Mike BledsoeFine tuning your body, Fasting benefits, Diversity is healthy, Improve your body in the toilet, Conscious movements, and more.
Guest: Aaron Alexander
Aaron Alexander CR, LMT, CPT is an accomplished manual therapist and movement coach with over 13 years of professional experience. He is the founder of the Align Movement™, an integrated approach to functional movement and self-care that has helped thousands of people out of pain and into health.
Aaron also hosts the top-rated Align Podcast featuring the biggest names in movement and wellness. His clients include Hollywood celebrities, Olympic/professional athletes and everyone in between. He teaches workshops and speaks at events all over the world.
In this episode, we dive into why you sometimes need to remove supplements rather than add more, how diversifying your training and movements can improve your performance in your specific sports, why fasting is healthy for you, how eating poop can make you healthier, and much more.
Enjoy!
-Mike
P.S. This is Aaron’s third time on the show. Check out the other two episodes he was featured on: Aaron Alexander: Finding Flow and Feeling Connected #44 and Aaron Alexander on Language & Movement, Trauma Effects Posture #16.
Connect on social: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
Resources: Align Podcast, Align Therapy
3:10
Fine tuning your body
A lot of supplement companies are targeting people who regularly drink sodas and other poor choices, which means they make supplements with at least some sugar, so the taste appeals to the masses. Some supplements have so much sugar, it’s better to avoid them completely. Aaron takes a protein powder that is so sweet he treats it as a dessert or “cheat” meal, and only does so every once in awhile.
People take supplements to improve their health and performance or fix an issue, but often times the solution is done by removing a supplement or food, rather than adding one.
“So often we wanna solve some type of physical problem or improve our performance or health by adding something, and most of the time it’s better to just remove something.” — Mike Bledsoe
7:55
Fasting benefits
Why is there so much hype about fasting in 2018? Because it’s great for you. Fasting has many benefits including better gut health, anti-aging, better muscular structure, improved tastebuds, and more.
When we’re fasting, there’s a process in our body called cellular autophagy. It’s a process that helps the body cut out the “shitty business” and focus on optimizing all functions to find food for survival.
Some people shy away from fasting because they don’t want to lose gains a.k.a muscle mass. What they don’t know, is that fasting can speed up moving their muscles to fire in the right direction. Fasting makes the body optimize everything, including movement. It means that your muscles would fire more efficiently, and in the long run, it will improve your movement patterns, help you avoid injuries, and open up opportunities to make bigger gains!
Did you know?
The longest fast recorded in history lasted 382 days! Where a 27 year old fasted under lab supervision and went from 456 pounds (~207 kg) to 180 pounds (~82 kg). He lost 276 pounds (~125kg) during his fast.
Five years after the fast ended, the patient’s weight has been constantly around the values of 196 pounds. A.B. had no ill symptoms during and after the fast.
13:30
Immunological momentum
Negligible senescence is is the lack of symptoms of aging in some organisms. There was a study that have shown increase negligible senescence by transplanting youthful poop in old fish. It has shown anti-aging benefits and has helped fish live longer by cleaning up their cells.
Research has also shown poop to be an effective medicine for humans, specifically for extreme colitis and bad infections, where patients healed by taking a poop pill called fecal microbiota transplant.
Scientists also agree that 90% of our body is made of bacteria that is not ours. In relation to us being bacteria, Ronnie Landis (episode 4), has brought up the term “immunological momentum”. It’s a concept where you’re not trying to kill anything in your body, else trying to build up as much positive momentum. So when bad bacteria arrives, you have enough positive bacteria to overstand it.
“We have this insecurity around bacteria, meanwhile you are probably much more than 90% bacteria.” — Aaron Alexander
18:40
Diversity is healthy
Diversity is healthy for physical movements, societal movements, and gut movements. Perhaps all kinds of movements. Diversifying your physical movements can make you more well rounded in life, as well as help your sport specificity.
It’s important to note, specificity is important and should be the main focus, but it’s only good up to a certain point. You need at strike a good balance of specific sport movements and some diversification to maximize your potential.
It’s common that big muscular people don’t perform well on slack lines and other balancing acts. They’re usually big because they have been focusing on their sport specificity, for example, doing many squats and deadlifts. What they don’t know is that they can get good at balancing on a slack line with only 5 minutes a day. It will not help them get better balance, but will also help build stronger feet, which are our base.
“Cultural diversity is what makes culture robust.” — Aaron Alexander
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27:10
Shape yourself layer after layer
What’s really cool about us humans, is that we being shaped at every single moment. We are constantly being built and broken down by little cells at the same time, which means we have an opportunity and a responsibility.
We have both opportunity and responsibility to build a better machine, continually changing the structure of our bones, muscles, organs, etc. In order to build a sustainable, healthy machine, it’s important you don’t compare yourself to others.
Aaron Alexander is super athletic human, but he doesn’t expect to look like Jason Khalipa ever. He knows that’s not feasible for him. Aaron suggests you focus on improving yourself layer after layer.
“I watched the shape of my bones change over time.” — Mike Bledsoe
40:10
Improve your body in the toilet
I hope that by now you know that squatting makes a much better pooping experience than sitting at 90 degrees. If you don’t have a squatty potty yet, you better get yours ASAP. It will be the best gift you’ve gotten yourself in 2018 😉
Based on a study from Japan, the ideal pooping angle is when the hips are below 100 degrees to 126 degrees compared to the knees. Aaron Alexander says squatty potty is for amateurs, he takes pooping to the next level by squatting on the seat!
Pro tip: To help your t-spine rotation, try wiping your ass alternating hands. You do it so often, it will actually improve your overall movement patterns.
43:10
Conscious movements
Whenever you are moving, you need to be conscious about your movements. You can’t achieve high performance health and athleticism if you only squeeze your glutes before a big deadlift. You need to have constant awareness about applying good movement patterns, and be hip hinging every time you brush your teeth!
Besides hip hinging, you can make small conscious efforts to improve your movement patterns by hanging often, and squeezing pull up bars and bench press bars to improve your grip strength.
“A safe joint is a joint that doesn’t have a bunch of floppy slack. If a joint has a lot of room to move, then you’re asking for trouble.” — Aaron Alexander
55:40
Why everybody is talking about breath
Breath was the first movement of yoga. In the west, yoga gained popularity through yogis showing off complex body poses on social media. However the original yoga practice focused on breathing only. The poses were later invented to keep people busy and engaged, so they could learn how to control their breath.
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[…] Check out the last time Aaron’s was on The Bledsoe Show w/ Aaron Alexander: Cultivating Diversity Across the Board #71 and his episode on Barbell Shrugged — Cultivate Your Mind, Body, and Movement w/ Aaron […]