Naudi Aguilar of Functional Patterns Explains Biomechanics, Fascia Training & Posture | Nervous System, Pain, Movement & Functional Training | Mental Health and Fascial Health

0:04 This is the Fitness Wisdom podcast.

0:09 Imagine in pursuit to actually get fit and healthy, you're actually sabotaging your joints. You're breaking your body down and you're causing more stiffness. This is why I've got the founder of Functional Patterns on the show today. Now the Aguilar. Thank you for coming on the show, brother. It's an absolute honor and pleasure to have you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited for this discussion because you know, a lot, a lot of people in pursuit to actually get fit and healthy are doing the things which are taught or believed to be, you know, beneficial, but are actually harming their body, right?

0:39 And you have actually been through this process yourself and you have come up with this incredible system which is actually restoring people's bio mechanics. But it's not only doing that. That is what we are seeing just on the outside, on the surface level, but there are so many underlying things which are occurring at the same time because we know that our our quality of movement is tied to so many different aspects of our body. And something very interesting, which I've heard you say before on other podcasts, is the relationship or the connection between brain development and movement quality.

1:14 Do you mind going a little bit deeper into that concept for us? Yeah, I'll say that the brain itself is a responding mechanism. Primarily. It responds to the temperature in the environment. It responds to how much food you have in your intestinal tract. It responds to how much water you've drunk. And it also responds to your bio mechanics, your biomechanical state. And if your bio mechanical state is in a state, if your bio mechanics are in a state of imbalance, then your brain now has to respond to that imbalance by ramping up its functionality to compensate.

1:49 And so the brain coordinates all sorts of different things. Right now, our movement is one of them. And it's primarily there to coordinate our movement. That's what the brain is mostly there to do. And so the more imbalance the body is, the more that a person's brain has to work in order to, in order to compensate for those imbalances. And So what I tend to try and focus on is really helping people with their mental health, for example, is trying to fix, fix the body to not to get the brain to not have to work so hard.

2:15 But yeah, I find that to be a huge thing that the more imbalanced the body is, the harder the brain has to work, the harder the central nervous system has to function in order to to to try and work around a dysfunctional body with dysfunctional fascial layers, functional bone formations, all those things. Guys, if you haven't already, smash that subscribe button and the like button. Now back to the show. Wow. Wow. Yeah, the body is so interconnected and intertwined. And in this podcast we talk about that a lot.

2:42 And it's fascinating what you said there about trying to address the body. So we are, we are working for the brain, but through the body, right, Instead of from the brain to address the body. It's like the other way around because the body is a sensory driven system, right? And when those sensory like inputs are not like correct, then the body gets stressed out as you were mentioning. And so now it's resources instead of going towards regeneration, repair, healing and thriving, now they're going towards a survival state because it doesn't simply know how to function correctly.

3:16 I think we can all agree that when we're born and we, when we start to walk and start to move, that's like, you know, when we start to develop our brain. And actually I remember in my studies as well, because I studied movement sciences in university, they taught us that 70% of the brain, as you mentioned, is devoted towards movement, which actually shows you how important movement is and specifically movement quality. And when we sacrifice that movement quality, what's actually happening to our brain.

3:45 So this actually leads me into my next question, which is do you think that poor posture contributes to cognitive decline or vice versa? Do you think that cognitive decline contributes to poor posture? I think it can go both, both ways. The way that it that it operates from the from the brain down would be like if somebody has values. And this is where I think I could be a little bit, I guess abrasive in terms of how people operate with the world. But for me, I think that any, any thought that you have is not tied to objectivity is, is a problem.

4:20 It's almost like a parasite. So let's say, for example, there's a book, I don't know if you've heard of it, called the Tyranny of words. I recommend it to people all the time. And this author, his name is Stuart Chase. And, and he cites a man named Alfred Core Zipski, who said that pretty much words that we use, for example, can be like viruses on the on the brain that then have all kinds of different issues with that cause different issues with the brain and the body themselves. So to me, what I found is that when you have people that are afraid of objective parameters, they're, they're afraid of the, of things like KP is in life.

4:51 Their, their posture will generally tend to follow like a person's mental state, the way they're programmed when they're a kid, you know, those first seven years of the, of their life, if their parents weren't emotionally available, if the parents did not reinforce discipline, if the parents they themselves were lazy, if the parents themselves stood with terrible posture, then that becomes a, a mental framework for the child. And once they get to their, into their adulthood, they might be more inclined to be sloppy.

5:16 You know, I'll have some clients that you know that that I've that I've worked with that, you know, they'll come into the gym and they want to do all these exercises and exert themselves. But then when they walk out of the gym, they'll just be like, whatever. I'm just like their mind is off of trying to fix their mechanics the moment that they leave from the gym. So the so the mindset do as it relates to affecting posture. It can't be understated. It's incredibly important. Like if a person's values don't correspond towards trying to correct posture, then the posture is never going to get fixed.

5:44 So I think that's like the most as funny as it is because I'm a biomechadist, but I'm but I take myself on as a behaviorist first. Like for me, I'm very interested in behavior as a general thing. And So what I found with people is that if I work with them, if they come in with that mindset of, hey, I just don't want to have to think about anything. I just, I want to be lazy. I don't want to have to think about my transverse abdominis. I don't want to have to process any of the shit that you're teaching me.

6:09 I just want to come in, I train for an hour and then I want that hour to erase all the sloppy thinking that I engage in on a regular basis. I don't want to Orient myself towards objectivity, any of that kind of stuff. So there's definitely a mindset that shapes your posture, but once that's mindset has, but there are many people that I've met that have the mindset of somebody who wants to change. And with those types of people, then fixing the mechanics becomes incredibly important. So I think honestly, if I'm being completely honest, I I would say that that posture is more of a mindset, a pain Free State is more of a mindset than it is a physical state.

6:45 And then the mindset and the physical state kind of like inter inter weave into one. But if you get a person that just doesn't want to do the work, if you get a person that's always just thinking about the next shortcut that they can take to circumnavigate objectivity, more accountability, and that person is never going to really change. Now, it's not to say that, you know, there's there's people that have dealt with physical damage, there's people that have dealt with abuse from when they were children.

7:09 There's people that have generational trauma that runs, you know, let's say 30-40 generations back and, and those people will have their posture impeded upon because they, there's actually physical damage that was done to them. There's damage that's been done to their nervous system and into their fascial system. Obviously the nervous system become damaged as a result of the fascial system being being hurt. So it goes both ways. But I'll just say this, the the ultimate block from being able to fix your posture, the number one is to not value it.

7:39 If you don't see posture as your key performance indicator as the main KPI in your life, if you don't see gait as your main KPI in life, then you're never going to fix anything with your body. You'll just be, it'll be like a dog chasing its tail repeatedly and never and never being able to sort out the problem. So to me, it's posture and fixing movement itself. It's it's a when a person can't solve that, usually it's there's some kind of a mental disorder at play. Wow, that was a fantastic breakdown.

8:04 Yeah, I wasn't waiting for that. The answer. So that was fantastic. Yeah. You basically just mentioned there how important the mindset is, though is, and also your posture and the way that you move is literally a way of life. It's not something that you just turn on when you walk in the gym and then you turn it off because it's what you do, to be honest. Like we, you and me both know that one hour of movement is not going to erase 20 three hours of sitting, right? So we know that how important it is to keep our body active, to keep it moving, to keep it like flowing and when things are getting stagnant.

8:38 And that goes the same for the thoughts as well. And the the mentality towards life. If you act like a victim, then things are actually happening to you, you know, because you are bringing the that you are attracting it into your life. But if you step into your power, into your authentic, you know, highest expression of yourself, that also reflects massively in your posture. You can see people who are super successful in business when they walk in a room, they have that presence that you can feel it without them saying a single word.

9:08 And that just reflects in the way that they walk in the way that they speak in or even just without speaking. It's just that presence, that energy that you're feeling. So I'm loving everything that you're saying there. So another addition I wanted to ask you about posture was that, you know how a lot of people think that posture is fixed. You know, there is this common belief system that all my posture is just like that. But would you say that posture is an adaptive response based on the way that you live And there is no such thing as good or bad posture, That is just obviously reflexivity, meaning that your body is doing the best that it can based on the situation.

9:45 Like what's your opinion on this? I'll say first and foremost, there is an ideal posture that I think it's going to to probably, I think that once we truly solve this problem of posture, because I think the term itself is a bit ambiguous because people just assume that good posture is you just being completely upright, vertical. And if your spine is straight, then you're good. But I mean, I've worked with so many clients that appear to have a pretty straight spine, but then it has tons of herniations everywhere.

10:12 You'll see herniations of their abdominal wall, you'll see herniations on their tibias, You'll see herniations everywhere on their body, just like just leakages of energy in different places on their body in so many different ways. You'll see concavities, convexities with a straight spine. So clearly what people think is good posture most of the time actually isn't even good posture. For me, good posture is like something like a Barry Sanders. I'm sure if you were to look at him stand or if you look at like a like a Bo Jackson, you would end up seeing somebody that would have good posture.

10:40 A good posture really just means a body that's that's capable of moving significantly and and the anatomy. A body that moves truly well with a lot of force production is going to generally have a body with good force production is going to have a different kind of mechanics than somebody who doesn't have the force production. So I'll say that there there is such a thing as a good posture. I think within time, as we learn mechanotransduction, if we understand the implications of it and how to actually optimize it, we should be able to get to a more uniform understanding of it and pretty much shape every human to look very similar in terms of their structural integrity.

11:16 I just think that we have so much variation because humans have lived in so many different environments and that, that have shaped us to, to function differently. You know, like a person in the Amazon is going to have very different demands than a person that's, that's in the Savannah in, in sub-Saharan Africa. So those demands are different and, and, and those demands are going to be very different to that of a European who's swinging A pickaxe trying to, you know, increase their agricultural yield that their posture is going to end up changing.

11:42 So which is the correct one? I would guess that the Savannah sub-saharan African posture. There's a there's not all humans in all, all parts of the world have equal levels of posture. Not everybody has equal levels of bio mechanics. I think there's some tribes to have better movement than others and and some tribes are more specialized maybe in throwing, some were probably more specialized in running, others were probably more specialized in becoming multi dimensional with their movement. And whatever that human was is the one that I want to gravitate to and I want to actually shape us to move in that direction.

12:12 So I think if that was like the the main question that you had, I'm not sure if there was anything else that you wanted me to cover within that. Your blue light blockers, they're a scam. No, seriously, use this RGB test on the screen to see if you're read. Blue light blocking glasses actually work. If you can see any of the green or blue light on the screen, that means your blue light blocking glasses are not protecting your melatonin. Most people know about the harms of artificial blue light, and so people go and buy blue light blocking glasses thinking they're all blue light blocking glasses are created equally.

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13:29 So if you wish to explore the blue light blocking glasses which I just talked about, head over to the description below and make sure to use the promo code attached to get a nice discount on your entire order. No, no, no, it was. Fantastic. So what I understood from what you said there was that posture or force production itself is driven through good posture mechanics. Is that is that what you're saying? Posture is driven by good mechanics. So, so, so, so if you the, the way the quality of your movement is going to determine the the quality of your posture.

14:01 So essentially the the way that you moved in space is what shapes is what shapes any animal's posture. Like if you look at a dog or a cat, or if you look at obviously like gorillas or animals in nature, their environment, the continued demands that they face are what shape their movement. And then that ends up shaping their resting position. So essentially the rate, the way that you prime a range of motion, the way that you create a mechanical tension through a range of motion is going to ultimately be the determinant of what's how are you going to fix your posture.

14:29 So the whole thing is what I tell people is I'm like, look, you want to understand how to stand better than what you do right now. I wrote a book on it called The Power of Posture, like, yeah, I think 13 years ago. And so I tell people you want to learn how to stand to some degree to understand where your anchor is. But if you really want to fix your at some point, you have to learn how to move the way that that that are that nature intended us to move. So essentially it's a range of if you skip ranges of motion, let's say, for example, I always tell people like there, there's three, there's three functions, let's say to the gluteus maximus.

14:58 And I got this from I think the the anatomist name was Christopher Golding. I forgot. And I feel really bad that I remember his name because this is like my first certification book, but it's called Musculoskeletal Anatomy and Human Movement, I think is what it's called. And one thing that I thought was really interesting about I got really lucky that in my first certification that they included this book in it because it labeled muscles as, as, as movers within a hierarchy of, of priorities. So let's say for example, the gluteus maximus is primarily a hip extensor.

15:28 That's its first function. It's secondary function is going to be a hyperextensor. The tertiary function could be an external rotator of the femur, right? So, so a hip external rotator. So we could say that the, that the, that with people in general, whenever it is, when it comes down to their movement, that they usually skip the primary function. Now, who's to say that the primary function is extension, hyperextension, or external rotation? I don't know. That's kind of a difficult thing to determine.

15:54 But what I've learned over time is that there are functions that people skip entirely with their movement when they're navigating space, when they're walking, when they're running, when they do any kind of emotion, they're always skipping steps along a a biomechanical continuum along a biomechanical function. And whatever they skip through those emotions and any what kind of motion that they do is what ends up popping up in their posture as a distortion. So if you see a convexity of concavity, if you see a heart or like hypholordosis, like a hard lordosis, if you see a scoliosis, usually that can be sorted or that can be rooted in some and then literally taking a misstep in their gait.

16:29 And if you learn how to sort out the misstep in their gait, that enables them to effectively be able to fix their posture. So the way that you actually address the posture is by accounting for all the all the missteps that you're taking, all the processes that you skip, the all the processes that you skip along a biomechanical continuum, along a range of motion when you're operating through space. Fantastic, fantastic. You mentioned something very important there about moving the way that nature intended us to move as as human beings or as an animal does in nature.

17:01 I feel like human beings have totally divorced themselves from nature in general. So therefore we have forgotten how to, you know, what is our ideal resting posture? What is our ideal like moving posture? Because we've lost our human capabilities. We don't throw anymore, we don't Sprint anymore. We don't do like long distance walking anymore, barefoot. You know, we're disconnected from our environment and therefore our movement is like totally thrown off because we are meant to be one with our environment.

17:27 I feel like our environment literally shapes us as human beings, right? When you look at an animal, you don't need to teach it how to move. You don't need to teach it how to eat. You don't need to teach it how to rest. It does all of these things intuitively. So we have lost this intuition, right? And so this is exactly why we're having this discussion today. It's basically to take people back to reclaim their movement capability to what your body was designed to do. And you have developed a movement system for this.

17:55 But before we dive into your movement system, I want to discuss what are the issues that you see with today, you know, with excessive stretching and conventional training, like what what kind of issues is this actually contributing to the human body? Well. What I find interesting, Andreas, is you're talking about like, like walking for a long period of time. You're talking about running and throwing things that we, that we did in nature that we don't do now. 10 years ago, to, to even discuss this would have been unheard of for me to be on a podcast and somebody to even lead with that to me is, is it says a lot about where the industry has gone and how much it's matured, which I'm just really, really happy to hear that because, yeah, like 10 years ago it was all about squats and deadlifts and squats, deadlifts, deep squats and then and then our hand stands.

18:44 That's kind of what the, what the industry was about 10 years ago. So I'll just say that the things that people get wrong, I mean there's just so many, I'll say that they they tend to Orient. This is what I've learned from a long time ago. They tend to Orient from the sagittal plane first. They tend to operate linearly. When they go to a gym and they use gym machines usually when they're at the gym, it's always just sagittal. It's like both arms pressing in One Direction, both arms pulling in One Direction.

19:08 Just OK, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But when you think about how we evolved specifically we evolved to oscillate our limbs. So usually what you should be doing is probably more push, pulling exercises that 'cause these contralateral implications, similar things should happen with your legs when you're doing, you know, corrective work and whatnot with your legs, your, your legs should oscillate. These are the types of functions that we should have. There should be rotation in our movement because rotation is like the most fundamental aspect of what enables us to move in space specifically.

19:36 And so there's, there's that element to it where people tend to Orient themselves sagittally. And what I've, what I've found interesting is what I remember talking to people about this back around like 20/07/2008. So it's almost like 20 years ago. And I was telling them like, Hey, you know, what I, what I think is interesting is that, you know, the body is supposed to be stabilized in space via a transverse spiral. That's kind of how it's primarily A transverse spiral. And they keep training themselves to be sagittal.

20:02 They conjured me to think, to ask the question, what's going to be the effect of that? How is the body going to adapt to that? And little by little, as I started working with clients, I noticed that like this issue of hyper flexibility started to become a very prominent issue with them. I went, well, let's I'll give you an example of that. Remember I worked with a. I had a client to super cool lady because she's so I miss her. She was such an awesome client. But anyway, I remember we we trained, I did a home training with her and I I used to do passive stretching with her.

20:30 This is back in 20 O 7 and so I used to do like I used to do assisted stretching with her. So you know, I'd stretch her piriformis, I'd stretch her hamstrings, I'd stretch her quads, like I was very good at stretching people like that. That was one thing that I would do after every session and when I began to notice because she was already a little bit hyper flexible to begin with. Like, you know, like, you know, like when you, when you kick up like a like almost like a pirouette, I think is what you call it.

20:52 She'd be able to kick up, she'd be able to get her head like her foot over her head really easily with her bottom leg straight. So she had her, she was already hyper flexible to begin with. And so sure enough, I was working with her and then I would stretch her and I'd be like, OK, so let's, I knew what PNF stretches were. I knew how to like how to create the right contractile V forces reflexes in order to create facilitate more length on the hamstrings. And what I started noticing within a matter of about like two or three months of working with her is I was like, hey man, like her like just keeps going and going and going to the next thing, you know, like her knee is almost whatever her tibia is almost by her head.

21:25 And I'm like, OK, so this is where this is around the time where I was like, OK, what does this mean for her? Like, should I keep doing this? So it started to make me ask questions. I'm like, when is it going to be too much flexibility? There's going to be a consequence for this. And so while that was happening, I also asked myself as I'm like, I was like, people have oriented themselves to the saginal point for so long, for such a long time. A lot of even like manual labor when you do stuff, a lot of it's sagittal.

21:50 And so I'm like, is this causing a destabilization in the body? And is that causing the tissues in the body to become somewhat LAX? Is that causing ligaments to become LAX? Is it is it's a sagittal plane kind of the enemy? So from that point onward, from around 2007 onward, I started focusing on doing everything, almost everything that I did almost strictly transverse. I became obsessed with the transverse plane and so I kept working on that. So I always thought about the sagittal plane, I always thinking about the frontal plane.

22:17 But for me, the, the idea of, of vortexing my emotions became incredibly important. So over time, I, I, I started realizing that people's focus on training in the sagittal plane, training linearly was going to create an instability in the body. I started noticing that and then I started noticing how people started gravitating more towards stretching because of the bad training sets up the intuition of the body. Once the body has a set of intuitive attributes, it has its own gut reactions, its own gut sensations, right?

22:46 Like everybody's got their gut intuition, but not every gut intuition is good, obviously. Like somebody who's a drug addict, for example, they have a gut intuition and it's not necessarily the best intuition. And so people develop a gut intuition by by training the, the, the sagittal plane. And the next thing you know, what do they want to do? Whenever they, they feel pain, they're going to say, OK, well, now I'm going to do some shoulder mobility exercise. I'm going to start putting some voodoo floss on my elbow and then forcing ranges of motion.

23:08 While I'm doing that. I'm, I'm going to start, you know, using E stems maybe, or they'll find different ways of working around this body wide instability without actually getting to the source of the problem. So this, So what I saw was sagittal point training and then that was followed by more status of plane training and then eventually people stretching a whole bunch, people gravitating to yoga, people doing like a lot of stretching and mobilizations and physical therapy. Osteopathy is highly, it's just it's related with with hyper flexibility built into it in terms of the way they mobilize things.

23:39 Pilates promotes hyper flexibility, despite the fact that they're trying to almost not do that. So you get like things like Gyrotonics, they tried to the there's just so many methodologies that are out there that only promote more hyper flexibility. They create too much range of I think that's one thing that people really need to think about when it comes to exercising is that they think so much when they when they have a pain, when they have a discomfort in their body, like what? What prompts a person to even want to stretch in the 1st place is discomfort, dysfunctional feelings inside the body, or what prompts people to want to stretch?

24:10 And so to me, what I think about is that the reason that you feel those sensations to want to stretch is very simple. It just comes back down to the fact that you're in pain and you're in pain to some degree because your body, there's too much friction going on inside of your system. You're in a high friction state with your body. Joints are colliding where they shouldn't be colliding. And then at some point where they make collisions or if you get the meniscus, for example, if it's got too much pressure on it and then you're getting shearing on it.

24:35 And then shear and rotation on it and lateral shear, anterior shear, posterior shear, you get all these different directions of compression and friction on it. What, what people feel intuitively is that I have this friction, so maybe I stretch and I create more range of motion to account for this friction. But what they don't understand that they're doing is that by stretching things even further, what they're taking is the muscles that Dr. traction and decompression in the body and they're rendering them incapable of creating those decompressions and the shear only gets stronger.

25:04 So it's just, it's, there's a laundry list of things that people do wrong. But if I could say the main thing that people do wrong is that they, they emphasize too much lifting vertically and, and, and moving sagittally. I'll say that they, they are, they lift weights up vertically and they move sagittally too much. And then the other part would be that they, that they train in so many ways that build their flexibility. And I think there's one more thing that I'll say is that people don't train to, to, to focus on balancing the body as a priority.

25:32 They skip that as a priority. Instead of what they focus on is saying, you know what, I'm going to focus on building muscles. I'm going to look aesthetic in a certain way. I want to, I want to be sexy, something to that effect. And then what I'll do is I'll dabble into functional functionality about 5% of the time. They'll maybe train the sagittal plane and lift really, really heavy in the sagittal plane, let's say 99% or 95% of the time. And then they'll mix in some transversal work or they'll, or let's say they, they do the transversal work, but then they don't really care about creating balance inside the body or trying to fix the posture.

26:03 Essentially what, what, what I find is that people's priorities in general when they train are off. They're not thinking about trying to fix the bodies and balances. Whereas for me, 100% of everything that I do with my body is oriented around addressing my dysfunctions. That's so I focus on, so if I'm not focusing on addressing my dysfunctions and my dysfunctions are only getting worse. And that's I think it's a paradigm shift that people really need to think about. Because I could talk about all the exercises that they need to do.

26:29 I could talk about all the, all the different modalities that, you know, you could go onto a bike or go ride a bike for a while. And then that's going to end up causing like all kinds of issues with your hip sockets, with your knees, with your lower back, with your shoulders. I could talk about all these things or all these different modalities, but really, if the primary focus of the individual is not to fix the imbalance, to address the dysfunctions, to start, then that's where the start is. And then on top of that, if we go back to the KPIs, the key performance indicators, if you don't actually observe your posture, if you actually take video of your posture, if you don't take video of your gate, and how can you really know whether you're even adhering to the KPI of even fixing your imbalances?

27:06 Because I think there's a lot of people these days that want to focus on fixing their imbalances, but they're not even observing whether or not they're, they're, they're, they're actually making progress. Which is why if you look at my, my, my Instagram page where there's the FP evidence on it, I made sure that we've, that we've documented what people look like before they do functional patterns, what they felt like before they did functional patterns and what they felt like after doing functional patterns.

27:29 So there's just, there's, there's so many angles to go out with the way that people do things wrong in this industry. But I'll also say this, that the general vision of everybody is that we should be able to move in many different ways, as many ways as possible, and that people are open minded to that. But the first principles still need to the first principle still need to respect, respect tensegrity as a system. They have to respect our evolution in general, and if they don't, then our body becomes these structured and then we deal with all the problems that people are facing right now, whether it's bio, mechanical, metabolic, physiological, psychological, you name it.

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30:07 The link will be in the description below alongside with the 15% discount code. Many great points there. Really really good breakdown. And yes, so many. Important things that you said that there, I think what you said to there, that people doing things despite not serving them, I think there is a lack of awareness and that's why we're having this discussion today because from the general public, the general population, there is still many people who are unaware about functional patterns or unaware of how their body, how should they actually train their body?

30:35 Because there is so much overwhelming information online these days. You know, how what's considered even functional training? I mean, like functional training is so confusing online, right? You look online, you see the any, everything is like, that's not conventional, it's called unconventional. And that could potentially be harming people as well, in addition to the actual conventional training, right? So there really is a system and a method to the madness. And we're going to get into your system in a second.

31:04 But another thing is that a lot of people, because they don't understand that a lot of the conventional work that they're doing, they're straight up and down moving in straight lines is actually coming at a cost. Most people think that well, if I can come in the gym and I can lift like £500 on a squat and do like £500 on a deadlift as well, if my gait looks shit outside of the gym, it doesn't really matter because I can lift a lot of weight in the gym. But this is the problem that people like are not considering, you know, the long term consequences because there will come a point where you will not be able to lift that weight anymore.

31:38 And it was the same for me. And This is why I stopped doing like a lot of the conventional work right now. And I mainly train unconventionally due to the the fact that I also suffered these aches and pains that you're actually talking about. And I also went through the route of hypermobility too, because I actually thought that, you know, it was fantastic how you explained it, that the reason we actually seek for stretching and mobility is because we are in discomfort. And I was actually in discomfort and I was experiencing tightness.

32:07 And at first it did help me when I started doing stretching and mobility, but then my body became hypermobile and I actually experienced more pain and I became more stiff as a result of stretching more, which actually totally blew my mind. And I was like, whoa, like, I need to stop doing this shit like really, really fast and start, you know, strengthening my body through full range of motion instead, rather than like forcing like my body through these extreme ranges, which is uncontrolled. And my nervous system totally is like freaking out, right?

32:38 So that I just wanted to add that in there. Do you want to add any anything to this before we move on? I'll just say that. Let me think about that first. I guess the the, the term functionality, I think it's become ambiguous again, we have to we have to assign things from objectively. Like when you think of a of an engineer making a car more functional, what what is that? What, what comes to mind to you when you think about a car becoming more functional? What does that mean? Honestly, I have. No idea because I don't know much about cars.

33:08 OK, so, so just imagine like where the where the wheels stand, you, you minimize friction at point. If there's if there's more friction at that point, now that it doesn't matter how strong the engine, it if it's all just friction, it's all rust, rust in there. And if there's no breeze in there, no lubrication, then the then the car's not going to drive period. It's it's, it's or is going to drive and it's going to be making a lot of squealing sound. If you're driving and they're like the the the rotors and the, the brake pads are scraping on the on the on the, or the, the the brake pads are scraping.

33:37 I think that's called the rotor. Then there's going to be squealing noises. That's not going to be functional if the axle is twisted or for whatever reason, if the frame of the car itself is twisted, that's not going to be good. If you're talking about, let's say the car being a box, like a flat box, that's going to, that's how they increase drag and the drag coefficient is going to, to, to increase. I believe it increases the right way. I think you want it to reduce, you want to minimize drag whenever you have a car.

34:03 So when you think about the ideal function to begin with, what people don't think about is that functionality as a general principle is meant to minimize waste. That's the whole premise of it. So when you, when you train functionally, it's not necessarily about like, Hey, I'm using my whole body because most people be like, hey, the, the, the, the accepted, the, the, the accepted definition of the term 10 years ago, 15 years ago was to get better at a specific function. But to me, I, the question I asked is I'm like, well, what is a human being And what are the functions that define human beings the most?

34:35 And because not all functions are equal, like I could get better at doing this with my finger, but what's the like, I could do that, but would that make it functional if I do that? Of course not to a human Organism, that wouldn't necessarily be better if I just start twitching around, moving randomly. However, that's not necessarily going to be functional for the human. We're not talking about optimization. We're not talking about the minimizing of waste. This is just something that people don't think about in this field very often when they use that term functional.

34:59 They're just thinking, hey, I'm using my whole body or whatever, what functionality actually is. This isn't even my opinion. If we take it from a perspective of engineering, what functionality really represents is a minimization of waste whenever you're moving in space or whenever you're just resting at all, resting at all times. So that that whole perception, again, the KPI, the key performance indicator, really needs to be objectified. I think we need to stop. We need to start using, we need to think about the words that we use.

35:26 This is why I recommended the book The Tyranny of Words. I always recommend that book for people because if we don't even know what what words, what the words mean that we are using, then that becomes a problem. And that oftentimes I think people have found my tone to be problematic on social media because they're like, I don't like your tone. But really the tone is that I like to Orient myself around objectivity and objective KPI's. The key performance indicators to me are always the main ones, finding the right KPI's.

35:50 And unfortunately my KPI's are different than most other people's, but I, I, they're the correct ones. And so for me, that's why I keep pushing the KPI's very, very authoritatively the way that I do. And it's just because I see them work. And so anyway, the the the the key performance indicator of a method truly being functional or an exercise being functional or dysfunctional will B how many imbalances it corrects after the set exercise has become has been overcome. How much functional muscle is built on a structure after an exercise has been done is going to be the the the the determinant again, the KPI of that that will that will that will determine whether that exercise is worth doing or not.

36:29 So if you do something like a deadlift and your back is more stiff and your joints are more brittle and your body is more in a, in a state where the fascia is dehydrated as a result of doing that, then obviously we have to render that exercise say that is more dysfunctional than it is functional. If it's not correcting an imbalance, the same thing could be said about a back spot. The same thing could be said about yoga. If it's not fixing an imbalance or moving us in the direction of fixing that imbalance, which is the fundamental KPI for, I think saying training for intelligent training, then it's doing the exact opposite.

36:59 And and if you're doing the exact in fact opposite, then ultimately that's then at that point you have to render whatever said activity is as in some capacity dysfunctional everybody. Knows about vitamin C, but have you ever heard about vitamin G? I'm talking about grounding. We know that oxygen is important for our survival, but what if I told you that grounding is just as foundational for our health? Your body is literally a battery and needs to be recharged every single day. Modern life, depleted fatigue, insomnia, brain fog and restlessness.

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37:59 Yes. Yes, fantastic. I love that, and it's basically energy inefficiency. What you mentioned there, that energy leakage. It's when we create that laxity, that laxity or that slack in the system. You know, when we talk about hypermobility, it's like a really, really huge issue. Again, you've got that inefficiency as well. As you mentioned, when we have compressions through the body, when things are not moving and flowing smoothly through the fossil system, when we create compressions, compensations, adhesions, now our body is not able to move as it was intended to.

38:28 So again, we are wasting so much energy towards moving the body that it was the way it was designed to, but now we are putting our resources there. Like instead of it being focused on moving efficiently through space, now it's just focused on just trying to get there. But it's like very wasteful because instead of not using muscles so much and relying more on the fascial system, now we're using so much more of the muscles, which leads to a lot of like compensations like in our hip flexors, our lower back, like our neck and and so on.

38:58 So a lot of people can get away with conventional training, stretching, yoga, Pilates for a really long time. But we can both safely say, and I have been in this industry quite a while as well, training people, I have witnessed this myself, that eventually people do end up stopping doing what they're doing because they are experiencing such some issues. And then it's kind of like, OK, well, it's now time to like meet the body where it's at and try something different. You know, do something that's actually serving your body rather than taking you towards dysfunction.

39:28 Now you let's restore the efficiency within your system so that we can get rid of that pain because what is pain? Pain is a request for change, right? When we have pain in the system, it doesn't mean that there's something fundamentally wrong unless you have a direct injury to the area. Of course, that's completely different. But most people's aches and pains just come out of nowhere, but they haven't just come out of nowhere. It's just years and years of inefficient movement and compensation patterns.

39:53 And when you build on top of a dysfunctional foundation, like when you add load, well, then you and then the load obviously reveals the dysfunction faster you you For example, when you do a lot of weights, conventional training, you may not reveal the dysfunction with a lighter weight, but as soon as you start loading that system more and more, you eventually start to see the compensations pop up. You know, the way that their bodies. And you're like, whoa, like there is some severe imbalances there, which eventually will lead to some injury down the line.

40:24 And that's what happened to myself. So now let's get into your system a little bit. Tell me a little bit the origin of functional patterns and what led you to actually create functional patterns in the first place. A lot of things I'll just say, like my upbringing. I liked watching movement a lot, so I spent a lot of time watching like video sports. That was like a big thing and I'll say that that's a big part of it. I was physically active. And then, I mean, I, my memory is kind of vague on it, but I've always been really interested in movement.

40:54 I've eventually I became a personal trainer. I was very much into like the bodybuilder type exercising. I was very much into like conventional, just building muscle. I'm a small guy, so to me, if I couldn't grow tall, then I had to like grow wide. That was kind of like the my compensation pattern. And so so when I became a personal trainer, my perspective was, you know, the interesting thing is when I became a personal trainer, I didn't necessarily have that much of an interest in getting my clients to become significantly more muscular.

41:22 For me, it was just more about like, hey, how do I my first concept of it was how do I just get people to want to be at the gym and have a good time while they're in there so they so they just have a good time. I know concept about what it was. I didn't realize it was a sales job as much as it is a training job. But anyway, I came into it like not really knowing much. I was still doing like the same meathead workouts, bench press and you know, chest, triceps, anterior medial deltoids on Mondays.

41:49 I guess I didn't come in that way. I had to be taught that way. But I came in doing super sets, chest and lats, right? You know what I'm saying? Biceps and triceps. That was kind of like my main thing. And I would hit deltoids every once in a while. Then I, I avoided his legs most of the time. And so to me, that was kind of like my, my, my background. I finally became a personal trainer and then started having to deal with people who had like clearly not the frame to build muscle. Like they didn't, they definitely did not have the brain frame to build muscle.

42:16 So I was like, OK, well, if I got this guy who's like an agent for professional athletes, I was like my first client, He was an agent for pro athletes. I was like, well, this guy, clearly it's he was a string beam, had no muscle anywhere on his body. I'm like, if I have this guy do a bench press, he for one, he's not going to live very much weight, but his body doesn't seem to be adapted to this. So literally from day one, I was like, OK, there's something missing here. The way that we train people, something is wrong.

42:39 Because The thing is, I know where this guy needs to get to. I know where my clients need to get to. But not everybody is at that place where they could build muscle, because people do need to be able to build muscle. People do need to become more athletic. But I always felt like there was something inherently wrong with the system. But with that said, I had an assumption that people who were already like specialists, like who are the best of the best in the industry, I had this assumption that there was like already like this, this grand understanding that somebody had already known like how to fix the body, how to condition it better.

43:10 I always thought about like the Bourne, Bourne Identity movies or something like that. Like, man, there must be like these master secret trainers or whatever it may be. So I feel like there was like some secrets to be uncovered that there was like some super secret thing that, you know, special operations understands. And so for me, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to kind of come at this with humility, assume I don't know anything. And also assume that there's probably people that are real badasses in training, people that are really, really good at training, that do a phenomenal job with the training, that know how to get the body to get any muscle to fire in any given context and create stability through the entire body.

43:43 Somebody has to know this. And then from the very beginning, I valued that and I knew somebody had to had to know the secrets or something like that. I started. So I just experimented a lot. I work with clients, I dealt with a lot of people who were in pain that nobody else wanted to deal with. And I was like, well, hey, let me see if I can help you deal with that pain. And so for whatever reason, I became good at being able to deal with people's pain of an empath. So a lot of times people tend to see me as not being as empathetic as what somebody should be, but I'm very empathetic.

44:09 I, I, I, I literally live in empathy because I'm always trying to experience why a person is feeling pain and understanding the conditions that lead them to feel the pain. And I think that's what really empathy is, understanding the person's conditions, shaping them to behave the way they do. And so I, I spent a lot of time working with people who have pain and their pains would inform me on what exercises and what movements they could or could not do. A lot of times people when they would train clients, they would just assume that then feeling joint pain was a normal part of the process.

44:35 To my clients, if, like if they felt any kind of pain, if it was .01% of pain, I'd be like, well, we need to stop doing whatever the hell we're doing until that pain is completely gone. And so I was operating like that since like 2007. So for me, it was like the pain was the indicator to change what it was that I was doing instead of me justifying it and saying that it was OK. I knew what that was going to lead to. I knew that even from a business standpoint that if I wanted to make it as a trainer, if my clients were feeling pain, they were eventually going to leave.

45:01 So I said, you know what, if I'm going to try and have client retention, I need to be able to, to, to, to resolve for this issue. And so I I said about to trying to understand bio mechanics, you know, during that time I was watching a lot of NNA. I was watching a lot of boxing. I was very into it. And then I started kind of like seeing when I thought was interesting. When I became a trainer, I was, I was a bodybuilder, me head, but and I had no, I have no interest. And because I've always been interested in the human condition, I tried to find out why we're so mentally messed up.

45:27 Like that's always been like one of my main things when I was a kid, I asked myself, I always asked myself, I'm like, is there a way to solve the world's problems? Can this be solved? You know, I go to Mexico with my parents and I'd see kids, you know, begging on the streets for, for money and just like not looking good. And I was like, how do you solve that? Like, is there even a solution for that problem? And I was like, man, there's got to be a way. And so I'd always, it was always like a, a lingering thought in my head from the eight, from the age of, I don't know, maybe 9 or 10 or something like that, maybe younger.

45:55 So I was like, is there a way of solving that? And so I became a trainer, not thinking at all that this would be a way of potentially moving us into that direction of like, of maybe developing the maturity as a species to be able to learn to get along with one another and to have the right priorities so that we can get along with one another and have like uniform values. Everybody across the world could believe in the same fundamental principles. And then we all like learn to get along. I never thought that I'd come into this industry being able to make a contribution to the world.

46:22 But then when it, when I started like working with clients, fixing their pain, I start watching boxing, boxing and I start seeing out like the movements that I was needing to transmitted to them intersecting with what I was seeing in boxing and athletics, track athletes and Barry Sanders and all these athletes that I would watch. And then I started seeing what it was doing to their mentalities and whatnot. I was like, OK, there's something, there's something deeper kind of going on here. My interests, my interests span like a lot of different directions.

46:47 I'm very much into history. I'm very much into like world history in terms of like geopolitics, but I'm also very much into history as it relates to, uh, scientific history and whatnot. You know, like to try and like pin down why I've created what I have. It's a lot of, it's several, it's probably, I don't know, I guess at this point, probably 60,000 hours of very intense study, very intent, like thought experiments and like observation of different types. That kind of led me to where I'm at. But I, I'll say that the main thing that's probably driving me to get to where I'm at is like literally just observing people, watching their reactions, making determinations as to whether those reactions are functional or dysfunctional and always aiming towards the direction of what's more functional.

47:28 Whatever tends to make them feel better is what I have them tend to do more. And whatever makes them feel worse is what I tend to stay away from. And that's kind of been my guiding light up until this point. It's still my guiding light right now because I haven't figured it all out. Obviously. I still, there's still so much to learn and I learned I'm still learning at an exponential rate. It's very fast. And so to me, it's just like trying to figure out that whole process of like what's what's nurturing and what's not.

47:51 What brings order to the making that determination of what brings order to the system or what increases the chaos is really, really tough. But that's, it's really just a lot of of experiment and then a lot of thinking about these experiments and then just observing everything we're like for me and my brain is switched on. And like I told you before, I think that pain is the byproduct of, of a mindset that people have. And I think that once the brain is switched off and is no longer interested in trying to like investigate the deeper nature of reality, that that's where pain, that's where the source of pain is.

48:22 That's a, that's a mindset of where it all originates from to begin with. And if you can get to that mindset of trying to like be curious about everything that matters. Again, focusing on the KP is that matter. The objective KP is that matter. That, that, that relate to the hierarchy of prioritization in terms of what we need in terms of our, of our hierarchies of needs. Then I think that that's what ultimately is, is the killer of pain because that's what guides you to making the right decisions that get you to where you're at.

48:47 It's so multifaceted. I know I said a lot of, a lot of different things, so I apologize if I, if I deviate all over the place, but it's kind of how my brain works, bro. It's, I've learned a lot of things that a lot of in many different ways. But to summarize it again, I, I just, it's a lot of experience working with people. And then on top of it, it's a lot of thinking. It's a lot of when I'm awake, I'm awake at five, 5:30 in the morning. And my first thoughts are, how am I going to solve more problems today?

49:12 What problems do I need to solve? What was I confused about yesterday that I need to resolve today? And then I make a plan in my head kind of what I'm going to end up doing to resolve it. And then I get on social media, do my, fulfill my duties there. I go on to my, obviously, I look at my, my WhatsApp, I look at all the groups, all the projects that I'm running, and I try and solve all the problems that I have there. And then I start thinking about the mechanics. So for me it's just I'm problem solving from 5:00 in the morning until about like 8:30 PM when I go to sleep, when I at the time that I try and go to sleep, when I'm when I'm more disciplined.

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50:58 So if you want to explore the shilajit that I use on a daily basis, make sure that you visit the description below and make sure to use the promo code attached for a nice discount on your entire order of course. We all do, but you're doing a great service to the world for sure. And I think what you mentioned there that was really important was about the value system and how that is connected to the way that we move our bodies. I think it's very, very true that if you care about how you feel in your body moving efficiently, pain free and moving well through the world in your vessel, that everybody should be taken care of, right?

51:30 That means that now your value system is, is also in place as well. So your morals and your values are all more aligned with what's better for the entire planet and for your neighbor, for example. But if you are not taking care of yourself, how can you take care of the person around you, right? So you cannot give from an empty cup, right? You need to fill your cup 1st. And in order to fill your cup, you have to take care of your body. And if you're doing things to sabotage your health unknowingly, which is what we are trying to bring to awareness today through this podcast discussion, then you are removing from your cup.

52:04 You're not able to be the best expression, the best version of yourself. You can't be, you know, the best to your family and your and your neighbors and your members. So it's not only just impacting you, it's impacting society, right. And when you are like in pain, you like, I know for myself, if I haven't eaten, if I'm in pain or if I'm in discomfort, I can't be good to other people. I just feel like I want to become an introvert and just stay indoors and, you know, not socialize with anybody until, you know, I'm fixed.

52:32 So it's also important to actually take the ownership and responsibility in the way that we're moving, for example, to make sure that actually our body is moving as efficiently as possible and not wasting energy. So I guess my follow up question to your system would be because I really want to understand the methodology behind it. Like what is the what is the method to the modernist? Like for example, is it based on myofascial lines? Is that what we are training when we are training functional patterns?

53:02 Like what are we trying to address when we're doing specific workouts or the way that you are moving the body in the in the training I. Think we could, we could summarize it in trying to trying to create forced transmission along myofascial lines in the way that Tom Myers has talked about in terms of the anatomy trains. I would say that that's going to be a big part of it. There's a viscoelastic coefficient associated to that essentially like myofascial continuities. In order for them to exist properly, there needs to be like a certain consistency in the fascial matrix itself.

53:36 And so a big, I guess it could be summarized in that regard and that that essentially because people don't have that viscoelasticity, they don't have those connections, the fashion distorts. Like people don't realize that fashion doesn't just magically, like those fashion lines don't just magically work with one another. They'll distort like if muscles don't slide on each other the way they're supposed to, like if fibers don't slide in the direction that they're supposed to because force is not being produced where it needs to be.

54:01 Then effectively what happens is the, the, the fascial matrix distorts, it braces itself and the and you'll develop like bracing patterns that exist along the entire like an entire continuity. Like there would be like a spiral cast that people will have that exist in one area or the body may even compensate maybe that you do have form and function in one mile fascial line while do you have like 6 or 7 or 8 of the other ones that have no former function? You have like maybe one line that you let's say you if you follow anatomy trains, maybe your spiral line is what cop one side of your spiral line is what compensates for everything that you do, while the other side is while half of the other spiral line is restricting what you do.

54:41 Maybe half of your functional line on the anterior side does part of it does some of the work, while the other part of it is not doing any of the work. Maybe you have almost a completely dysfunctional posterior functional line. So it just comes down to that when you when you are talking about like the like the fashion in terms of how it like how function is, is connected to it. What, what people just don't think about is that if you don't create the force, if you don't create the drive to, to change the, the, the mechanical properties of the body, the, the force transmission to the body, then those fascial lines, the, the, then the dominance of whatever fascial lines you currently use will continue to be the case.

55:22 And the, The thing is that those lines aren't necessarily functional. Eventually, though, they'll carry you for a certain period of time until they dehydrate. And then when they dehydrate, that's when you start feeling pain. Also, it, it could just be like really the, the I'll say that the main thing that distinguishes functional patterns from every other methodology is that for, for especially for functionality is that force transmission is a big multidimensional force transmission that challenges your current dysfunction.

55:47 Is what actually separates functional patterns from every other methodology. It's, it's really the distinct, the, the, the distinction that makes what we do different is that when you do most types of training, the difference is that they work around the imbalance to some degree. Like if a person has a set of restrictions, what they try doing is moving around it, They try finding a way to avoid that specific thing. But for me, I'm like, oh, there's a problem there. And I'm, I think sometimes I could be a bit abrasive.

56:15 I, and you know what, The funny thing is, we, I've set up my project function facility here in, in Las Vegas. We're about to open up our second one. And I thought people would not like my abrasive nature when it comes to trying to get to the source of the problem. Back in the day, people didn't like it. People didn't because I, I tend to mic things you know about Adam Bekins is so he's a very popular physical therapist, the hyperbolic physical therapist. And so there was one video of me like queuing somebody through an exercise and it's, I'm like telling the person I'm giving them maybe about like 20 different cues, 25 different cues to correct the structure to get to put them into a better spot.

56:49 And so he, he does this funny thing from like the, I never watched the TV show the Office where where I'm like, I'm explaining, I'm like covering a bunch of cues. And then he like funnily inserts like this whole thing of I forgot what the actor's name is, but he's like, kind of like that I'm just speaking gibberish kind of thing, right. And so functional patterns is it's kind of like micromanaging a process. And I think even an external observer, they might think it's kind of crazy to Adam because he's a typical physical therapist.

57:16 He just does the same whatever stuff that a physical therapy, it's the same, you know, drag and drop, copy paste approaches that they that they use in physical therapy. And So what we do at functional patterns is we tend to micromanage a lot of dysfunctions that exist in the body, because if you don't do that, then the body falls back to its dysfunction. But anyway, what I found with, with the, with the customers now is that they're actually, they're very open to this. They're very open to this idea of having somebody be very abrasive with, with micromanaging their body and, and making changes with, with their, with their body.

57:47 And so other approaches. The way that what they've tried to do for the longest time is appease people's impatience and tell them, Hey, you know, like, we don't want to certainly want to change you too much. We don't want to change anything about you. Let's just kind of work with what you got and just work around your problem. And to me, I've never done that. I've always been like, if I see a problem at some now look, it's not to say that if I see a problem in a person, because sometimes I can just see how like I'll have some clients, you know, like I've had this happen a lot with clients, people, especially people that are very well to do, people that are very financially well off.

58:16 They'll tend to want to go to vacation in the most epic places and find them and they'll like fly for like, you know, like 32 hours just to get to this most epic spot. And so that's, you know, that's 64 hours of travel where they're on an airplane, they have to pack your luggage, they got to do all this stuff. And that's not, that's the 64 hours of traveling horrible on the body, right? And it's like, So what I, what I've learned working with some clients is that so many times it's like they're, how do I explain this?

58:47 How I explain it? It's like their their mindset prevents them from being able to to, to get to where they where they need to be. Sometimes I want to come in and let them know, Hey, the way that you live your life is bullshit and you learn to just need to learn to just make peace with where you're at, into a fucking place that's 20 minutes away from where you're at. Get into nature, get away from all this blue light toxicity, get away from all the interference, find ways to change your environment where you're at, stop traveling, stop trying to escape your bullshit or whatever, like like sort out your shit.

59:21 And so sometimes a psychological intervention needs to be involved where I have to tell somebody, Hey, you know, you're the way you live your life is incorrect. That's just what it is. And and people will be like, well, now who are you to say, you know, who's living their life incorrect? And I'll be like, well, look at my results. I feel great. The official. Community of the Fitness Wisdom Podcast is over on patreon.com/fitness Wisdom Podcast. This is a space where you can get to connect with a like minded community and tribe.

59:45 Get ad free episodes of the show. So me your questions, guests and topics that you would like to see on the show. Read my latest health optimization protocols and blogs. Get my guided workouts and mobility routines and the good discount on my group and one-on-one coaching programs. The link is in the description below. I look forward to connecting with you. Look at your. Enrollment. Look at your movement patterns. I mean, that reveals everything, right? Like a lot of people think that the way that they, they don't actually understand that the way that they move is the biggest revealer of like your, your lifestyle dysfunction.

1:00:16 Like so many times I've worked with clients over the years and you know, we train and I see a lot of things arise, like maybe they feel like crap or something happens and we I'm not even pushing them that much, right? Like I always take you super easy with clients at the beginning and I always like to address their lifestyle first because I've actually learned that over years that if you don't address your circadian rhythms, if you don't address your sleep, if you don't address your nutrition, you come into the training.

1:00:41 The training is going to reveal all of the underlying dysfunction. It's not that the training caused the problem, unless of course, the training is actually causing the problem. But like, let's say that it doesn't, it just may actually reveal what's actually going on under the surface. And that's basically what you're saying. And what I loved what you mentioned there and sorry to cut you off mid census. I just wanted to just input about the your methodology is that you are aiming to literally reprogram the way that the body is functioning, for example, by observing an individual because as you said, everybody's so different when they walk in.

1:01:16 One person's bio mechanics and facial lines may be functioning entirely differently compared to someone else. And therefore people have different weaknesses to work on. And I think why people appreciate your methodology and being straight up with them is because they know if this actually gets them out of pain, it's totally worth it. Because I mean, what's the, there's nothing better than moving well, efficiently and sitting down and just enjoying life and not being in pain. I mean, what's better than that, You know, and be at any moment to be able to get out of the chair and Sprint and do the things that you love and pick your kid up, go to the beach and lift, like lift heavy shit off the ground and not like hurt your back, for example.

1:01:56 Like everybody wants to do that, but no one wants to actually put in the work, which you're actually explaining. And basically you're doing this reprogramming of the nervous system, If I'm understanding this correctly, you are teaching the nervous system via the muscle how to how to fire correctly with the fascial system. So everything works together as a unit instead of individual parts like most training is these days in isolation. Yeah, and. And I'll just say that like that. That's the main thing that that that on my end is just trying to be invasive on whatever.

1:02:30 People have shackles on their body and they just can't see them. I'm, that's like for me, I have a very controversial approach to how I do things on social media, especially when people find out what my beliefs are. They're just, they're a bit like, whoa, this guy's, this guy's very fucking intense. And I'm like, yeah, until you get that intense that you're not going to. The beauty address of life is that time will reveal who's full of shit and who isn't. And so people will say now who are going to tell me how to live my life and I'm going to be like, let me let me see if I can demonstrate it for you.

1:03:01 And then when I demonstrate it and then you have no fucking excuses left. Again, I'm 42, I'm not on testosterone. I don't take any fucking peptides. I have no fucking pain. I move and feel better. I'm I definitely move better than what I did 20 years ago, that's for damn sure Yeah, I think I feel bad. I could look better and I just I still, The thing is Andreas, I'm closer to the beginning on this than I am towards the end. At some point people are going to find out what project function is, it's going to spread and then people are going to be like, holy shit, this is a lot bigger than what we even anticipated.

1:03:28 I think most time when people walk into project function, they have a certain idea of what, of what it actually is. And they walk in and now it's like, it's just, it's like a, it hits them like a like, like a ton of bricks. They're just they, it's hard for them to imagine what's there and what's it, What's they feel that they're like, they're like, they're, they're pretty shocked. They're very surprised. But I'm closer to the beginning that I am towards the end. And for me, like I always tell people like, if somebody to say now, who are you to tell me how I should live my life?

1:03:53 I'll be like, well, let me just demonstrate it. And if I'm 65 years old, 70 years old and I move better at 6570 than what I do now, then at that point we're going to find out who's living life correctly or who's not. So again, it comes back to the KPI's, it come back to the objective parameters and, and I think objectively, everybody wants to move well into their older age. Everybody like I'm trying to see if I could hit a second puberty. That's that's where my main, my main, I didn't hit first puberty very well, but I'm going to see if I can hit a second puberty and then achieve the growth that I was supposed to achieve and get to the state of evolution that I feel that human beings were supposed to get to.

1:04:28 Because our anatomy is a, is a car crash. I don't think that we're at our final point of evolution. I think still that our, our physical anatomy needs to, to change. It's going to change in time. It's not going to, we will. It's not that we're going to look different than what we do. We're going to look a lot better than what we do right now. Once we understand these, these first principles that I'm that I'm talking about. Once people understand the KPIs that matter and they put their time and attention to that, that's, that's what I think is going to, what's going to move the needle for them to, to move in, in the direction, direction of what I'm talking about.

1:04:56 But I guess just to close this out, the main difference between functional patterns and every other methodology is, is that we cut right through the bullshit and we just, and we, we little by little, we, we, we show people the mirror of truth to their face. And sometimes we just show it real quick and then we pull it away. Because when you show people the mirror of truth, they're just like, fuck, like they know it, they know it's there. They've looked at that mirror themselves. But usually when you're the one, but you're the other person that's showing it to them.

1:05:20 And they're like, fuck, he knows. I'm like, yeah, I feel, I see the pressure, I see the generational trauma. I see the job that you have to do. I see the kind of, I see the kind of behavior you have to exhibit to hold your job and make the money that you do. I see how you have to smile and nod politely every single time that you're in a meeting or whatever because you don't want to offend anybody. I see the rule. I see the rules that we have to abide by in the civilization. And, and a lot of times those rules are not favorable for our biology.

1:05:45 And I understand it and I want to try and see if I can help you navigate that more effectively. That's the whole idea. So you just show them the mirror of truth to be like, hey, look, I see it, I see it until the mirrors there the whole time that you're just like, I see the bullshit and it's not your fault. It's just, it's not your fault. You don't have to worry about it. I'm not judging you for it or whatever the fuck. We all got to do what we got to do with this life to survive. It's just it could be hard for people to have to give that level of vulnerability to a person and let them know like, yeah, you know, I'm kind of dealing with a bunch of shit.

1:06:13 Like it's hard for them to do that, man. It's hard for me. Change is the most difficult thing to do. You know, like old habits die very, very hard and they die very slow. And so for me, my job is to try and get people to kill the habits. And I find I'll say that usually the more that a person is willing to engage in the process of, again, objectivity and the way that I approach it, the easier it becomes for them to uncover the things that are wrong with their body. The more restrictive they are with their with their psychology, the harder it is to make these physical changes.

1:06:42 And the harder it is to take on this, the emerging nature of reality, the more difficult it becomes for them to become adaptable. But but yeah, that's, that's mainly it. There's a there's a physical component to it. If you haven't done functional patterns yet, do it. Even if I look, I'll say I'll leave it off of this. Even if I told people what makes functional patterns different over the the phone or over this podcast, the way that I am, it's not going to do it any justice until you physically do it.

1:07:06 Once you feel a chamber sequence, once you feel bits of the tech move your tissues in the way that they're, that they, that it makes them move. You're going to be like, your eyes are going to go like this and you're going to be like, oh shit. OK, this is a lot different than anything I've ever experienced. So I'll just say, if you want to know the difference between functional patterns and every other methodology that's out there, find yourself a qualified practitioner that's in it. Find a certified track, get to a certified functional pattern facility or pop into a project function and you'll know you'll, you'll, you'll experience the difference pretty quickly.

1:07:33 But the main thing, the main aspect of it is that thing that you're avoiding is what we're going to make you avoid. We're going to make you confront that thing that you're avoiding and make you realize that it's not that big of a deal and that we're not judging you for it. Most of the time, as long as it's not like some crazy shit, it's not like it's not, you're not engaging in criminal activity, video, whatever, then we're not going to judge you for it. But if you're a fucking criminal, then I'm going to judge you for that and I'm not going to participate in that.

1:07:57 But if it's just some some small things, which for most people it usually is, then then we could, we could sort that out. But the key point is address the problem. Quit trying to work around it. Yoga works around it, Pilates works around it. Pretty much every other corrective exercise procedure that sounds out there, they work around ossifications, they work around deep fascial problems, they work around ligamental laxity. And that's why they just don't work, is why people ultimately end up doing things like I teach at some point or the other.

1:08:25 And it's not because people choose to do it or whatever. It's because they need it. Yeah, and. When they get to witness it like you just expressed like and they actually feel it for themselves. They feel it in their tissues. Something lights up in your brain and it goes wow, that like that feels right to like that feels something. It literally switch on a switch which is so ancestral evolutionarily to your bionic it feels as natural as walking well. It's not necessarily doesn't feel. Imagine, remember when I told you that people that are drug addict, to them, what feels natural is drug addiction.

1:08:55 For that, look through a heroin addict. Injecting heroin is a natural tendency. What I'm finding these days is that with people, they're drinking caffeine. Nicotine is all the craze. People are taking nicotine and they don't even realize that it's just dehydrating the fuck out of their fashion. Same shit with caffeine. They do all this stuff with these peptides and whatnot that are causing probably more ossifications in the body. They don't realize like all these adaptations, they're just burning out.

1:09:16 They're burning out receptors inside of their body every time that they take all of these things, they'll be smoking marijuana, they'll be taking testosterone and they'll be on testosterone replacement. They'll be on all these quote on quote therapies. And they don't realize that it's like like these are that these things are changing their intuition and that one by the time they get to me and they do a chamber sequence. A lot of times these drugs make what I seen feel not natural. What I do, sorry, what I they make what I what I seems like, what I do not natural.

1:09:45 So a lot of times people when I'm working with people boots on the ground and right now we have like, we're, we're very close to 100 members now at Project function. So we have a lot of people in there. And I'll say that a good half of them are kind of like disoriented. They don't really know what feels right. They're kind of like, well, what is right? Like I'd be like, how does that feel? You asked them, how does that feel? They're like, I don't know. I feel a lot of tension, but I'm not sure. And you're like, well, it looks better.

1:10:06 You're moving a lot better. They're like, why? I don't know, they're confused, bro. People are high. The medical establishment has failed them. They keep pumping them full of fucking drugs. When you're highly caffeinated, it's very difficult to be coherent and to have a good mindset. When you're when you're under the influence of drugs. We all know that you all, it's like if you're drunk and you try doing some exercise, we already know how that's going to end up. So imagine that people in general are a little bit drunk and they're trying to exercise and they're trying to, to reorient themselves.

1:10:32 And so obviously like another big part of what I try and push to people is for them to focus on being, uh, to engage it with reality sober, to stay within the realm of sobriety. But it's, it's hard. It's difficult, man. So a lot of times I can push back a little bit on that and just say that people don't necessarily intuitively say that this is right. If the person is ready for it, if the student is ready to learn, they're like, Oh my God, this is it. Now I'm going to investigate. Like if I have a gym member that's at my spot, they're like, OK, I have to investigate into this.

1:11:00 They're going to be like, all right, what, what can I do more? I'll be like, get done. Get on the 10 week online program. Look at the 10 week online program. Do the techniques that are in the 10 week calling program. Familiarize yourself with that. Get to a human foundation certification course, familiarize yourself with that content there so you could truly figure your shit out. But people don't realize their intuition is fucked up. And until they fix that fucked up intuition, they're never going to solve it.

1:11:21 They're never going to figure it out. And that's like, and that's another big, big key distinction of what separates FP is that we're priming good intuition because not all a crackhead has an intuitive set of traits, right? They have traits about them that are, that are intuitive and they're, those traits are clearly not functional. Obviously a crackhead, heroin addicts, right? Somebody who's taking Xanax, for example, those types of people don't have a very good intuition programming. That intuition matters a lot.

1:11:47 And so the first time that you do functional patterns is just going to be, it's going to be a jarring experience. Whether you want to take it positively or not is going to be determined by how much pain you've already dealt with and how much you've been thinking about it. That's really what it is. But I have people that are like, they're in tears and I can't talk to them too much because I even this thinking about it, I get emotional because I see the pain on their face and the hope that's returned on their face.

1:12:08 I can't think about it too much, but like, you see that and there's people that are ready for that, that experience, the chamber sequence and they're like, Oh my God, I've literally been looking for this my whole life and they get it. But again, bro, there's a lot of people that are in the business world and they're just like, ah, I think maybe maybe they do get it, Andreas. But then they're like, I don't want to get, I don't know if I want to get, I don't know if I'm ready to get this. And then maybe the body does.

1:12:31 And they're like, I don't know if I'm emotionally ready for this. I'm not sure if I'm mentally ready for this. And it's just like, there's a lot that you, you're probably maybe going to uncover that I don't want to. There's a lot of tears that pop up in my facility. A lot of sometimes when people are forced to have to do this, there's a lot of crying. There's a lot of emotions because people are like, fuck, dude, I'm going to have to go through all this. And I'm like, you know, you did a lot of stupid shit before you met me.

1:12:51 A lot of dumb shit. And your parents did a lot of really bad things. They raised you the wrong way in many regards as it relates to how you should be approaching your health and the way that you, the KPI's that you take on with your life. They taught you to value a lot of stupid shit. Your grandparents, probably a lot of they did a lot of dumb shit to great grandparents and great, great grandparents. It goes runs very a lot of generations deep. If we're going to overcome this generational trauma, all this bad nurturing that you got in so many ways, it's not going to come cheap.

1:13:19 It's not going to come easy. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to be a lot of work and you're going to have to dig into places within yourself that you never thought you knew existed. But once you get on the other side of that, what you see on what's on the other side of it is peace. And I get to feel peace every day despite the fact that I'm going to fucking hurricane. My life is a fucking hurricane. If you came into my spot and you fucking see what I have to deal with on a regular basis, bro, my life is a fucking hurricane.

1:13:42 And I am like, for me, it's like I'm not in the eye of it either. I'm in the fucking like you can hang out in the eye of the hurricane for a while, but like I get into the windy parts and bro, it's rough. It's fucking rough. My life is rough, but I go to bed at night and I didn't feel this way fucking 3-4 years ago, but I go to bed at night now and I'm like, I have peace. I can access peace at any point in my fucking life, at any point that I want. I can be in the middle of some crazy shit. I'll be in a place where like people hate me or whatever that I know I'll be.

1:14:09 I'll be in places where I know people fucking despise me in person and they want to just knock my really places where people will beat the shit out of me. And I know they don't like me and I'm like, whatever, I'm at peace with it. They fuck me up. It is what it is. It's just what it is. But I'll sit there and I'll be like, all right, I'm just sitting here. I'm chilling, I'm relaxing, I'm breathing. I know how to breathe. I know how to like Orient my body. I feel good. And so the, the, the path towards, towards peace is going to be very, very traumatizing at the initial stages of it.

1:14:38 And so again, some people come to FP and they're ready for that. And there's some people that are just like, they still want to engage with like life. They still want to engage with life, like a bit childish and they're not ready for it. But at the end of the day, I thought for what I always fall back on again is just trying to and ensure that I that I, that I create outcomes that make them want to go towards that direction of where the where the temporary apparent chaos seems to be that that is actually not really great.

1:15:03 Discussion, brother, I want to be respectful of your time because we have hit the the hour and I know you've got stuff to do. So thank you so much for coming on. And there was like a bunch of other questions that we didn't manage to cover, but so definitely we did do it. Like, yeah, let's do it. Let's definitely do a Round 2 because I really enjoyed this discussion. I'm sure that the audience has gotten a lot of value out of our conversations today. You shared many, many important things that people needed to hear, even though that might be like tough to hear.

1:15:30 And So what I understand from everything that you said today is basically like functional patterns is a way of life. It's not just a training system. It's a way of ditching your, your bad habits and like, you know, reprogramming yourself towards better and becoming the best version of best version of yourself. Really. So thank you so much for your service to the world. So where can people find you, connect with you and work with you if they wish to do so? I would just. Say go to a functional patterns.

1:15:54 That's my main Instagram page. My my page is called the lever king unless I change the name, but I think I'm going to keep that because it seems to work. Everything about me is about leverage. So I'll keep that name. So you can find me as the lever king on Instagram if you want to find out my deepest thoughts about things. There's going to be some darkness in there. I don't think it's all. I think it's all light side. I think I'm a very lighthearted person, but if you want to find out my deeper thoughts and I have a naughty thoughts page for as long as I'll keep it public, it'll be up for a while.

1:16:18 I don't know how long that'll stay there. And then I also have a project function page that you can follow that represents a new paradigm on on a gym. So that's that's mostly it. But I really appreciate your time, Andreas. I really like how you approach approach this podcast. It makes a lot of sense. I keep going, man, I really like this conversation. I miss Europe, man. I feel like the Europeans have ways about thinking and they think in ways that don't necessarily correspond to the way that civilization is, is developing right now.

1:16:47 And I think it's good. And I, I can, this is like a just remind me of like some old school shit that I would I used to talk to people back in Europe. At some point I have to make a trip out there. I need to, I need to get back out there and just talk to people again. Awesome. Brother, yeah, it would be great to connect in person. I would absolutely love that. And please stay on the call when I end there, when I end the that's all if you guys. Enjoy the topics and guests I bring on the show. I would really appreciate if you left me a five star review on Spotify and subscribe to Fitness Wisdom Podcast on YouTube as well.

1:17:13 This helps us spread the knowledge and wisdom with the world. Until next time.