Al Kavadlo began his fitness journey in 1992 at the age of 13, and a decade later, he launched his career in the fitness industry. In 2009, Al started his blog and YouTube channel, which quickly gained traction, leading to a book deal with Dragon Door Publications.
His first book with Dragon Door, Raising The Bar, was released in 2012, followed by several more titles, including Get Strong, a collaboration with his brother Danny Kavadlo. Al is also recognized for his appearance in Dragon Door’s popular Convict Conditioning series.
In addition to his work with Dragon Door, Al has self-published several titles, available at FortifyTraining.com. To date, his books and programs have sold over a million copies worldwide.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Al Kavadlo about getting fit and strong without a gym.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How bodyweight training can calisthenics offer benefits in fitness programs.
– Why variations in calisthenics exercises increase engagement and creativity.
– How effective coaching involves listening, guiding, and allowing for rest.
– Why transitioning to minimalist footwear gradually improves foot health.
– How learning new movement patterns requires patience and integration time.
Connect with Al:
Guest Contact Info
Links Mentioned:
alkavadlo.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
Research is really clear for runners, walkers, hikers, getting stronger is better, and now you can’t go to the gym, but you might want to go back to the gym. I’m going to try and talk you out of that right now, so is my guest, who I’m going to introduce in just a second. But first, I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host for The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a healthy, happy, strong body. Starting with the feet first, because those things are your foundation. We’re going to break down the mythology, the propaganda, sometimes the outright lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to walk, to run, to hike, to do yoga, to do CrossFit, to do pretty much whatever you want to do and to do it enjoyably efficiently. And did I mention enjoyably? Because that’s the most important part. If you’re not having fun, do something different till you are.
We call it The MOVEMENT Movement podcast because we’re creating a movement about natural movement. We want to make natural movement or actually help people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice, the way we think of natural food. It’s a movement because that involves you spreading the word about this whole idea. What that means is go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You’ll find all the previous episodes, you’ll find all the places you can interact with this podcast on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and pretty much everywhere you can think of. And, of course, like and share and give us a thumbs up and hit the bell on YouTube. You know how to do it. In fact, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. It’s a really simple message.
So, let’s get started. I am really, really thrilled and there’s a better word. I can’t believe it’s taken us this long until I’m happy to introduce Al Kavadlo. Al, hey man, how are you?
Al Kavadlo:
Hey, hey. I know. It’s been a long time coming.
Steven Sashen:
It has been.
Al Kavadlo:
I think I might be the longest running Xero Hero that there is. I’ve been a brand ambassador pretty much since day one with you guys.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I think for a while it felt like you were practically living with us in the very early days, so it’s been a treat. Before we jump into that though, since I gave you no introduction other than your name, tell people who the hell you are and why you’re here.
Al Kavadlo:
Well, I’ll try to be as quick and concise as possible.
Steven Sashen:
Good luck with that.
Al Kavadlo:
I’ve been a personal trainer and a fitness expert for about 20 years. And my-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Get rid of the air quotes, man. I would say that you have rightly earned that title and appropriately earned that title.
Al Kavadlo:
I appreciate that.
Steven Sashen:
Many people haven’t. So ignoring that, so definite fitness expert, not air quotes.
Al Kavadlo:
I don’t know how long I’ve been an expert for, but I’ve been doing it as a career-
Steven Sashen:
There you go.
Al Kavadlo:
… for about 20 years. I’ve written some books and I’ve done some things. My whole niche and message is essentially what you alluded to earlier, that you don’t really need a gym to get strong and get in shape. You can just use your own body weight and very simple equipment, like a pull-up bar or a pair of gymnastics rings or parallel bars or the floor beneath your feet, and still get a great workout. So I’ve been teaching people how to get strong using calisthenics for a long time. Looks like you mentioned also earlier, now body weight training is more viable than ever because a lot of gyms are not operating and even ones that are are at limited capacity. People are just a little bit more hesitant about going to a gym in general. And it’s been a good thing for the calisthenics community in some ways.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I know that home fitness equipment has just gone through the roof in the last couple of months. Have you seen a similar thing with people really reaching out to try to find a less expensive, more available alternative?
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve had been doing books on body weight training since … I put out my first one in 2010.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Al Kavadlo:
So I’ve done eight books over the course of the decade, but I did see an uptick in sales for everything when this started because people suddenly started looking for resources about how to do body weight training. And I was kind of ahead of the game in a sense. A lot of people have said about everything that’s happened this year, that it’s just kind of made things that were inevitable happen faster.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
And I think that what’s going on in the fitness industry is a good example of that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I love the whole idea that people are kind of taking it on as their own personal project rather than just doing something. I mean, people like simple answers, and sometimes they’ll join gyms because they think they’re going to find a simple answer, which is not the case, and it’s often just not even valid because what works for this person is not necessarily going to work for you. So I love that people are figuring it out.
Al Kavadlo:
To be clear, I don’t really have anything against gyms. I’ve trained people at gyms, especially when it’s cold out, you can’t always be in the park.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
I mean, I want gyms to be able to reopen. In New York, they’re still all shut. I have a lot of friends that are trainers and gym owners, and I want those people to be able to get back to doing what they love to do. Anything that supports someone staying on track with their fitness goals, whether they’re more motivated by going to the gym or more motivated by not going to the gym. There’s something for everybody here. I’ve been just trying to offer an alternative for a long time, and now that alternative is becoming sort of one of the only choices.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I guess let me phrase it or frame it a little differently. What I find really interesting is that people are recognizing there’s more to being fit or getting strong than going to a gym because … So I mean, for example, there’s a $400 piece of equipment that I’m looking to buy, and they have them in very few gyms. I found one that’s on sale. To be totally transparent, not that it’s a secret, it’s a reverse hyper machine. So I’ve got a compromised spine and I’m a sprinter, so reverse hyper is really good for (a), helping with some traction on the spine, and (b), building glute and hamstring strength. And there’s really very few things that can work that way.
But more importantly, what I’m doing around the idea of using that reverse hyper is a whole bunch of body weight stuff. I do a bunch of crazy high box jumps and one legged squats in various ways and things that are also relevant for sprinting that I don’t need a gym for. But if I were going to a gym, and if I were that kind of person, I have this arsenal of here’s the machines that make the most sense, here’s the body weight stuff that makes the most sense for what I’m doing, for who I am. That’s the part that I find really interesting, because I’m hearing people talk about that online as well.
Al Kavadlo:
There are ways to do a similar sort of movement pattern without using that exact apparatus. I’m sure you can see some of them, like back bridge variations and things like that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, sadly, I can’t do bridge stuff because I got a compromised spine. For the fun of it, I have a grade 2 L5-S1 spondy, so anything that’s bridging makes it so that I can’t feel my legs. So that’s not good, I’m told.
Al Kavadlo:
Even like shoulders on the ground, feet flat, just like a hip up and down a little bit.
Steven Sashen:
As long as I’m not doing any lumbar hyperextension, I’m okay. So I can do glute bridges, and I do those.
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
Steven Sashen:
But as a Masters All-American sprinter, I could do glute bridges all day long and-
Al Kavadlo:
Sure. Even on one leg, they’re probably still relatively easy for you.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. It’s too simple. I mean, I definitely need the extra resistance. Let me back up just for the fun of it. I’m going to put you on the spot. Since this is The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, can you think of any movement thing that you would want to share with humans that they could try and experiment or feel right now, I don’t know, just for the hell of it, just for the fun of it?
Al Kavadlo:
The exercise we were just talking about is a really good one for runners who are inexperienced in that type of strength training, just to lay on your back, bend your knees, put your feet flat on the floor, a couple inches from your butt, and push your hips up into the air. All your weight will be on your feet and your shoulders, and you’re basically trying to make a straight line from your knees to your shoulders. Because you don’t want to arch your back like you were saying before.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
You don’t want to be sagging too low either. You want your abs engaged, you want your glutes engaged, you want your hamstrings engaged. You’ll feel your quads too, and maybe even your upper back and your spinal muscles helping get up there. And those are muscles that are so important to runners that sometimes don’t get hit as well, even if you’re doing things like squats.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
You might not be getting as much glute and low back activation as you can with a hip bridge like that. And then if that’s easy for you, try it with one leg in the air and try it with the other leg in the air.
Steven Sashen:
I’m trying to think for people who may be sitting down, is there a seated version, maybe something isometric or something?
Al Kavadlo:
I hope if they’re sitting down, they can get up and they got four feet of floor next to them. That’s all-
Steven Sashen:
I know.
Al Kavadlo:
You really involve a lot of equipment there, Steven. It’s just the floor.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, it’s not that. Sometimes, I mean, I don’t know how much people are driving now, but sometimes people are listening to this in a car. There’s every now and then I try to think of what can you do in a car, or I think of isometric-
Al Kavadlo:
And that you have to keep looking at the road also, so you can’t do neck things. Neck circles isn’t going to work in a car. Because that’s what I was going to say if you’re sitting at a computer, you can do some neck circles, at least open that up a little bit. That sort of thing.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a funny thing-
Al Kavadlo:
I think when you’re driving, you should be focused on driving. You maybe shouldn’t be trying to get a workout in the car.
Steven Sashen:
Come on, Al. You’re at a stoplight. You got 20 seconds to kill.
Al Kavadlo:
Well, if you’re at a stoplight and you know that it’s not going to change for a little bit, then you can maybe stretch your neck up a little bit, stretch it to the side.
Steven Sashen:
So I want to back up and talk about your history, because my memory is that body weight and calisthenics. The whole sort of calisthenics, oh boy, I got so many thoughts about this. Let me start with this one actually. The calisthenic and street fitness movement has evolved dramatically in the last five, 10 years. What have you seen? How did you get here and what have you seen? How has it evolved and changed?
Al Kavadlo:
I was a trainer at a gym at the beginning of my career, a big box gym, doing a lot of conventional workouts with people, weight training and machines and things like that. And I always did basic calisthenics, push-ups, pull-ups, body weights, squats, dips. Along with a lot of other people at the same time, just a collective unconscious thing started arising where people started getting more into esoteric calisthenics. And I started seeing things like the one-legged pistol squat or a muscle-up or human flag, and being really intrigued by these things, and little by little, wanting to learn more of them. And I found myself in my own workouts, and also with my clients, kind of gradually getting away from doing conventional workouts and getting more into esoteric body weight stuff, and finding that, like you were alluding to earlier, that stuff works as well, or in some cases, better for some people than a lot of the conventional gym workouts.
This was around the time when YouTube was starting to become somewhat of a viable thing. Somebody happened to suggest to me, “Hey, maybe throw some videos up on YouTube.” It was certainly not … Nowadays, I feel like a lot of people get into posting online with an expectation of, “Okay, I’m trying to do this to reach as many people as possible.” There’s an awareness that the internet can make you a star of sorts.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
When I started doing this, the internet was so new, it was just kind of like, “Let me just throw these videos up there. What the heck?” And then little by little over time, as was happening with a lot of other calisthenics people, more and more people started to see this stuff and get interested in it. And I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write some books and make some online programs and put a lot of stuff out there before there was quite as much saturation in the market.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
Just to a certain extent is true for your brand also, there’s a lot more people making barefoot shoes now than there were 10 years ago.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
You had a little bit of a head start on some of that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. My favorite is the people who say, “I was looking for something kind of like this and I couldn’t find it,” and then I made this thing and it’s an exact copy of something that we’ve done. And then I look in the database and saw they bought our product three years before they did that. But I’m cool with as many people doing this as possible because we’re just trying to raise awareness.
Al Kavadlo:
Absolutely. That’s exactly how I feel about bodyweight training. I don’t feel threatened in any way by anyone else in the field who’s doing this, who’s succeeding. If anything, it’s great because it pushes more of the door open for the message to reach more people.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and that’s one of the things that I alluded to before that I find really interesting, I’m curious of your thoughts, is it seems like there’s almost this split in the body weight and calisthenic community where there’s the street fitness thing, which is guys doing unbelievably insane stuff. I mean, look, I’m a former All-American gymnast from 40 years ago, and back then the number of guys who could do a planche was, you could count them on two hands. Now, if you can’t do a planche, you can’t get into the club. So there’s the crazy, crazy elite-
Al Kavadlo:
I think it’s the Planche Club at least.
Steven Sashen:
There’s definitely a Planche Club. For people who don’t know a planche, imagine doing a pushup and then having your feet off the ground. So it’s just your hands on the ground and then your body is parallel to the ground. It’s crazy. So there’s this extreme version and then there’s what normal humans could, should, would be doing. Talk about where you are in that world or what you’ve seen as well.
Al Kavadlo:
I’m somewhere more toward I guess the beginner-intermediate end of the spectrum in terms of who my target audience is, because I’m looking to inspire people who are relatively new to fitness or who are relatively new to calisthenics. Sometimes it’s nice to show somebody an advanced move, like a planche or a human flag, just so they get a glimpse of what’s possible eventually. But the programs that I write for the most part are not geared towards people who want to learn a planche or a human flag. I do have one book called Street Workout, which really is like an encyclopedia. It has everything from the basic stuff up to the really advanced stuff included in it. So that’s sort of like the catch-all book.
But my best-selling programs are the ones that are intended for people who are working towards doing better pushups, maybe doing a one-legged squat, maybe doing multiple pull-ups, maybe a muscle-up is a reach move for people. Although like you said, in the street workout, in that high-level world, of course you could do a muscle-up. You’ve got to be able to do 10 muscle-ups to even hang with some of those guys.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
But it’s the same thing in the world of running, right? I mean, most people who run a marathon aren’t running a two-and-half-hour marathon. They’re running a four-hour marathon, a five-hour marathon. The elites obviously are inspiring a lot more people to get into it, but those people are never going to be performing at that level. And that’s okay.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I was just thinking about this. Well, if we talk about, what’s the word I’m looking for, impressive strength moves, impressive bodyweight things. I mean, you mentioned the human flag. We talked about planches, one-legged squats. If you had to think of the one that people might be able to master the quickest, that’s going to be the best bang-for-the-buck-for-party trick, what would you put on that list?
Al Kavadlo:
The easiest move to do that looks the most impressive is basically what we’re-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
I don’t know. I mean, there’s really nothing that I would say is easy, that is going to impress anyone that much. But there are certainly things easier than a planche or a human flag, like an L-sit is a good intermediate skill, that I think if you can pop on the floor. That’s something that I’m sure you remember from your gymnast days. Hold yourself up and put your legs out on an L and hold that for a few seconds. I think that’s a pretty cool move that’s attainable for most people with a little bit of practice and training.
Steven Sashen:
I’m putting them in order in my mind as well.
Al Kavadlo:
Maybe an elbow lever, which looks kind like a planche but your arms are bent and you’re resting your elbows on your body. That’s certainly … To someone who doesn’t know the difference between a planche and an elbow lever, they might look equally impressive, but that’s an easier way to do it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s actually a good catch. For people who aren’t watching to visualize this, so again, imagine that you lie flat on the ground, this is not how you get there, but the hell of it, and you put your palms on the ground, your fingers are going to be pointing towards your toes, and then squeeze your arms into your body as much as you can. So basically your elbows are practically in your stomach, and then you’re going to have then be parallel to the ground. So you’re more balancing than anything else.
Al Kavadlo:
The leverage of the elbows is what supports you.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, exactly.
Al Kavadlo:
That’s elbow lever.
Steven Sashen:
Now that I think of it, that’s actually the most impressive thing I can think of, is the easiest thing involves a partner, which is a leveraged planche. So this is one, again, I’m describing for people listening or watching, where you get in a push-up position and then your partner faces your feet and sits on your shoulders and hooks their feet under your thighs and slowly leans back. If you get it just right with the right partner, it’s not a lot of strength, it’s just a lot of balance, but it looks like you’re in Cirque du Soleil.
Al Kavadlo:
That’s the key to that stuff with the partners, is you have to really know each other and be able to counter each other. Because if one person goes too quick, then they’re going to drag the other person along the other way. But like you said, when you’re able to get the scales evenly, that’s the key to all those moves.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s a super impressive one. So after elbow lever, because I was flashing back, as gymnasts, we all learned how to do human flags, which is just super, super fun, and it doesn’t strike me as like … I’m trying to think of which was harder for me, human flag or one-legged pistol squat. But either of those, if someone’s going to try and really do good party tricks, those would be my top two for knock those out. But here’s a course.
Al Kavadlo:
The thing about a flag, there has to be something to do it on. If you don’t have a good pole or a good surface to grab.
Steven Sashen:
There’s always-
Al Kavadlo:
Whereas a pistol squat or a handstand or whatever, you got a little floor space, boom, you can do it.
Steven Sashen:
That’s true. That’s a good point. When I was in New York and I was doing some acting for a living, I had a card that I gave as kind of like a business card. That was me doing a flag, but the way the picture was taken is, it just looked like I was hanging vertically. And then you have to suddenly realize that the buildings were facing the wrong way. And then people would turn the card and go, “What the? Wait, is that a camera trick?” It’s like, “No, no.” And then I would just go do it. They’d get very impressed. That made me think of-
Al Kavadlo:
Human flag always gets attention. That’s for sure.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a good one. So there’s another thing about calisthenics. I did something during COVID, like the beginnings of COVID, where I was working really hard and just needing to just do something with my body. And I got into a push-up and a pull-up challenge. What was really interesting in both of those was learning so many variations of each exercise. I think that a lot of people, they think of push-ups as a single thing or pull-ups or chin-ups as a single thing, and not realizing there’s so many other variations that some are easier than others, some are harder than others. There are some that are way more interesting than others, more challenge. Can you just give people an intro to the width and breadth of what are seemingly simple exercises and things they might be able to try?
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah. The thing with bodyweight training that’s essentially different than weight training at the gym is that instead of changing the weight on a barbell or a kettlebell or a dumbbell and doing the exact same movement pattern, you can alter little things about the leverage of the exercise itself to make it harder or to make it less difficult. So like a push-up, for example, I think the easiest way to illustrate this point is just to think of a push-up where your feet are elevated on a surface higher than in your hands, as opposed to one where they’re both on the floor. When your feet are higher, you’re offsetting the weight, you’re putting more of it in your hands, you’re making it feel like the equivalent of doing a bench press with more weight. But you’re doing that by altering the movement slightly. And, of course, the opposite is true too. If you elevate your hands, now you’ve made the push-up less difficult, you have less weight loaded into your hands.
And then beyond that, obviously taking an arm off the ground completely and doing a one-arm push-up is going to be even harder than a feet-elevated one. And there’s steps and increments in between. And that’s true for everything. It’s true for a squat. It’s true for a pull-up. It’s true for a planche even. There’s guys out there who are doing planches on their fingertips on one hand. It’s like the spectrum of fitness is so far-reaching and feel like it keeps expanding in both directions as people keep breaking new records and getting fitter. On the other side of things, obesity is getting more out of control, and it’s just so weird that those things coexist at the same time. But here we are.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s a good point. Well, one of the things that I really appreciate about your books, some different than others obviously, and you can talk about this in a bit, is that you do give both the width and breadth or the depth and breadth, if you will, for individual exercise. So you have a bunch of push-up variations, a bunch of pull-up variations, often graded here are the easier ones, here are the harder ones. And I would just encourage people, whether they’re finding your books or finding you online, to play around with these because it really, for me, it’s been so much fun to have this bigger, more arrows in my quiver, if you will.
So like when I go out on the track on the weekends and I want to do something, just some strength training before or after, usually after, just to sit around going, “What do I want to work on today? What’s my favorite one today? Do I want to do some wide grip push-up thing? Do I want to do chin-ups? Do I want to do pull-ups? Do I want to do something?” I mean, just all these different options that frankly I just didn’t have in my brain before. And the fun part, the fun quotient is elevated by having more opportunities and more options.
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah, I mean that’s what you said at the beginning of this podcast, is if you’re not having fun doing it, then what’s the point, right? I think that that’s a big part of what’s made calisthenics popular and why I like it, is it does have that playful element to it, and that element of just, like you said, trying things out like a practice, it’s not quite as rigid as some other forms of strength training. I think for people like you and myself, we like to have a little bit more freedom to experiment and have a little more creative input into our own workouts.
Steven Sashen:
I just had a flashback to when I was in high school and was doing a lot of exercise stuff, obviously for gymnastics. In fact, so much of the body weight and calisthenics stuff is what gymnasts have been doing for ages because they don’t typically go into the weight room very much.
Al Kavadlo:
Right. Those guys are pretty darn strong.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, absolutely. One of the push-up variations that you just reminded me of is, we used to do chair push-up so you’re three chairs, one for your feet, one for each hand, and you just get a nice wide stance, if you will, for your hands. So you’re getting really, really deep. We used to just do those all day every day. Oh, my god. Sorry, I just had the bigger memory. You’re going to love this.
My first day of junior high school, our gymnastics coach hands the six or seven of us who decided we were going to try gymnastics a sheet of 10 to the inch graph paper. He says every one of those squares is 10 push-ups. Whoever fills out the sheet front and back first wins a coke. We were a bunch of competitive 13-year-olds, and we’d come in the morning, it’s like, “How many push-ups did you do yesterday?” “200.” “Oh man, I only did 150.” And then we’d drop and do 50 more. Then the other guy would do 50, and then we would do 50. I mean, we got to the point where we were doing, not at one time, but over the course of a day, a thousand push-ups a day just to beat the other guy.
Al Kavadlo:
Wow. Was it really about the soda then at that point? Or it was more about the ego thing?
Steven Sashen:
It was all about the ego thing. It was all to see … It was the competitive thing. I actually met a young man at a high school track meet, and he said he wanted to be a college decathlete. I told him this story of we were doing a thousand push-ups a day. He goes, “I can’t do a thousand push-ups a day.” I said, “Yeah, we couldn’t either when we started.” I was just waiting to see if he was going to drop and do 50, but he just kind of got depressed. And I went, “Oh, that’s not the right attitude to have.”
Al Kavadlo:
It’s just amazing what the human body can get conditioned to. Ultra running, for example, I remember when that was a new thing, and not that long ago when I was like, “What? Somebody ran a hundred miles? That’s amazing.” And it still blows my mind because I’ve never run a distance anywhere near that much. But now, lots of people run a hundred miles. It’s not as much of a shocking thing anymore, at least if you’re aware of that community.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you know another thing that’s evolved a lot that is no longer shocking it used to be? It’s all over you.
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah, yeah, it’s true. I remember when I first saw the back of Guns N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction when I was a kid, and they had three tattoos. Oh, my god, those guys are such badass tattoos. And I have quite a few more than that myself now, as you probably noticed. So yeah, standards just change over time.
Steven Sashen:
What was your first tattoo?
Al Kavadlo:
The first one I got was this tiger right here on my shoulder.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. So what inspired that?
Al Kavadlo:
You can see how much faded it is compared to this one that’s about, I don’t know, 20 years more recent, right underneath it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I am art-free and ink-free at the moment, but people who really make that kind of commitment, have you gotten anything where you’ve just gone, “Oh, no”?
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah, there’s a couple that didn’t come out as good as I was hoping they might or that maybe didn’t age as well as others, but that’s life. One of the things I like about tattoos is you have to live with them. I mean, I know people get tattoos removed, but generally they’re permanent. I feel like so much of life, people always wanted to take back things, and it’s okay to be able to change your mind, it’s good to be able to evolve, but sometimes you just have to live with having made a bad decision, and that makes you a better person. So I have a few tattoos that I feel like they did that for me.
Steven Sashen:
What? Any ex-girlfriend names?
Al Kavadlo:
Thankfully no names, thankfully no names.
Steven Sashen:
What about actually current wife and child names?
Al Kavadlo:
I do not have either of their names. Grace and I have a matching tattoo. We both got this diamond right here in the same spot for our first year wedding anniversary.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s splendid.
Al Kavadlo:
That’s our tattoo for each other.
Steven Sashen:
And to let people know, so your wife Grace is also a major body weight and calisthenic fitness person. What’s it like having this in the family? And what are your thoughts about now that you have a child? I mean, we don’t have kids, but I kept thinking, boy, if I had kids, I’d be a dangerous parent because as a gymnast, I mean I did a lot of crazy, crazy crap, and there’s no way I would ever not have my child do things that made me look safe.
Al Kavadlo:
Well, I think that maybe some mainstream parents would have the impression that you were a dangerous parent, but I don’t think you would be a dangerous parent at all because I know you’re a thoughtful person who, even though you like to push boundaries, you’re aware that they exist.
Steven Sashen:
I mean dangerous, like one day we’re at a restaurant and there’s some kids jumping up and down on the bench seats of the restaurant and the parents are yelling, “Stop doing that,” and I was thinking, if it was me, I would’ve go, “Stop doing that. Springs are better on this bench. You get more altitude over here.”
Al Kavadlo:
Grace and I encourage our kid to exercise a lot. We take her to the playground pretty much every day that it’s nice out. She’s basically made a playground at the home, just climbing on everything and going up and down all the time. We want her to be physically active. We encourage that. But at the same time, when you are out at a public space and a kid is doing things that are not socially okay, you do have to sometimes-
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s another one.
Al Kavadlo:
Because I don’t love to be a disciplinarian either. That’s definitely been a challenge for me as a parent, because I’ve always, as a trainer, part of what I think has made me unique and stand out is that I’m not a disciplinary type of trainer. A lot of people, I think especially when I got started in the business, the idea of a trainer or a coach was that they were going to be a drill sergeant. They were going to be a hard person on you. I always did the opposite and had success with that method. So I’m trying to be a gentle parent, but sometimes you got to lay the smack down.
Steven Sashen:
How have you dealt with what has become sadly a fitness mantra of no pain, no gain?
Al Kavadlo:
Well, by doing exactly what I was just alluding to a minute ago, trying to be the antithesis of that. So I’m a big believer in the old cliche to be the change you want to see. So if you feel like, “Oh, why aren’t more people doing this?” then you should be the person to do that. So that’s kind of how I fell into everything that I’ve done in my career.
Steven Sashen:
If somebody comes to you or you see that they definitely have that attitude that they’ve got to be enduring something unpleasant to get something they think they want, how do you work with them about that?
Al Kavadlo:
It depends a lot on the individual. I think something that makes for a successful coach is not necessarily having stock go-to things, but being prepared to listen to the person and hear them out. And then based on what they told you, use your experience to guide them in the direction as gently as possible. I think one of the worst things you can do as a coach or as a parent or just as someone in general who’s trying to convince anyone of anything is flat out tell them that they’re wrong. You got to listen to people and hear them out and find areas of common ground where you agree. And then and only then are you able to maybe gently make a suggestion. Even when somebody comes to you asking for your guidance, if you’re not gentle about how you deliver it, they’re not going to be receptive to it.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a tricky thing on my-
Al Kavadlo:
Unless they want a drill sergeant, like some people do. So I don’t know.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, some people like that. It’s a tricky thing on my end of the equation because on the one hand, there’s plenty of evidence that modern athletic footwear is fundamentally wrong. So on the one hand, we want to really call it out and be somewhat confrontational.
Al Kavadlo:
And that works. People respond to that. I don’t think-
Steven Sashen:
Some people do.
Al Kavadlo:
… that they don’t. Especially in an advertising sort of setting, if you’re trying to catch someone’s attention quickly and on the web, there’s so much vying for your attention all the time. So I was referring more to if I’m actually working with somebody in person one-on-one.
Steven Sashen:
No, but my point is that what you’re saying is still true. It’s an interesting balancing act. You’re right, I mean to be confrontational and controversial has value. It also comes with the side dish of people are going to tell you you have your head up your butt and then you have to deal with that, so you’re cultivating a certain kind of relationship that is both good and bad. The flip side is, I’m thinking about, there’s a Facebook group called Running Shoe Geeks, and somebody posted a picture of one of our shoes and was raving about it, and a number of people are like, “If I ran in those, I’d break my ankles, my hamstrings would explode, my mortgage rate would go up. I’d get Ebola,” whatever it was, and finally-
Al Kavadlo:
That’s stupid hearing that since the brand began from runners, and people just don’t get it.
Steven Sashen:
But again, but the thing that was interesting with what I did is I jumped in, I said, “Look, if you want to run in the shoes that you currently have, go for it. I’m not going to tell you not to. But when you take them off at the end of the day or at the end of your run, you might want to … If you just want something for active recovery to let your feet bend and move and flex and feel and get some circulation going, or if you want to just have something comfortable to relax in or something that … There’s a study from Sarah Ridge at BYU that shows if you just walk in minimalist footwear, you can build foot strength just like doing an actual foot exercise program. If any of that sounds interesting, just try these for some casual, use when you’re not running.”
And it just ended the conversation. People had no response to that because, like you said, in that way, I was trying to meet them where they were. I mean, sometimes I half jokingly say, we’re the heroin of footwear because I know that if they start doing that, then they’re going to go, “Yeah, maybe I’ll try going for a little run and see what happens.” The next thing they know, they’ll-
Al Kavadlo:
Right. Once you have them wearing it at all, then yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, there’s no turning back. I mean, once you go from having your toes not squeezed together, you never want to go back to squeezing them together.
Al Kavadlo:
I think the other thing that happens is, people are so deconditioned that they try to do too much too quickly, and this happens a lot in strength training and calisthenics too. I hear the same type of stuff. People see me doing human play like, “Oh, if I did that, my shoulder would pop out.”
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Al Kavadlo:
It’s like, “Well, you’re probably right. It would, but if you built yourself up to it gradually, your shoulders would be so strong that they could do it and they wouldn’t pop out.” People who are used to running in something that has a tremendous amount of conditioning and have never given their feet the chance to develop, if they suddenly try to go out for a five mile or a pair of Xero Shoes on day one, it is going to jack them up.
Steven Sashen:
Which nobody-
Al Kavadlo:
But that’s not the fault of the shoe.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Nobody would suggest that.
Al Kavadlo:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, we hear it every now and then. Where we hear it from most is people who put on shoes like ours, and they’re so happy, they’re so comfortable. They go for a little run and they go, “This is great,” and then they just keep going. During the course of that run, they get tired and their form reverts back to something that’s not necessarily good. I always say calf pain, achilles pain, knee pain, or any kind of pain, totally optional. You don’t have to have any of it if you wear-
Al Kavadlo:
I remember when I first got into, even before I switched to wearing minimalist shoes, when I just changed my running style and started running more toward my forefoot, I couldn’t believe how sore my calves were. I had that same feeling of like, “Oh my god, I hurt myself.” And then two days later, they felt fine. I tried it again. I’m like, “Actually, this does kind of feel better.” And then they were never really that sore ever again after that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
But I think a lot of people have that one first shock to their system. They’re like, “Whoa, I’m not doing this.” But the body just has to adapt to that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. There’s two things that I find really interesting, and I’m putting air quotes around interesting. I find it kind of annoying. One is what you just said, is people will do something and they do a little too much too soon. They have not the right form that allows them to not have any of these little aches and pains that will go away. And their first reaction, “Oh, see, this doesn’t work because look, I’m feeling a little sore,” when it’s just like you said, if you just slow down, chill out, let yourself build up slowly over time, it can all be fine.
The other one is, oh, forgetting that the process of learning something new, like learning to run where you’re not overstriding a heel or striking it, and instead being a four-foot lander with your feet underneath your body, that if you’re learning a new movement pattern, it’s going to take a little time. And the way it works is, at first you try it and it’s going to feel weird, and then you’re going to rest, and it’s during the resting period where your brain integrates these new patterns. So then a couple of days later, you try again and you’re a little better, but that frustration is not a sign that it’s hard, you should stop. It’s a sign that your brain is trying to lay down new neural pathways that when you rest, will actually get integrated, and people forget that process of learning for, I’m thinking about running, but I imagine it’s similar for what you do as well.
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah. I actually just had a conversation with a client of mine somewhat recently where I was kind of explaining that. This is a guy who runs a contracting business, and I was saying to him, “If you have your workers working all day and then you have them come back the next day and expect them to work all day, by the third day, they need a day off or they’re not going to be efficient anymore.” And he was somebody who had a little bit of that no pain, no game mentality. I was telling him, I was like, “You have to take some rest.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
Because he was just wanting to train hard day after day after day and was asking me, “Oh, why am I sore? Why does my shoulder hurt?” I was like, “This is why your shoulder hurts, man.” So I think that explaining it to him in a way that related to his world helped him understand it, and hopefully he is going to find that balance a little bit more.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and you just reminded me of a thing that I’ve been very aware of of late, that I’m curious what your experience has been both personally and professionally, at 58 and change right now, the most annoying thing is how long it takes for me to recover. There’s so much that I want to do that my brain thinks I can do that my body goes, “Oh, no, no, no, you’re grossly mistaken.” And that’s been very tricky to adjust to. I mean, early on when I got back into sprinting, it took me maybe two years until I learned that when I have the thought, “Let me just do one more,” that’s when I need to stop and not do that one more.
Al Kavadlo:
It’s like drinking, right?
Steven Sashen:
Say it again?
Al Kavadlo:
It’s like drinking.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, exactly.
Al Kavadlo:
Let me just have one more drink, then it’s all over.
Steven Sashen:
Always a bad thought, especially if a drink has an umbrella in it or it doesn’t taste like anything. I’ll never forget the first time someone gave me a Long Island iced tea and I didn’t know what it was. Holy smokes. I think I woke up in Utah. That was crazy. And I’m not even a drinker. It was just like, “Oh, this is very tasty.” Or an Alabama slammer, which is the fruit punch version of a Long Island iced tea. Those things are pure evil.
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah. To your earlier point, it’s definitely true that as you get older, you have to recover a little bit more, and it’s a hard thing to cope with when you were an athlete in your youth and you can train hard every single day, and you kind of got used to that to readjust your expectations of what your body can handle and to respect those limits, because when you’re young, you kind of do the opposite.
Steven Sashen:
Totally.
Al Kavadlo:
You keep pushing beyond when you want to stop, and your body can still recover from that sometimes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I have vivid memories of, we just had some big weightlifting session or something, and the next day, we’re gymnasts, we’re going to go work out, and just feeling so sore I could barely move. But the whole idea was just do a little stretching, a little whatever, just till the soreness doesn’t bother you. The idea of taking a rest didn’t exist in our minds. We just had to deal with or get over the soreness, and eventually it worked, but that is just not the way it works now. This just popped into my head. I was going to say it this way: There’s a bunch of older fitness guys that I know, I won’t mention them by name, who are very, let’s say, financially successful, who the way they have dealt with this is they’re all taking drugs and-
Al Kavadlo:
Testosterone.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, some variation of testosterone. Some of them will say that it’s just hormone replacement therapy and that they’re getting back to “normal” or a high level of normal despite the fact that they were asymptomatic before. Have you dealt with people who are wrestling with the idea of taking some sort of hormones or performance-enhancing products?
Al Kavadlo:
I really have very, very little experience with anything related to steroids. I’ve never taken them myself. I’ve never advised anyone on how to take them. If I had clients who were taking them, it wasn’t something that we discussed as part of our training. I don’t think that I have had clients who were taking them. So I feel like that’s more of a thing on the West Coast and where you are than it is here, but maybe I’m just taking-
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know how much it’s out here. I mean, here-
Al Kavadlo:
Maybe I just thought I was aware of it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, here-
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah, I’ve heard of older the guys doing that. Frankly, I just don’t know. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Maybe it is okay. I mean, I could certainly sympathize with the idea of being in my 60s or 70s and being like, “Damn, I used to perform differently, and I miss that and wanting something to be able to …” So yeah, I really don’t know.
Steven Sashen:
Well, yeah, and I haven’t either, but I mean, out here around Boulder, Colorado, it’s all free-range, organic testosterone. You’ve got to make sure that it’s fair trade, organic, free-range, gluten-free. The gluten-free testosterone is-
Al Kavadlo:
There you go. That’s good for you.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s way more expensive too, and not as satisfying, strangely. It’s like close to testosterone, but it’s not as good as real testosterone.
Al Kavadlo:
This is definitely outside of my wheelhouse.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah. No, you and me both.
Al Kavadlo:
But to your point about recovering slower, I mean, I’m 40 now, I’ll be 41 in a few weeks, I still consider myself relatively young, and I still think I have a lot of good years ahead of me, but I’m definitely not able to do what I could 10 years ago in terms of recovery. I can still perform just about at the same level, but then I just need to rest for two or three days afterwards.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s one of the reasons that-
Al Kavadlo:
I have rested for two days before.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, right. Well, it’s one of the reasons that I’m very deliberate about not going into a gymnastics gym because I know that I could throw all the moves that I was doing 40 years ago once.
Al Kavadlo:
Right. Then you’ll be hurt in the next day.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, it would be more than hurting the next day, guaranteed. It was also, actually, it’s funny, I did a standing backflip. This was two years ago, the last time I did one. Haven’t thrown one in a little while. This is going to sound hyperbolic when I say it, but I’d probably done a hundred thousand of them up until that point. There was a time where I was doing about a hundred a day, long story. But what was interesting is that when I did one this last time, I must-
Al Kavadlo:
You’re a guy who likes reputation, right?
Steven Sashen:
Well, no, it was actually-
Al Kavadlo:
You do a thousand push-ups. You’ve run thousands of miles. You do backflips.
Steven Sashen:
No, I don’t run thousand of miles.
Al Kavadlo:
Maybe over the course of your life, I’m sure you’ve run thousands, thousands of miles.
Steven Sashen:
Maybe. As a sprinting workout, a long sprinting workout, including warmups is maybe 2 or 3K, maybe.
Al Kavadlo:
Well, that’ll add up though, right? You’ve been doing it for a long time.
Steven Sashen:
But I haven’t been. I took a 30-year break. So it’s one of those like when the whole idea that 10,000 hours to master something came out, I immediately said, “Oh, that’s complete bullshit.” And my first two thoughts were, I don’t know one gymnast who’s ever put in 10,000 hours, you’d be dead by the time you did that, or one sprinter who’s ever been able to put in 10,000 hours. You just can’t do it. Your body’s not wired for that. If you do the math, I’ve done the math before, just imagine 10,000 hours over the career of a gymnast or a sprinter, which let’s say it’s 15 years.
Al Kavadlo:
Right. When they’re training at their peak intensity. We’re not counting warmups and things like that. Right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just like real training. It is like you do the math and there’s no way. Especially when you see some of these gymnasts who are in their teens, they’ve been doing it for six, seven years, there’s no way they could put in 10,000 hours in six or seven years or 10 years.
Al Kavadlo:
I never took it that literally, just the idea that you have to practice something a lot to get good at it. But yeah, the idea of trying to quantify exactly how long it takes to master something is completely absurd. And then try to make that an umbrella thing that applies to all things that you can master is even more absurd. I think the general idea that it takes a lot of time and discipline to get good at things, that I’m on board with.
Steven Sashen:
And it takes one other thing, because the kind of person who’s going to put in 10,000 hours is a different kind of person than someone who is not. They’re interested in what that thing is, maybe they have a certain competitive thing or whatever else drives them. But this takes me back to thinking about someone starting with bodyweight training and calisthenics, is that, how do I want to put it, what’s going to drive you to keep doing something is, we’ve talked about it a couple of times, is that sort of the fun component and experiencing the progress, experiencing some benefits and seeing that there’s actual movement.
So this is why I love the idea, again, of having this bigger quiver full of arrows so that you can find the parts that are fun. There’s certain exercises and certain stretches even that I’m not good at, and I just don’t do them. For a while I thought that I had to, that if I couldn’t do it … I remember going to Bikram Yoga for a while, and there were a couple of stretches, man, I was horrible at, and I felt this sort of normative pressure to get good at them. And then after a while I went, “You know what? I’m just not good at those for whatever reason.” And then-
Al Kavadlo:
Having a competitive mindset about yoga in particular, but exercise in general, isn’t necessarily the healthiest thing unless you’re just kind of competing with yourself to try to get better in sort of a motivating way.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
But yeah, I mean there’s definitely, when yoga was a thing, I don’t know if yoga classes exist anymore, but everyone is kind of looking around the room like, “Oh, Am I keeping up with them? Are they keeping up with me? What’s going on here?” I think I went to enough yoga where eventually I kind of got past that, but there’s a lot of that in the beginning, and it’s not the healthiest way to approach it. I say whatever gets in the door, I don’t know.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a comic friend of mine who does line, he says, “I’ve been doing yoga so long that I was doing it when it was called stretching.” Have you ever seen yoga competition?
Al Kavadlo:
I have. And the very idea of it fundamentally disturbs me.
Steven Sashen:
I thought the same thing.
Al Kavadlo:
It’s the ultimate hypocrisy.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, I thought the irony and paradox and contradiction of it was hysterical and crazy, but I wanted to go see what a yoga competition looked like.
Al Kavadlo:
I mean, it’s amazing what they can do. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, the competition part I didn’t get, but you start to … What’s really funny, it’s not like an Olympic sport where if you’re watching figure skating, you can’t figure out the difference between that triple axel and someone else’s triple axel. But you’re watching people do competitive yoga and you go, “Oh, yeah, that was better. The way you got in and out of that, that was definitely better than that other guy.” I mean, again, it’s silly, but it’s also super interesting, and it hasn’t taken off as a public popular thing. I don’t think that it will, and I’m not sure that it would be good if it did. But I’m going to say to people, if you haven’t looked up yoga competition on YouTube, do that. It’ll definitely, the entertainment factor is there.
Al Kavadlo:
But it’s also very subjective because someone might be watching the same thing you just were watching where you thought, “Oh, clearly this person did it better,” and they’re, “Actually, you know what? I liked it better when the other person did it.”
Steven Sashen:
That guy had his … on his head, the other guy had his butt an inch away from his head. So clearly, it has, to be honest.
Al Kavadlo:
But maybe he had a better smile, or some other player to it.
Steven Sashen:
I think that must be part of it too. The thing I noticed about some of the yoga competitions, freakishly good-looking people.
Al Kavadlo:
It’s a beauty contest essentially. It’s like bodybuilding, which is something else. As a kid, bodybuilding was part of what inspired me to want to get into fitness. When you really know what it’s about and you meet people who have been involved in that world, then you’re like, “Oh, that’s not really what I thought it was.” Those guys are actually not very strong as they look. They can’t move very well. A lot of them are sick, or that’s really the only people I’ve ever known who were always involved in the bodybuilding. Like I said, those were not the people that I ran with the tightest, because as soon as I saw a little bit of that world, there was not a feeling in me at all.
Steven Sashen:
That’s an interesting thing. There’s some people who think that you can’t get big doing bodyweight training, and there’s some people who are afraid that just doing anything, they’re going to get big.
Al Kavadlo:
Right. Isn’t that funny? Well, the guys who think you can’t get big doing bodyweight training are men, and the people who think you’re going to get too big are generally women. And I hear this all the time. But the thing is, if you look around at most gyms, the people are lifting weights and they don’t look like bodybuilders either. So it’s like, those guys, it’s not the lifting that makes them look like that. It’s genetic steroids. And then yeah, of course, the lifting is part of it, but you or me, no matter how much we lift, we’re never going to be on the cover of FLEX Magazine unless we started juicing 25 years ago.
Steven Sashen:
No, there was one bodybuilder who said, “Yeah, we’re taking a lot of drugs, but that’s not why I looked this way. You couldn’t do what I do to look this way off of the drugs.” I mean, taking the drugs out of the equation. And talking to him, it was totally true. I mean, first of all, he was practically a monk. All the guy did was eat, sleep, work out. That’s it. Just beyond religious, beyond obsessive compulsive about each one of those things in a way that is yet again goes back to the 10,000-hour thing. You’ve got to have the right kind of personality, the right kind of whatever, to be someone interested in doing that for a decade or more, because it is-
Al Kavadlo:
Absolutely. And to be clear, I don’t mean any disrespect to the bodybuilding community.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no.
Al Kavadlo:
Like you said, those people are tremendously disciplined, and that’s what they want. That’s their goal. It wasn’t my goal, it wasn’t what drew me to this path. There’s plenty of people who would look at what I do and be like, “That’s not for me. This guy’s an idiot. He is a tool. I don’t like him.” And that’s cool. You need to have different options in the world, something for everybody. The world is very big, and I feel like now than ever, there’s more examples out there for people to potentially find someone who they can relate to.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Al Kavadlo:
I think that’s part of why your brand has done well, I think that’s part of why I’ve had success, is because we’ve reached people who maybe nobody else was really on the same wavelength as them at the time that they were receptive to that.
Steven Sashen:
I want to hit you with a question that you can feel free to answer with a plug for any and everything that you’ve ever done, and it’s a two-parter. Part one is, if you wanted to give someone the simplest way of getting started with bodyweight training, what would it be? And the subset of that is, if you wanted to do something specific for runners, since we have a lot of runners who are listening to this, what would you recommend for them?
Al Kavadlo:
Actually, I have a couple programs that I think are good for a runner or a non-runner who’s just looking to get into this, and it really depends on what format people prefer. If you want a book or an e-book, I have one that’s simply called Get Strong. I co-wrote it with my brother Danny. It’s our best-selling book between the two of us. It has a very clear, concise program in there. It lays out a lot of our philosophy behind it, talks a little bit about some other diet and lifestyle things. It’s just a really good general overview of everything that we’re about. For people who prefer more of an app or a video program, I have a program called Universal Strength. That’s a 30-day video program where I do see the exercises demonstrated actually in video rather than just reading descriptions and seeing photos in a book.
And then I also have another app that’s just called Al Kavadlo we’re working out, and it’s an animated cartoon app, and that one’s sort of more like a reference. It just has a bunch of different little animations of me showing different exercises and taking you through a couple of quick sample workouts. So that app, if you have an iPhone or an Android, there’s a free version of that. People, if they’re listening right now, they could just go download that right now. And then obviously if they like the app, there’s more content you can unlock with a premium account, which is still pretty small investment.
Steven Sashen:
So for any of these things, where would people find you and those things?
Al Kavadlo:
Well, like I said, they could just go to the app store and put my name. If you can spell K-A-V-A-D-L-O, and you Google that or put it into the App Store or Google Play or Amazon, then you’ll find my stuff.
Steven Sashen:
And for the books and other things?
Al Kavadlo:
Amazon has-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, Amazon has books.
Al Kavadlo:
Amazon has everything.
Steven Sashen:
Of course.
Al Kavadlo:
I mean, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a book, you can go Amazon. If you’re just looking for general information, you could Google me.
Steven Sashen:
I was going to say-
Al Kavadlo:
People can find info nowadays if they want it.
Steven Sashen:
Don’t make me force you to give out your website or your Instagram or something like that. I mean-
Al Kavadlo:
It’s all just my name. My website is just alkavadlo.com. My Instagram is @alkavadlo. So if you google me, everything on the first page is all the stuff that people would be looking for.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, see, now you’ve given me a search engine optimization mission to outrank you for your own name.
Al Kavadlo:
Then I’d be very curious what you would put on that page, and hopefully it wouldn’t be too disparaging.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no, it wouldn’t be at all. Frankly, I wish that it would be the last time you and I got to see each other where it would just be us hanging out in Veniero’s Bakery in the East Village, because that was just delightful. No, in the early internet days, there was times, just because I was experimenting with search engine marketing, anyone who had an infomercial on TV, including Tony Robbins, I outranked them for their own name. There was no value to it because nobody was selling anything then, but it was just like an experiment to see what was possible.
Al Kavadlo:
I think that would be harder to pull off now. I’m really curious because my website has been my website for so long and it’s just alkavadlo.com, so I don’t know how anyone could trick Google into thinking that they were more the authority on that than that site is. But who knows?
Steven Sashen:
No, no. It would be a tricky one. The thing that’s fun to do is, you can rank for things like, “Al Kavadlo is the greatest bodyweight fitness guide.”
Al Kavadlo:
Right. You could get a specific term, but just my name. I think the website I have had for 11 years.
Steven Sashen:
And I’m certainly not suggesting that I would. Yeah. It’s not like I would have the reason inspiration, let alone time to even try, as somebody who has also owned a domain name since the beginning of the internet. It’s funny, one of my best friends and I, in 1991, we were sitting around my apartment saying, “I can’t believe someone’s trying to register the domain business.com. Why would you just register a generic word?” And by the way, who has $70? In fact, it was 140 because you had to register for two years. It’s like, we don’t have that kind of cash. Oops.
Al Kavadlo:
A lot has changed.
Steven Sashen:
I’m trying to think if there’s any other specific thing I want to ask. Actually, I want to ask you this. We could have gone to this. What was it that got you into the whole idea of natural movement and minimalist footwear way back when? What was the inspiration and what would you recommend?
Al Kavadlo:
I know it’s a cliche, but it was the book Born to Run.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really? Perfect timing.
Al Kavadlo:
That’s why I was seeking out this type of footwear back in 2009 or whenever it was that we first connected, because it was right when that book had come out. I tried on a pair of the FiveFingers, and I just did not like the way they felt, and I wanted something that was, he talked about in the book, the actual huaraches. I was like, “I want that. I want what they were wearing in that book.”
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Al Kavadlo:
And you were the first person that I found who could provide such a thing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. We joked way back when that Chris McDougall, the author of that book was, what’s the word, he was our inadvertent marketing department for the first two years because people were just responding to that book. There was actually a thing that I used to do. I took business cards, and every time I walked by a bookstore, I’d walk in and I’d find copies of Born to Run, I put my business card in the book as a bookmark.
Al Kavadlo:
Nice. You’re a hustler, and that’s why you are where you are now.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it was inspired by a friend of mine who self-published a book, and what he did is he would just take copies of his actual book and put it on storage.
Al Kavadlo:
Put it in storage. Right.
Steven Sashen:
So then when person would go to check out, it wouldn’t be in the computer and they’d have to find out where the book came from, and they would call him and then order books.
Al Kavadlo:
If someone actually went to buy it, which right there is a huge victory.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. It was pretty entertaining. Well, Al, first of all, thanks. Secondly, needless to say, I love the work that you and Danny are doing. One other compliment for the two of you about your books, these books are gorgeous. The photography is spectacular, the artwork is, I mean, it’s so thoughtfully and meticulously and well done that, I mean, just as a piece of art. I mean, they’re worth taking a look at. I haven’t saw that before. Thank you.
Al Kavadlo:
That’s a very nice compliment. Yeah. We’re very involved in every aspect of the books. We’re intimately involved in selecting photographers and photos and graphic design, all of that. We love hearing exactly what you just said, and that means the world to me. Thank you. Obviously I’m a huge fan of your brand.
Steven Sashen:
Well, thanks.
Al Kavadlo:
I’ve been wearing pretty much exclusively Xero Shoes for a long time now, and spread in the word as best as I can, because like you said, that’s what we got to do. That’s part of the movement, telling everyone about it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. At a certain point, we’ll hit critical mass, and it’ll be the obvious thing instead of the odd thing. That’s what we’re-
Al Kavadlo:
Yeah. I’ve seen plenty of people wearing Xero Shoes out in the wild, and sometimes they see that I have them too, and there’s an acknowledgement for look. Sometimes I see people, this is the coolest thing, wearing Xero Shoes, and I look at them and they look at me and they say, “You’re Al Kavadlo. I’m wearing Xero Shoes because I saw you in the ad.”
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s great. I love it.
Al Kavadlo:
It has actually happened a couple times.
Steven Sashen:
My favorite thing is when someone recognizes my shoes and they don’t know it’s me.
Al Kavadlo:
Well, right. They’re not necessarily going to know your face, but they know the product.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s my favorite. My fantasy as a business person is that someday I want to be at a dinner party where I overhear someone talking about how they were one of the people who helped start my company and they don’t know who I am. Hopefully-
Al Kavadlo:
That’ll be an odd, surreal moment if that ever happens.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s like here in Boulder where Crocs started, and the number of people that I’ve met who say they were one of the people who helped start Crocs, and I know the people who started Crocs, so I hope that someday we get to the point where people are misrepresenting reality for their own party favors.
Al Kavadlo:
Xero Shoes has that much cache that people want to lie, say they were a part of it at the beginning. Now, that’s how you’ll know you’ve made it.
Steven Sashen:
We’ll get there. Anyway, once again, everyone go to alkavadlo.com, A-L-K-A-V-A-D-L-O, or do a search on wherever you just said.
Al Kavadlo:
Anything, anywhere where you would search, hopefully you can find me.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, exactly. More importantly, let us know what you experience when you just add some of this wonderful body weight and calisthenic stuff into just … We could have talked about this more, but I like to say, don’t even think about it like a workout per se. One of the things that I’ve been having a lot of fun with is just whenever I got to get out of a chair, I’ll go do something. I got my-
Al Kavadlo:
I think you made that point earlier. There’s a playful element to it.
Steven Sashen:
But I just want to emphasize that specific thing. It’s like you don’t need to do-
Al Kavadlo:
It could be spontaneous.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Do a set of pushups, do a set of box jumps. Do just whenever-
Al Kavadlo:
Hopefully some people who are listening actually tried that glute bridge. We were talking about that earlier. Or maybe they’ll try it now. If you made it this far in this podcast and you never did a glute bridge, do you remember what we were talking about?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, do it. And if you want to see something fun, check out Al’s videos and look for dragon pistol squat. If you want to see something that makes you just go, “What?” Actually it’s worse. It’s one of those things where you go, “Oh, that looks cool,” and then you try it and go, “Are you out of your mind?” That is so cool.
Al Kavadlo:
Why, thank you, my friend.
Steven Sashen:
So anyway, everyone, thank you so much for being part of this. A reminder again, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. That’s where you can find out how to interact with everything we’re doing. You’ll find all the previous episodes. You can leave comments and questions. In fact, if you have a question or a recommendation, someone you think should be on the show, or you want to tell me you think that I have my curly head up my butt, I’m open to that conversation as well. In fact, one of my fantasies for this podcast is to get somebody on who vehemently disagrees with me, and let’s hear what that conversation turns into. Suffice it to say, like I said before, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe, but most importantly, go out, have fun, live life, feet first.
Speaker 1:
You’ve been listening to The MOVEMENT Movement podcast with host Steven Sashen. Remember to join the tribe and subscribe at jointhemovementmovement.com.