Intro to Philip 

Ryan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Autonomy podcast, where we talk about how to develop yourself physically so that you can do all the things you want to do with your body and live a full life. 

My name is Ryan, and as one of the founders here in GMB, as well as the head coach, I'm focused on helping you improve your physical autonomy as efficiently as possible.

Chances are you're like me and my business partners, Andy and Jarlo, in that we don't want to spend hours each day working out in gym. Nope. We want to focus on just the essentials in order to help us better enjoy the things we love to do, like practicing our martial arts and being active with our families.

That's why in this episode, I was really happy to be able to chat with Philip Chubb, otherwise known as The Mindful Mover in which we discuss how to minimize the time you spend training while maximizing the range of the gains you'll make. By the way, I apologize for the sound in this one, but our discussion was just too good not to share.

All right, let's get into it.

Today I have a very special guest, Philip Chubb. Philip runs an online training company with his wife Martina and they focus on minimalist training and they help their trainees gain without having to spend all day in the gym.

This is what we're going to be talking about today. Our theme is basically having a life while focusing on doing less with more gains. We're going to be talking about stuff like Philip's big five movements, accommodating resistance and all kinds of fun stuff.

Do Fewer Exercises

Ryan: [00:01:24] I just want to jump right into it, talk with you cause I'm so excited.  So one thing that I love is your Instagrams and you just share so much information. And one thing that you're really passionate about is actually the concept of doing less will actually give you more.

Let's just start off right with that, if we can just jump into why you think that and looking at some of the how did you come to this conclusion, which is super cool cause we can talk about your studies and your testing that you do I think, which is phenomenal. So run with it, brother. 

Philip: [00:01:56] So it's a really fun topic. So basically certain exercises have carry over to other exercises. And that's important to know because unfortunately there's two issues with being human. One: we don't have unlimited time. And two: we can't be in both places at one time.

Because of that issue, it's like, how can we gain on the most exercises while not having to spend all day in the gym doing each of those exercises. And what we do to do that is basically we test to see what exercises have carry over. So with through testing, we found five exercises tend to have carry over to everything else.

So if you do these five, you're basically gaining on things that you are doing, those five exercises, but also things that you aren't doing. So you can't be immortal. We can't fix that for you. And we can't make you able to be able to be in more places at one time doing 10 exercises at once, but we can give you the next best thing, which is those five exercises where if you work on those five, you're going to be gaining other things at the same time.

Ryan: [00:03:01] And so what I really love about this, we're going to be doing a lot of comparisons today, everybody with GMB and Philip and the thing is, is there is actually a lot that relates to the both of us. Philip, obviously, I'm the better looking one, obviously, I'm just kidding with you, man. I'm just kidding. Of course not, it's the beard. 

But that's what I really love. And the thing is especially following your, for lack of better term, growth over the years to where you've come now, it's just so cool to see where you're going with everything. And especially recently when you're talking about, and you've been talking about this for a while, but especially talking about what you just said, and that is " Hey, we don't have all the time in the world to train eight hours a day thinking that we got to do all these movements." 

And the thing is there's a better way. So let's go over your five big moves real quick. So if you could just cover those for us.

Philip: [00:03:49] Absolutely. So we have the squat, this can be basically any kind of squat. We can get full range of motion, the planche push up, the handstand push up, the one arm chin up and the front level row. And a lot of people will hear those and think I can't do a planche push up. Don't worry. 

There are progressions from the basic, push up on your knees, all the way to full planche push up with weights on your ankles because you are not so strong, same thing for chin ups. You can start off with assisted chin ups all the way up to one arm chin ups for people, someone hanging off your waist. 

So it's progressive, but if you work towards those five, you're probably gaining those five, but also a lot of other things at the same time. 

Ryan: [00:04:29] And for all of you listening, go ahead and we'll have links to Philip's page. You might know him as The Mindful Mover on Instagram and man, you just share just some incredible content. You're on there all the time and you got your stories.  

If you're not following Philip, you really should because you're going to learn a lot. And also you've got some pretty funny stuff that you do. We won't go into that. But I would love to maybe that's another, a podcast that we can talk about that, but, okay. 

So you've got these five movements and as you said, if we're looking and going through like the squat and you brought up something I think is great, is full range of motion. And looking at the squat in terms of strength, but also as a mobility flexibility component as well. So if you could go into that just a little bit. And I know you do this with all your movements, but I just thought this might be a good time to bring that up in terms of, yes, it's a strength move, but you also look at it as a way to also improve your flexibility mobility.

Philip: [00:05:23] Absolutely. So again, we're trying to find how we can get the most carry over to everything else with these few exercises. So if you're doing a squat, are you able to get yourself down easily enough, low to stretch out your calves and your hips the same time, or if you're not able to, with a normal squat, maybe we can do a split-squat which allow you to stretch your ankles and your hips all at the same time while also getting stronger so that you don't have to spend extra time stretching. It's just bam. I do that one movement. I get stronger. I get more mobile. I'm in, I'm out the gym, I have time for everything. 

Ryan: [00:05:56] Wait a minute. Time to do stuff in your life. What does that mean? I don't understand. Cause all I want to do is workout, man. This is another reason why I wanted to talk to you because I think you could tell right now Philip's a fun guy. And we do have lives and being able to still get strong, be able to do the skills that we want while still having a life, I think is great.

Do Less Reps Less Often

Ryan: [00:06:15] And this is of course, GMB,  we were really relate to that. So this is the thing: you also talk about not just these five skills, not just the squat, not just the one-arm chin, not just the planche push-up, the handstand pushup the front lever row, but saying that you don't need to be doing these all the time throughout the week. And in fact, sometimes you might even say, hey, once a week is good enough. If you can go into that a little bit for us. 

Philip: [00:06:41] Absolutely. So on the fact that, we can't do all the exercises. Well, the big five exercises that we do make it so you don't have to. We got those exercises that carry over to everything. Well, what about like, how often should we do them? Well, the time side, that is right there is where we apply what's called accommodating resistance. So when people do a repetition of a squat, for example, squat's probably the easiest one. If you do a quarter squat, you can probably squat like an obnoxious amount of weight, enough to bend the barbell.

But if you take that squat all the way down to the bottom, all of a sudden your weight, it drops right? The problem now is if I'm working with the full range of motion squat, then the bottom is limiting the top part. 

Another thing is you gotta think what about the fact that on the way down from a movement, we're stronger. If you're working on chin up for example, right? Everyone gets the eccentric first. And then the concentric that comes in. It shows the eccentric is always stronger. 

So when you're working, when you're lifting a weight are you're pulling yourself up doing you want to chin up, you're limited by how much you can go up with the way down is never fully overloaded.  That's where accommodating resistance comes in. 

So just imagine you're about to do a chin up, and someone is holding onto your waist. And as you start pulling, they pull down on you. So you're pulling against them the whole time. And they're always making sure that you're able to do just barely that rep. When you get to the top, you hold at the top. And then they grab on your waist. They pull even harder and they pull you off that bar like you're a kid doesn't want to leave the playground.

If you do a repetition like that, you will see immediately: Wow. I do not need to do many of these to get stronger. And I do not need to do  many workouts a week to get stronger. I can do one time a week and get stronger. In fact, if I do multiple times a week, it probably would end up as a trip aboard the the pain train. 

Ryan: [00:08:36] Yeah, man. And also I come back to your Instagram account. I love that your wife is hanging off you while you're doing all this stuff and everything. She's amazing. Some people might be thinking well, okay, great, whatever, man. But I'm still having trouble with my chin-ups. 

As Philip mentioned earlier, he's got tons of progressions and different ways you can do this, but I think the main thing to think about, and I just want to harp on this because it's so good, is that it's not just focusing and thinking that you should be doing one progression of that particular repetition because within that repetition you're actually changing it according to where you need help the most.

And so this is what the accommodating resistance comes in, which is just great. And as you mentioned, yes, you might be able to do one part of that movement, but for the eccentric portion, compared to the concentric, it's going to be different. Therefore, let's adjust that and use the appropriate thing for that portion of the movement. Absolutely love that. 

And the yeah man, just kudos on you for doing that and just keeping it simple. Not simple because it's super intense. And so in terms of that intensity too let's talk a little bit about that. I know that this is something that I also agree, and that is when you're doing sessions, there's a difference between practicing the skill per se, and then actually like owning that skill if you will. I know that you're really big into this as well. 

And so when you're talking about using this accommodating resistance, it's already focusing on a skill that, for lack of better term, you own so that you can do it safely. If you could talk a little bit about, for example, how you would work up to be in be able to do a particular skills. And let's say, just for shits and giggles, if you will, the one-arm chin up.

Because I know this is something that a lot of people are like, "Oh, I could never do this." And I'm here to tell y'all maybe you don't need it. And this is where accommodating resistance can actually be wonderful at some of the lower levels, if you will. But let's talk about how to work up into something like the one-arm chin up using your protocol for that.

Philip: [00:10:37] Absolutely. So let's say that I got someone they have absolutely zero chin up strength. So I'm gonna start them off, they'll basically get into a kneeling position. Kneeling on their legs and they'll reach up the arms straight and grab the rings. And you're going to grab those rings and you're going to pull as hard as possible with your arms. Whatever your arms can't do, your legs will make up for by extending just enough to help you up.

That'd be one way to do it. If you had a partner, you could do the same thing as hanging off the bar, pull as hard as you can, and they'll basically help push you up as tiny as possible. On the way down, since we are stronger during the eccentric, what we would do is put as much load as on our hands as possible, and then lower down, super slow.

We're going to make sure that we use enough load where the gravity and the load of forcing you down. But you're going to make that take as long as possible from there, you'll go to doing your chin ups, so progressed to chin ups at that point, and you'll do the exact same thing. You can apply accommodating resistance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Get your chin ups to a reasonable amount of reps. And then you're ready for what's called the mixed grip chin up, where one arm's going to be facing you supinated, other arm facing away, pronated and you're going to pull with the supinated hand, the one facing you, as hard as possible. And the other hand just basically gives you a tiny bit of assistance as possible during the entire rep.

On the way down of course we're stronger. We're going to shift even more weight into that hand and lower down as slowly as possible, making sure that the gravity is forcing us down, that we're adding the force where it's basically involuntary like your mom pulling you away from the playground again.

And from there we just keep shifting more and more and more and more weight onto that working hand until eventually you're like, "Hey, I can do one-arm eccentrics by myself. Hey, I can do one-arm eccentrics by myself with X for load around me. Hey, I can do one-arm chin up now. Bam." There, you got it. 

Ryan: [00:12:30] I love it. And the one thing I like is, again, we're doing tough stuff here, but you keep it simple. And that's what I really like about it is that it's: you just put in the work and it's not something where it's like, all right, if you want to get your one-arm chin, you've got to work on it five days a week, which I think is great.

The other thing too. The one, one day a week concept, just come back to it. And I do know in your program, and it's not always that way, you do have it set up if you want to do two days a week and you can separate it into upper and lower, but, we don't really need to get into that.

Looking at that, a lot of people might think, okay, is once a week really going to be enough for me. You and I know the answer, what have you found with all the people that you've worked with? Does it really work? Is once a week really going to be enough for us?

Philip: [00:13:18] It definitely does. And like I said, you test it out and you see. And everyone does think at first, is once a week going to be enough to help me gain and get stronger, right? And then you see it happen on everyone's first accommodating resistance rep. The question is no longer, "Will once a week work?" It's, "Will I survive? Will I survive this?” Yeah. 

But after you see that, I always tell people, they're like, wow, I've been sore for a week of my first try. I'm like, yeah, I know. And then I'm like at that point you can see now how each of those repetitions that you did was probably worth multiple repetitions. Each of those sets that you did was worth multiple sets.

Each of those workouts is worth multiple workouts. It's basically the same thing. You're not working out almost any less. You're just taking it all and squeezing it into a really maximal intensity one session a week. 

Ryan: [00:14:13] Yeah. And the other thing too, that I absolutely love is the attention to that particular repetition at each repetition that you're doing and bringing that awareness into what you're doing. 

Okay one of are your videos on Instagram I absolutely love is where you're talking about looking at the intensity of the reps and you show yourself doing  kneeling pushups, and then afterwards you turn around and you're like, do the thumbs up to the camera.

And I'm just like, dude, that kind of sums it up. And so yes, we can be cranking out reps, but for what? You know, for what? And that's always been my thing. You want to work towards a hundred pushups, that's great. After 10, your form is probably going to break down.

Congratulations. You did 90 crappy pushups. Why don't you just move on to the next thing and make it harder? Increase the intensity and work towards being able to like not have to do a hundred reps. 

But the thing is this once a week that you bring up, I just think it's fabulous. And I think if more of us can really look at okay, is this session helping us to get stronger and bring it to that, I think it would really help us to change the way that we look at different things. 

And, it goes for everything that we're doing here in GMB, for those of you who are doing the GMB programs, think of that as well. A lot of you are like, I want to do more and I want to do more. And I'm like, okay, maybe that's not such a good thing okay? Good is good enough. And that's what we're talking about. And this is a good example of that.

All right.  Once a week, we're talking about that. And then, so we have all this time and we're going to get into actually getting a hobby later. But since we're talking about this, you were talking about accommodating resistance. We were talking about focusing on harder in terms of the being smarter and not just doing more. 

Let's talk about the flexibility component of it, if you will. And we did talk about how going into your squat and really focusing on full range. Same can go if you're focused on the front lever rows, cause you really want to focus on going as deep as possible.

And I do know that you've got the arc rows and different ways that you can work your way up to being able to do that. But let's talk a little bit about the flexibility component of this, because I do know that there are certain things that you do focus on and you have the same thought process in terms of, okay, let's not do a whole lot of flexibility.

Let's focus on the big things. So for you, what would that be? 

Philip: [00:16:20] Ah, so like basically with flexibility, two thoughts basically. The first is if I can get it from my strength work, I will get it from my strength work. So for example, at the bottom of your chin up work, you can just go into a full hanging, and get your shoulders mobile, great. Then that keeps you from having to do more work on that mobility. 

Ryan: [00:16:37] Wait a minute. I'm sorry. So you're saying like good would be good enough is what you're saying. 

Philip: [00:16:41] I didn't say all that. 14 times a week, okay?

Yeah. Obviously, if you're getting down to the bottom,  unless you're going to be a contortionist, you probably are going to be totally fine with the hang at the bottom of your chin up. Let's be honest. You know what I mean? How far do you have to go? And so then there are some movements where the big five won't increase the mobility to that extent. 

Maybe if you want to do a splits between two chairs like Jean-Claude Van Damme. At that point, what we'll do is we'll do some weighted mobility. So instead of reaching into it  really nicely and stretching out that way, what we do is we basically have you take your feet.

We'll split them apart and have you slide down slow, slow, slow to the bottom range where you can hold it. From there you're going to hold it up. No help from your hands. All your legs doing all the work. And as your legs build strength in that position, your body will begin to open that range up for you.

First of all, whenever you want it, which is nice. And second of all, it'll be really easy to maintain, takes almost no work. Like for example, I do my splits like once every couple of months, and it's only because I'm taking a video for Instagram. And I still have them and I don't do anything else. Like I don't even, I don't even do like any sort of like really movement or anything like that. And they still stay. So it's just really cool. Once you build it strong one, it sticks really nicely. 

Ryan: [00:18:00] Yeah. That's great. And a key point there, which you're saying is actually just build up to it, actually giving yourself the time to be able to do that. 

And so I think need to talk a little bit about, and cause we really haven't, your background. God, you've studied with so many different people. What, black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you've done a lot of other martial arts as well, for example, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu and things that we just mentioned. Everybody listening, this isn't just a guy just doing the stuff we're talking about.

Philip has gone through, he's got some experience with that stuff. And so I just want to say that right now, but coming back to flexibility portion of that. What you just said, I'm the same. It's once you have it and you were smart in getting it the way that you've got it, you're going to have it.

And so it's just like everybody, " I could never do that." I'm like well, you just have to kind of work to do it. You know what I mean? And have a smart protocol to do it. 

Philip: [00:18:49] I think the thing is about it. Like when you work towards it in the first place, anyway, you're going to end up getting pretty good. Even if you are somebody who, where all their weight is in their leg, you are like a hundred pounds and 90 pounds a bit of just legs cause all you did a squat in the past and you're like, "I'm never gonna get full planche." So who cares? 

Stop Over-training

Ryan: [00:19:06] Yeah, exactly. Yes, yes. Right there. Right there. What you just said is like, who cares, focus on yourself. Exactly. Ah, so good, man. Let's jump into a little bit here and then I want to get into like actually having a life. But over-training, so one thing that you mentioned now, if we're talking about training in general is that concept of people actually just do it too much.

This is where we actually see a lot of people they come to me or they come to GMB and ask us, and they're just like, "Hey, I really want to be able to do planche handstand,  aerial, backflip. And also I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu every single day. And I'm also a power lifter and I also do this."

And I'm just like, "Whoa, hold on there. Okay. Maybe you're doing a little bit much, over-training." And this is something that I do know that you talked quite a bit about this in terms of injuries. And if you could touch on that just a little bit.

Philip: [00:19:56] Yeah. So we'll have people like that. And then they'll also add in, " Oh, by the way, I only sleep like one hour a night. My spouse is cheating on me. My kids do really, really hard drugs. So I never find them at home at night. And my dog ran away with my cat. Okay. Now what can you do for me?" And it's well, you know, let's try taking your training down at least to a level where you can actually recover.

And I think one of the problems is people tend to look for what is optimal in the training. Okay how much can I do and how will it get the best gains possible? And I'm like, okay, look, to be honest, there's really no way to know what's optimal. 

There isn't a farm full of twins and we made their lives exact same and had one group train one way and one group trained the other way. That's the only way to tell what's optimal, besides that we can't tell what's optimal. But I do know what is sub optimal. What is suboptimal is you're trying to train this optimal program, getting broken up. And then you're not able to train for the next couple months.

I have a friend of a friend,  a gymnast. And he's like, "You know how we know who's going to be the strongest as a gymnast on the rings? The person who doesn't get injured and has to take a whole bunch of steps backward." And I was like, I love that. So my thing here is just, let's keep the dosage, the training dosage at the minimal effective dose, the amount that you need to gain.

And you'll oftentimes find a fixed training with that dosage. You're far away from that dosage where you end up on the pain train. So when you try to add that extra work in, you don't even know if it's going to give extra gains. You're basically taking a chance of extra gains with one side if it goes well, for a chance of wasted time. Okay. Or possibly less gains cause maybe your body doesn't recover. Maybe now you've gained slower and taking a chance over-training taking triple board the pain train. And we know that if you're not able to train at all, that is definitely suboptimal. So it's like, what chance do you want to take?

Ryan: [00:21:53] It makes sense to, at least to me, right there with you. And so, for those of you listening: auto regulation, that's also why we talk about that too. But it's so true because there are a lot of shiny sparkly things out there that we want to do.

And right now it's okay, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. How can I optimize that? And that, to be honest, that's like my pet peeve, because I'm like no, focus on one thing. Just focus on that one thing, and do it in a way that's going to be good for you in your lifestyle.

And this is what I like too about that you bring up is we're not athletes, okay. We're not getting paid to do this kind of stuff. And like you said earlier, if you're a contortionist and you need to have that level of flexibility, good on ya, but chances are that you don't need it. And so it's not worth the risk, to be honest, to do that.

If you've got everything else, like your dog running off with your cat, which really sucks. I hate it when that happens. You got other stuff to worry about. So focus on that. The other thing too is when you talk about impacts that you have in your training in terms of whether it be rushing repetitions and putting yourself into positions that you probably not for one, ready for, but then also not actually taking the time and thinking about how you're performing the repetitions and how that leads to injury as well. 

Philip: [00:23:06] That's a huge one. I'd say, typically, training injuries come from two or three things. One of them might just be like, you struck something structural that you never would have seen in your life. Okay, fine. There's nothing you can  do about that, sorry. 

But the two things you can control. One of them is how much work you do. Like over-training in terms of under recovery. That's one where it's okay, you can manage that by reducing your training down, doing that minimum effective dose. 

But the other one is high impact training. That's the one that's kind of scary. Cause let's say that you are doing a death jump. So you start off on a tall box and some people even load weight onto it. And you drop off that box and land on the ground and that's like a movement to help you work on your reactive strength, et cetera.

That's a movement where you can go from too little volume to too much volume instantaneously. If you're doing an AR repetition, you're probably not going explode on one rep. You might explode on rep number like 30 because you overwork. Okay. That's fair. But you deserve it at that point. You know what I mean?

But on the death jump that's one way you can get totally tricked. You can load up too much weight and not understand that when you drop down to the bottom, gravity gets multiplied by the load by a complex formula that I didn't pay attention to in school, but I know it hurts. But that can also apply in even a squat.

Let's say you have a barbell on your back. And instead of lowering down slowly to the bottom, you drop to the bottom, relax at the bottom and then try to bounce out the bottom of the squat. That's gonna put a lot of extra pressure on your knees and your back that you weren't ready for, that you didn't account for in your training volume.

So you've got to be really careful when you take the high impacts as well. 

Ryan: [00:24:43] Yeah. It's crazy. Sometimes just watching people do things and I just cringe because I'm just like, ah, yeah, you might've been able to do that. And it looks really good for your Instagram right now, but how are you going to do tomorrow?

So the other thing too, we're coming down to bringing awareness into everything that you're doing. And obviously with accommodating resistance, you're not going to be able to crank out the repetitions. And this is something that I actually really like about the accommodating resistance is because it forces you to slow down because you almost have to, because it's so tough.

And I think that just brings such great awareness into everything that's going on when you're doing these repetitions. Now, in terms of that,  you're not when you're doing it thinking of high repetition. And I want everyone to be clear with this is that, Philip is talking about if you want to get strong, 20 repetitions of something means that basically the intensity is not there.

So what would be a good, yeah. So what would it be a good rep range that you're looking at in terms of if we're just looking at the strength. And I do know the hypertrophy is going to be a component or a by-product, if you will, just simply of doing this work and recovering and actually taking care of yourself. But if we're looking at strength and working on these skills that you're talking about, what would be a good rep range that you want your people to focus on when doing it?

Philip: [00:26:02] It's going to be pretty low and the reason it's going to be low is because you also have to remember that when you do a normal repetition, let's say you're doing a barbell back squat. Let's say it's at a hundred pounds or a hundred kilos. So as you lower down, the weight is a hundred pounds on the way down and a hundred pounds on the way up. Okay. So the weight stayed the same. 

But not every part of that movement got naturally trained on the way down. Near the top, you might've been capable of using 500 pounds. But you only can use a hundred if you use the weight you can use for the way down and up, or maybe on the way down at the very bottom you could use 125.

But the problem is that middle point, which is a real weak point in the squat so you only use a hundred. When you do an AR rep, an accommodating resistance rep, the entire repetition is going to be maximum loaded the entire time. And as you lower down and go back up, it's also going to take you a lot longer to do that repetition.

So what might help people is to do a normal rep and then take a video of it and then do an AR rep. Take a video of it, play them side by side. And look at how long your AR rep takes and look at how long your normal repetition takes. And then see how many of those normal reps do you get during the AR time.

And that might help you understand that the reps are typically going to be low. Because each of those reps is worth a lot Mo. There you go guys, it's my new  rap album coming out. 

Ryan: [00:27:28] Yeah. I love this. So this is something that you've shown before, which I absolutely love. And I think a lot of our listeners will relate to this.

So you have the pseudo planche pushup. I think you call it the pseudo lean pushups. So basically for those of you listening, just think of your pushup, but lean forward as much as you can. And then you're going to lower yourself as slowly as you can towards the ground. But if you try and stay in that position, you're not going to be able to push straight back up just for the reason that Philip said is because as you lower yourself, you're going to be able to handle more load.

Therefore you can lean forward further into this pseudo planche position. Now the bottom position you might get stuck. So what are you going to have to do? You're going to have to bring your shoulders back just a bit, little bit, maybe get through that transition. And then as you start to push up, you still want to load that, but you're not going to be able to lean as far forward as you were before.

So the the position of that movement is going to change throughout the movement in order to allow you to complete the movement. But it's still going to be hard as shit because you're using accommodating resistance. And so this is what it is, and this is so good. 

And that's why, what I don't know. Let's say what five, six reps maybe is about all you're going to have in the tank, I assume. 

Philip: [00:28:59] I would be really surprised if someone would do a set of more than five reps. So just for fun though, there's a book called Body By Science, where they have a protocol where they basically did this 49 seconds of work, right?

Ryan: [00:29:11] Yeah. Yeah.

Philip: [00:29:12] Per goal.

Ryan: [00:29:13] Yeah. I'm like, screw this shit, right? Yeah. Yeah. 

Philip: [00:29:17] Well, I took that and I was like, let's try that with accommodating resistance. I think I got three reps and I was just miserable and trying to go past that was just, it was, it burned so bad. I remember I was doing that with the accommodating resistance, and I got to the point where I didn't even want to train anymore. I would wake up that day. I was like, I don't want to do this.

Ryan: [00:29:38] God, man. And this is, it is great. And as a matter of fact, right now in my training. Okay. So this is something I wanted to tell you about by the way. And so for those of you listening and, for those at GMB to already know it, but your five big movements are really similar to like my, I don't want to say end goal for movements for people, but for example, like those are the big skills, right?

These are the big things to focus on. And if you can do a full handstand pushup on the rings, you’re a pretty bad, dude. It's not saying that you really need to be able to do that, but imagine, 12 reps I'm like, okay, whatever. That's not really going to happen unless you just trying to crank them out and they look like crap and everything like that. 

So just try and imagine that everybody, that's what we're talking about. And again, not saying that you need to jump up and do this, and you're going to be using movements that are appropriate to your level, but the intensity should be there.

And what I think you're saying is if you can get 10 reps out of that, you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough is what you're saying. Right. Is that right?  

Philip: [00:30:36] That's what a lot of our coaching is. I've been using accommodating resistance for two years now and I still to this day learn how to get more out of repetitions. So a lot of my coaching is just saying, okay looking at your rep, they're nice eccentric, but on the way up you look basically exploded like a rocket ship, you're ready for more. You got to add more intensity. 

Another one you see somebody. Okay, the concentric was great, but when you lower down, it looked totally voluntary. It looked like you were lowering down, on your own time, add more load to so  gravity is forcing you down. 

That's so much of our coaching is just helping people get to the place where their accommodating resistance is actually accommodating resistance and not we call it basically wet fart intensity, where you're lifting, but you're not losing any intensity.

It's no, we want to get past wet fart intensity. 

Ryan: [00:31:24] That's scientific terminology right there. But dude, I, that just totally makes sense.  I think really what this is coming down to is really being aware of what you're doing and it's tough. And that's why everyone needs a coach.

And so a person to say, okay, wet fart or whatever's going on, but the thing is that I love that because I think the better that we can bring that awareness into it, the less we actually have to do in what you're saying. And in terms of If you were to hit it harder with more intensity and you're better aware, everything is going to get better. And that's what I just really love that you're doing. 

So we've got the strength components of that. We've got the big five, we've got the flexibility component, certain things that we're looking at if you do need some of that extra training. 

Cardio 

Ryan: [00:32:01] One other thing and this is I think it's great. And I want to talk about the reason why you do this because I was talking to Andy about this yesterday and we were just like, Oh, that's so good. Sprinting, sprinting. So you sprint just because you like to sprint right. I'm messing with you, but your sprinting is not just to get better at sprinting, which I love. Could you explain that a little bit? 

Philip: [00:32:29] Yeah. My goal, when it comes to sprinting, is that I don't want to have all this planche strength, these one-arm chin ups and everything and then die of a heart attack as I walk up the stairs. That would be so, so, so very embarrassing.

Ryan: [00:32:42] I heard you lose your gains. If you die, you lose your gains. If you die, I've heard that, you know.

Philip: [00:32:47] No one who has died has told me so far, but I think it might be possible. So I don't want to take the chances, so my thing is okay, how can I make sure that I'm getting a good cardio work without actually taking the time to do a whole bunch of cardio work.

So we do what's called a sprint drop set, which is also going to be one of the most miserable things you'll ever do in your life. So you find the good, a nice grassy hill or a nice grassy plain, something that's soft cause impacts. And you basically will start off looking like that Homer Simpson meme. You'll sprint as fast as possible.

And then as you fatigue, your sprint will drop to a run, then it'll drop to the jog, drop to a walk and then you'll drop to the floor. And then once you hit that point, you're good to go. And again, maybe you're doing this in your form. Maybe you're doing this and you don't have the perfect athletic wear.

Maybe you're not even using sprinting. Maybe you're doing it on a bike. Maybe you're doing it with swimming. Who cares? It's basically just as fast as possible, as long as possible until your heart basically almost explodes. And when you fall to the ground, you’re good to go. Then you go home and you rest, and then you come back and do it again next week.

Ryan: [00:33:53] Next week. And that's what I love about this is literally just like once a week, if you want to do it, which I think is great. Again, like everything you're doing is just looking at okay, how can we get in and get out and move on to the stuff that we really want to be doing in our life. And I just absolutely love that.

And so, in your videos you're running in like flip flops sometimes, which I'm just like this mofo is awesome. I just love that. It's like, "Oh, I got to have the best, I don't even know, shoes like Nike" or whatever. You're just like, hey, barefoot, whatever. And I just love that.

Yeah man doing great stuff. 

Philip: [00:34:26] It's barefoot. It's like my run form is probably terrible. Actually, I did gymnastics for a short time as an adult. And I was vaulting. And my coach looked at me and he said, don't ever tell anybody you run like that.

Ryan: [00:34:43] Oh man, I'm sorry. That's hilarious. Oh God. Yeah. I think it's fine. It gets the job done. It gets the job done. And that's, I think what the most important thing is there. 

Get a Life

Ryan: [00:34:52] All right, let's get into the next part. And this is really huge. By the way, I hope this is cool for me to ask, how old are you? I don't even know. Do you know how old you are? 

Philip: [00:35:06] I think... oh, you know what? I am almost 30. 

Ryan: [00:35:10] Almost 30.  So we're about the same age is what you're saying. So yeah this is what I absolutely love is the fact that, okay, we are about 20 years apart. But the cool thing is it's I look at you right now and especially over the past two years. And I'm just going to talk you up, man. And I hope this is okay. 

But I know where you've come from and I'm trying, and I'm trying to say this without bringing up any other individuals in the conversation, and it's so fascinating for me to see how much you used to train, like literally all day long. Yeah. Compared to where you're going right now. And I can't tell you how happy I am, because you seem a lot happier. And that, to me, it just pleases me like you wouldn't believe. 

And so seeing where you've come and the things that you're doing and the great work that you're doing. And now on top of that saying, hey, it could only be once a week. That's maybe all you need and then some sprinting and then go enjoy your life. I think is fabulous. And this is where we're going with this. 

And so basically, recently you're talking about having a non-fitness hobby. And I just think that is so important and, you know in GMB, that's what we're after. And so a lot of people come to GMB and they're like, I just want to do GMB all the time. I'm like, whoa, we actually don't want you to do more GMB. It's you know, just do enough to help you with the other stuff in your life that you want to do.

And of course we do have skills and if you want to do skill work and stuff like that. Great. But talk a little bit about what you mean when you're talking about, everyone knows what a hobby is, but why do you feel this is so important for us and especially for you at this age coming to it and going, wow.

You train Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you do all these martial arts and all this other stuff. I don't believe you're even doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu right now. Is that correct? Talk a little bit about like what, where you're going with this man.  

Philip: [00:37:12] I think one of the things is when people train, training is very fun, I enjoy my trainings. Don't get me wrong. I love my training, but training should not be everything. I think a lot of people use it as not for something for gains, but something for the sake of entertainment. And I'm like training is entertaining, but it is probably one of the worst forms of entertainment, because let's say I'm bored, right?

I'm like, man, I'm bored. I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna work out. I'm gonna spend an hour working out. Maybe I'll spend two hours working out and maybe even three. Then at the end of that now, great. Now I'm bored and I'm tired. There's two things. And I'm like, guys, this is not the way to go.

Plus if you end up getting injured in that, over-training now you can't train at all. Now you're going to be depressed. I'm pretty sure every single one of us who's used training as a way of having fun has gotten sick or the gym's closed down or something like that. And then you've been absolutely bored out of your entire mind.

So I think everybody needs to have a non-fitness hobby. But when I say non-fitness hobby, I say non-fitness cause I don't want people being like, I'll make my hobby reading about fitness books. No. You got to have a real non-fitness hobby. So it can be whatever you want but it should be something that you can do and unlimited time and preferably it doesn't have to be something that makes you better.

You don't have to look accomplished or achieve something. My favorite thing nowadays, I like to hang out with my wife. We watch animes. We watch movies. We play video games, currently playing the old school Tale of Investeria. It's been a blast. We're having fun with that. We just watched Attack on Titan. Don't worry. I won't spoil anything, but we watch that. And it was absolutely awesome. We do stuff like that and we have fun and we don't turn our lives into a giant, miserable time like we used to. Now we actually enjoy stuff. 

Ryan: [00:39:07] Yeah, man this is just so good to hear. I know a lot of the sacrifice. I know of a lot of the sacrifices that you both did, that you and your wife both did, in order to train with other people. And again, it's just really refreshing to see you now as you've come up and as you're looking at things and saying, "Oh my goodness, there's more than just training. And there's some stuff out there that's actually can be healthy for you." 

And I really liked the point that you bring up too. It's having this other hobby and not trying to crush it and think that you need to be the best at something or learn something. And that's what I really love. And I know for example, you studied Spanish, and so it's other things that you're doing, which I think is absolutely great. 

And I think one thing I do want to come back to is it's so important is that people can use fitness as a way of thinking it's their identity. And when it's not there because of injury, because of COVID, because of something else is that depression comes in. And so what are you going to have beyond that? And so that's what I just think is good. And a big reason why I wanted to get you on here and share some of the stuff that you're doing, because I just want more people to take a look at what you're doing cause I think it's great. 

Yeah man. And so what are you doing? What do you, besides, videos and other things like that, like you got a lot of time on your hands recently. What have you been doing man?

Philip: [00:40:31] Yeah, we basically do some work and we run some tests. And we spend really good quality time with her family, my family. I found out a couple of years ago, I started training less right, that I have a family.

Ryan: [00:40:44] No way! No way! 

Philip: [00:40:49] I was like, whoa, where did? I thought I was born in the gym. Yeah. I hang out with my family. I hang out with her family. And it's so funny. Cause like Martina was always like, I've always wanted a husband who wants to hang out with my family with me. I feel so good that I feel so bad. And I was like, Oh goodness. What have I done, who was I the past couple years. 

Sum-Up

Ryan: [00:41:10] But that is good. It's good to hear. And so kudos to you, man. So great chat with you. There's so much more than we could talk about, I want to wrap this up just a little bit and put it all together. Focus on actually doing the things that matter to you.

I think that's a huge thing of course that you're  after. Your five main movements. If you can run through those once again, real quick for us. 

Philip: [00:41:32] Absolutely. So it's always remember, it's progressions towards these. It's a squat. It can be a which ever kind of squat you want, as long as it's full range of motion, and then we have the planche push up, the handstand push up, the one-arm chin up and the front lever row. 

Ryan: [00:41:47] Use accommodating resistance at a level that's going to be good for you. And then focus on just being aware with what you're doing with that. When it comes to heart health, sprinting, doing that in a way that's actually going to be good for you. And remember it doesn't just have to be outside on the grass. He said you can do it on a bike or wherever you need to do that. Yeah, and get a non-fitness hobby. Love it, man. So good. 

Well, Philip. Thank you so much. Where can we find you, man? 

Philip: [00:42:15] Our website is www.mindfulmover.com. Our Instagram handle is the_mindful_mover. We have a YouTube, which is Mindful Mover. And email, at mail@mindfulmover.com. 

Ryan: [00:42:28] Perfect. We'll have all those links for all of you in there. If you have any questions for Philip, please feel free to send us. Thanks again, man. It has been a pleasure. 

Philip: [00:42:38] It's been a blast.

Ryan: [00:42:39] Cheers.