Research is really clear for runners, walkers, hikers, getting stronger is better and now you can't go to the gym But you might want to go back to the gym. I'm gonna try and talk you out of that right now So as my guest who I'm gonna introduce in just a second, but first I'm Stephen Sashan from zero shoes.com your host for the movement movement podcast the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes To have a healthy happy strong body starting with the feet first because those things are your foundation We're gonna break down the mythology the propaganda Sometimes the outright lies that you've been told about what it takes to walk to run the hike to do yoga to cross it to do pretty much Whatever you want to do and do it enjoyably efficiently and I mention enjoyably because that's the most important part You're not having fun do something different till you are we call it the movement movement podcast because we're creating a movement About natural movement. We want to make natural movement or actually help people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious better healthy choice Way we think of natural food and it's a movement because that involves you spreading the word about this whole idea and what that means is go to www.jointhemovement.com You'll find all the previous episodes you'll find all the places you can interact with this podcast on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and Pretty much everywhere you can think of and of course, you know, like and share and give us a thumbs up and hit the bell on YouTube You know how to do it in fact if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe It's a really simple message. So let's get started I am really really thrilled and there's a better word I can't believe it's taken us this long till I'm happy to introduce Alkavadlo Al.
Hey, man. How are you? Hey? Hey, I know it's been a long time coming I've been I think I might be the longest running zero hero that there is I've been a brand ambassador pretty much since they won Was you guys?
Yeah? I think it for a while It felt like you were practically living with us in the early days So it's been a treat before we jump into that though since I gave you no introduction other than your name Tell people who the hell you are and why you're here So well, I'll try to be as quick and concise as possible I've been a personal trainer and a fitness expert for about 20 years and I would say you have rightly earned that title and a program title and ways pretty many people have it So ignoring that so definite fitness expert not I don't know how long I've been an expert for but I've been doing it as a career I've written some books that I've done some things and my whole niche and message is essentially what you will do It's earlier that you don't really need a gem to get strong and get in shape You can just use your own body weight and very simple equipment like a pull-up bar or paragenestics rings or parallel bars or the floor beneath your feet and so get a great workout so I've been teaching people how to get strong using calisthenics for a long time And like you mentioned also earlier now body weight training is more viable than ever because a lot of gems are not operating Even ones that are limited capacity and people are just a little bit more hesitant about going to a gem in general And it's been a good thing for the calisthenics community in some ways Well, I know that home fitness equipment has just gone through the roof in the last couple of months Have you seen a similar thing with people really reaching out to try to find a less expensive more available alternative? Yeah, I mean I've been doing books on body weight training for since I thought my first one in 2010 Well, I've done eight books over the course of the decade But I did see an uptick in sales for everything when this started because people suddenly started looking for resources about how to do body weight training And I was kind of ahead of the game in a sense So a lot of people have said about everything that's happened this year that it's just kind of made things that were inevitable happened faster Right, and I think that what's going on in this industry is a good example of that Yeah, it's you know I love the whole idea that people are kind of taking it on as their own personal project rather than just doing something I mean people like simple answers and sometimes they'll join gyms because they think they're gonna find a simple answer Which is not the case and it's often just not even valid because you know what works for this person is not necessarily gonna work for you First and so I love that you look for you. I don't really have anything against you I've trained people it's changed especially when it's cold out you can't always mark so Jim's I mean I want Jim's to be able to reopen in New York They're still all shot I want I have a lot of friends that are trained as a gym owners But I want those people to be able to get back and do what they love to do and anything that supports someone staying on track With their fitness goals whether right they're more motivated by going to jam or more motivated by not going to jam There's something for everybody So I've been just trying to offer alternative for a long time and now that alternative is becoming sort of one of the choice of this yeah, I guess let me phrase it a little differently what I what I find really interesting is that people are recognizing There's more to being fit or getting strong than going to a gym because so I mean for example There's a 400 hour piece of equipment that I'm looking by and you know and they haven't been very few gyms I found ones on sale to be totally transparent not that it's a reverse hyper machine So I've got a compromise spine and I'm a sprinter So reverse hyper is really good for a helping with some traction on spine and be building gluten hamstring strength And there's really very few things that can work that way But more importantly what I'm doing around the idea of using that reverse hyper is a whole bunch of body weight stuff I do a whole lot You know a bunch of crazy high box jumps and one leg and squats and various ways and things that are also relevant for sprinting that I don't need a gym for but if I were going to a gym now You know and I if I were that kind of person I have this arsenal of here's machines that make the most sense Here's the body weight stuff that makes the most sense for what I'm doing for who I am That's the part that I find really interesting because I'm hearing people talk about that online as well There are ways to do a similar sort of movement pattern without using that exact apparatus and try to prove them like that bridge variations and Like that.
Yes. Well, sadly, I can't do I can't do bridge stuff because I've got a compromise spine I've got a for the fun of it. I have an L5 a grade two L5 S1 spondy So anything that's bridging makes it so I can't feel my legs. So that's not good.
I'm told even like shoulders on the ground feet flat So I just like like a hip up and down. I can do as long as I'm not doing any lumbar hypertension I'm okay, so I can do like I can do like glute bridges and I do those Yeah, that's what I'm talking about but as a master's all-american sprinter I could do glute bridges all day long and even on one leg They're probably still relatively before us to simply I mean I definitely need the extra resistance back Let me back up just for fun, but I'm gonna put you on the spot since this is the movement movement podcast Can you think of any movement thing that you would want to share with humans that they could try and experiment and feel Right now just a I don't know just for the hell of it just for fun And the exercise we're just talking about is a really good one for runners who are inexperienced in that type of strength training Just to lay on your back bend your knees put your feet flat on the floor a couple inches from your butt and push your hips up into the Era all your weight will be on your feet and your shoulders and you're basically trying to make like a straight line from your Knees to your shoulders because you don't want to arch your back like you were saying before but you don't want to be saying too Well, either you want your abs engaged you want your glutes engaged when your hamstrings engaged You'll feel your quality still and maybe if you're up for back and your spinal muscles helping get up there And those are muscles that are so important to runners That's sometimes don't get hit as well even if you're doing things like squats Right not be getting as much loop and low back activation to kind of with a hip reach like that And then if that's these people yeah try with one leg in the air and try with the other leg in the air I'm trying to think of like for people who may be sitting down like what's a seat is there a seated version? Maybe something isometric or something I hope if they're sitting down they can get up and they got like four feet of four Next time I know I know I'm just really involved a lot of equipment there's no no no no no no it's not that is You know sometimes I mean I don't know people how much people are driving now But sometimes people are listening to this in a car there's every now and then I try to think what do you do in a car? Or I think of like isometric that you have to keep looking at the road also So you can't do like next things next or something to work in a car Because that's what I was gonna say if you're sitting at a computer you can do some Network at least open that up a little bit that sort of thing.
You know it's a funny thing I think when you're driving you should be focused on driving you should maybe shouldn't be trying to work out in the car Come on now you're gonna stop light you got 20 seconds to kill Well, you're gonna stop light and you know that it's not gonna change for a little bit Then you can maybe shred your neck up a little bit to the side So I want to back up and talk about your history because my memory is that body weight and calisthenics and and you know The whole sort of calisthenics boy. I got so many thoughts about this Let me go let me start with this one actually the calisthenics and street fitness movement has evolved dramatically in the last five ten years What have you seen you know weird? How did you get here and what have you seen how's it evolved and changed? Well, I was a trainer at a gym at the beginning of my career You know big box gym doing a lot of conventional workouts with people weight training machines and things like that And I always did you know basic calisthenics pushups put pull ups body weights blocks dips But I started you know along with a lot of other people kind of at the same time just a collective unconscious Things started rising where people started getting more into esoteric calisthenics I started seeing things like the one like a pistol smart or a muscle up or a human flag and being really intrigued by these things And little by little wanting to learn more than and I found myself in my own workouts And also with my clients like kind of gradually getting away from doing conventional workouts and getting more into esoteric body weight stuff And finding that like you were doing too earlier that stuff works as well Or in some cases better for some people than a lot of conventional gym workouts And this was you know around the time when YouTube was starting to become somewhat a viable thing and somebody happened to suggest me Hey, maybe throw some videos up on YouTube It was certainly not like nowadays.
I feel like a lot of people get into posting online with an expectation of okay I'm trying to do this to reach as many people as possible And there's an awareness of the internet and you make you a star of sorts right when I started doing this the internet was so new It was just kind of like I'm just really was up there We don't know what that and then little by little over time as was happening with a lot of other calisthenics people more and more people Started to see this stuff and get interested in it And I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write some books and make some online programs and put a lot of stuff out there Before there was quite as much saturation in the market, right? Just to a certain extent is true for your brand also There's a lot more people making care of what you know than there were ten years ago Yeah, a little bit of a head start on some of that Yeah, my favorite is the people who say you know I was looking for something kind of like this and I couldn't find it And then I made this thing and it's a exact copy of something that we've done And then I look at the database and saw they bought our product You know three years before they did that But I'm cool with you know as many people doing this as possible because we're just trying to raise awareness It's absolutely and that's exactly how I feel about body weight training I don't feel threatened in any way by anyone else in the field who's doing this who's succeeding If anything, that's great because it just it pushes more of the door open for people to reach for the message to reach more people Well, and that's the point one of things that I alluded to before that I find really interesting I'm curious your thoughts is it seems like there's almost this split in the body weight in calisthenic community where there's you know The street fitness thing which is guys doing unbelievably insane stuff I mean like I'm a former all-American gymnast from 40 years ago And back then the number of guys who could do a planche was you could count them on you know two hands And now if you can't do a planche you can't get into the club So, you know, there's like the crazy is the planche club at least there's definitely a planche club And for people who don't know a plant you imagine doing a push-up and then having your feet off the ground So it's just your hands on the ground and then your body is paralleling around it's crazy So there's like this extreme version and then there's the what you know normal humans could should we'll be doing talk about where you are In that world of what you've seen as well I'm somewhere more to where I guess the beginner intermediate end of the spectrum in terms of who my target audience is because I'm looking to Inspire people who are relatively new to fitness or who are relatively new to calisthenics and sometimes it's nice to show somebody an advanced move Like a plant or a human flag just so they get a glimpse of what's possible eventually But the programs that I write for the most part are not geared to where people who want to learn a plant or human flag I do have one book called street workout Which really is like an encyclopedia has everything from the basic stuff up to the really advanced up included in it So that's sort of like the catch-all book But my best selling programs are the ones that are intended for people who are working towards you know doing better push-ups Maybe doing a one-legged squat maybe doing multiple pull-ups Maybe a muscle up is a reach move for people all the way you said in the street workout in that high level world Of course you can do a muscle up you know you got to be able to ten muscle ups even hang with those guys but it's the same thing in the world of running right most people who run a marathon aren't running a Two and a half hour marathon or they're running a four hour marathon a five hour marathon and the elites You know obviously are inspiring a lot more people to get into it But those people are never gonna be performing at that level and that's okay The you know I was just thinking about this like well if we talk about in what sort of look more impressive strength moves impressive bodyweight things We mentioned human flag might be talking about plants as one like a squats If you were to think of the one that people might be able to master the Quickest that's gonna be the best bang for the buck for party trick. What did you put on that list? The easiest move to do that looks the most impressive.
Yeah, basically what yeah I don't know. I mean there's really nothing that I would say is easy. No that is good I'm not doing that much, but there are certainly things easier than a plant or a human black like an L Sit is a good intermediate scale and I think if you can pop on for that something I'm sure you remember your gymnast days hold yourself up and put your legs out and I'll hold up for a few seconds I think that's a pretty cool move that's attainable for most people a little bit of practice training I'm trying to I'm putting them in order in my mind as well. Yeah, maybe an elbow lever which looks kind of low Yeah, yeah, your arms are bent and you're resting your elbows on your body That's certainly because someone doesn't know the difference between an implant and elbow lever They might look equally impressive, but that's an easier way to do it.
Yeah, that's a good one That's actually a good catch and for people who aren't watching to visualize this so again imagine that you lie flat on the ground This is not how you get there But and you put your palms on the ground your fingers are gonna be pointing towards your toes and then squeeze your arms into your body as much as you can So basically your elbows are practically in your stomach and then you're gonna have you know Then be parallel around so you're balance you're more balancing than anything else and The leverage of the elbows is worth it. It's a lever You know now that I think of it that's actually the most impressive thing I can think of this the easiest thing involves a partner which is a leverage planche So this is one again I'm describing for people watching watching where so you get in a push-up position and then your partner faces your feet and sits on your shoulders And hooks their feet under your thighs and slowly leans back and if you get it just right with the right partner You're not having it's not a lot of strength. It's just a lot of balance, but it looks like you know You're in circles away. That's the key to that stuff with the partners is you have to really know each other and be able to count to each other One person goes too quick.
They're gonna drag the other person. Yeah, the other way But like you said when you're able to kind of get the scales evenly that's the key to all those moves Yeah, it's a super impressive one But then so so after elbow lever because I was flashing back like as gymnast You know we all learned how to do human flags, which is just super super fun And it doesn't strike me as like I don't think it was harder for me human flag or one-legged Pistol squat, but you know either of those if someone's gonna try and really good good party tricks Those would be my top two for not those out here's a course about flag There has to be about something to do it on you know if you don't have a good pole or a good There's always a lot or a handstand or whatever. You got a little floor space Boom that's good point I actually had when I was in New York and I was doing some acting for a living I had a card that I gave as a public business card It was me doing flag but it was the way the picture was taken is it just looked like I was hanging Vertically and then you have to realize that suddenly realized that the buildings were facing the wrong way and then people would turn the card You know what the wait, how do you do that camera trick is like no no no I was gonna do it to get very impressed I always get to tension that's for sure. It's a good one.
There was something So you know there's another thing about calisthenics I did something during covid like the beginnings of covid where I was working really hard and just needing to get Just do something with my body and I got into a push-up and a pull-up challenge And what was really interesting in both of those was learning so many variations of each exercise And I think that a lot of people don't they think of push-ups as a single thing or pull-ups or gen-ups is a single thing And not realizing there's so many other variations that summer easier than others summer harder than others There are some that are way more interesting than others more challenged Can you just like kind of give people an intro to the width and breadth of what are seemingly single exercises and things they might be able to try? Yeah, you know that the thing with bodyweight training that's essentially different than weight training at the gym is that instead of Changing the weight on a barbell or a kettlebell or a dumbbell and doing the exact same movement pattern You can alter little things about the leverage of the exercise itself to make it harder or to make it less difficult So like a push-up for example, I think the easiest way to illustrate this point is just to think of a push-up Where your feet are elevated on a surface higher than your hands as opposed to one with a ball on the floor When your feet are higher you're offsetting the weight you're putting more than your hands or making your feel like the equivalent of doing a bench Press with more weight, but you're doing that by altering the movements slightly and of course the opposite is true to elevate your hands Now you've made push-up less difficult you have less weight loaded into your hands and then beyond that You know, obviously like taking an arm off the ground completely and doing a one-arm push-up There's gonna be even harder than the elevated one if there's steps and increments in between it And that's true for every that a trooper a swag a trooper a pull-up It's true for a plant sheep and there's guys out there who are doing planches on their fingertips on one hand And it's like the spectrum of fitness is so far reaching and feel like it keeps expanding in both directions You know as people keep breaking new records and getting fitter On the other side of things obesity is getting more out of control and it's just so weird that those things coexist at the same time But here we are. Yeah, that's a good point Well, one of the things that I really appreciate about your books some different than others Obviously and you can talk about this in a bit is that you do give both the width and breadth or the depth and breadth if you will for individual Exercise you have a bunch of push-up variations a bunch of pull-up variations often great if you're the easier ones here the harder ones And I would just encourage people to whether they're finding a butcher finding you online to Play around these because it really for me It's been so much fun to have this bigger You know more arrows in my quiver if you will so like when I go out on the track on the weekends And I want to do something just in strength training before after usually after just to like sit around like where do I want to work on today? What's my favorite one today?
Do I want to do you know some wide grip push-up thing? Do I want to do chin-ups do I want to do pull-ups do I want to do something? I mean just like all these different options that frankly I just didn't have in my brain before and the fun part like a fun quotient is elevated By having more opportunities and more options. I mean, that's what you said at the beginning of this podcast is if you're not having fun doing it Then what's the point right and I think that's a big part of what's made catalyst then extapolar and why I like it is it does have that playful element to it And that element of just like you said trying things out like like a practice It's not quite as rigid as some other forms of strength training I think for people like you and myself we like to have a little bit more freedom to experiment and have a little more creative input into our own workouts I just had a flashback to when I was in high school and was doing a lot of exercise Obviously for gymnastics and in fact so much of the body weight and calcine stuff is what gymnast is doing for ages because they don't typically go into the weight room very much Right.
That's what I was doing more strong. Yeah, absolutely One of the push-up variations that you just reminded me of as we used to do chair push-ups So you're three chairs one for your feet one for your hand and you just get a nice wide stance to do off your hands So you're getting like really really deep and we used to do this all day every day. Oh my god Sorry, I just had the bigger memory my first day of junior high school. You're gonna love this my first day of junior high school Our gymnastics coach hands the six or seven of us who decided we were gonna try gymnastics a sheet of 10 to the inch graph paper And he says every one of those squares is 10 push-ups whoever fills out the sheet front and back first wins a coke We were a bunch of competitive 13-year-olds and we'd come in the morning It's like how many push-ups do you yesterday 200?
Oh, man I only did 150 then we'd drop and do 50 more and the other guy would do 50 and then we would do 50 and we were we got to the point where we were doing You know not at one time But of course of the day a thousand push-ups a day just to be the other guy and Was it really about the really about the soda that that pointer was more about the ego thing It was all about the ego thing it was all to see it was the competitive thing I actually met some met a young man at a high school track meet and he said he wanted to be a college decathlete And I said I told him I told him this story. You know, we're doing a thousand push-ups today He goes I can't do a thousand push-ups today. I said yeah, we couldn't either when we started And I was just waiting to see if he was gonna like drop and do 50 But he just kind of got depressed and I went that's it's not the right man attitude to have You know, it's just amazing what the human body can get conditioned to yeah, like like Oh running for example. I remember when that was a new thing and not that long ago.
I was like what somebody ran a hundred miles That's like amazing. I still blows my mind because I've never run distance anywhere near that much But now lots of people run hundred miles. I'm just it's not as much of a shocking thing anymore At least if you're aware of that community well, you know another thing that's evolved a lot that is no longer shocking it used to be It's all over you Yeah, yeah, that's true. I remember when I first saw the back of Guns N' Roses appetite for destruction when I was a kid And they had like three tattoos Oh my god, those guys are such bad ass I quite a few more than that myself now is you probably know that well, yeah standards just change over time What was your first tattoo?
The first one I got was this this tiger right here on my shoulder Got it. And so what is how much beta that is compared to this one? That's about I don't know 20 years more recent right underneath Yeah, yeah, it's I mean I am art-free and ink-free at the moment But the people who really make that kind of commitment have you gotten anything where you just gone? Oh, no Yeah, you know, there's a couple that didn't come out as good as I was hoping they might or that maybe didn't age as well as others But you know, that's like one of the things I like about tattoos is you have to live with them I mean I know people get tattoos removed but generally they're permanent and I feel like so much of life People always wanted to take back things.
It's okay to be able to change your mind It's good to be able to evolve but sometimes you just have to live with having made a bad decision That makes you a better person. So I have a few tattoos and I feel like they did that for me What any ex-girlfriend names or thankfully no names. Thank you know names. What about actually current wife and child names?
I do not have either of their names grace and I have a matching tattoo We both got this done right here at the same spot for our first year wedding anniversary That's what it's that's our tattoo for each other and to let people know so your wife grace is also, you know A major body-wet in calisthenic fitness person. What's it like having this in the family? And what are your thoughts about you know now that you have a child? I mean I keep think we don't have kids but I get thinking boy if I had kids I'd be a dangerous parent because as a gymnast I did a lot of crazy crazy crap and there's no way I would ever not have my child do things that made me look safe Well, I think that maybe some mainstream parents would have the impression that you were a dangerous parent But I don't think you would be a dangerous parent at all because I know you're a thoughtful person who even though you like to push found trees I mean dangerous in like one day when they were at a restaurant and there's some kids jumping up and down on the The bench seats at the restaurant and parents are yelling stop doing that and I was thinking it was me I was going stop doing it.
It's friends are better on this bench You get more altitude over here. I definitely encourage grace and I encourage our kids to exercise a lot We take up the playground pretty much every day that it's nice out She's basically made a playground at the hall and just climbing on everything and going up and down all the time We want her because we act we encourage that but at the same time, you know when you are out at a public space and a kid is doing things that are Not socially okay. You do have to sometimes Well, that's another one. I mean I don't love to be a disciplinary That's definitely been a challenge for me as a parent because I've always as a trainer part of what I think has made me unique and stand out Is that I'm not a disciplinary type of trainer?
I have a lot of people I think especially when I got started in the business the idea of a trainer or coach was that they were going to be a drill sergeant They were going to be a hard person on you and I always did the opposite and had success with that That's I'm trying to be a gentle parent but sometimes you got laid smack down How have you dealt with them become sadly a kind of fitness mantra of no pain no gain Well, by doing exactly what I was just looking to and then let's be trying to be the ethicist of that Yeah, so I'm a big believer in you know the old cliché to be the change you want to see So you feel like oh why aren't more people doing this then you should be the person to do that So that's kind of how I fell into everything that I've done in my career If somebody comes to you where you see that they definitely have that attitude that they've got to be enduring something unpleasant to get something they want How do you work with them about that? It depends a lot on the individual and I think something that makes for a successful coach is not necessarily having like stock Go-to things but being prepared to listen to the person and hear them out and then based on what they told you use your experience To guide them in the direction as gently as possible I think one of the worst things you can do as a coach or as a parent or just as someone in general who's trying to convince anyone of anything Just flat out tell them that they're wrong You gotta you out listen to people and hear them out and find areas of common ground where you agree it And then and only then are you able to maybe gently make a suggestion even when somebody comes to you asking for your guidance Yeah, if you're not gentle about how you deliver it, they're not going to be receptive to it It's a tricky thing on mind. I want to go sergeant like some people do something like that It's a tricky thing on mind of the equation because on the one hand we there's plenty of evidence that modern athletics footwear is fundamentally wrong And so on the one hand we want to really call it out and be somewhat Confrontational or and that works, you know people respond to that They don't and especially in advertising sort of setting you know if you're trying to catch up with attention quickly and on the web There's so much buying for your attention all the time So I was referring more to if I'm actually working with somebody in person one of my point But my point is that what you're saying is still true It's it's an interesting balancing act like like you're right I mean to be to be confrontational and controversial has value It also comes you know with the side dish of people are going to tell you're head of your butt And then you have to deal with that so you're cultivating a certain kind of Relationship that is both good and bad the flip side is I'm thinking about There's a Facebook group called running shoe geeks and somebody posted a picture of one of our shoes and was raving about it And a number of people were like if I ran to those I'd break my ankles my hamstrings would explode my mortgage rate would go up I'd get Ebola whatever it was and finally I didn't hear that since the brand began from Well, it's true Don't get it but again But the thing that was interesting is what I did is I jumped in I said look if you want to run in the shoes that you currently have Go for it I'm not going to tell you not to but when you take them off at the end of the day or at the end of your run You might want to if you just want something for active recovery to let your feet bend and move and flex and feel and get some circulation going Or if you want to just pass something comfortable and relax in or something that That there's a study from Sarah Ridge at BYU that shows if you just walk in minimalist but where you can build foot strength Just like doing an actual foot exercise program if any that sounds interesting You know just try these for some casual use when you're not running and it just ended the conversation You'll have no response to that because like you said it's like in that way I was trying to meet them where they were Yeah, and I mean it's you know sometimes I have to say we're the pair when a footwear because I know that if they start doing that Then they're gonna go never go try going for a little run and see what happens in the next thing they know though Right why don't you have them wearing it at all then? Yeah, yeah, there's no turning back I mean once you go from you know having your toes not squeezed together.
You never want to go back to squeezing them together I think the other thing that happens is people are so be conditioned that they try to do too much too quickly This happens a lot in strength training calisthenics do I hear the same type of stuff people see me doing him play like oh I did that my shoulder would pop out it's like well you're probably right if you build yourself up to it gradually Your shoulders would be so strong that they could do it and they wouldn't pop out So people people who are used to running in something that has a tremendous amount of positioning and have never given their feet the chance to develop If they suddenly try to go out for a five-mile or a pair of zero shoes what they want it is Not the shit. Yeah, nobody would suggest that I mean, you know It's we hear it every now and then it's like and what we hear from most is people who put on issues like ours and they're so happy It's so there's so comfortable they go for a little run They go for a little run they go this great and then they just keep going and during the course that run they get tired in their form Or it's back to something that's not necessarily good. I mean I would say calf pain and Kelly's pain knee pain or any kind of pain totally optional You don't have to have any I remember when I first got into that even before I switched to wearing minimal shoes I just changed my running style and started running more toward my four foot I couldn't believe how sore my calves were and I thought I had that thing going like oh my god I hurt myself and then like two days later. They felt fine I tried again I'm actually you know this does kind of feel better and then they were never really that sore ever again after that Yeah, but I think a lot of people have that one first shock to their system.
I'm like whoa I'm not doing this But the body just has to adapt to that yeah, there's two things that I find really interesting and by putting air quotes around interesting I find it kind of annoying one is what you just said is people will do something and they do a little too much too soon They have not the right form that allows them to not have any of these little aches and pains that will go away And their first reaction to see this doesn't work because look I feeling a little sore the when it's just like you said If you just slow down chill out let yourself build up slowly over time They can all be fine. The other one is oh forgetting that the process of learning something new like learning to run where you're not Overstrolling and you'll striking instead of being a four foot lander with your feet underneath your body that if you're learning a new Movement pattern it's gonna take a little time and the way it works is at first you try it It's gonna feel weird and then you're gonna rest and it's during the resting period where your brain integrates these new patterns So then a couple days later you try again You're a little better and that frustration is not a sign that it's hard you should stop It's a sign that your brain is trying to lay down your neural pathways that when you rest will actually get integrated people forget that that process of learning For something about running that I mentioned it's somewhere for what you do as well You know I actually just had a conversation with a client of mine some recently where I was kind of explaining that and this is a guy who runs a Contracting business and I was saying to him if you have your workers working all day And then you have them come back to next day and expect them to work all day like by the third day They need a day off or they're not gonna be efficient anymore And he was somebody who had a little bit of that no pain no game in hell He was telling him I have to take some rest. Yeah, he was just wanting to train hard day after day after day I was asking oh why am I sore why is my shoulder? I was like this is not your shoulder It's now so I think that explaining it to them in a way that related to his world helps him understand it And hopefully he's gonna find the balance a little bit more well And you just reminded me of a thing that I've been very aware of late that I'm curious what your experience has been both personally and professionally At 58 and change right now the most annoying thing is how long it takes me to recover and you know There's so much that I want to do that my brain thinks I can do that my body goes Oh, you know, you're grossly mistaken And and that's been very tricky to adjust it me early on when I got back and springing the for it took me maybe two years Until I learned that when I have the thought let me just do one more that's when I need to stop and not do that one more But you know like drinking One more drink always a bad thought especially if it has an umbrella in it or it doesn't taste like anything I'll never forget the first time someone gave me a long island I see and I didn't know what it was holy smokes I think I woke up in Utah that was crazy, and I'm not even a drinker It was like oh, this is you know very tasty or an Alabama slammer, which is the fruit punch version of a long island I see those things are pure evil.
So it's your earlier point. It's definitely true that as you get older You have to recover a little bit more It's a hard thing to cope with when you were an athlete and you were trained hard every single day You kind of got used to that so readjust your expectations of what your body can handle and Respectless because when you're young you kind of do the opposite Oh, you keep pushing beyond when you want to stop and your body can still recover from that sometimes Oh, I did the memories of like you know We just have some big weightlifting session or something and the next day we're gonna go We're just gonna go work out and just feeling so sore I could barely move but the whole idea was just you know Do a little stretching a little whatever just till the soreness doesn't bother you the idea of taking a rest didn't exist in our minds We said yeah deal with or get over the soreness and eventually it worked as just not the way it works now There's a here's a way this just popped in my head I was gonna say this way there's a bunch of older fitness guys that I know who I won't mention them by name who are very let's say financially successful who the way they have dealt with this is they're all taking drugs and Yeah, some variation of testosterone some of them will say that it's just home and replacement therapy and that they're getting back to quote normal Or a high level of normal despite the fact that they were yeah, I said mad before You know have you dealt with people who are wrestling with the idea of doing taking some sort of form those performance enhancing products I really have very very little experience with anything related to steroids I've never taken myself You've never advised anyone on how to take them if I had clients who were taking them it wasn't something that we discussed as part of our training And I don't think that I have had clients were taking them So I feel like that's more of a thing on the west coast and where she hard than this Well, yeah, I've heard of I've heard of old guys and that frankly I just don't know I don't have an opinion one way or the other Maybe it is okay Yeah of being in my 60s or 70s and being like damn This used to perform differently and I miss that and wanting something to be able to so yeah I really don't know well Yeah, I haven't either but I mean out here in around Boulder, Colorado You know, it's all free range organic testosterone. You've got to make sure that it's fair trade organic Rearrange gluten free that gluten free testosterone is good for you. Well, it's way more expensive to and not a satisfying strangely It's like it's like close to test out.
It's not as good as real testosterone So this is definitely outside of my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, no you only both But I'm just your point about recovering slower. I mean I'm 40 now I'll be 41 in a few weeks and I definitely I still consider myself relatively young and I still think I have a lot of good years I'm definitely not able to do what I could ten years ago in terms of recovery I can still perform just about the same level, but then I just need to rest for two days afterwards Well, you know, it's one of the reasons that I'm very deliberate about not going into a gymnastics gym Because I know that I could throw all the moves that I was doing 40 years ago once It would be more than hurting the next day guaranteed and it was also actually it's funny I did a standing back flip and this was two years ago It was the last time I did one haven't thrown one in a while But where I had probably done is gonna sound hyperbolic when I say it I've probably done a hundred thousand of them up until that point There was a time where I was doing about a hundred a day and for a long story But what was interesting is that when I did one this last time I Well, no, it's actually You've run thousands of miles over the course here over the course your life you want thousands of miles maybe you know Like a sprinting workout a long sprinting workout including warm-ups is maybe two or three K Maybe that'll add up though, right? You've been doing it for a long time, but I haven't been I took a 30 year break So, you know, it's one of these like when that when the whole idea that the 10,000 hours to master something came out I immediately said that's got that's complete bullshit and the and my first two thoughts were as it I don't know one gymnast who's ever put in 10,000 hours You'd be dead by the time you did that or one sprinter who's ever been able to put in 10,000 hours You just can't do it your body's not wired for that if you do the math like I've done the math before just imagine 10,000 hours over the career of a gymnast or a sprinter which let's say it's 15 years I've been when they're training at their feet.
You can't see we're not counting warm-ups and things like that Yeah, yeah, just like real training, you know, it's like you do the math and there's like no way especially when you see some of these gymnasts Who are in their teens, you know, they've been doing it for six seven years There's no way they could put in 10,000 hours in six or seven years or ten years I never took it that literally I just you know kind of just the idea that you have to practice something a lot to get at it But yeah, the idea of trying to quantify exactly how long it takes to master something is completely absurd And then try to make that a little bit of thing that applies to all things that you can master Well, I think the general idea that it takes a lot of time to discipline to get good things Well, tell them on the list It takes one other thing because the kind of person who's gonna put in 10,000 hours is a different kind of person than someone who is not They're interested in what that thing is maybe they have a certain competitive thing or whatever else drives them But this takes me back to think about someone starting the bodyweight training in calisthenics is that how I want to put it What's gonna drive you to keep doing something is we've talked about a couple times is that sort of the fun component and experiencing the progress Experience some benefits and seeing that there's actual movement and so this is why I love the idea again of having this big Equiver of air quiver full of arrows so that you can find the parts that are fun Like there's certain exercises and certain stretches even but I'm not good at and I just don't do them And for a while I thought there was that I had to if I couldn't do that I went to I remember going to be from yoga for a while and there were couple stretches Man, I was horrible at and I felt this sort of normative pressure to get good at them And then after a while, you know what? I'm just not good at those for whatever reason and then having a competitive mindset about Yoga in particular but exercise in general is necessarily the healthiest thing unless you're just kind of competing with yourself to try to get better and Motivating white, but yeah, I mean there's definitely a when yoga thing was this thing I don't know if that's existing more but everyone's kind of like looking around the room I'm doing keep it up with them, but I keep up with me what's going on here I think I went to a yoga where eventually I kind of got past that but there's a lot of that in the beginning It's not the healthiest way to approach it. Well, whatever gets you in the door, right? I don't know there's a comic friend of mine who's lying so I've been doing yoga so long that I was doing it was called stretching Have you ever seen yoga competition, you know, I have and the very idea of it fundamentally disturbs me.
I Thought it's an old and it hypocrisy. Yeah. Well, I thought that I thought the irony and paradox and contradiction of it was Historical and crazy, but I wanted to go see what a yoga competition looked like and I mean, it's amazing what they can do Yeah, I mean the competition part I wasn't you know, I didn't get but like you got but you start it And what's really funny? It's kind of it's not like an Olympic sport where if you're watching figures skating you can't figure out the difference between that triple axle and Someone else's triple axle but you're watching people do competitive yoga and you go Oh, yeah, that was better that move the way you got in and out of that That was definitely better than that other guy.
It was again, it's silly But it's also like super interesting and hasn't taken off as a public popular thing I don't think that will and I'm not sure that it would be good if it did but you know I'm gonna say people if you haven't looked up yoga competition on YouTube do that. It'll definitely be entertainment factors there Well, it's also very subjective because someone might be watching the same thing you just were watching We thought clearly this person did it better. They actually know what I like about it with the other person That guy that guy had his head on his head the other guy has bought an inch away from his head So you know, it's really it has to be on so maybe he had a better smile Well, some other player to it. I think that must be part of it too.
The thing I noticed about some of the yoga competitions Traditionally good looking people It's a beauty contest essentially like bodybuilding which is something else that you know as a kid bodybuilding was part of what inspired me to want to get into fitness But when you really know what it's about and you meet people who have been involved in that world then you're like, oh, that's not really what I thought It was those guys were actually not very strong as they look they can't move very well a lot of them are sick or You know, that's really the only people I've ever known Yeah Those were not the people that I ran with the tinnest because I saw a little bit of that world was not feeling the only thing That's interesting thing. There's some people who think that you know, you can't get big doing bodyweight training and there's some people We're afraid that just doing anything they're gonna get big I can't get big doing bodyweight training or man and the people who think you're gonna get too big or generally What I get is all the time But the thing is like if you look around at most gyms the people are lifting weights and they don't look like bodybuilders either So it's like those guys. It's not the lifting that makes them look like that It's genetic steroids and then of course the lifting is part of it, but you know, how much we lift we're never gonna be on the cover Let's start a juicy, you know, 25 years ago. No, there was one bodybuilder who said yeah We're taking a lot of drugs, but that's not why I look this way you couldn't do what I do to look this way off of the drugs I mean ignore taking the drugs out of the equation and you know talking It was totally true I mean first of all he was practically a monk all the guy did was eat sleep workout That's it and just like beyond religious beyond obsessive compulsive about each one of those things in a way that is yet again Goes back to the 10,000 everything You've got to have the right kind of personality the right kind of whatever to be someone interested in doing that for a decade or more Because it is absolutely clear.
I mean any disrespect to the body building community No, no, people are tremendously disciplined and that's what they want That's their goal. It wasn't my goal It wasn't what drew me to this path and there's plenty of people who would look at what I do and be like That's not for me. This guy's an idiot He's a tool. I don't like him That's cool You need to have different options in the world something for everybody the world is very big and I feel like more now than ever There's more examples out there for people to potentially find someone who they can relate to yeah I think that's part of why your brand has done well I think that's part of why I've had success is because we reached people who maybe nobody else was really on the same wavelength as The time that they were receptive to that I want to hit you with a question that you can feel free to answer with a plug for any And everything that you've ever done and it's a two-parter part one is if you wanted to get someone the simplest way of getting started With bodyweight training what would be in the subset of that part Me is if you want to do something specific for runners since we have a lot of runners who are listening to this You know what would you recommend for them?
You know actually I have a couple programs that I think are good for a runner or a non-runner who's just looking to get into this And it really depends on what format people prefer if you want a book or an ebook I have one that's simply called get strong I go right with my brother Danny It's our best-selling book between the two of us and it has a very clear concise program in there It lays out a lot of you know our philosophy behind it talks a little bit about some other diet lifestyle things It's just a really good general overview of everything that we're about and for people who prefer more about an app or a video program I have a program called universal strength as a 30 video program where I do see the exercise is demonstrated actually In video rather than just reading description and sing photos and book and then I also have another app That's just called alkavad but we're working out and it's an animated part to an app and that one sort of more like a reference It just has a bunch of different little animations of me showing different exercises and taking you through a couple of Example workouts so that you if you have an iPhone or an Android there's a free version of that people that listen right now They just go download that right now and then obviously if they like the app There's more content you can unlock with a premium account, which is still pretty small investment So for any of these things where would people find you and those things? Well, like I said, they just put the app store put my name in it You can sell KAVA DLL and you google that or put it into the app store Google Play or Amazon Then you'll find the stuff and for the books and other things Amazon has Books I mean depends on what you're looking for a book you can go Amazon if you're just looking for general information you can Google I was going to say I did for nowadays if they want it don't make you You know don't make me force you to give out your website or your Instagram or something like that I mean, it's just all just my name my website is just alcavado.com My Instagram is alcavado though So if you Google me everything on the first page is all the stuff that people will be looking for See now you've given me a search engine optimization mission to outrank you for your own name No, it wouldn't be at all it would be frankly I wish that it would be the last time you and I got to see each other where it would just be us hanging out in Beniro's bakery in the East Village Because that was just delightful now in the early Internet days There were times just because I was experimenting with surgeon and marketing anyone who had an infomercial on TV I including Tony Robbins I outranked them for their own name if there was no value to it because nobody was selling anything then but it was just like an experiment to see You know what was possible? I think that would be harder to pull off now. I'm really curious because my website has been my website for so long Yeah, it's just now the dot com.
I don't know how anyone can trick Google into thinking that they were more We authority on that than that side is enough No, it would be a tricky one the thing that's fun to do is you can rank for things like out of adlo is the greatest body You know bodyweight fitness, right? You could get a specific term, but just my name I think the website I had for oh Yeah, I'm suggesting I would yeah It's not like I would have the reason inspiration level on time to even try as somebody who has also owned a domain name since the beginning of the Internet It's funny one of my best friends and I in 1991 we were sitting around my apartment saying I can't believe someone's trying to register the domain business.com. Why would you just register a generic word and by the way who has $70? In fact, it was 140 because you had registered for two years.
It's like we're not have that kind of cash So I'm trying to think if there's anything any other specific thing I'm gonna ask you actually I want to ask you this because we could have gone to this What was it that got you into the whole idea of natural movement a minimalist footwear way back when what was the inspiration? What do you think I know it's a cliche, but it was the book once around oh really perfect timing And that's why I was seeking out this type of footwear back in 2009 or whatever it was that we first connected It was right when that book had come out and I tried on it there of the five fingers I just did not like the way they felt and I wanted something that was he talked about in the book that actually well were I was like I want that I want the people wearing in that book and you were the first person that I found who could provide such a thing Yeah, we joked way back when that Chris McDougal the author of that book was our what's the word? He was our inadvertent marketing department for the first two years because people were just responding to that book There was actually a thing that I used to do I took business cards and every time I walked by a bookstore I'd walk in and I'd find copies born to run it but my business card I'm a book as a book a bookmark. You're a hustler.
That's why you are where you are now Well, it was inspired by a friend of mine who self-published a book and what he did is he would just take copies of his actual book and put it And stores right now and so then when they go to person would go to check out It wouldn't be in the computer and they'd have to find out where the book came from and they would call him and then order books So if someone actually went to buy it which right there is a huge victory. Yeah, it was pretty entertaining Well, now first of all, thanks. Secondly, you know, me say I love the work that you and Danny doing I want to one of the compliment for the two of your books these books are gorgeous the photography is spectacular The artwork is I mean, it's so thoughtfully and meticulously and well done that I mean just as a piece of art They're worth taking a look at I really I have something to do. That's a very nice element We're very involved in every aspect of the books We're intimately involved in selecting photographers and photos and graphic design all that because we we love hearing Exactly, we just said that that means the world.
Thank you Because obviously I'm a huge fan of your brand Well, they're pretty much exclusively zero shoes for a long time now and spread in the words as I can because like you said That's what we got to do as part of the movement and how about about it? Yeah, at a certain point we'll hit critical mass and you know, it'll be the obvious thing instead of the odd thing That's what we're yeah I've seen plenty of people wearing zero shoes out in the wild and sometimes they see that I have to and there's an Acknowledgement to look and sometimes I see people this is the coolest thing wearing zero shoes and I look at them They look at me and they say you're Alkum Adlo. I'm wearing zero shoes because I saw you in the air. That's great.
I love it It's actually happened a couple times. My favorite thing is when someone recognizes my shoes and they don't know it to me Well, right. They're not necessarily gonna know your face. Yeah, yeah That's my favorite my fantasy as a business person is that someday I want to be at a dinner party where I overhear someone talking About how they were one of the people who helped start my company and they don't know who I am Hopefully, you know, it'll be an odd surreal moment Well, it's like you know here in Boulder as where crocs started and the number of people that I've met who say they were one of the people Who helps rocks and I know the people who are the crocs so you know I hope that someday we get to the point where people are misrepresenting reality for their own party favors Because there was that much cashay that people on the live say they were part of the beginning I'll tell you know you made it.
We'll get there anyway once again everyone go to alkav.com Alkav, ad, alo or do a search on you know wherever you just said anything anywhere where you would search hopefully you can find me Exactly and more importantly let us know what you experience when you just add some of this wonderful bodyweight calisthenic stuff into just you know Don't even think about it. We're gonna talk about this more but I don't even think about it like a workout per se one Things that I've been having a lot of fun with is just whenever I got to get out of a chair I'll go do something I got my I think you made that point earlier There's a playful element to it, but I mean I just want to emphasize that specific thing It's like you don't need to do be spontaneous. Yeah, like you know do a set of pushups do a set of box jumps Just whenever hopefully some people who are listening actually tried that glute bridge Know you're talking about that earlier, right? Or maybe they'll try it out You made it this far in this podcast and you never did a glute bridge do you remember what we were talking about?
Yeah, do it And if you want to see something fun check out alz videos and look for look for dragon pistol squat If you want to see something that makes you just go what? Actually, it's worse. It's one of those things where you go. Oh, that looks cool And then you try it and go are you out of your mind?
That is so cool Well, so anyway, everyone thank you so much for being part of this reminder again go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com That's where you can find out how to interact with everything we're doing you'll find all the previous episodes You can be comments and questions in fact if you have a question or a recommendation someone you think should be on the show Or you want to tell me you think you have then I have my curly head head up my butt I'm open to that conversation as well In fact one of my fantasies for this podcast is to get somebody on who vehemently disagrees with me And let's hear what that conversation turns into suffice it to say like I said before if you want to be part of the tribe Please subscribe but most importantly go out have fun and live life feet first