We get comments on our YouTube channel pretty often, from people saying things like, “That movement comes from capoeira,” or “You should really give credit to _________ for introducing you to that movement.”
Many people seem to think that particular movements or styles of moving are proprietary, or “belong” to a particular group, person, or school.
GMB was founded on certain principles of movement and teaching that come from Ryan, Andy, and Jarlo’s respective backgrounds – we’ve been doing many of them for over thirty years! But does that mean “GMB-style” movements should be categorized as gymnastics, or martial arts, or yoga, or anything else?
No.
In this very special episode, Jarlo joins Ryan and Andy for the second time on the GMB Fitness Skills Show. Watch and/or listen as the “three musketeers” discuss some important ideas about where movements come from, and what has influenced them to teach the way they do.
Watch it!
Listen to it!
Key Points:
- (02:26) Our best exercises for shoulder injuries – Causes & solutions of shoulder pain
- (06:56) Evidence-based fitness – click here for another podcast where we discuss this topic in detail.
- (10:13) Stretching doesn’t work? Really?
- (12:18) What has influenced the GMB method?
- (24:10) Good information, necessary information, and how can we present it effectively?
- (31:50) When we don’t know much about a particular area of fitness, we gladly refer people elsewhere.
- (35:42) What makes a good coach? Someone who fits you.
Andy: Breaker, breaker, one-niner. Get your ears on. Get your eyes on. It’s the GMB Show, suckers! Santa Fe edition, Team Ryan edition. We’ve got our Team Ryan shirts on and this is Ryan.
Jarlo: So he doesn’t need a shirt.
Andy: He doesn’t need a shirt.
Ryan: I don’t need a shirt.
Andy: This is Jarlo. I’m Andy. We are GMB and for the next 30 minutes plus or minus, we are going to educate, elucidate and do all kinds of other “E” words with you.
Jarlo: Indemnify. That’s an “I” word though.
Andy: Yeah. It’s not with E. You got to watch out for that. Indemnification isn’t really a good thing though.
Jarlo: Oh, never mind then.
Andy: Yeah. OK. So today we’re going to talk about – we’re going to talk a little bit since we got all three of us here. We’re going to talk a little bit about sort of some of the influences that came into GMB because we get a lot of people asking us, “Is that an exercise from gymnastics? Is that from martial arts? Is that from yoga? Is that from this?”
We live in a really interesting time with internet and information age and all this stuff and there’s so much stuff out there, right? So we’re able to draw from a lot of sources and we want to talk about some of the ones that have been especially influential to each of us that have really filtered into GMB and because we think that’s going to be interesting to know because people ask us about it and it means a lot to us that we’ve been able to learn from some really great people. So we want to talk about that. But first, let’s do some questions that people have asked.
[Music]Andy: Earlier today we did an AMA which means Ask Me Anything on Reddit. We have a lot of people asking us random questions and we answered them. But some of the questions that were not answered that we’ve gotten a lot of lately on email and Facebook that we want to cover and especially since Jarlo is here and has a little more knowledge on some of this than Ryan and I. We want to ask a couple of sort of injury and rehabilitation-related questions. Of course none of this is medical advice. What has been maybe the biggest one lately?
Ryan: Yeah. Pretty much the biggest one is the shoulder question and in fact today we are asked that question. But basically, I have some sort of shoulder injury. What are some good exercises for rehab? Also what are some good exercises for strength building that I could do on the shoulders?
I’m going to start off. Jarlo is going to say this also but we’re not doctors. Go get it checked out. OK? That’s the first and foremost thing you need to do. All right? But …
Jarlo: Well, I understand why people reach out to us too because you have to say go to your doctor and it’s true. I mean go to your doctor. I mean why are you asking somebody over the internet? But I understand why people do it. It’s because either they had a bad experience with doctors before or maybe they’ve already gone and they’ve gotten a – oh, here’s some pills. Go ahead and shake it off. If that hurts, don’t do it, right? That’s not a satisfactory answer.
Andy: Or you’re not bad enough for surgery, so just kind of …
Ryan: Deal with it.
Jarlo: Just deal with it.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: One of the primary reasons why we say that is because you have to – you don’t know what it is. It seems kind of weird to say that it might be cancer, right? Let’s not flip it though. It might be. There’s a lot of visceral organ dysfunction and a lot of like major medical things that masquerade as shoulder pain, masquerade as like low back pain. For the shoulder in particular, there’s like diabetes, pancreas stuff, lots of – it’s lots of weird, crazy things. The more you’re kind of into – you’re more of a health professional. You understand that and all of these things.
So just get it checked out and even if the doctor does an exam, does a few things and he said, “Oh, you’re fine,” well at least you know you’re basically fine. Does that make sense?
Andy: It’s good to know that, right?
Ryan: Maybe structurally OK. Is it like you can work out at least and …
Jarlo: You can work out at least and it’s not something major. There have been incidents where people go in just thinking they had a simple like, oh my neck hurts a little bit and it turns out to be something crazy.
Andy: It’s nice to rule out like a blood disease …
Jarlo: Right.
Andy: Right? I mean you want to rule that out right? Once you know it’s not that, it’s not going to fix that.
Jarlo: A little bit of stretching goes a long way. It’s not going to do that, right? But first of all, that’s probably the main reason. Another reason is you want someone in person that could help you. That doesn’t mean we can’t help you or it doesn’t mean like that one person is going to be the savior and what not but that’s basically it. You just have to be safe. You got to take care of yourself.
Now, for the shoulder in particular, we did actually a really comprehensive series on that in our articles. Look on the blog. So we explained a little bit about the shoulder but went really in-depth into what you can do and I had a lot of – it’s actually pretty popular. You had a shoulder flexibility example, shoulder strength examples and then the motor control which is really interesting and people don’t do enough of being strong in certain positions and being able to do certain things.
So it’s different than just normal kind of basic strength exercises. It’s just like doing all the bodyweight things, like handstands and cartwheels and all of that. It just conditions you in a different way and people kind of understand that they have to do that. They have to be strong in a certain position, not just strong in that machine, that rotation or not just strong in the band.
So they have to be able to have that leeway and go into different things. It’s really hard to answer a specific thing like, oh, my shoulder hurts. No, it hurts in the front. Oh, yeah, that told me a lot. Thanks, right? How am I going to do that? But I can lead you in a certain way and give you sort of the tools to kind of figure out yourself. It’s never going to be as good as someone else that’s there. If I was there, that would be great but that’s the basic thing. You got to go see somebody not just for the reasons of we don’t want to help you or it’s too difficult but maybe it’s something crazy. Hopefully it’s not but sometimes it happens.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: And Ryan knows that too. He has had to go in for different things.
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah.
[Music]Andy: So one more thing that’s kind of Jarlo-specific here that while we’ve got you here, I just want to – we’ve talked before about our opinions on evidence-based fitness or research-based fitness and sometimes we even got kind of flipped on one of our podcasts. We called it “evidence schmevidence”. It was actually Jarlo’s phrase that we copied. But we don’t want people to get the wrong idea that we’re anti-research or anti-evidence or any of that.
Jarlo: I actually keep up with it pretty well.
Andy: Yeah. So Jarlo is a real professional and so you clear it up.
Jarlo: OK. Well, and that’s the thing. It can be easily misconstrued as saying – our critical evidence-based practice or evidence-based fitness, right? What’s that? Evidence-based …
Andy: Evidence-based fitness.
Jarlo: Yeah. I think that’s kind of a newer thing right now. It’s not that we’re anti-science because that’s ridiculous, right? Who’s anti-science, right? You can’t. We’re pro-critical thinking.
Andy: Yes.
Jarlo: Right? You have to understand in research and this is born out across the fields especially in healthcare. Research can be very biased. You can make – I’ve taken at least seven semesters of statistics, undergrad and then grad school.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: I mean you have to take that risk. The way you can manipulate the numbers, oh man.
Ryan: It’s unbelievable.
Jarlo: Yes, unbelievable. You talk to …
Andy: That is a fantastic thing.
Jarlo: Talk to people that actually do research and they will totally agree 100 percent. So if you go in with any kind of bias, any kind of thing that you want to have happen, you can make it happen.
Ryan: Yeah, it’s going to happen.
Jarlo: Now that doesn’t mean we discount things. But you have to look at things critically.
Andy: That doesn’t mean that the researchers are always pushing a bias.
Jarlo: No, but sometimes that bias is there even when they don’t realize it.
Andy: Unconsciously.
Jarlo: Unconsciously. The way you frame the question, the way you report the data, the way you analyze the data. Now, you can easily go to the extreme in that and say, “Ah, that doesn’t matter.” Then you’re talking about things and this is fairly controversial but I believe in it, that vaccine is causing autism. I bet you get emails like that. But it doesn’t. It purely doesn’t.
Andy: No.
Jarlo: There’s no way it does. So you’re going to get people saying, oh, yeah, the studies say this but then I have a friend of a friend and – OK, I’m going to offend some people but no. It straight up doesn’t.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: That’s an example of just going nuts over it, right? But then you have things like – in therapy right now, there’s a lot of the evidence-based practice and it’s great. I know all through it. I know all these clinical prediction rules. I know all these things and it’s awesome. You have a pattern. You have these things but it gives you just a general picture of where to go. If you were just to follow these things and not put in your expertise, and that’s the part that people forget about evidence-based practice. The first part is where the evidence leads you. The second part is where your clinical expertise and your experience bring into it. So that’s what these guys are talking about in that podcast.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: Are you going to discount all of these things that you’ve found through experience because a study in this said that?
Andy: Yeah, and the specific example was that stretching doesn’t work thing or stretching injures you. Well, we’ve seen thousands of people stretch and get more flexible but there was a study done on 20 college sprinters that showed that they reduced their power output, therefore stretching doesn’t work.
Jarlo: Right.
Andy: And that’s poor application.
Jarlo: Immediately after stretching, but then they didn’t say that an hour later they were fine.
Andy: Yeah. So I’ve read the study. You’ve read the study. We know a lot of people that have not read the study but draw crazy conclusions.
Jarlo: Then since we’re talking about stretching, there are a lot of things that people think stretching does that isn’t true. It’s like they say. It prevents soreness or gets rid of soreness. Not true.
Andy: No.
Jarlo: I’ve tried.
Andy: If stretching prevented soreness, it would be a beautiful world.
Jarlo: Right.
Andy: Right?
Jarlo: Or prevents certain injuries.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: I don’t think so. What it does is it helps you get into certain positions easier, so you can demonstrate your strength and it gets into positions where you have that extra leeway, so maybe like I have the jiu-jitsu example. If you can’t get your arm here and some guy tries to crank it because you’re not flexible, that’s going to hurt.
Ryan: It does, it does hurt.
Jarlo: If you were more flexible, that prevented that injury.
Andy: Exactly, exactly.
Jarlo: So it’s more – and it’s not common sense. But it’s applying your thinking correctly.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: Critical thinking, always critical thinking, right?
Andy: Excellent.
Jarlo: Putting your experience to the test and read the studies. See where it goes. Try it out. Do all these things. Now it’s not anti-evidence. It’s anti being a dumb shit.
Andy: Yeah, truly, truly.
Jarlo: Right?
Andy: Absolutely.
Jarlo: You got to get onboard with that.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: How can you not get onboard with that?
Andy: Yeah, absolutely. So thank you. That was super good, really good explanation.
[Music]Andy: So let’s talk a little bit about sort of totally changing gears into where a lot of the things come from and actually some of it does come from evidence and research too. But more specifically I want to talk about sort of some of our teachers that have taught us different things and most importantly the ones that have come into sort of building up what we call the GMB method, the things that we teach and the foundations of that because well, they come from a lot of things and one of the great things that I think about GMB is that it’s not a guru shop. It’s not a one-man show. There’s three of us and we’ve all got – we’ve got some common things, background, but we’ve got some very different background that helps us sort of get together and I think make a stronger method altogether. But of course number one though, Ryan, being the head coach, and the number one teacher here, a lot of your background and a lot of what we teach is kind of based on gymnastics.
Ryan: Right.
Andy: So …
Ryan: Yeah, and the interesting thing, the gymnastics part of it but more so the influence of my coach, my first coach Mark Folger in the way that he taught me and the way that he interacted with the people who are on my team and then also the other students that he taught. So it’s not just the fact that I was doing gymnastics and I’m taking certain things that we’re using in gymnastics but …
Andy: It’s his coaching.
Ryan: His coaching and the way that he did it and something that was – I just love about Mark and Mark is still coaching a very successful team. He’s constantly studying and he’s looking at what he can do to make things better and simplify things.
So instead of just throwing something out there or maybe just sticking just with the same thing that has happened year after year after year, he’s constantly trying things out, making – well, testing. That’s very important. Just like what we do of course, right?
Taking that, testing it on his athletes and if it works, using it; but understanding that it’s not going to work for everyone. So there are certain things that he will use with this particular athlete whereas with this particular athlete it’s different. So this is something that you will really find here in GMB is that we’re constantly evolving too because we’re always going back and looking at what we can do to be better and how we can help more people like for example in our Alpha Posse. Every person is different. So there’s different ways that you need to coach that particular person. So Mark Folger has been one of the largest influences not only in just my life but also in a lot of the way that we program and do things here in GMB.
Of course it’s not just me because there are three of us here but that’s just an example of what – when I think about what I want to do with the programming and the new things I want to do. So whether it be using movements that I learn in gymnastics or taking something from let’s say one of the movements in F2. Let’s say a butterfly kick and so I took the wushu, the idea of wushu, the butterfly kick. But what I did was went back and looked at how I can better teach it to other people. From learning from Mark and the way that he actually studies different things, it helped me to look at the butterfly kick in a different way and make a new application that was I think a lot better for a lot of people.
Jarlo: Yeah.
Ryan: So …
Andy: Cool. Just to say, because Ryan didn’t really preface it that Mark Folger was your gymnastics coach.
Ryan: My gymnastics coach.
Andy: From what age to what age?
Ryan: When I started, really I was maybe six until all the way throughout high school and he’s still my mentor.
Andy: He’s still coaching.
Ryan: Yeah, he still coaches.
Andy: He has written several books. He has been …
Ryan: USA Gymnastics Coach of the Year.
Andy: Yeah, coach of the year.
Ryan: Coach of the year.
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: So he’s very well-known throughout the United States. So he’s not just some dude teaching gymnastics.
Andy: Some local guy. If you’re doing gymnastics, you probably know him.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. We all have those people.
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: In our life.
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: Where our influence is. Like with you, whether it be taido or even maybe an instructor even outside of the exercise or the movement world.
[Music]Andy: Well, what you said about Mark actually I want to mention next because I studied from a very young age a martial art called taido and I had a few different teachers especially since I practiced in the US and in Japan and I’ve been lucky enough. I’ve been able to teach on several continents now. I’ve taught a bunch of people but I wouldn’t have gotten into teaching if it hadn’t been for one particular teacher of mine, a guy named John Okochi, who is actually a very good friend of mine now. From the time I was 12 or 13 I guess, he had me helping out and he taught me how to teach.
Like you said, you followed the way Mark coached. Well, John taught me a lot about moving and about kicking and punching and martial arts. But mostly he taught me how to unlock that whole idea of teaching and how to teach myself as well because there are some things that maybe a teacher can’t teach you. You have to learn how to figure out where you want to go and teach yourself but he was a great role model as a teacher because the thing I always admired about him is he could look at a class of 20, 30, 40 people, watch them warm up and know what each one of them needed to do that day. He could see where they were in their progression and know exactly what they needed to do, watch them do a kick one time and know that they needed to practice something.
I always wanted that. I wanted to be that good, right? Which is kind of like with therapy, right? When you have to be able to sort of diagnose and see where they need to go and that was the thing that got me fascinated in teaching. That made me want to be a teacher which drove me to learn how to teach martial arts and drove me to be a school teacher. I decided I love teaching because of him and I think that that’s – in terms of my role in GMB, that has really been the biggest thing is I’m very fanatical about how we teach, so these guys know.
Ryan: Exactly.
Andy: Because I’m a hard-ass sometimes, but yeah, it all goes to him.
Ryan: Yeah, for a good reason, for a very good reason.
Jarlo: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: Yeah, it’s interesting too that when we all got together, we were doing different things but the main thing was martial arts. I did the same thing. I started martial arts at a younger age, different teachers throughout the years. Everybody was great. I’m not going to single anyone out in the beginning years because it was a little different.
Andy: When you’re young, it’s …
Jarlo: When I was young, it was a little different
Ryan: Yeah.
Jarlo: But also I think what that did was it got me thinking about athletics and the human body really. I got interested in it right away and I started lifting weights, started exercising, started doing all of these things. So that got me to that certain point. Of course as you go through high school and all of college, what are you going to do with your life?
I knew that I had to do something with that but I also knew that healthcare was something I wanted to get into. I was premed. I was thinking I will be a doctor. Yeah. When you’re a kid, you have a certain like academic ability.
Ryan: Yeah, just be a doctor.
Jarlo: I will be a doctor.
Andy: Your SAT scores are good enough?
Jarlo: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah, you could consider it.
Jarlo: Maybe, right? Maybe. But then – so I was kind of into that, getting into school. I think OK, but then my mom actually said – you know, we were talking about physical therapy. There were some other people and my mom said, “My friend’s husband does PT.”
So I went in and he’s like, “I want you to go in and you go look at it.” Then I will tell you what. As soon as I went into that clinic, I was like this is what I want to do.
There are people in there. In particular – and I will say his name because he helped me get into PT school, Mike Tolin [0:20:00] [Phonetic]. He had – he would see something. It was just like you said. He could see somebody walk in, go into that, just do a little movement and he would say, “Oh, that’s that.” Put his hands on somebody, boom! Then how could you not want to be that?
Andy: It’s like magic.
Jarlo: It’s like magic, right? As soon as that happened, I was like well, I’m going to do this. So I figured I need to do that and then through all that. So therapy has been what? Sixteen years now. It has been a long time. So 16 years. So every patient I’ve had have had that opportunity to teach and I always had that mindset. I’m going to try and get better. I’m going to try and get better every time. One of my best friends who I think is the greatest PT I’ve ever meet Brian Lee.
Andy: Brian is good.
Jarlo: Brian is awesome. He had me thinking critically every minute of the day, every practice. We would call each other in between – it’s crazy.
Andy: Now you guys text back. Yeah.
Jarlo: In the beginning, those first I would say first three to five years, really focused, focused. So I think that helped me a lot. It’s not exercises. It’s not a specific thing. It’s that mindset of how can we make ourselves better and how can we teach better? How can we get people going?
[Music]Jarlo: Martial arts, I was kind of there for a while and take a lot of different things, wushu, taekwondo. I had my ranking in that and I thought it was dumb for a while. I was like oh, I’m done. I don’t need to do it. Then I was in Hawaii and I met my teacher Burton Richardson JKD Unlimited …
Andy: If you’re not a martial artist, you don’t know this but Burton Richardson is a legendary – he’s a very, very good person.
Jarlo: And that’s the thing too. The guy is just a legend.
Ryan: Yeah, he’s a great guy.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: So I started going to classes in Hawaii and I just kept going and I’m the kind of guy, if I like it, I show up. Those first six, seven years, it’s like I could count how many times I missed. When you do that, you get noticed because you keep coming and so I was very lucky. He let me participate in a few things here and there. He was like helping me learn how to teach just like you said with Mark and your teacher. He taught me how to teach. He has – just like it sounds like with your teacher is that really fine balance of being open to things but also being critical and saying, “OK, no.”
You test it out and he was very big on that. He tested out everything that he teaches. It works because he has shown it and he has shown that it works for real, with sparring and drills and all of that.
If it didn’t work, well it’s discarded. Maybe it can come back later and it’s interesting because the last few years, certain things that he put away, has come back because now he has found an environment where it works and that kind of thing.
Andy: That’s actually very interesting because a lot of times, you see something and you think, well, this doesn’t work and you just discard it and you never return to that idea. But maybe after a while, maybe that idea develops elsewhere or maybe you come to a different place where you can see a different value in it.
Ryan: You now know how to teach it.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: That’s right. That’s another thing you said is like even I talked to – I think it was a couple of weeks ago and it was like, yeah, pulling off things that I didn’t think I could do before. So that’s your thing …
Andy: That’s especially impressive from a lifelong martial artist who has been teaching for decades.
Jarlo: You have that mindset that you can keep growing and we talked about this actually at an interview with our friend Duff [0:23:26] [Phonetic] for our Alpha Posse and we talked about the growth mindset.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jarlo: If you really have that mindset that you can improve every time and you can, maybe just a little bit.
Andy: You can.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jarlo: But you have that feeling in your head, that mindset, that growth mindset we always talk about. Then it can happen. Keep your mind open enough to make that happen but critical enough to go, “Well, come on,” right? So that really influenced me a lot for everything we do here in GMB. We’re always open to things but we’re also willing to say, “You know what? Maybe not now. Maybe there’s going to be a different place for it later. But right now, no.”
Andy: Cool. So I think one of the things that we each touched on that’s really interesting is that how to teach better and I think that that’s something that’s really important to us because there’s a lot of information out there. There’s YouTube. If you guys haven’t noticed, there’s a thing called Google that has – I guess you just type any word in.
Ryan: It’s amazing.
Andy: And get like …
Ryan: So cool.
Andy: … a lot of information about it.
Jarlo: There are a lot of experts out there.
Andy: There are a lot of experts but what I think is really – one of the things that drive us is not just to present the information but to figure out what’s the most effective way to teach it.
Ryan: Is it necessary?
Andy: Yeah. Is this information necessary? If it is, how can we present it in a way not just to say, “Well, you should be able to do this,” or “Why can’t you do this?” or “I’ve given you the information. It’s up to you to do the work now.” Well yeah, it’s up to you to do the work but it’s up to the teacher to present the information in a way that the student can do the work.
Jarlo: And benefit from it.
Andy: And benefit from it, yeah. So that something that’s really big for us.
[Music]Andy: I do want to kind of switch gears also and get into some of the specifics of not just our teaching mentors but maybe where some of these movements came from.
Ryan: Oh, OK. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good.
Andy: Because we teach from a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different movements and it’s easy to say, oh well, that’s capoeira. That’s gymnastics or that’s B-boy or yoga or whatever. One of the things that we’ve been talking about since we’ve been in person here for the past few days is the first time you see something is kind of like an imprint in your mind, right? It’s going to – and if you see something in a martial arts context, every time you see that movement, after that, you’re going to think of it as like a kick or …
Ryan: From a particular system.
Andy: Yeah. And your first contact is like a filter, right? If that’s your context that you start seeing things through that lens from then on, if you’re – man, if you’re from Brazil and you see yoga, you think it’s gymnastika.
Ryan: Or even a good example and this came up this weekend was that like the way here in GMB when we do our plank. It’s with a hollow body. Now we put out a picture or video of maybe me – or someone else demonstrating this hollow body plank and someone from yoga said, “You’re doing it wrong.”
Jarlo: Yeah, yeah. You’re doing it wrong.
Ryan: And the thing is unfortunately, they don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish with that, right? But they have that mindset of OK, this is where I’m coming from so it has got to be this way or it has got to be this style or something.
Andy: Yeah. Not long ago …
Jarlo: You’re doing it wrong.
Ryan: Yeah, you’re doing it wrong.
Andy: Or like you showed a cartwheel on a video. One of them, a guy posted a comment like capoeira. Well, no. I don’t think there was any music. There was no opponent. You weren’t wearing white pants.
Jarlo: The berimbau wasn’t …
Andy: Yeah, there was no berimbau and it was not capoeira.
Ryan: Another thing too, I’ve never done capoeira.
Andy: It would be funny to see you training in capoeira.
Ryan: Yeah, it would actually. Yeah. Not going to happen.
Andy: So let’s talk about some of those things because – so we’ve got gymnastics. That’s an obvious influence. We’ve got martial arts. That’s an obvious influence. We’ve got yoga, Jarlo definitely a lot of yoga background.
Jarlo: My primary teacher is over in Hawaii. It was a few years ago. I started with her, Cathy Louise Broda over in Purple Yoga. If you’re ever in Hawaii, just drop in. Drop into her class. It’s well worth it. We’re talking a lot about that today because I do that extra session for these people over here at DKB Fitness.
Ryan: The lovely ladies.
Jarlo: Yeah.
Andy: The lovely ladies of DKB.
Jarlo: Showing a lot of those concepts that I learned from her. So I’m really informed by that. Now to say that – I can’t say that I’m a yoga teacher though.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: I can’t say it because a lot of it – and I said this before. If you’re going to do yoga, you should do yoga. If you’re going to do yoga because you think that’s the best way to stretch out, that’s probably not right.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: Right? Because that’s not their intention and they will tell you that too. Yoga isn’t about stretching or flexibility. Yoga is about doing yoga. Yoga is about doing those things that are yoga, in yoga, for being a yoga person, for being a yogi. So if that’s what you want, then you need to do that and it’s funny because oh yeah, yoga is stretching and the flexibility. But that’s only a little bit of a part of it, right?
So a lot of that is informed by her and of course they would have to – I have to adjust it for certain things because of the things I know from therapy. That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong the way that it was done before but we have certain goals that we have to meet. So I’m able to change it. So that’s good that I’m able to change it but I’m not a yoga teacher and I won’t get in trouble for changing it, right?
Andy: Right.
Jarlo: But it needs to be done and it’s done – I think it’s done the right way because it has been extremely helpful for a lot of people. But also it makes sense clinically in my respect.
Andy: So it’s a thing that you’re drawing on a yoga influence but it’s not in a yoga context.
Jarlo: That’s right.
Andy: You’re learning from yoga and applying it to fitness.
Jarlo: That’s right.
Andy: And whatever the students are needing.
Jarlo: That’s right.
Ryan: It’s a different purpose.
Andy: Yeah.
Jarlo: It’s like with martial arts. OK, martial arts, fighting, right?
Ryan: Right.
Jarlo: Not really.
Andy: Hopefully you’re not fighting very often.
Ryan: That’s right.
Jarlo: It should be a part of it, I think. I think it should be a part of it. Some people in different martial arts say it doesn’t have to be but I think it does. But it doesn’t have to be all of it. There’s no way – and if it’s all of it, then how could we be drawing from that influence and teaching people on these seminars? Because we’re not teaching them how to hold a knife and stick it into somebody or kicking. But we know from the movements and from the things we’ve learned from it that we’re able to translate that into better movement patterns for these people. So martial arts are very good for that obviously.
[Music]Andy: So it’s the same thing with gymnastics too because obviously we teach a lot of things that are related to gymnastics. We use gymnastic rings and other apparatus but we don’t …
Ryan: We are gymnasts and if we wanted to be gymnasts or become a gymnast, we would go to a gymnastics center and learn from a person who only teaches gymnastics. That’s not what it is. So our purpose is different, therefore we’re not focused on gymnastics.
Andy: Yeah. We’re not using the gymnastic rings to perform a rings routine in a gymnastics competition.
Ryan: Right, right.
Andy: We’re using them to build strength and mobility for things that non-gymnasts need in daily life.
Ryan: Exactly.
Andy: Right?
Jarlo: And some gymnastic movements are particularly well-suited for this.
Ryan: Right.
Andy: Yes, yes.
Jarlo: And some aren’t.
Andy: Some are not.
Ryan: Yeah. That’s why we can choose from different disciplines and it’s not that we just think oh yeah, we have to have that in here. No, it just matches for what we want to do with our purpose here in GMB and that’s why we’re using it.
Jarlo: It’s also too when we’re talking about this too is also that we won’t be so – when we’re talking about how there’s other people doing other things, right? So we don’t have to be so defensive about oh, we don’t do that.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jarlo: Right?
Andy: When somebody wants to practice a particular sport or practice another kind of discipline, that’s fine. That’s their goal.
Ryan: Right.
Andy: It’s not our job to say what your goal should be but given your goal, if you ask us for advice, we’re going to try to give you the benefit of what we do know.
Jarlo: Yeah, and then we know different people doing different things.
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly. So if you want to go and you want to do barbell squats or work on your deadlifts, hey do it.
Andy: We will send you to JC or Matt or somebody, right?
Ryan: Yeah, exactly.
[Music]Jarlo: Even within like the bodyweight community. How can we really be competitors for different people?
Ryan: Yeah, yeah.
Jarlo: Next week, you’re going to go with Mike Fitch.
Ryan: Mike Fitch, good example.
Jarlo: Global Bodyweight Training.
Andy: Right.
Jarlo: He’s a perfect example of someone taking from a lot of different influences and doing a really good job.
Andy: And being very upfront about the fact that he’s not teaching any of those things, yet he draws from all of them to teach his own thing.
Ryan: Right.
Jarlo: And he’s very good …
Andy: Which he says he did not invent.
Jarlo: Yeah, yeah. He didn’t invent squatting.
Andy: No. He didn’t?
Jarlo: No.
Andy: Who did?
Jarlo: I thought we did.
Ryan: We – yeah, I thought that too but apparently …
Andy: I thought we invented parallettes.
Jarlo: I think you invented P-bars.
Ryan: P-bars?
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah. And the pommel horse, but see, that’s an example of things because we used it but we decided nah, we’re not going to use it for …
Andy: Yeah, we did have requests for a pommel horse program.
Ryan: We did actually.
Andy: Yeah, we did. But it doesn’t fit in the dining room very well so we decided not to do that one.
Jarlo: So we un-invented that.
Ryan: Un-invented it.
Andy: We un-invented. What did we invent? We invented something.
Jarlo: I’m pretty sure we didn’t invent anything.
Ryan: No. I’m going to take no.
Jarlo: Oh man! We got to say we were able to invent something, right? That cracked me up a little bit.
Andy: We’ve go some proprietary exercises, don’t we?
Ryan: Yeah.
Andy: Some patent-pending processes.
Jarlo: Cracked me up.
Andy: We don’t.
Ryan: Yeah, there’s no …
Jarlo: I don’t think anybody does.
Ryan: Yeah, there’s no …
Jarlo: Let’s just say that outright right now.
Ryan: The movement is not original. It’s the expression of the person showing how they want to do it.
Jarlo: It’s just like you were saying today like you learned how to do crab from a slightly overweight Japanese.
Andy: Yeah. So I learned how to do back flips from a 50-pound overweight Japanese guy who was not a gymnast but I had a pretty good back flip for quite a number of years despite that challenge. It happens.
Jarlo: And these weren’t animal movements that you …
Andy: They were not animal – well, I did learn to do duck walks and rabbit hops when I was …
Jarlo: So ducks and rabbits.
Ryan: But no, they’re not called “rabbits”. They’re called “kangaroos”.
Andy: Yeah.
Ryan: See? All right? Because it really doesn’t matter what the name is.
Jarlo: I think this primal view does it better.
Ryan: I think so too. Primal is the way to go.
Andy: We’re joking but the point is like you did a lot of these things from a very young age. I did a lot of these things from a very young age and if we put out a video of us showing a movement that I learned at age seven, somebody will say, “You know, you should really give credit to somebody else.”
Jarlo: Yeah.
Ryan: Gymnastike National.
Andy: Oh, that’s Gymnastike or that’s Animal Flow or that’s – no, it’s a movement that people have been doing for probably hundreds or thousands of years that I learned before I knew what fitness was.
Jarlo: I’m pretty sure my kids learned how to crawl from a guru somewhere.
Ryan: From a guru.
Andy: Probably.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andy: Probably.
Jarlo: Right.
Ryan: But I think it was like from God himself that blessed them with that movement and …
Jarlo: Maybe.
Ryan: … came in a dream.
Andy: Well, they’re twins. So when one of them saw it in the dream, the other one did too.
Ryan: So that’s how it works.
Jarlo: Special.
Ryan: Special.
Andy: OK. So before we get nutty here, we’re going to wrap this up. But the point is, all this stuff has been out there and we all learn from different sources and there’s a lot of people teaching great stuff.
Jarlo: Very good stuff.
Ryan: Yes.
Andy: Some great teachers out there and if you’ve listened to us at all, you know that we really appreciate great teaching. So find a great teacher. It doesn’t really matter where things come from because it’s all the same. You just want to find somebody who has a passion for the good stuff.
Ryan: I want to add too that it’s – Andy mentioned to find a good coach and a good coach is a good coach for you.
Andy: Yes.
Ryan: Not necessarily what everyone says. This is the greatest coach out there. He might or she might be the greatest coach in the world for everyone else. But if that coach doesn’t match where you want to go or what you want to do …
Jarlo: It’s so important.
Ryan: Yeah. So it doesn’t really matter what you do. It’s how you interact with that coach and what that coach can do for you.
Andy: Do you need a Nobel literature laureate to teach you creative writing? No. You can probably learn enough about basic composition from your high school teacher. You don’t need to learn from Maya Angelou.
Jarlo: Yeah.
Andy: You don’t need the best person in the world to teach you basic stuff. You just don’t.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andy: So find somebody who’s a great fit for you.
Jarlo: It might take some time.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly.
Andy: It might take some time.
Ryan: Yeah, a lot of searching.
Andy: And it might not be us.
Ryan: That’s right.
Andy: But if it is, get in touch and we will help you out. So thanks for watching and listening and being a part of the posse. We’re always here for you.
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Hi, I'm Andy Fossett đź‘‹
A lifelong martial artist and former schoolteacher, Andy’s deeply concerned with autonomy and fitness education. As CEO of GMB Fitness, he’s dedicated to providing an open, accessible culture for both clients and staff to enjoy exploring more of what they’re truly capable of.
He's best known for his wildly off-topic rants on the GMB Podcast and spends the majority of his time eating burgers, sipping bourbon, and reading books.
