and truthfully I think the big joke and you moved there to Raleigh Durham area. 

Brandon: 

The truth is is that other than basketball like everybody gets along, I mean my professors at you and see we’re from Duke and vice versa. 

Shannon: 

They teach in different places in those places. 

Brandon: 

But when it comes to basketball man, there’s a big rivalry. 

Brandon: 

I I think it’s I totally agree. 

Brandon: 

It’s like there’s this mutual respect because everyone sees each other as academics. 

Brandon: 

But then when it comes to sports it’s like all the wheels come off. It’s very funny. But if it makes you feel any better, I am. 

Shannon: 

We hate Duke as well. 

Shannon: 

Like my husband will never wear a Duke polo or like we hate Duke to. 

Brandon: 

It’s just he’s just here for school. 

Shannon: 

Well, we won’t, we will let the administrators here that. But uh people would do go bad actually. My grandfather and uncle went there, so um not all bad, but I’m joking. But how did you, that’s an aside, how did you, did you change your, did you shut down your physical location and now doing it all online? 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

So I was renting space and just operating as my kind of in my own practice and when the pandemic hit the space completely shut down, so I was out of a job, it was sort of a panic moment as for a lot of people all around the world and because my husband was in school, so he didn’t have an income, so it was kind of like scrambling to try to figure out how to make this work. 

Shannon: 

Um And you know, like as you know, starting a business, sometimes it takes months before you’re making a profit and you know, not not that it’s all about money, but when you’re the sole breadwinner, it kind of is. 

Shannon: 

So um that was the first few months, it’s I had a blast doing it, but they were very um difficult and um we’re finally at a point where we’re making a profit, we’re seeing the things coming together and um it’s a lot more fun now, but the first few months were very, very stressful. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, so a few things just so our listeners, the model that you were using is that you were in an existing physical therapy place and you effectively rent a room, so to speak, very much like a barber or a hairdresser, rent a chair. 

Shannon: 

Is that was that? 

Brandon: 

Exactly, exactly, and I was treating people’s injuries, I wasn’t doing fitness with them, so they would come to me for back pain and I would treat their injuries from a rehab standpoint. 

Brandon: 

Um, whereas now my model is all online and it’s fitness classes, so it’s workouts, it’s not treating pain or treating injuries or anything like that. 

Shannon: 

So it’s a completely different model and you were doing a revenue share, just like a hairdresser or barber in the sense that you uh I guess you had a set fee per month to rent the room and then you did a revenue share with that practice. 

Brandon: 

No, luckily it was just rent, which is really nice. 

Shannon: 

Like I yeah, and the person that I rented from was super generous and it was very affordable. 

Shannon: 

Um so yeah, no revenue share, just rent, which is really nice. 

Brandon: 

I want to get to the fitness, but you’ve done something, you mentioned that you are profitable and a few things you mentioned that I want to come at one is being in business is about money. 

Shannon: 

I think this is something that I’m only taking the opportunity because I think we, as humans creators, entrepreneurs, business owners sometimes feel like it’s this, there’s this perception about money that’s bad. 

Brandon: 

There’s nothing bad about money, there’s nothing bad about making a lot of money. 

Brandon: 

There’s that is a cultural shift that someone is trying or a small group of people are trying to shift, but there is nothing wrong with wealth and and and we should feel good about making money. 

Brandon: 

So I’ll say that start, I could not agree with you more and you know, as someone who is, you know, I think you can also be, it can be a both ant, like you can be altruistic and want to change the world and you can also want to make a lot of money doing it. 

Brandon: 

And that’s a shift that I’ve had to make in my own mind over the last year, starting this business where I’m like, I’ve been so used to trading time for money as a physical therapist and getting into a model where that it’s scalable and I’m not trading time for money anymore, has been you almost feel this late, this layer of guilt, like, oh my gosh, I’m not working hard enough to get this amount of money, but it’s like, but I no, like I can actually change so many more people’s lives and I can also make a lot of money doing it. 

Brandon: 

So I totally thank you for saying that for all the, especially all the pts that are listening, I think we have this thing where like, we have to trade time for money and we can’t make our over, you know, 100 grand or else like, you know, it’s it’s ridiculous. 

Brandon: 

I totally agree. 

Brandon: 

So thank you for saying that you’re welcome. 

Brandon: 

I just take the, take the opportunity to say it often, because there’s this thing like, oh, well if there’s nothing bad about money and by the way, I will tell you from a guy who created a, you know, there’s this, I don’t even like the word passive income because that, that degrades what we’ve created, It’s that we’ve created a long tail on our product that allows us to collect and it becomes highly addictive. 

Shannon: 

Like there was nothing more than I like to get these emails, I get them today for our newsletter. 

Shannon: 

Um like, hey you just made $299 and when I created my first business, I had the same thing, my wife has a dog agility side hustle training facility and she’s getting these emails and this is, you know, she, she used to not really be, as I’m gonna say aggressive joking with her last night, but you can’t Emails and they’re like, Hey, it just made $25, hey it just made $25. 

Shannon: 

Like that’s what really makes you feel good. 

Shannon: 

Yes. 

Shannon: 

And it’s not like you’re not putting value into the world to earn that money, you’re still putting value out. 

Brandon: 

I think it’s just a shift that you don’t have to be slaving away every second to be making money. 

Brandon: 

There is no better feeling. 

Brandon: 

I totally agree than waking up and checking your email and saying that you made money in your sleep. 

Brandon: 

There is no better feeling. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, it’s great, right? 

Brandon: 

It doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it or you don’t like, you know it doesn’t yeah, it doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve it. 

Brandon: 

I think that’s the biggest thing like people have to get past, you’ll get past it, you deserve it, working on it, you deserve it and in fact you should get more of it and make a ton of it because that means that you’re solving a real problem for people that they’re willing to pay for and there’s, there’s just nothing wrong with that. 

Shannon: 

So I want to, uh, I wanted to comment on that. 

Shannon: 

The other thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, you’re already profitable and you said something like, oh, sometimes it takes months to get profitable and I just want it from a guy who I’m wearing a sweatshirt, so you can’t see it, um, or whatever, the shirt, as long as you, um, whoever is, I got a lot of scars on my back that says sometimes it can take years. 

Brandon: 

So with that, how did you, how have you, Because I looked at your instagram, you started instagram In August, I think it’s August 26 of 2019, which maybe is a time when you started to Instagram, but then this pandemic, you create this shift, how have you been able to create this following? 

Shannon: 

I don’t, you know, and it looks to me mostly through instagram, maybe word of mouth and maybe an email list that you have, can you just take a few minutes of like, how have you done that change? 

Brandon: 

Because that’s incredible. 

Brandon: 

Well, thank you. 

Brandon: 

It’s funny because the first, I would say year, like Was a slow grind, like I felt like I was posting a lot, I wasn’t getting very much traction. 

Brandon: 

I think between like August when I started my instagram and the following August of 2020, I think I had maybe 8000 followers, like this last August and then from this last August two now, which is what, like, you know about, what is that, eight months, nine months? 

Brandon: 

I have almost, I think I checked today is 27,000 followers. 

Brandon: 

So most of my growth has happened within the last like 66 or so months, like six or eight months. 

Brandon: 

So I’m not really sure, I mean, I am sure, I think the first thing that I did was I cleaned up my messaging and I understood my customer and I understood how to speak to them in a way that wasn’t so complicated. 

Brandon: 

Um so I think that was the main thing that I did is like I started to understand them, I talked to them all the time. 

Shannon: 

I was in my DNS, I was in my emails, I was interacting with my customers literally on a daily basis and figuring out getting inside their brains. 

Shannon: 

And I changed my messaging um from exercise that prevents injuries too. 

Shannon: 

The more results driven like messaging, which is fit bodies, happy joints as soon as I did that and people are people understood more of my messaging and understood the result they were going to get from my product the following like exploded. 

Shannon: 

Um, I also took advantage of reels. 

Shannon: 

So like reels were really popular um a few months ago and the algorithm was really favoring them. 

Shannon: 

So I was posting reels like every day or not every day, but only like three times a week, but still, um, and then also doing instagram ads. 

Shannon: 

So I have an ad that I’ve been doing for the last eight months because it works really well, converts really well and with instagram, I don’t do you run instagram ads? 

Shannon: 

We do. 

Shannon: 

Yeah. 

Shannon: 

Okay. 

Shannon: 

Well, as you know, for the listener, in case listeners don’t know, you can really funnel in the type of person that you’re trying to attract in your ad so I can, I can dial in exactly who I’m trying to attract. 

Shannon: 

And even if they don’t click on my ad and go through my funnel, they maybe might click on my profile and follow me that way. 

Brandon: 

So I think those three things that I’ve done is dialing in my messaging, taking advantage of what’s popular on instagram. So like the reels and then also doing instagram ads is really how I’ve been able to grow in the last eight months. 

Shannon: 

And is that a lead magnet that you’re moving them towards on the ad? 

Brandon: 

Yes, so I do. Um, for me, I found that video converts like video ads convert better. And so it’s literally just like I saw healthy of me talking and I say something similar, like a similar message, like your workouts don’t have to break you down. My philosophy is that you can do to its, you know, uh seven second video and it’s free, it’s six free classes. 

Shannon: 

So they swipe up their emails right there, they put in their email, there’s not a lot of copy, there’s not a lot of words they put in their email and then boom, they get the 63 classes in their email from there, they are subscribed to an email sequence of like four emails over 10 days with education, there’s another bonus workout in there and then the final email on the 10th day is the invitation to join the membership. 

Shannon: 

So, um, that’s kind of my funnel that’s been working pretty well. 

Shannon: 

Um, interestingly, I think that although that funnel works, I think what works the most is getting people warm in my on instagram and talking to the camera on instagram and showing my face and being maybe a little bit more vulnerable and making people learned that I’m a real person and sharing some of my life. 

Shannon: 

Um and then getting to know me and promoting my product that way, and then when they’re warm and they trust me and they understand my philosophy, then they’re more likely to join my membership. 

Shannon: 

So I really appreciate you explaining that and sharing that because um, you’ve done a great job. 

Shannon: 

You know, one question, I have a whole bunch of questions. 

Shannon: 

Um, and maybe this is a transition. Uh well, congratulations first of all, because I’ve watched you do it. 

Brandon: 

Uh just from observing, I’ve never, I haven’t gotten your ads, I won’t click on it because it will cost you a buck two or three or whatever your customer acquisition cost is. But uh The by the way, is your acquisition costs within $5 or is it 5-10 or you Know since we just switched platforms, I don’t have the conversion, I have the cost per click which is like 77 cents I think I just yesterday. 

Brandon: 

But that’s the click. 

Brandon: 

So that’s like them just swiping up on it. 

Brandon: 

So the cost from that to them joining my membership, I’m not sure what the cost is because since we just changed platforms, I don’t have enough data yet. 

Shannon: 

But are you using to job now? 

Brandon: 

We were you, I was using Punjabi and I just switched to like a white labeled platform where it’s just all like branded. 

Shannon: 

So it’s not on like one of those that so this is maybe our transition. 

Brandon: 

Thanks for sharing all that good work. 

Shannon: 

So I’m interested because I keep track of what t shirt or sweat shirt I wear on all the podcast because um we’ve been doing three or moving to five and I just think if we’re going to put these on Youtube, which we are, then you do that. 

Brandon: 

So I noticed that you have a different outfit on possibly three times a day and I’m wondering how you do that and where are you getting these clothes? 

Brandon: 

Like are you sponsored or you do you coordinate this? 

Brandon: 

Like I, it’s clear to me that it’s not random. 

Brandon: 

I mean, um, it’s so funny. 

Brandon: 

I, you’ve been the first person to call me out on that. 

Brandon: 

That is so funny. 

Brandon: 

Um, yeah, I mean, so here’s what happens I teach in the morning and I wear an outfit, I’m less conscious about what I’m wearing while I’m teaching. 

Brandon: 

I’m more interested in the, like how I’m teaching and what I’m teaching. 

Shannon: 

But when I am filming like my content either on stories or for content on my instagram, I am conscious of what I’m wearing because I think, um I think that I, I want to look put together and clean and professional and I want to look the part um and I know how important that is. 

Shannon: 

So yeah, I will sometimes change like three times a day depending on what I’m doing and I bashed my content so like I’ll film, I’ll play in all my stuff and then I’ll film all my stuff all at once. 

Shannon: 

And so a lot of times I’ll like, um I will change in between In the same day, like I’ll change three or four times just to like film new content. 

Shannon: 

So that was my, I was like, my, my zinger question for today because I was like, Shannon doing this. 

Shannon: 

Like she has new top on, I mean, what is, what is going on? And and one other business thing, you are just for listeners because people ask me, they and you made a comment when we jumped on your like, wow, you got a whole set up there. 

Brandon: 

Um, I’m like a total geek and and want that. 

Brandon: 

But you, it looks like you’re recording your stuff, which you can on an iPhone 12 at 4K, which is basically movie quality. Are you’re doing a lot of this with not a red camera? You’re, I mean, is that right? 

Brandon: 

I have no camera. All I use for all my classes, all my content is my phone. 

Shannon: 

Okay. There you go. People like when you Shannon, you can imagine and you’re a businessperson, an entrepreneur yourself and I’m sure pt people come to you like Shannon, how do you do it? 

Brandon: 

I gotta go research this new Sony camera or this red You do if you’re listening out there, you do not need all this stuff. 

Brandon: 

In fact, I’ll be honest, I’m building a studio out back right now. 

Brandon: 

Recording studio and I’m going to do all my videos with this 12 at four K with a road mike because it works. 

Brandon: 

Why why spend a bunch of money on a camera if your users are not going to be able to tell the difference? 

Brandon: 

I totally agree. 

Brandon: 

I think you’re a testament sorry to, I just want to say this that you are already making money. 

Shannon: 

You’re profitable on a subscription business and you’re doing it with a phone, a laptop and earbuds and I’m doing it literally in my living room. 

Brandon: 

People are like, think they need a fancy studio and I am doing it. 

Brandon: 

I wish I’ll just show you my backdrop here. 

Brandon: 

It’s kind of messy because I just filmed you guys get to see behind the scenes. This is what my classes look like literally in front of my tv that’s not mounted. Um there’s a wine little carrier there. And yeah, like a crappy bookshelf. Like, you do not need to get fancy. 

Shannon: 

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And I saw an instagram story from you, uh that you showed your boxes. Um I guess you were feeling some guilt that everybody thought you were perfect. But uh I think that was good. That was good. I already knew it because if I showed you around in here, there’s like a dog blanket on the floor there, you know, so that because I saw it when we were getting ready, I was like, I can’t put that in there. But you know, you can make things frame things look really good, right? And yes, you’ve done a great grab. So let’s talk about um fitness. 

Brandon: 

One of the things that or fitness or mobility or what’s the right what is your what is the right nomenclature that you’re using now for this whole like lifting, fitting it? 

Brandon: 

I don’t know. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, I think um I really prioritized biomechanics over anything because I do think that the forces you are putting through your body are important and I don’t think that that is studied or appreciated or um or known about in the industry. 

Brandon: 

I think people think that you know there’s a certain there’s a certain number of popular exercises that everyone should do and um you know a lot of those popular exercises don’t place force through your body in an appropriate way. 

Brandon: 

That will lead to the strongest possible, most fittest body with the least amount of joint degeneration. 

Shannon: 

So yeah I would I would call it probably biomechanics but with that leads I mean when you have happier joints and a stronger body you will have better mobility um and we can get into that, we can get into like why that happens, why you have tightness and and all of that stuff, but just to kind of start there. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, so let’s talk about it because I sent you a video and I do all these like mobility exercises and you can hear which I’ve been taught and that could be wrong. 

Shannon: 

Um their bone spurs or something that effectively they build up and you can hear them and you’ve got to keep doing these mobility but it’s very different then stretching, is that right? 

Shannon: 

Yes, yes. 

Shannon: 

So I think we can back up because I think when I explain this it can help you, it can help people understand exactly what stretching is doing and what it’s not doing. 

Shannon: 

So tightness and you probably already know this, but just for like the listener tightness is a mechanism for from your nervous system to keep you safe. 

Shannon: 

So when your nervous system senses instability or a bone spur or a ligament tear or something is wrong inside your joint. 

Shannon: 

It tightens up the tissues around that joint in order to protect you from going into a range of motion that could injure that structure. 

Brandon: 

So, so when we think about tightness in that way, when we stretch a muscle that is trying to tighten up and protect you, we are potentially overriding our nervous systems natural protective mechanism and potentially opening you up to vulnerabilities that your nervous system is trying to protect you from. 

Brandon: 

So I have a lot of issues with stretching and this is an unpopular opinion and I don’t stretch and I don’t recommend my clients stretching because of that because we don’t have X ray vision and we don’t know or understand exactly why our muscles or our tissues are tightened a certain range of motion. 

Brandon: 

So do we want to bypass that protective mechanism and assume that we know better than our nervous system and stretch into ranges of motion? 

Brandon: 

Where were them opening ourselves up to vulnerability? 

Shannon: 

Um So I like to think of stretching as more of you have to utilize an external force, like pulling your leg with a strap or gravity or using your body weight to bring your joint into a position that it can’t go if you were to let go of that external force. 

Shannon: 

So for example, um doing the splits and using your body weight to push your legs into the splits is different than how much you could just actively lift your leg up towards your chest if you were in standing. 

Shannon: 

So that’s that’s kind of the difference between flexibility, which is using an external force and mobility, which is using your muscular system to actively bring your joint into a certain position. 

Shannon: 

Does that make sense? 

Shannon: 

Yeah, don’t make sense. 

Shannon: 

And I think for listeners it’s really important because um, when I first learned about all of this, and we’ve been taught, I mean, this comes from high school sports, right? 

Shannon: 

Like there’s all this stretching stuff that goes on and um, there’s not a lot of discussion, you sort of, then you carry it through your adulthood and you don’t realize that you could be injuring yourself. 

Brandon: 

But um, when I carry a lot of weight, which probably comes from all the body building in those days, I do my back, we’ll get, we’ll get tight. 

Brandon: 

And I met this guy and he’s like, well you need to do mobility exercises with your hips and your back and you need to rotate it and it’ll go away. 

Brandon: 

And I was like, yeah man, um I don’t think so, I think you gotta stretch it. 

Brandon: 

He’s like no. 

Brandon: 

And he was trained in Russia and he he walked me through this thing and sure enough, what your body really wants to know which is what you’ve said is that you can move so it can stop tightening that muscle. 

Brandon: 

Is that right? 

Brandon: 

Exactly. 

Brandon: 

Exactly. 

Brandon: 

When your nervous system feels safe, it will give you all of the mobility that your structure can tolerate. 

Brandon: 

So let’s say you do have bony spurs and your wrist. 

Brandon: 

Do you want your risk going into all of this full extension? 

Brandon: 

If you’re getting these bones rubbing over your structures and causing more damage? 

Shannon: 

Probably not. 

Shannon: 

But if you are if you move actively through your wrists improves synovial fluid, improve the connection of your brain to those neurons in your hand. 

Shannon: 

Maybe your brain feels like it has more information over how to move your wrists and maybe the tightness decreases a little bit and you have all of the mobility that your structure will allow for. 

Shannon: 

So um yeah, I mean I totally I do agree with what what he said about doing mobility drills will help reduce tightness. 

Shannon: 

But I think that the missing factor is that you cannot out mobility or out massage or out foam, roll or out stretch inappropriate forces through your workouts. 

Shannon: 

So if you are wearing down your body and your workouts and causing all this compression in your spine and causing um a bunch of sharing force in your disks. 

Shannon: 

No amount of mobility can undo that force. It’s like, it’s like hitting a hammer on a piece of wood and the hammer is your workouts and you create all these damages in the wood, but then sanding it out and expecting it to look perfect again and the sand is like, like the sand with the sand paper would be like your mobility drills. 

Shannon: 

It’s like yes, it might make it feel a little bit better but it still isn’t going to undo the damage from your workouts. 

Shannon: 

I think that’s the key part where I was really excited that you agreed to come on today because I had all that. 

Brandon: 

And I think first of all let’s just talk about crawl, walk run because the listeners probably are still at stretch and we got to get him, you’re not gonna stretch, you’re gonna do mobility. 

Brandon: 

But the missing part is exactly what you said, which when I watched and I watched your videos, I mean I’ll be honest at first I was like um that’s why I watch for a long time to sort of figure this out because you were doing some, you’re doing tricep exercises and you’re doing a chest exercise with your back on the ground, on that map that you showed us and not going all the way down on the fly. 

Brandon: 

And if you’re a bodybuilder like that is the, what do you call it? 

Brandon: 

Like the thing right? 

Brandon: 

Like that’s how you feel like you’re really getting that that pump. 

Brandon: 

And I was like okay well I’ll do this thing that this doctor Shannon says on this instagram thing and sure enough, you know you can you can literally feel that you’re not jacking your shoulder in the wrong way. 

Brandon: 

So it’s got to be this this combination. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, exactly. 

Brandon: 

And like, you know, we could break down individual exercises like from a biomechanical standpoint, but I also don’t want to confuse the listeners. 

Brandon: 

But I think that, you know, going through larger range of motion isn’t always necessarily the best for individuals body because if they’re going through the range of motion and they’re extending their arm all the way back here, but then they’re also internally rotating to try to compensate for that lack of really arm extension or being able to for those that aren’t listening. 

Brandon: 

Like in a bench, press when you bring your arms all the way down below the level of the bench. 

Brandon: 

If they don’t have that active ability of their shoulder in their shoulder caves in they all the center probably going to get some clinking in the front side of the shoulder, potentially impingement syndrome, potentially causing more inflammation and less ability for your muscles to contract. 

Brandon: 

So although that’s not a bad thing to bring your, to feel the fullest stretch of your pecs and you will get better benefit that way. 

Shannon: 

It’s not always the safest for the masses. 

Shannon: 

I think that you have to be really, you have to have a deep understanding of your body and what to look for and what to feel for in order to kind of go to those end ranges of motion. 

Shannon: 

So that’s why I do tend to um, I think that you can get great results by just staying a little bit smaller and just playing it on the safe side. 

Shannon: 

Um, unless you’re like a professional body builder, you know, then you will want to like push to those extremes a little bit more. 

Shannon: 

But Yeah, well, and I also think people, for whatever reason, don’t quite grasp the fact that if you’re going to, if you’re going to try to model a male bodybuilder or even some of these women fitness things, I’ll go out on the edge here or allege and say they’re using drugs and they’re using and they, and they make you, I mean, this isn’t, this is a fact. 

Shannon: 

Like it’s a fact. 

Brandon: 

I mean, they’re using drugs and if you really knew them, they had admitted to you and they’re using drugs that compensate the joints with things like winstrol deca. 

Brandon: 

I mean, I keep going down the list here, um, that are, that are looting the joint to get them through that, but as soon as they’re done, um, you know, it’s a major problem. 

Brandon: 

So I think there is that perception. 

Brandon: 

And, look, I was, you know, I was a kid who wanted to be big and you know, you get it in your head, you’re like, oh, I’m gonna take all the, you know, I tell I don’t know how you feel about this Shannon. 

Brandon: 

Um but I tell people they shouldn’t take, I mean, other than vitamins, I do take some vitamins that I think I think work. 

Brandon: 

I don’t know if they work. 

Brandon: 

I saw the netflix thing, like maybe they don’t work, but the placebo works okay for me. 

Brandon: 

But as it relates to all this other supplement crap, just eat some real food. 

Brandon: 

How do you feel about that? 

Brandon: 

I mean off the record because you know, I really try do try to stay in my lane because the nutrition I will say is not my formal education. 

Brandon: 

So I try not to give anybody advice on that, but my opinion and how I treat it in my own body is I’ve learned to eat the food instead of blended and drink it and all of that stuff. 

Brandon: 

I totally agree. 

Brandon: 

Like I’ve heard that from a functional medicine doctor who advised I was doing protein smoothies like every single day and she said, eat your protein. 

Brandon: 

Just eat it. 

Shannon: 

Like eat the good clean protein, whatever that is instead of blending it. So yeah, from a personal standpoint, I definitely agree with that. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, I mean, the results speak for themselves. All you gotta do is look for, look at people, eat healthy like yourself. Like you can see it, it works. I mean, I’m not saying I’m the greatest specimen, but for a guy who’s middle age, right? 

Brandon: 

Well, I don’t know what middle aged 40 50 freaking great, right? 

Brandon: 

Like it clearly does something that’s all I know and I used to take all those shakes. Trust me, I like I’ve taken every shape known to man, I don’t want to go off on the nutrition thing, but um, I appreciate you sharing that for our listeners. Could, what would be the best example you could give that we could describe in a podcast. People on Youtube will obviously be able to see you do it. 

Brandon: 

But what would be an example of an exercise that a lot of people do that you could describe on how it would be done better by not by following your method of not loading this joint. 

Brandon: 

And basically, I think the other thing is when we say ruining your joints, what we’re talking about is putting undue load on those joints that cause arthritis, pain, bone spurs, I don’t know, six other things that, you know, um, but I love for you to give that example of like that, that primary exercise. 

Brandon: 

Exactly, definitely. 

Brandon: 

Well, and I think if I could reframe your question just a little bit because I think maybe it will help me um give a really good example of maybe not an exercise but a muscle. 

Brandon: 

Like if we could Okay, so perfect, that works, that’s better. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, that’s okay. 

Brandon: 

I’m not, that’s why I I like to talk to people Shannon who are way smarter than I am. 

Shannon: 

What you are. There you go. 

Brandon: 

No, no, no. I I that is a very, very common question is like, how do I change this one exercise to fit my body better? 

Shannon: 

And I like to say, how do we choose an exercise to fit your body instead of fitting your body to an exercise? 

Shannon: 

So it’s totally backwards. 

Brandon: 

But I do think that it’s like a subtle but important shift. Okay, so let’s take the glutes because everyone loves to know how to load the glutes effectively about where the glutes are, because some people actually might not know that. 

Shannon: 

Yes, thank you. 

Brandon: 

I know I get carried away and then I like start talking and all these technical terms. 

Brandon: 

Okay, so your glutes are your butt muscles, Um you’re the big butt muscle and you have a few others, but it’s the primary one. 

Shannon: 

so you’re the most popular, one of the most popular exercises for your glutes is what do you think it is? 

Shannon: 

I think I see people, I think it’s, I mean doing the exercise on the back of a bench with a straight bar across your hip and rotating your hip, Is that is that what the glue did? 

Brandon: 

Or is it hamstring curls are like a, like a hip app bringing your legs, so they go like this and they sit on the bench and then they put the, the bar, not a dumb bell, but oh, that’s a hamstring curl. 

Brandon: 

Uh no, they’re laying on their back and they rotate their hips like their glutes. 

Shannon: 

I don’t know. 

Shannon: 

But anyway, see, I’m not the expert, so I don’t know what, clearly, I don’t know what to answer your question is. 

Brandon: 

So what is the, what is the question? 

Brandon: 

I I would, I think that a squat, I think that squats are one of the most popular, like I just, I just have to say this. 

Brandon: 

So if you’re listening to the podcast, if you could have seen Shannon’s face looking at me doing this, thinking, what in God is this guy even talking about? 

Shannon: 

That’s pretty much the look that we got there. 

Brandon: 

Um So guys, your squats, okay, let’s go with squats. 

Shannon: 

You were perfect. 

Brandon: 

I hear what much weirder shit on a day to day basis, so you’re fine. 

Brandon: 

Okay, so a squat which is basically squatting down, like you’re going to stand a chair and lifting back up. 

Brandon: 

A lot of people will put a bunch of weight on their back, like a barbell and to increase the load to their glutes. 

Shannon: 

So um it’s so fascinating, I can break down and other people who understand physics can break down these exercises and calculate how much force is going through the glue, or how much glue, how much force the glute has to generate in order to lift you out of that exercise so fast. 

Brandon: 

This is so fascinating and I did this on my instagram once and I calculated the forces. 

Shannon: 

So there’s that exercise, let’s say you’re holding £40 so you’re holding a £40 either barbell or dumbbell or whatever. 

Shannon: 

And you’re doing squats. 

Shannon: 

There is something like two or 3 times More force to your glues when you choose a step up, so you’re stepping up on a chair with one leg with, so just a body weight than there is in a squat. 

Shannon: 

So let me back up, we’ve got to exercise is a squat with £40 and a step up with just your body weight. 

Shannon: 

There is something like two times more work to your glute in a step up than there is in a squat. 

Shannon: 

Why is this? 

Shannon: 

It’s because the, what’s called the moment arm or the magnification to your hip is longer in a step up and you’re lifting more of your body weight in a step up versus in a squat you have both of your legs working. 

Shannon: 

So it divides the work by two. 

Shannon: 

Now, the problem with the squad is that because the magnification to the glute isn’t that much, you have to hold a lot of weight. And when you’re holding a lot of weight, you’re getting that additional compression down through your spine. So if we can choose exercises that actually load the glute more and have zero compression through the spine, like in a body way, step up. 

Shannon: 

You know, why would we not choose that exercise? Because in a step up you can get more work through the glute and less stressed through the spine. So I think that’s just like an example of, and listen, anyone that loves squats, please don’t come after me. Because that’s like saying that you do that is fine. 

Shannon: 

Because my next question is, uh what? 

Brandon: 

What you said, you spark something I’m going to ask you about about the individual. 

Brandon: 

How doing individual exercises actually increases the load with the same weight than doing them even single dumbbells together. 

Brandon: 

But uh and that was that was one of the things that I had caught from some of your stuff. But uh on the, on the squat, as it relates to loading the quad. 

Brandon: 

Is that true? 

Brandon: 

Also for the quad and the hamstring? 

Brandon: 

Yes, so a squat, a squat depending on how far your knee is traveling forward, so how far your knee is coming to approach going over your toes, or over your toes? 

Shannon: 

Um In most squads, the quad is challenged very little because there is a little, there’s not a very long moment aren’t meaning there’s not very much magnification to the quads. I did the same thing comparing a squat using £40 weights and what I call a Matrix movie, it’s technically called the reverse nordic curl. It’s when you’re on your kneeling and your hips, hips and um shoulders are straight and you’re leaning back and it almost looks like you’re defying gravity. 

Shannon: 

So that’s why I call it the matrix move, but you’re leaning back and then you’re coming back up. 

Shannon: 

So I compared a squat using heavy weights like £40 or whatever and a reverse nordic curl using body weight. 

Shannon: 

The reverse nordic curl again, challenges the quads. I think, I cannot remember the numbers off the top of my head, but something like three times more and you’re just using your body weight. 

Shannon: 

So again, zero compression through the spine. More work through the quads. So that’s how you can start to get better results with less joint wear and tear is when you start to apply physics to exercise and start to take a harder look at these exercises that are popular. 

Shannon: 

Like are they really worth it? Just because they’re popular and just because someone once said that they’re really great. 

Shannon: 

Are they really doing what they think we’re doing? And can we choose an exercise that is healthier on your body? 

Shannon: 

I think that’s a great example. It’s just hard for me, go to my woman, I broke it down. 

Brandon: 

Maybe that will help conceptual again, it’s kind of hard to describe without drawing it out. 

Brandon: 

Like I do these stick figures. 

Shannon: 

I get it. 

Brandon: 

I’m more thinking in myself how many years I’ve been doing it wrong? 

Shannon: 

Uh and so I’m going to ask this question and I think we got to answer it for men and for women listening because well, you’ll understand why. 

Brandon: 

So what you just described in that reverse nordic curl? 

Brandon: 

Um Yes. 

Brandon: 

Will that build muscle? 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

And well for a man it would gain size. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Shannon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

For men and women you would gain size. 

Shannon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

I was hesitating because here’s all the women are going to say and you know this as soon as you said it is, my wife’s gonna come storming in here and be like, I don’t want to I don’t want a big muscle. 

Brandon: 

So can you talk about that? 

Brandon: 

Because that really is one of the myths and one of the reasons I think women don’t use weights when they should be using weight to increase bone structure and strength. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Thank you for bringing us up. 

Brandon: 

And we should put this to bed here now. 

Brandon: 

So first off it is how easily you gain size is largely genetically predisposition. 

Brandon: 

So some people will be able to gain muscle faster and more easily than other people. 

Shannon: 

It has a lot to do with your hormone balance and just how your body adapts. 

Shannon: 

So for someone like me, it’s very difficult for me to gain muscle. It’s always been difficult for me to gain muscle. It happens very, very slowly and progressively and I am just not predisposition to get bulky, like it’s just not going to be in the cards for me now, there are women that might be more predisposition to that. 

Shannon: 

Those women probably know that they probably know that they are more predisposition to gain size quickly. 

Shannon: 

However, I totally think that we should stop being afraid of gaining muscle size because the more muscle you have, the leaner your body will become, muscle is one of the most um calorically expensive tissues in our body. 

Shannon: 

In other words, it requires a lot of energy from, from our metabolism in order just to stay alive. 

Shannon: 

So £1 of muscle burns like something like 50 to 100 calories per day, just resting. So just to keep you alive, Your muscle burns a lot of calories. 

Shannon: 

So if you add like £5 of muscle to your frame in a year, by the end of that year, you could be burning 500 more calories a day, just sleeping on your couch, just driving in your car. 

Shannon: 

So, like, at first I think people get afraid because they start to see their muscles grow. 

Shannon: 

Maybe they are in adapting nutrition, but it really does create an environment where your metabolism increases. You have to rely less on, like, these, um intense, highly repetitive calorie burning workouts that can destroy your joints and more on your body to keep you lean and healthy. So really that is the recipe for success. 

Shannon: 

I went into it in the nitty gritty detail in my podcast actually last week. So if anybody wants to learn more than 80 Grady behind that, it’s called fit body happy joints, you can go look at that. But I do think that women need to stop being afraid of gaining muscle because it truly is the secret and really what our priorities should be for both men and women. 

Shannon: 

And you can gain that muscle, £5 of muscle, which could lead to losing £5 of fat, which you’re and I think the other just because you do that. 

Brandon: 

Uh I know, I know, I don’t say I know, I think I know that women will say, well, I don’t want to look like I’m ripped in the magazine. 

Brandon: 

Trust me, Like you’re you’re not at seven body fat, you’re not going to look like that. 

Brandon: 

You’re gonna look toner maybe, but you’re not going to have veins and striations. 

Brandon: 

That is that is like, super hard. 

Brandon: 

I mean, it’s hard to get there naturally. 

Brandon: 

I should say it the other way. 

Brandon: 

It’s hard to even get their own drugs. 

Brandon: 

Yes. Yes. I mean truthfully, it’s super hard. 

Brandon: 

Yes. It is not very very unless your genetics are just super freaky. It is very difficult. 

Shannon: 

I mean, you have to be in the gym for three hours a day. You have to be eating a ton of the right stuff. 

Shannon: 

It is very difficult. And trust me, I would love to be that way. And I am trying like seriously like I am lifting you know, I’m working out and I just do my program. But um it is it is hard like for women for most women to to get that way. 

Shannon: 

So I think that that fear is a little bit antiquated and I see that going away and I hope it continues to start to go away. But thank you for bringing that up. I think that’s super important for women to understand. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, I think and I think there’s, you know, there’s been some messaging about this, but I think whatever other messaging that that women read, whether that’s through magazines, some websites or whatever it is, it just counteracts it. So, um I want to talk a little bit about metabolism, which really you touch known as it relates to burning calories and your muscle and the shift that I read from you, shifting your mindset from thinking that you’re doing the exercise to burn calories, which if you’re above heart rate zone to all your burning is glucose at that point that you will refuel or if you don’t, you’ll be dead the rest of the day. 

Brandon: 

Um, and exercising in these heart rate zones to build a body that burns calories longer. 

Brandon: 

Can you talk about that? 

Brandon: 

Because I totally just paraphrased I think or not? 

Brandon: 

Probably, Well, what I read in one of your posts, which I think is really important. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Shannon: 

Well, I I think that people choose exercises often because they feel hard and they are tiring systemically, which means like all over your body, you’re just like fatigued afterwards. 

Brandon: 

And I think that there is a big difference between just burning calories. It’s similar to like uh, getting stuck in mud and spinning and flooring it and spinning your wheels and you are utilizing energy. 

Shannon: 

You’re utilizing fuel, you’re going through your tank, but you’re not going anywhere. 

Shannon: 

So it’s it’s similar in that way. A lot a lot a lot of fitness modalities are like that. You’re burning calories and in a moment you’re burning calories. 

Shannon: 

But it’s a short term payoff because you’re not actually building your tissues to set you up for fitness results in the long term. So the way you really want to exercise in order to stimulate um uh muscle growth. 

Shannon: 

And let me let me say that muscle is not built in your workouts, it’s built in your recovery. So you have to recover properly. But the way to really stimulate is to tap into what’s called again and talk about this more on the podcast. But we’ll get into it briefly stimulate what’s called your glycogen stores in your muscles. 

Shannon: 

And your glycogen stores are um what is? 

Shannon: 

So when you eat food, the carbohydrates in your food are converted to glucose like you said. And you might use that glucose to go throughout the motions of your day. Whatever is left, is then sent to the liver into the muscles to be glycogen. 

Shannon: 

And um the liver uses this glycogen to power your heart, power your digestive system, power your respiratory system, other systems in your body. The glycogen in your muscles is used almost stored as an emergency source for when your muscles need to contract very very very hard. So when you lift a heavy thing, those glycogen stores are tapped in order to fuel um that that muscular contraction. 

Shannon: 

So so what happens is when you never tap into those glycogen stores and you’re never intensely working your muscles. The glycogen stores tend to build up because you eat the same process happens more. Glycogen goes into the muscle that glycogen overflows and then is converted into fat. So if you are not intensely contracting your muscles, you’re never emptying those glycogen stores. 

Shannon: 

And that glycogen is just building up and converting into fat. So the way again you start to empty those glycogen stores is to exercise and recruit your muscles ah in an intense way. 

Shannon: 

And I think people think intensity has to be like plyometrics and fox jumps and sprints and all of that kind of thing. 

Shannon: 

And intensity can just be like a really focused heavy chest press and just really tapping into those muscles. Intensity can be a reverse nordic curl going really slow. I mean you’re gassed by the end of that. 

Shannon: 

Um But I think like a lot of women, I’ll speak to women specifically like to do like plates and more bar and there’s nothing wrong with those things but they might not be tapping into those glycogen stores and emptying those glycogen stores. Which truthfully we’ll set your metabolism up for the for um a long term. You will you will improve your metabolism of the long term by more strong muscular contractions they lose, you know, um because I think that flows into your hair dryer test, right? 

Shannon: 

Yeah. 

Shannon: 

Did you see that today? 

Shannon: 

Did you want the hair actually needed to read it twice? 

Brandon: 

Maybe I got off caffeine um, completely and, wow. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, I decided I’m doing 500 better than I was honestly. 

Brandon: 

Um, you mean while you were drinking the caffeine? 

Shannon: 

Well, so yeah, so here’s how I would describe it. 

Brandon: 

I will tell you that my, I’ve had to adjust and I am probably, Um, I don’t want to use the word crazy uh, meticulous as you are about fitness and all that, mainly because I do lift, but I ride my bike 150 200 miles a week. 

Brandon: 

So if you’re going to do that, you gotta have your for, you gotta have your shit together. 

Brandon: 

Like you gotta be. 

Brandon: 

So what I’ve noticed though, I’m I’m a tab so I’m very I’m watching feeling everything like what I look like in the morning, how much water am I retaining all that stuff? 

Brandon: 

I have noticed that the caffeine was definitely burning fat for me without having to do things because you know you’re in fight or flight for as soon as you start taking that caffeine you’re jacked up. 

Brandon: 

Um I am much more level during the day. 

Brandon: 

My head is ah way clear, meaning I don’t need to ride 3.5 hours to get the clear head. 

Shannon: 

I’ve got a clear head when I wake up I can concentrate and my poor uh e. 

Brandon: 

A. 

Brandon: 

G uh operations manager for build a business but like I can just I can crank out work like nobody’s bit like I can concentrate much more. 

Brandon: 

Um Getting off of, it took me five weeks, I did, I think I was doing five cups of tea, which is whatever probably 50 mg of, you know, I went 54321, so one week. 

Brandon: 

Um And it was held but and then that week afterwards I think my wife would tell you if that would tell you, I was probably a little edgy even just to talk to me. 

Brandon: 

Um But I feel way better. 

Brandon: 

Um And I’ve seen fine, I don’t have to make the tea, I don’t have to go to Mcdonald’s and get these iced teas, I’m not taking stevia, which is I know natural, I still think it was affecting me in some way that I mean Shannon, I’m like ordering that stuff from amazon, like it’s going out of style, right? 

Brandon: 

So well I think like and again, I don’t know like don’t like fact checking in or do back me, but like, I nobody’s fact checking you Shannon, you gotta I think social media has made you so sensitive because you probably get all these dems negative, negative comments about some bs that your hair wasn’t right or that your outfit didn’t work Or that you don’t know what you’re talking about. 

Brandon: 

I will just tell you from a guy who’s been in social media since 19 96 that you got to put that out for that overhead. 

Brandon: 

But anyway, that is true and it takes it takes some getting used to because I definitely have had a few haters that, like, it bothers me, but yeah, about the stevia, like, I just have a feeling that stevia hits your brain in the same way sugar does, in the sense that it’s a very refined substance and it goes straight to your brain just the way sugar dead. 

Brandon: 

It’s almost like that instant dopamine hit. 

Brandon: 

So I do wonder if that’s why I never really understood stevia. 

Brandon: 

So anybody that’s listening to this and does understand it, send me a message and explain, reluctant. 

Brandon: 

Well, no. 

Brandon: 

So what you said, I actually did study it and I know it’s going to sound really geeky, but um I do read academic journals on the weekends. 

Brandon: 

I have a psychology. 

Brandon: 

So I did study it and it does trigger that’s why people who drink diet coke beyond the fact that it’s got like Formaldehyde and 60 other things of which I am not throwing stones because a long time ago I used to drink diet coke and I used to drink diet mountain dew, uh which will jack you up like nobody’s business. 

Brandon: 

But um it also rot your teeth. 

Brandon: 

It will probably eat your insides out, luckily meth. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, it is like meth. 

Brandon: 

Um, but I mean it works, but the it triggers your brain doesn’t know the difference in the sense your cells understand the difference but your gut and your brain don’t so effectively. 

Brandon: 

That’s why diet people are drinking diet coke or are overweight and and there’s nothing you can do. 

Brandon: 

So when I did get off of caffeine, I went and got recently I have four weeks to my next one. 

Shannon: 

I got a deck scan. 

Brandon: 

I got um, Vo two Max a metabolism analysis and they do this thing. 

Brandon: 

Maybe you’ve done it before, they actually draw your body and it just makes you sick. 

Brandon: 

Like really all the outline. 

Brandon: 

I do not. 

Brandon: 

The lady prepared me. 

Brandon: 

She’s like, look, I know you’re crazy fitness dude. 

Brandon: 

And even bodybuilders who come in here hate this. 

Shannon: 

But it gives you the true measurements of your arms, your legs, your stuff. 

Shannon: 

And I’ll be honest with you, I think Covid, I think I’m bulletproof Shannon, but Covid the scale tells the truth. 

Brandon: 

Like I was, I was at 22 percent body fat, which has scared the living daylights out of some of my friends because they think I’m lean. 

Shannon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Isn’t that crazy? 

Brandon: 

That surprises me. 

Brandon: 

You’re a 22%, wow. 

Brandon: 

And you can see my six pack. 

Shannon: 

But here’s why. 

Brandon: 

And this is really important. 

Brandon: 

I think all the things that you’re saying about exercise or uh, mobility and what do you call bio, uh, like biomechanics, biomechanics, It’s also important for losing weight. 

Brandon: 

I know we’re going a little bit off topic, but we already went there, so we better address it. 

Brandon: 

Or I’ll get 59 miles that say, uh, you left me hanging. 

Brandon: 

But um, everybody stores fat in different places and you have to get that body fat in one area of your body low enough to trigger that. 

Brandon: 

And I actually carry a lot of it in my legs and my butt and that’s where it is. 

Shannon: 

So until I get down and I know like and it happens quickly. 

Brandon: 

Um I know when that when I’m there then the fat from the other place. 

Brandon: 

So. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Well I think that on that same vein people think that they can target fat in their body by doing exercises. 

Brandon: 

I you would not believe Brandon, how many people send me messages and say I cannot get rid of the fat and my inner thighs. 

Brandon: 

What exercises can I do? 

Brandon: 

And I just it’s like it’s no it’s no one’s fault. 

Brandon: 

I don’t mean to like shame anybody know nobody. 

Brandon: 

It’s just to be clear to say that it is not your fault. 

Brandon: 

You have been informed with the wrong information and I’m gonna say it from marketers on the internet that want you to believe this crap. 

Brandon: 

That is completely wrong. 

Brandon: 

I mean, I’m actually wanting to do a podcast about how there are so many jacked up things that have been fed into our mind by consumerism and marketing that have messed us, messed up the fitness world, like totally messed us up. 

Brandon: 

Um but that’s one of them and that you cannot lose fat by targeting by moving a certain area of your body. 

Brandon: 

More fat loss happens systemically and that your body utilizes fat stores when it’s in a calorie deficit or it needs that fat as energy. 

Brandon: 

So if you hold onto fat in your butt, or in your hips or in your inner thighs or whatever you, the more inner thigh exercises you do might make that muscle stronger, but it won’t actually burn the fat in that area. 

Shannon: 

Um So, you know, again, back to genetics, genetics play a big role in where you hold fat. 

Shannon: 

And so I think that that’s a big misconception. 

Brandon: 

Is that I mean that in the exercise will that you need to do a bunch of exercise to lose weight. 

Brandon: 

That that drives me crazy too, because Weight loss often comes. 

Shannon: 

I mean, nutrition is like 80, I want to say almost 90 of the equation. 

Brandon: 

I mean, your workout is a very, very small piece of the equation, as far as fat loss. 

Brandon: 

So let me just say that because people are like, I want to lose weight, can I join your program? 

Brandon: 

And like, yes, but without nutrition, you’re not gonna, you won’t see the results you want? 

Brandon: 

Well, I didn’t experiment and and I did this, I did, I stopped writing Um I was probably writing less than 50 miles a week, which is doable for an average person. 

Brandon: 

Like that’s and maybe some weeks 25 miles. 

Brandon: 

I didn’t want to stop completely. 

Brandon: 

And I did this. 

Shannon: 

It’s not a diet, it’s a nutrition it’s a nutritional approach by this guy. 

Shannon: 

Dr Gondry called the plant paradox that basically says no corn, no soy, which truthfully, your body can’t process. 

Shannon: 

Um It’s not a plant paradise. 

Brandon: 

I mean, it’s not a this palomino thing that basically everybody winds up in ketosis, which is not sustainable, but for some people, I know, I know I know everybody out there, there’s a marathon runner, he lives on, that’s like five standard deviations from the norm. 

Brandon: 

Like, let’s talk about, let’s talk about average normal. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, let’s talk about normal people here. 

Brandon: 

Um that’s just not not going to work and what I did um as I followed it and it’s not, It’s not a, it’s not, it’s something that you can live. 

Shannon: 

I actually tried to, since that moment, I’ve tried to live in that and I got down to £143., I didn’t exercise as much. 

Shannon: 

Ah I was, this is how there’s a friend of mine who’s special forces guy, elite, the elite, the elite of the elite guy. 

Shannon: 

So let’s just say this guy will give him the credit, right? 

Brandon: 

Good for you. 

Shannon: 

And I picked him up from the airport, he said Brandon, I don’t want the metro or anything, but like you look amazing, like you have this glow, you have this like everything, what have you been doing? 

Shannon: 

And I said, I gotta tell you, john, I’ve been doing this thing and it’s just a, it’s a nutritional approach and it and it’s obviously worked. 

Shannon: 

I’ve been this lean since like high school, I want to do it and he did it and he followed it just like I did same thing, he stopped swimming as much, he just more swimming and things like that. 

Shannon: 

Um And he got lower than when he had trained, lower and stronger than he had done when he trained to go into this special mission force unit. 

Shannon: 

So I think I only saying that to support your point like you’re not gonna out exercise a bad diet if you want. 

Shannon: 

Abs stop running. 

Brandon: 

I’m not, I’m not saying don’t exercise, I’m just saying it’s all in your diet, it’s all in your diet, you’re right, you cannot outrun a a bad diet. 

Brandon: 

And I think, I think actually what people do is, and I wonder if this happened to your friend. 

Brandon: 

I wonder if he was almost when he was training really hard. 

Brandon: 

I want back for what was it? 

Brandon: 

Some special forces something? 

Brandon: 

Yeah, it’s a like the most, the most elite unit in the army. 

Brandon: 

I mean, it’s there haven’t been that many people ever in it. 

Brandon: 

And you know, you gotta it’s a the requirements are are very hard in the training and and all those things. 

Shannon: 

So I’m just saying it’s one of those things where you can’t fool around. 

Brandon: 

You know, it’s not just the Iron Man. 

Brandon: 

It’s like the Iron Man for a year, right? 

Brandon: 

Like intense. 

Brandon: 

It’s interesting that you say that because my guess is is that he, was he? 

Brandon: 

Because what I alluded to earlier results are made in recovery. 

Brandon: 

And so what people do is they end up working out too intensely and they actually end up regressing and not seeing the results that they could. 

Brandon: 

So I almost wonder if that happened to him. 

Brandon: 

I almost wonder if he was training too hard and if he had backed up a little bit, he actually would have seen better results because you said he this last time he wasn’t training very hard and he was just cleaning up diet and saw better results. 

Brandon: 

And I see that, I mean I’ve seen that happen in my body. 

Brandon: 

Like I used to work out every day if not sometimes twice a day and like intensely like intense workout and um I ate like almost nothing, like I was just busy so I wasn’t doing it on purpose, like I was just busy and whatever. 

Brandon: 

And I think that not only did that jack up other stuff like my sleep and my mood and all of that stuff, but now I work out for less than I ever have in my life. 

Brandon: 

I work out, all I do is my classes and I work out, my classes are like 30 minutes, 30 minutes monday through friday. 

Brandon: 

I take the weekends completely off all the other walk or whatever, but I eat a lot cleaner during the week than I ever have and I eat enough and my, not only does my body not hurt, like it used to, I used to have all this chronic pain, but my body physically looks like the most muscular than it’s ever looked. 

Brandon: 

Um I was thin back then, but I didn’t, it’s like you almost look healthier, like it’s hard to describe. 

Brandon: 

It’s just like a look. 

Brandon: 

Um So I do think that there is all I always caution people when they’re like, I need to work out every single day and I need to work out really hard every single day. 

Brandon: 

And I say maybe if you step back and if you do less, you could actually see better results. 

Brandon: 

So it’s a total shift, but not only do you save your body and save your joints, but you save more time in your life. 

Brandon: 

I mean, who doesn’t want that? 

Brandon: 

So here’s something. 

Brandon: 

I read a book. 

Brandon: 

Uh my viking coach had given me In my late 30’s and it’s called younger next year. 

Brandon: 

It’s mainly towards tuned towards men, but it’s applicable to women. 

Brandon: 

And I think, I say it’s tuned towards men mainly because it’s written by two men. 

Brandon: 

And I think that too many times men seem to want to write about women, which I think is okay, but you know, we don’t have your body and it’s it’s completely different in every regard. 

Brandon: 

Um, I mean you can like grow a human, we cannot do that. 

Brandon: 

I mean, I mean that’s that’s real right. 

Brandon: 

Like there’s a lot of things going on there that uh and I’m not saying that male doctors don’t know that all I’m saying is that sometimes you got to live that life to truly know it, but what it talks about is is that it’s called younger next year. 

Brandon: 

I got no like interest in it other than what what it was talking. 

Shannon: 

And some of the stuff actually is old from a psychology standpoint. 

Shannon: 

Um the neocortex and all this right. 

Brandon: 

Life Brain is actually completely wrong. 

Brandon: 

The science has shown that the regions of the brain actually can do more than what they used to think in this hole, primitive brain and all this crap. 

Brandon: 

Um which really blew my mind quite candidly. 

Brandon: 

I want you to read this book. 

Brandon: 

Well I’ll give you another book by um seven essays by that will blow your mind about totally it’s a mythbuster and I have a master’s in psychology, so I’m into all this and it just blows your mind that this primitive brain that that’s all fake. 

Brandon: 

It was it’s all been totally disproved by modern science that can measure. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, it’s completely wrong, Wow 100 wrong, but that’s like another three hour podcast. 

Shannon: 

But um or discussion, but importantly along that way is uh I’m getting into something because this ties into something that you’ve said that I want to talk about. 

Shannon: 

Well one is I want to talk about uh the guilt of recovery days, which I suffer from immensely. 

Shannon: 

But two is this point that what their whole premises is that really what happens in your body from a cell perspective and muscles. 

Brandon: 

And they talk about it is that when you start getting in your forties and fifties and then 60 plus, you’re getting these degenerative cells that are basically taking over your body and you need to flush them with younger or actually new cells that are generated. 

Shannon: 

So they recommend. 

Shannon: 

And I’m been doing this basically since my I guess I got my forties, I was riding bikes, so it didn’t matter. 

Shannon: 

But They say six days of exercise Shannon for at least an hour a day and at least zone too, to flush the old sells out with newer younger cells that basically keep you from aging. 

Brandon: 

So what do you do? 

Brandon: 

You know anything about this or this whole theory about this that’s fascinating from a cell perspective I am. 

Brandon: 

That doesn’t surprise me and I would love to read that book, but the red flag to me is that, you know, the repetition that you have through your body and exercise is what can is so is what can, you know, damage your joints, and so is it a wash? 

Brandon: 

Is it that we are potentially damaging our joints with the excessive repetition? 

Brandon: 

And then, you know, you are building more younger cells or whatever it is. 

Brandon: 

So does that end up being a wash? 

Brandon: 

And are you trading one problem for another? 

Brandon: 

Are you trading potentially younger cells or more worn down joints? 

Brandon: 

I mean, that would be my question with all of that. 

Brandon: 

I’m not saying it’s not interesting for sure. 

Brandon: 

I’m definitely, or I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong, but that would be kind of my red flag. 

Brandon: 

So, here’s what they recommend, they actually recommend riding your bike because it’s probably the lowest impact exercise known to man other than what you teach now. 

Brandon: 

I mean seriously? 

Brandon: 

I mean, I would agree with that, but it’s still thousands and thousands of repetition in the same motion. 

Brandon: 

So um and it’s like hinge forward, so you have that moment, I’m going through your back the whole time um and potentially compression and all that stuff. 

Shannon: 

So that is the and I think that’s like a big, I’m not saying biking is wrong, by the way, what you just described as? 

Brandon: 

Absolutely fact, there’s thousands of repetitions and you are leaned over like if you don’t have a strong core, you’re you’re you’re ruining your joints. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, and the strongest core can’t protect from a certain amount of force that’s beyond you know what your body can tolerate. 

Brandon: 

So it’s like, I just was reading actually a study that being hinge flexed forward is like um is something like five times more compression through your back than being laying on your back. 

Brandon: 

So if you’re in that position, even if you’re not using any weight for a long period of time and then doing the repetitive hip flexion, um you know, what are the consequences to your body now? 

Brandon: 

And that’s always what I want to ask is like what are the consequences and what are the rewards? 

Brandon: 

So for some people, the rewards might outweigh the consequences and that maybe the rewards are that cell turnover and that’s ultimately more important to you than maybe the health of your disks or whatever it might be. 

Brandon: 

So um I I think that’s what makes exercise so fascinating. 

Brandon: 

It’s not black and white. 

Brandon: 

It’s like what you always have to analyze, what am I getting out of this and what is, what is this potentially taking from me? 

Brandon: 

And do you? 

Brandon: 

One of the things I think is touching on your point that’s really important is you can listen to me, you five other people who might know what they’re talking about, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is to analyze yourself and get in tune with your body. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

And what’s important to you. 

Brandon: 

And I have people that say that I have runners running is not my favorite activity from a biomechanical standpoint, but I have runners that tell me, look, this is my meditative time, and this is my time. 

Brandon: 

That helps my brain and that helps the rest of my life. 

Brandon: 

And I am going to deal with a little bit of knee pain because that is more important to me. 

Brandon: 

And I’m like, okay, great. 

Shannon: 

Like you do it. 

Shannon: 

Like I know that how many runners are like that, So that’s the thing, that’s real and that doesn’t mean that, you know, they’re bad and they need to stop immediately. 

Shannon: 

It’s like just what’s important to you. 

Shannon: 

And I do know that so many people are like me and that feeling good in their body is is the most important thing to them. 

Shannon: 

Like maybe they don’t see exercise as meditative, or maybe they don’t really even like exercising that much. 

Brandon: 

They kind of want to just do the least amount for the biggest reward and I’m like, hey, those are my people. 

Shannon: 

Um and we’ll have a little bit fun and we’ll laugh at ourselves while we’re doing it. 

Brandon: 

But yeah, I mean, I think you hit it, you hit the nail on the head. 

Brandon: 

There is no demonizing any of this. 

Brandon: 

Like, I don’t think that’s productive. 

Brandon: 

I think you’re right. 

Shannon: 

Um I think I exercise because of the mental space. 

Brandon: 

I actually get more work done on my bike then I do other places I and a type a person who needs to let his mind rest and the best way that I found. 

Brandon: 

And for for people that maybe yoga, it maybe meditation, it may be the six other things for me. 

Shannon: 

It’s to go up a hill where there is nothing else that can be on my mind but going up that hill because I’m so tired, right? 

Shannon: 

Um, and and I don’t want to age. 

Shannon: 

So I’m trying to fight that. 

Shannon: 

Having said that, I found exactly what you said, which is comes to my next question for you, which is I used to lift like six days a week and I gained size and did all that stuff in my 40s. 

Shannon: 

I realized ironically that I was growing more than I ever had by lifting less me and taking rest days. 

Shannon: 

However, my question for you is that how do people like us or do you recommend people like us deal? 

Shannon: 

I heard you take, let me finish take the rest day because here’s what I just heard from you, which I love about you is but by the same token, I I knew that you had the same problem or same challenge, not problem challenge that we all have, which is you’re like, yeah, I work out during the week. 

Brandon: 

You know, I rest on the weekends, you know, I walk or whatever, but like, so how do we deal with? 

Brandon: 

Like even on my, my my rest days monday and yesterday did four sets of sit ups. 

Brandon: 

I got this iron neck. 

Brandon: 

I not remember seen, you know if you’ve seen this iron neck machine because I got my, I think my head weighs a lot and my neck from my bike, I don’t know what it is that you can talk to my wife off line and debate what what that means. 

Brandon: 

But uh, the uh, the uh, and I did four sets of dumbbells presses, but that’s my off day because there’s something in my brain that’s like, I just feel guilty. 

Brandon: 

So how do you, do you have any advice about that? 

Shannon: 

Oh my gosh, Like you are so not alone with that and that there is this guilt where and and again, I think that’s conditioning from the fitness industry that we need to train every day or we’re not going to get to the results that we want and listen, your muscles just don’t work like that because your muscles require a certain amount of time to heal and recover. 

Shannon: 

So you can work out six days a week if you are intentional about your programming and you are working chest, chest and back on one day and you know, legs on another day and the next day you’re working core and that you’re not working the same muscle groups two consecutive days and you’re really not working muscle groups more than two times a week. 

Shannon: 

So maybe I like to stay, I like to say one time a week, some sometimes you could do two times a week. 

Shannon: 

Um But your muscles have to have that recovery time because um what happens is when you lift a weight and you create little tears in your muscle because the weight gets too heavy that you can tolerate the muscle physically tears and is like has a little micro injury, right? 

Brandon: 

Your immune system swoops in to heal up that tissue and the result is you have a stronger tissue. 

Brandon: 

However, that process takes like To sometimes up 7-10 days. 

Brandon: 

So if we are interrupting that process by lifting the weight again in the same motion, doing the same exercise and creating tears in the muscle that’s trying to heal. 

Brandon: 

It’s like breaking open a scab before it’s healed. 

Brandon: 

And so it’s just prolonging that immune system to fully run its course and create stronger muscles. 

Brandon: 

So that’s why people tend to either regress like they’ll get weaker because um they spend in chronic inflammation or they just won’t see they won’t see their muscles grow because they’re not actually giving their body that full time to repair. 

Brandon: 

So I think that’s the problem. 

Brandon: 

I think what I how we do it is that monday through friday we work a different muscle group um And then on Saturdays and Sundays you know I do recommend people move every day because motion is lotion. 

Brandon: 

Um But I don’t recommend a stressful work out on Saturdays and Sundays so from a muscle standpoint or from a systemic standpoint. 

Brandon: 

So like I don’t want people to go out and really stress their systems on a hard run or um like taking the power yoga class, I mean all of those things are stressed to your system. 

Brandon: 

So not only are you healing your musculoskeletal system but you’re healing your nervous system by not placing additional stress when you’re trying to heal. 

Brandon: 

How long is the optimum? 

Brandon: 

I mean you gave a range and now in my head I’m like So is it 48 hours? 

Brandon: 

Is it 72 hours? 

Brandon: 

Does it different from my quad to my bicep to my triceps? 

Brandon: 

And I’ve dealt depends on the amount of damage incurred. 

Brandon: 

So I I really think that a scrape on your skin is a great way to think about this. 

Brandon: 

If you have a small scrape um you know that could heal in a matter of just a few days. 

Brandon: 

If you have a larger scrape, obviously it takes longer. 

Brandon: 

So the more you, the more damage you creating your muscles, the harder your workout, the more time that will take to heal um as far as like size of muscles, like, you know, your glutes are a larger muscle than your biceps. 

Brandon: 

Do those take longer to heal? 

Brandon: 

I’m actually not sure. 

Brandon: 

I would say probably just that makes sense to me, like just because there’s more immune tissue that needs to come in there and do its job. 

Brandon: 

So I would say that maybe like bigger muscles take a little bit longer to to heal. 

Brandon: 

It also depends on genetics. 

Shannon: 

You know how and also depends on sleep. 

Shannon: 

Are you getting enough sleep? 

Shannon: 

Because if you’re not getting enough sleep, your immune system is distracted by being fatigued. 

Shannon: 

Are you eating enough? 

Shannon: 

Are you eating the right things? 

Shannon: 

Are you hydrating enough? 

Shannon: 

So all of those things will influence how quickly you heal if you have amazing genetics, if you’re, if you’re sleeping enough, eating enough, drinking enough, I say, like a max of, you know, two days in between when you work a muscle, that’s fair. 

Shannon: 

Can you? 

Shannon: 

So you’ve fundamentally really, honestly, uh, changed my workouts and um, I didn’t do too many straight bar exercises. 

Shannon: 

I know a lot of people do do straight bar exercises. 

Shannon: 

I haven’t, I love the squat. 

Brandon: 

Um but the squat, be honest, in my later, I say maybe in my twenties, that was a cool thing and how much weight you can do, even though I haven’t benched in a really long time. 

Brandon: 

But one thing that you did, I basically stuck to dumbbell and nautilus exercises which back in the nautilus sort of, I don’t know um what you think or what you lived through, but none of us went through this thing when it first came out at least in the body building, where it was like that’s it, then it went through this thing uh you’ll never grow on a nautilus and then it sort of came back to uh dumbbells and then it’s sort of a hybrid now. 

Shannon: 

Um But what I’m talking about here is the individual rep. 

Shannon: 

So normally people even with dumbbells will do both hands at once and I think you did either a story or or a post or your website, you can’t remember can you talk about this effect and what it is because it’s actually game changing. 

Shannon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Yes. 

Brandon: 

Okay, so two things to discuss here. 

Brandon: 

One is um the phenomenon called bilateral deficit then we’ll talk about, and then the second is um I I think like you’re kind of I think you’re kind of going down the idea of compound exercises versus more targeted exercises towards muscle groups. 

Brandon: 

Okay, so we’ll talk about bilateral deficit first. 

Brandon: 

So bilateral deficit is this cool phenomenon with your nervous system where your nervous system can produce slightly more output, more muscular output when it is when you’re using one limb versus two lens. 

Brandon: 

So for example you can lift more weight Using one arm and a bicep curl than if you were to do both at the same time. 

Brandon: 

Same thing with your legs. 

Brandon: 

So like doing a lunge, you can produce more slightly more output than you could if you were doing a squat with both of your legs on the ground. 

Brandon: 

This has to do with your nervous system in the sense that your nervous system is really good at doing one thing at a time and it’s really crappy at doing multiple things at a time. 

Shannon: 

So the more you can funnel down your focus and exercise, the more stable you or beat you will be, the less risky the exercise will be and the more results you will get because your body will be able to dedicate all of its resources to the targeted muscle and produce the best out. 

Shannon: 

But they’re so pretty interesting there. 

Shannon: 

And that feeds into the idea of these compound exercises using the bar. 

Shannon: 

I mean compound exercises straight bar comes to mind. So like overhead presses with a straight bar, um squats, dead lifts the curls. You have to use two arms or two limbs when you’re using a straight bar for pretty much everything. So the idea of bilateral deficit plays into that, right? 

Shannon: 

And then also again, your nervous system just has a hard time doing a lot of things at once. So one of my issues with the squad is that not only are you, I mean in a squad you’re basically trying to target the legs, but unintentionally you have to stabilize every single vertebra in your spine. 24 vertebra, there’s load coming down. Your body has to spread its resources thin to stabilizing your spine, stabilizing your hips, stabilizing your feet, stabilizing your knees. There’s a lot that you’re nervous system has to do. So its resources are spread thin. So the output tends to plummet, the more that’s going on in an exercise, the less benefit you will see. So that’s why I’m not a huge fan of those compound exercises. I just think that the risk tends to be a little bit higher than the reward. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, I know. I just thank you because it really did change. At least what I’ve found is on this bilateral deficit phenomenon, um is that I can actually use less weight mm but know that I’m getting more work out or um more getting more work out of that thing. 

Brandon: 

Yeah. 

Brandon: 

Getting better results. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, I’m getting more like uh muscular benefit. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, like biking, it’s called watts, whatever. 

Brandon: 

I’m putting out more energy per this exercise at a lower weight to get this desired result, which is ultimately strengthen size. 

Shannon: 

That’s a good analogy to think of it. 

Brandon: 

Like what’s Well, that’s how I like, I don’t know, I don’t know how to think of it. 

Shannon: 

And you know, when someone says to me on the bike, like how how much are you putting out? 

Brandon: 

The only thing that we measure? 

Brandon: 

Well, we measure all sorts of things, but basically you can say heart rate, which just doesn’t translate over to you because my heart rate is different than yours and I could have been dehydrated through this. 

Shannon: 

Like 100 things are wrong with using, I’m not saying we use it as a gauge, but watts doesn’t lie. 

Brandon: 

My 100 watts is the same as your 100 watts now. 

Brandon: 

So yeah, what do we use? 

Brandon: 

Like what do we, what word do we use in lifting weights? 

Shannon: 

What how I do? 

Brandon: 

It is I use again, I try to standardize things by breaking it down from this biomechanical standpoint and you can kind of calculate force and this isn’t like a perfect calculation or this isn’t like a perfect unit, but really because gravity comes involved and there’s lots of complicated things when you’re calculating physics enforce. 

Brandon: 

But um basically you can calculate inches per pound. 

Brandon: 

So how much how many pounds of force are produced per inch. 

Brandon: 

Um So that’s kind of how I calculate it and how I standardize it and how i it’s just a way to compare two different exercises and compare how much force is this is going through this movement and how much force is going through this movement and like watts. 

Shannon: 

It’s standard right? 

Shannon: 

It doesn’t like it’s math you can’t like there’s no subjective nous it’s just like it’s black and white it’s there. So that’s kind of how I the measure that I’ve used to wrap your head around how much stress is going through this joint. 

Shannon: 

And do we want that or do we not want that? 

Shannon: 

Three H. P. T. S. That you would give high percentage tips that you would give people about their fitness and approach to live in a better, healthier life? 

Brandon: 

Yes. Okay. Three tips lift the weights slowly and smartly recover properly. 

Shannon: 

And I think the third would be to work on loving yourself more every day. 

Shannon: 

That would be my three. 

Shannon: 

Well that’s a good one. 

Shannon: 

That one sounds like a full podcast unto itself. 

Brandon: 

I know it really could be multiple but thanks a lot. 

Shannon: 

How can people find you? 

Brandon: 

So I have a fitness platform called of low fitness E V E L O fitness dot com. 

Shannon: 

Um You can check that out. There’s a free seven day free trial instagram dr Shannon. 

Shannon: 

D R dot Shannon dot dpt. Um dr Shannon dpt. And then my new podcast is fit, body happy joints. 

Shannon: 

And how many days a week are you doing your podcast? 

Brandon: 

Just one right now. 

Shannon: 

That’s all good. That’s all you should do. Uh the start. So listen, thank you so much. You are super busy, congratulations on your business and thank you for sharing all of these tips just to live a healthier pain, not pain free, but do do less damage to your joints life. 

Brandon: 

Oh, I am so happy to be here. 

Brandon: 

I was a blast. 

Brandon: 

Thank you for having me. 

Shannon: 

Thanks for being generous with your time and joining us for this episode of build a business success secrets before we go. 

Brandon: 

Let me ask you a quick question, Are you the type of person who wants to get 100 out of your time? 

Brandon: 

Talent and ideas? 

Brandon: 

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Brandon: 

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Brandon: 

As a fellow entrepreneur who is aiming for nothing short of success, you owe it to yourself to subscribe, check out the special offer with bonuses for you at be success Secrets dot com. 

Brandon: 

That’s b as in business success secrets dot com. 

Brandon: 

And until the next episode, remember you are just one business plan away. 

Brandon: 

I’m rooting for your success. 

Brandon: 

Mhm. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, there we go. 

Brandon: 

Oh, that was fun. 

Brandon: 

Thank you for handan. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, good job. 

Brandon: 

I really appreciate it. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, it’s a blast. 

Shannon: 

I’m sorry for my technical difficulties in the beginning, but maybe it’ll be humorous to some people know, hey, you know, this is, it’s real life and that’s my, my thing. 

Brandon: 

I try to be two people is I’m not trying to, I don’t, I don’t even do this for my day job. 

Shannon: 

I like doing this. 

Brandon: 

I want to give back. I want people to realize that the lives we live are not perfect. 

Brandon: 

Well, I love it. 

Brandon: 

You are very talented and this was the easiest interview I’ve ever done so well. 

Shannon: 

Yeah, I didn’t correct you but, and I think I said it like, I don’t do interviews. I just want to have conversations because those are interesting, right? Yes. Some people go that some people shouldn’t do, come on and some of them don’t make it like I’m at a point in the podcast where I’m just in my evolution, so to speak, where I’m just not going to do a marketing promotional piece like that. 

Brandon: 

Like I want real intention. 

Brandon: 

Yeah. 

Brandon: 

You, you, when I finally bring guests on like the way you did, this is how I will try to like mimic because this was so lovely. So thank you again for having, how long have you been podcasting? 

Shannon: 

Ah, you really want to know. 

Brandon: 

Yeah. 

Brandon: 

Since 1998 what I actually been doing, we were doing podcast. 

Brandon: 

I mean, honestly, I was one of like early internet guys, um, people, uh, we did, I did podcast, quote unquote Because I used to do fishing reports and fishing reports are anywhere from 1000 to 3000 words to do a good fishing report. 

Brandon: 

And what I realized was is that I could record it. 

Brandon: 

I was actually doing videos and I would just I just like it was like 2:40 p. 

Brandon: 

I mean it was terrible resolution and the audio and we would record it. 

Brandon: 

And um yeah, so I love I love media and like it’s and you’re going to I’m really I’m really excited for you to transition from selling time for money to creating something that has a long tail on it. 

Brandon: 

It’s hard, super impressed. 

Brandon: 

You did it

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