Nick Nilsson, widely known as the “Mad Scientist of Muscle,” is a fitness expert renowned for his innovative and unconventional training methods. With over 20 years of experience in bodybuilding and strength training, Nick has crafted unique exercises and programs that challenge traditional fitness norms.

Holding degrees in Physical Education and Psychology, Nick blends advanced biomechanics and anatomy with creative exercise design. He is the author of several books, including The Best Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of and Gluteus to the Maximus – Build a Bigger Butt NOW!, as well as the creator of the “Time-Volume Training” method, which maximizes muscle growth using efficient, adaptable techniques.

Nick shares his expertise through his website FitStep.com and contributions to major fitness platforms like Bodybuilding.com and Iron Man Magazine. Inspired by his father’s commitment to fitness and his own journey from endurance sports to bodybuilding, he has built a career helping others achieve their health and physique goals.

Known for transforming limited resources into effective workouts, Nick continues to inspire fitness enthusiasts worldwide, living up to his reputation as the “Mad Scientist of Muscle.”

Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Nick Nilsson about optimizing movement patterns for efficient muscle growth.

Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:

– How incorporating innovative exercise approaches optimizing movement yields better results.

– Why you should engage your deep core muscles with unique exercises like sitting at a desk and lifting your legs.

– How you should focus on angiogenesis for muscle growth by performing high-rep sets followed by heavy low-rep steps.

– Why utilizing loaded resistance stretching stimulates muscle growth through hyperplasia.

– How angio sets and connective tissue training help you grow your muscles while improving circulation.

 

Connect with Nick:

Guest Contact Info
X:
@nicknilsson

Instagram: @nicknilsson1

Facebook: facebook.com/nicknilssonmadscientist

Links Mentioned: https://fitstep.com/

Connect with Steven:

Website

Xeroshoes.com

Jointhemovementmovement.com

Twitter
@XeroShoes

Instagram
@xeroshoes

Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes

Episode Transcript

Steven Sashen:

If you are bored with your workouts, don’t like working out, or think that working out involves basically the same six exercises, you just need to squat and bench and deadlift, blah, blah, blah, well, I’ve got news for you. There are many, many other ways and things that are super interesting, super unusual, super exciting, and work for wherever you are, whatever age you are, including people like me who are 60 plus, and we’re going to be chatting with someone. Well, more about that in just a moment. Welcome to The MOVEMENT Movement Podcast for the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body where we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright myths that you’ve been told and lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to run, walk, hike, workout, do anything, and to do it enjoyably and efficiently and effectively.

Did I say enjoyably trick question? Of course I did because look, I know if you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to keep doing it. And that’s one of the reasons I’m really excited about what we’re going to be doing on this call. I’m Steven Sashen, the host of The MOVEMENT Movement Podcast, and the co-founder and chief barefoot officer here at XeroShoes.com. We call this The MOVEMENT Movement because we, that involves you, I’ll tell you about that in a sec, are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do and to do it best that way. And we break down the propaganda myths, et cetera, et cetera. Like I said, more importantly, the movement part that involves you is just simple.

Spread the word. If you like what you’re hearing here, a, go to our website www.jointhemovementmovement.com and just share. You’ll find all the previous episodes there. Give us a thumbs up, like us, give us a good review, give us five stars here, hit the bell icon on YouTube. You know the gist. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right, let’s get started, shall we? Nick Nielsen, first of all, a pleasure. Secondly, tell people who you are, what you do, and what you think you might be doing here.

Nick Nielsen:

Well, I’m known as a mad scientist of muscle. I’ve been training 35 years and basically that entire time, I’m looking for new ways to accomplish the results that I want to get like build muscle, build strength, that kind of thing. And I’m not satisfied with the normal way of doing things. So basically, from the very first time I started training, I’ve been looking for new and better ways to train, to lift weights. Primarily, like I said, movement is a big one there too, but primarily, I do things differently, not for the sake of just doing differently, but for trying to do them better.

Steven Sashen:

And first of all, before anyone asks if you’re watching the video, yes, Nick is not a whistleblower or in the federal witness relocation program. We just have some video issues. We figured, screw it, let’s just do this without trying to fix the video issues because we want to get this out and have some fun. So I’m trying to think of my favorite way of doing this. So to be clear, I mean when I think about you, I think you are the most creative person I’ve ever seen in terms of coming up with ways of doing exercise. But it’s not about just coming up with a new exercise, it’s like how does the body move in this way and what can I do to optimize that?

Sometimes if I have a limited set of resources at my disposal, if I don’t have a home gym, full of everything you could have possibly want, if I don’t even go to a gym, if I go to a gym that doesn’t have anything other than the bare minimum, et cetera. But you’re, so again, you’re not doing it just for the sake of going, hey, look at the crazy crap that I’ve come up with, but for a whole different reason, it’s all based on understanding movement.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. Essentially with all the people on YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and all that, just doing crazy stuff for the sake of crazy stuff to get clicks and likes, that’s not what I’m all about. What I do is I don’t even care if it looks crazy or not. If it works better, I’m going to do it. Some of the stuff I’ve done, you may not even notice the difference from regular stuff, but it’s just the intention of how you’re doing it. That’s different. For example, I’ve got a trick for doing barbell bench press where when you’re lowering the bar, instead of just lowering the bar, you actually try and bend the bar forward and out, and that actually brings the lats down, locks in the shoulders, and gives you a perfect positioning all the way down.

So instead of just lowering the bar under control, you’re actually getting a good negative on the chest and you’re actually setting yourself up in perfect position to do the bench press. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at it because it looks exactly the same, but it’s just instead of just holding the bar like that, you’re trying to bend the bar up and forward like that. You’re trying to snap it at half forward.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, basically, you’re trying to make it upside down. You is the intention is the best way I can describe it.

Nick Nielsen:

Sort of like that, but it’s hard to describe actually. That’s basically, imagine…

Steven Sashen:

Well, wait, so here, let’s do it this way. So if we could bend the bar, if we were Superman and bending the bar, so we’re lying on the bench, the bar is above us basically straight over our chest. If we were going to be Superman and bend with the U shape that we’re creating, be with the bottom of the U towards our head or towards the ceiling?

Nick Nielsen:

Towards the ceiling.

Steven Sashen:

There you go. Yeah, that’s what I was going for.

Nick Nielsen:

Here’s the difference though. Most people when they recommend that, you bend the bar down like that, right? That’s what you’re thinking. You’re actually trying to hold here and bend the bar forward and up.

Steven Sashen:

Got it, got it.

Nick Nielsen:

So you’re gripping the bar here and you’re pushing up like that rather than bending down like that.

Steven Sashen:

Nice.

Nick Nielsen:

It’s a very subtle difference, but the difference between that means you’re kind of relaxing the chest, whereas that you’re actually engaging the chest.

Steven Sashen:

Got it. I love it.

Nick Nielsen:

Very simple, very subtle, and you wouldn’t notice the difference by looking at anybody doing it at all.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, you can’t see the motion because this is basically a metric. So I want to back up a half a step and say, so the exercises you come up with and even more of the workouts you come up with, and I want to talk about both, but they’re designed for different purposes. And I want to say this just so people have a context for why they really, no matter where they are in their fitness journey from been doing this forever, to never picked up a weight in their life or never thought about doing anything other than whatever activity they currently do. And I’ll get the ball rolling, you fill in the blank. You do some things that are metabolic conditioning, some things that are about strength, some things that are about hypertrophy, building muscle. So do you want to break down the types of things that you, or the categories of things that you are thinking about when you’re putting things together?

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. I mean, when I’m doing exercise, especially workouts like you said, the exercises are kind of the building blocks and then you put them into the specific workouts that are designed for very specific metabolic goals. Like I said, you’ve got metabolic conditioning workouts, you’ve got strength stuff, you’ve got hypertrophy stuff, you’ve got physiological oriented stuff. You’ve got, basically for people who have never trained before, one of the first things I always get them started with is core training, core workouts to stabilize the core, which that’s where all your movement comes from. So that’s kind of the most important thing to me is to strengthen that area, and then you can progress in multiple directions from there. But in terms of metabolic conditioning, you’re doing stuff still with a strength focus, but with very little rest and with basically the idea of moving fatigue around your body.

So for example, you going from chest to legs to back, so you’re kind of bouncing the workload around to different areas while you’re still using relatively heavy weights and really stimulating the body for hypertrophy at the same time but while still getting that metabolic conditioning effect. If you’re wanting, doing training for strength, you go in a very different direction. You take long rest periods, very little variety and very basic movements, and then with assistance, exercises that support the weak points of those basic movements. Hypertrophy training, another, it’s a very different thing from the other two. So there’s so many different directions you can go with this in terms of you don’t just grab a weight and start working out. If you have a specific goal, you need a very specific plan to attack that goal essentially.

Steven Sashen:

And one of the things that also, I mean I’m going to kind of bounce around, because when I think about the way you put stuff together, it feels very four-dimensional chest to me. So there’s kind of different principles and then different exercises and different workouts and all these things, and you put them mix and match them together in really fascinating ways. In fact, I’m going to just share the story I mentioned to you the last time we chatted. You used to do a thing every Friday that was a metabolic workout, and the office that we had in Downtown Boulder or actually outside of Downtown Boulder was right next to a gym. And I said to them, “Look, I’m just going to come in on Fridays at the end of my workday and just do something. I don’t need any help. Will you just let me do that?”

And they went, “Sure.” And I had a long, hard week. This is when I was working until 2:00 in the morning a lot of the time. And the last thing I really needed to do on a Friday night was go into a workout. I really needed a nap, but I would go in and these things would kick my butt and they made me so happy. But it was also what was interesting, some of the times we were working on just, and I want you to talk about this because this relates to your latest book, some of the things we’re just working on building, I know where this goes, building the infrastructure we need for everything else to work, building the scaffolding thing we need for everything else to work and kind of working on top of that. And when you say core, most people think, oh, doing sit-ups and planks, but you got a whole other way of framing that.

So I know this is getting, I’m being kind of confused when I say this only because there’s just so much I want to do, and it’s a Monday morning and I’m not awake yet. So can you talk about kind of, again, there’s the different goals, but then there’s those things that allow for those goals like capillarization, et cetera, et cetera. I’ll let you do those, but also I don’t want to forget, when you talk about core, let’s give some examples of the kind of stuff that you’re talking about that are exercises that most people would never think of that are probably more effective than what they’ve already been doing.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. Let’s start with the core stuff. The very simplest core thing I have people do to start with is they have them sit it at a desk and have them put an elbow on their desk and I have the left elbow and I have them lift up their right leg and then just push down as hard as you can with that left elbow. You feel core, deep core engaging right there?

Steven Sashen:

Yeah.

Nick Nielsen:

Just do that for 30 seconds. Switch sides, do that for 30 seconds. That’s hitting those deep core muscles and you can sit there looking like you’re bored, out of your mind. You just look and then you’re working your core.

Steven Sashen:

No, I feel that transverse abdominis, I feel that. I mean, I feel that in a bunch of things, basically from my ribs down to my upper thigh. I mean it’s like-

Nick Nielsen:

Exactly.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah.

Nick Nielsen:

And that’s literally, it’s like no equipment at all. You can do that while you’re sitting at your desk and 30 seconds of that, it’s going to be better than sit-ups for flattening your stomach. It’s going to strengthen your core. I have a book on this stuff. It’s like you can do this leaning against the post while you’re waiting for the bus. There’s your post, you’re leaning that, stand at one foot, and you’re just kind of leaning and just that, isometric. Everything contracts in that deep core, because it’s like you said, it’s not just the six-pack abs, it’s all those deep muscles that go around your six-pack abs and it’s your lower back as well. Everything has to be worked and worked in kind of conjunction with each other and-

Steven Sashen:

Well, there’s another one that I don’t think I’d ever heard it anywhere. It made sense as soon as you set it from some other things I did, and I do this when I’m taking my dog for a walk every morning. I just basically pull my belly button into my spine as much as I can. And then if I kind of bear down a little, I can feel that really hitting the transverse abdominis as well. And then just like how many breaths can I do while I’m really, really contracting all of that and sucking everything into just kind of train those muscles about how to engage and love doing that.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, it’s literally starting with simple stuff like that. You can do it while you’re doing other things like when you’re walking the dog, when you’re sitting at your desk, when you’re waiting in line. There’s so many things you can do just without even any weights at all, just by body and positioning and stuff like that.

Steven Sashen:

And this is also true, not just for doing core stuff. I mean, we can talk about weights versus body weight stuff and some of the creative things you’ve done there as well. But I want to back up to that other thing that I made when I was combining too many things at once of just body systems, if you will, and how those people don’t think about those and how important they are for whatever your fitness goals are.

Nick Nielsen:

Absolutely, yeah, and that’s one of the things I’ve noticed, especially for people as start getting into the 40s, 50s, 60s, and stuff like that. These systems, these underlying systems that support your muscle mass, they start to deteriorate essentially. It’s one of the reasons why you lose muscle as you get older. You mentioned the capillarization. That’s a big one. Circulation is everything as far as keeping your muscle mass, because if your muscles don’t get nutrients, they don’t get oxygen, they don’t get fed, they go away. So I’ve got training that’s specifically designed to rebuild those capillaries and redevelop those systems. So you’ve got circulation, you’ve got connective tissue, which is your fascia, your cartilage, your tendons, ligaments, bones, all the structural stuff. I like to kind of liken it to a house where you can build a bigger, stronger house when you’re using two by sixes versus two by fours or two by twos or whatever.

As you get older, those beams start to deteriorate, so we can actually strengthen those beams and rebuild those beams. We can redo the plumbing, which is your circulatory system. We can redo the electrical, which is your nervous system, make that more efficient. We can rebuild more muscle mass. When you’re losing muscle, you actually lose muscle fibers as you get older as well. So I’ve developed hyperplasia training, which is splitting muscle fibers into new muscle fibers rather than just building the ones that you got and is good to just build up the ones you’ve got, but you can actually develop new ones as well to replace the ones that your body is losing as you get older. So so many different structural things that support basically your body’s ability to carry and hold muscle mass and strength.

Steven Sashen:

Yes and all of those are super interesting, and the workouts are, again, things that you many people have probably never seen. Actually, do you want to give an example of something for each of those four components?

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, absolutely. The circulatory system, basically you want to do really high reps. For example, I call it angiosets, which is angiogenesis, which means creation of new blood vessels. So to do that, we actually want to, it sounds awful, but you want rip new blood vessels into your body. You want to actually, it sounds awful, but that’s the process on a very low level. You’re basically forcing so much blood into the muscle that you’re basically blowing those out and creating new pathways, so you’re opening those suckers back up again.

So we put a lot of blood into that muscle with a very high rep set, very lightweight. Now the weird thing is then you take a heavier weight and you do very low reps, so you do 50 reps of a dumbbell bench press and then do two reps with a heavy weight three times the weight on a dumbbell bench press, which dramatically amps up the pressure in that muscle, which blows out. So essentially we’re filling it up with blood and then we’re squeezing the crap out of it and just blowing out those pathways and creating and forging new pathways, and then you’re doing it again. You repeat it for four to six rounds of that.

Steven Sashen:

Now, when you describe it, it sounds like the image that pops in my mind, and I imagine possibly others as well, is that you end up looking like you’ve just been beaten up, but you don’t end up looking bruised. I mean, yes, it’s not massive trauma. It’s this very, very small level, single blood cell, thick kind of microtrauma. And this is the thing that I think people really don’t appreciate is that what’s making your body change is mild traumatic events that you then heal and repair and recover from and become better when you organize that properly.

I see people in the gym, it’s actually, Elaine and I were on a boat with some people and they had a gym on this boat, and I watched some guy doing bench press stuff with 20 pounds, and he would do 10 reps, and it’s like you to do two of those. That didn’t do anything. I mean, you could do that without breaking the sweat, without blinking, without putting any effort. Nothing’s actually being forced to change. And so this is part of what we’re doing is finding these ways of forcing these specific changes. But yes, you don’t end up looking like you were in a bad bar fight.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. No, you haven’t been beaten with that two by four or anything like that. So it’s microcirculation. It’s really the tiny, tiny blood vessels that we’re looking to open up and yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, literally a blood vessel. I mean, that’s how those things work. Okay, so onto the next one.

Nick Nielsen:

So next, we’ve got the connective tissue training. This is actually, you’re going to look like you’re not doing anything because essentially, for example, the best example is to go into a squat rack, put a bar on your back and stand up, put 300, 400 pounds on the bar and just stand there for a minute. And literally, that’s all you’re doing. You’re just standing there with weight on your body. It’s squishing down all your connective tissue, it’s squishing all the fluid out of all your connective tissue. Now, connective tissue has a notoriously poor blood supply, and as you get older, this connective tissue dries out so you get less fluid in there. So it’s harder to heal injuries, it’s harder to build strength because of this. So what we’re doing is we’re putting that weight on and we’re literally, just 1, 2, 3 minutes, we’re just letting everything kind of squeeze out because of that loading, constant loading.

We take the weight off and then we do it like a dead hang from a chin-up bar. So you’re creating this effect where you’re squeezing the fluid out and then you’re sucking it back in and you’re creating a bellows effect. So you’re actually pushing fluid out and then you’re forcing your body to suck it back in. And you put that with connective tissue nutrients like collagen, vitamin C. You’re forcing circulation and nutrients to repair the connective tissue in there when it’s needed most, and it’s creating that circulation and it’s highly effective. You can actually heal old injuries that have never healed before because that connective tissue is so dried out, you’re not getting that circulation in, you’re not getting the nutrients in. This actually forces the nutrients in and you can actually heal old injuries. I’ve had people say that my knee injury from 20 years ago, I don’t even feel it anymore after doing this stuff, and that’s literally from standing there with weight on your back.

Steven Sashen:

Interesting.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Okay, number three.

Nick Nielsen:

So this hyperplasia training, hypertrophy, you’re probably familiar with, that’s building muscle fibers. Hyperplasia is splitting muscle fibers. So stretch, loaded stretching is what we’re doing here, and this is loaded resistant stretching. So you’re not just taking a dumbbell fly and you’re holding the stretch position passively. You’re actually, say you’re taking 60 pound dumbbells, you’re holding that bottom of the dumbbell fly. You’re coming up just a little out of that bottom stretch with 98% of the effort that would require to lift it. So you’re actually trying to lift it, but just not enough to actually lift it.

So that’s the active resistant stretch that we’re looking for, not just passively letting the dumbbells come down and down and down, which can actually be tough on your connective tissue. We don’t want to do that. We actually want that active resistant stretching at the bottom. It’s that position that we’re looking for, and that puts massive tension on those muscles and actually creates the stimulus for the body to basically split the muscle fibers and to use satellite cells, which are part of the process to repair that with. I’ve talked to Dr. Jose Antonio about this. He did studies on birds where they achieved a 300% muscle growth by doing this kind of loaded stretching.

Steven Sashen:

Well, this is what’s interesting. You’ve been talking about that type of training for much longer than the last 9 to 12 months where the whole idea of stretch-mediated hypertrophy has become like what everyone in fitness is talking about. It’s like that research and other research about the importance of the stretch phase is now what everyone’s all giddy about, and you’ve been talking about this for ages.

Nick Nielsen:

Oh, yeah. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.

Steven Sashen:

But wait, so do you feel vindicated or do you feel like, I can’t believe people are just catching up?

Nick Nielsen:

You know what, 20 years ago people were talking about it too.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, were they?

Nick Nielsen:

It literally goes in waves and cycles.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, funny.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, it was a big thing 20 years ago and now it’s coming around again. And then I’m sure keto oil would coming back around again and everything comes back around again. It is really funny how it works. Yeah, people say there’s nothing new under the sun. It’s like in a way that’s true, because a lot of it just kind of gets repackaged and the next generation finds out about it and wow, this is the best thing ever now, and it’s like it was the best thing ever 20 years ago too.

Steven Sashen:

I’m starting to wear bell-bottoms again. No.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Okay. All right, so that was number three. Number four.

Nick Nielsen:

So number four, we’re looking at nervous system efficiency and activation. So when we get older, you actually do lose nerve cells. You lose the capability of your nervous system. So for example, most people are functioning about maybe 60% of their efficiency. We use that as a guide. Elite athletes can go up to 85 to 90% is how they build strength without getting bigger. So if you’re functioning about 60 to 70, the training I’m doing here allows you to amp that up. So instead of using 60% of your capacity, you’re now using 70 or 75% of your efficiency and capacity. So you’re building strength just by using what you’ve got better. So one of the best methods I’ve found for doing that is single rep cluster training where, for example, you take a weight, that’s about maybe 90 to 95% of your one rep max.

So it’s a pretty heavy weight, something you could maybe get three to four reps with, and you’re going to do 20 reps with it but in a very specific way. You’re going to do one rep, rest 20 seconds, do one rep, rest 20 seconds, and repeat that for 20 reps. And what that does is when you’re doing a set of more than one rep, your first rep is never your best rep, it’s your second rep, because your first rep is just your body getting used to figuring out what it needs to do.

Your second rep has already put that pattern into the nervous system so it’s more efficient, and it’s technically better. So what we’re doing is a set of 22nd reps, so a bunch of good reps, really high quality reps, and with just enough rest in between to recharge your energy systems so you can do those reps. So you’ll find a weight. You could normally get three to four reps with, you can do a set of 20 reps like this, and it actually feels really good. Your 10 to 15th reps are going to be your best reps, and you’re going to feel strong all the way through that.

Steven Sashen:

I think I just realized that if I had to describe one thing, that I know that you do that, I haven’t seen other people do that I find that I found really fun, frankly, and very effective is variations of taking a weight that is some percentage of what you could do for one rep and doing different things with that, whether it’s one rep, 20 seconds, one rep, 20 seconds, or I mean just various things about time under tension in different ways where you’re modulating or mediating, changing variables that people don’t think about how much rest between something or going up and down with the number of reps you’re doing and just various combinations of time and effort in a way that lets you do things that you just frankly would never think to try or wouldn’t realize would have the effect that they would have.

I can’t remember which thing I did. I just remember it was about a year and a half ago, Elaine and I were on an anniversary vacation, and I remember doing one thing. I can’t remember which exercise it was or which workout it was, the structure of it, but basically, I was just doing chest press for 40 minutes straight with varying degrees of rest and varying degree and what I had done. And I think it was probably the same weight, just different amounts of rest based on what I could do. Can you describe just philosophically what you’re doing, describe one of the workouts, then talk about philosophically why that does what it does and some variations that kind of play with that whole game of what you can do over what amount of time?

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, absolutely. And the way you’re describing, I think is my time volume training protocol, which essentially, you’re taking a weight that you can get for 10 reps and you do sets of three reps with it. So you’re basically front loading the workload. This kind of training is all about how much work you’re doing, not the intensity of the work that you’re doing. So it’s actually a really good way to train when you’re feeling a bit beaten up, feeling a little bit more fatigued, maybe your nervous system isn’t quite as juiced up as it should be. So you can actually build muscle really effectively like this. And essentially, you take a set weight, you can do 10 reps, you do a set of three reps with it and you rest 10 seconds, and then you do another set of three, and then you rest 10 seconds and then another set of three.

So gradually, you’re kind of building up the fatigue. When you get to the point where you can no longer get three reps where you’re on two, and it would be tough to get three, don’t do that third rep, don’t even try that third rep, set it down, rest 20 seconds, and keep going on the three rep sets. And then you keep doing 20 seconds rest until again, you hit that point where you think you would have to really push it to get the third rep, and then you rest 30 seconds and you keep doing that. So you’re basically doing more work upfront while you’re more fresh.

And then as you get more fatigued, you extend the rest periods. So you’re basically still allowing your body to function at a very high level with perfect technique, perfect form. You’re not going to be getting anywhere near any sort of injury level of loading on your body, but just building up that workload, you’re kind of sneaking up on that fatigue point. So you’re hitting all of these muscle fibers that you don’t normally get with intensity kind of training, because if you’re trying to hit all your muscle fibers at once, you’re never going to achieve full fatigue on those muscle fibers. Whereas with this, you can kind of sneak up on it, and you can kind of gradually require your body to activate more and more muscle fibers. So by the time you’re done with that 40 minute workout, you’ve hit literally every muscle fiber in your chest you’ve got.

Steven Sashen:

And it just occurred to me, there’s another way of thinking of this where again, lately people have been, the research has been coming out, people have been talking about that, whether you’re doing high weights, sorry, yeah, heavy weights and lower reps versus lighter weights and more reps. The important thing is getting closer to failure or as close to failure as you want to get those last couple of reps. And so getting to failure or getting very close to failure without putting yourself in a position where you’re going to get injured is really important. And with what you’ve just described that time volume training, you’re basically just doing that over and over and over more than you would do if you just did a set of eight and that last one was hard, then a set of seven and the last one is hard, and then the next set is six, and the last one is hard.

It’s like you’re getting that way, way more often in a fixed period of time. And again, like you said, it’s not that the workout is easy, but it doesn’t have that same kind of hit by two by four feeling except that you feel the effect without feeling the beaten up part that makes you, like I said before, if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to want to keep doing it. And to a certain extent, these can be difficult but enjoyable because it just doesn’t have the same kind of stress inducing something that what most people think of as a weight routine creates.

Nick Nielsen:

Exactly. And that’s one of the big things. The reason this technique works so well sometimes with a lot of people who’ve kind of over trained their nervous system, doing a lot of really heavy, really hard stuff, they pull back to something like this. You’re not getting that stress response. You’re not getting that cortisol dump. You are not getting that adrenaline. You don’t need to take a pre-workout for this. You just start. You don’t even really need to hardly warm up for this because you’re using a weight. You can normally get 10 and you’re doing three. So the actual work, it’s a very time efficient kind of training too, because you don’t need to spend 20 minutes warming up. You literally do maybe just the bar on the bench press put your working weight on, and you start going and the workout is your warm-up as you’re doing it. And yeah, you’re really, more and more of your muscle fibers get to that point in your failure when you do something like this than if you’re doing, like you said, one set of eight or couple sets of eight only is very specific.

Steven Sashen:

Especially if you’re doing a couple sets of eight where you’re not really not going to get to that failure point until the last set when you’re really pushing. Because the first few, you could have done more, but it says you’re supposed to do three by eight. It’s like…

Nick Nielsen:

So you’re holding back on the first and the second, and then you’re pushing it on the third. So you’re really getting very limited. Those muscle fibers are getting a very limited exposure to that beautiful point, so to speak. Whereas something like this, you’re gradually bringing involving more and more of those muscle fibers in to get to that point. So by the time you get, and you don’t have to do 40 minutes, you can do blocks of 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. You’re going to basically get to that point with more muscle fibers without the stress of the fear factor almost.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. Well, no, to be clear, I did the 40-minute thing because I got up about an hour and a half before Elena does. I had time to kill, and it was like, I wonder if I could do this. I wonder what it’s like. And that’s another thing that I really enjoy. It’s like you put these things together and they’re intriguing. It’s like, I wonder what that feels like. I’ve never done anything like that before, and that’s a very motivating thing of just the curiosity factor.

Nick Nielsen:

Oh, yeah, that’s what keeps me going for. I’ve been doing this 35 years and I keep coming up with stuff that I’m like, “Hmm, that’s interesting. I got to try that.”

Steven Sashen:

I’m guessing that you have recorded in some way every exercise or exercise variant or workout variant you’ve come up with. Am I correct?

Nick Nielsen:

Starting from about to 2000, probably ’07, yeah. Everything before that was before cell phones and cameras, but I’ve kind of gone through a lot of that.

Steven Sashen:

Well, I don’t even mean recorded on video and whatnot. I just mean even on paper, including a single paper.

Nick Nielsen:

Oh, yeah. I’ve got 13, 200 page notebooks from before I started recording stuff. Literally, yeah, I would write everything down in a notebook after. If I learned something new, I’d write it down.

Steven Sashen:

So let’s just do exercise variance first. Do you have a number for how many you’ve come up with?

Nick Nielsen:

If I had to go off the top of my head of the past 30 something years at least, it’s got to be in over 10,000 easy.

Steven Sashen:

And for anyone who thinks that’s insane, I’m going to give you, again, Nick, I’m going to set you up. So imagine you want to work on your bicep, which is going to involve bending your arm at the elbow at the very least, and possibly bending, doing something with your shoulder too, because the bicep inserts around your shoulder as well as on your forearm. So if you think all you can do is a bicep curl just for the fun of it, pick a different angle, pick a different, I mean, hang upside down, I’m making shit up but almost not. Hang upside down, hang sideways, go underwater. You don’t do anything like that. But I mean, if you start to think, I’ve almost tempted you to try to find a way to program some AI model with the way you think about how to approach, how do I want to attack this muscle in some new way?

I mean, I know that when I’m writing an ad, for example, if I’m going to write an ad saying, Xero Shoes are the greatest shoes you’ve ever worn. The next thing I’m going to write is going to be the opposite. It’s kind of like don’t wear these things or else. I mean, there’s a formula that I kind of go through in my head for coming up with things that are just creative ideas, because I’ve just done it so long that I know there’s 15 different things that I’m going to think about to see if I can make those work. And I’m guessing that you do something similar as you’re coming up with something new.

Nick Nielsen:

I do, and a lot of the times I actually come up with some of my best stuff based on something that’s completely unrelated to it. I’ll do an exercise, it’s like a chest exercise. Then all of a sudden I’m like, huh, I felt that in my calves. And then I go, I wish I could say I was kidding, but sometimes that’s how the process works.

Steven Sashen:

Wait, wait. I want to know what chest exercise you did that you felt in your calves.

Nick Nielsen:

I think it was incline barbell bench press, and I thought I’ll put the bench up against the wall. I’ll set my feet up on the wall, and as I’m doing the bench press, I’m going to try and do calf raise. I’m going to try and push. I’m going to try and slide my body up the bench as I’m doing the dumbbell bench press to see if that gets stronger activation by activating the legs in the core. And as I’m doing this, yeah, boom calf exercise and not a very good one. Mind you, it didn’t really work out to be something that I would actually recommend training, but that leads me in the direction of like, okay, now what can I do? Okay, that actually worked my calves to some degree. Let me see how I can make that into a calf exercise. And then I take that concept and I run with that. So it’s like the other day, I did a band curl where I’m hanging a kettlebell from a band between a bar kettlebell hanging from a band, and then the handle on the other side.

And that worked so well for biceps. I did it for chest, and then all of a sudden for chest, I’m like, “Oh, wonder if I do it for deadlifts?” And doing it for deadlifts was actually phenomenal because you pick it up off ground, the kettlebell. When you’re right below the knees, that’s when the kettlebell comes off the ground, but it doesn’t suddenly come off the ground. It likes gradually then right at that sticking point where a lot of people fail right below the knees. It adds 90 pounds to your deadlift right there. So all of a sudden, you own 225, now you’re doing 315 right at your sticking point. And it’s phenomenal for forcing you to grind out that rep. And then the angle is perfect for the lockout as well. So because the band is angled, you’re coming back like that, your glutes and your lower back are fighting against that diagonal tension of the band to get hip extension. So it’s like all of these things based on throwing a kettlebell through a band, threw a kettlebell and seeing what happens.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, because that’s something that most people would think about. What if I got some bands, I got some kettlebells? You’re sort of like it’s a Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland movie. It’s like, I got a barn, I got a stage. It’s like, I got a kettlebell, I got a band. What can I do with those two things? And away it goes. I totally love it. But you’ve also done this just on the body weight side. I mean, one of the most recent things you put out was about doing pushups in a way that are good for the upper chest that get rid of the one problem that pretty much no one ever thought of that gets in the way of doing upper chest based pushups. Would you like to talk about that? Just cracked me up.

Nick Nielsen:

Oh, yeah. Basically when you’re doing pushups for your upper chest, you elevate your legs. So basically, you’re creating that angle like an incline bench press. Now, the problem with your body position when you’re doing that is your face.

Steven Sashen:

So speak for yourself, Nick.

Nick Nielsen:

Well, for me personally, my face gets in the way. So rather than digging a hole on the floor, you elevate your hands up onto a bench. You elevate your feet onto a bar higher than that, so you’re angled, but there’s room for your face to not contact the floor. Because when you’re doing foot elevated pushup on the floor to get full range of motion, you have to flatten your chest out. So it basically makes it like a regular pushup again. You’re getting some more resistance of course, but you’re not getting that angle for really hitting the upper chest. You need to basically take your face out of the equation. And so by doing that, by putting your hands on the edge of a bench, flat bench and angling your feet up on a bar, you’re getting that perfect angle the entire time. And you can maintain it without changing your head position, without changing your neck position, and without flattening your torso, without flattening yourself at the bottom. So you’re actually hitting the upper chest and it makes a big difference, yeah.

Steven Sashen:

You get that bigger range of motion. You’re not worried about smashing your face into the ground. You just gave me a flashback. When I was a junior high and high school gymnast, we just did chair pushups, so chair under each hand, chair under your foot, and then we’d raise the chair. So similar idea but this have kind of, we’d make it wide enough so it kind of added a fly aspect to it, because that’s an important thing in gymnastics as well, having that kind of strength. And again, the difference there is if you push too hard, that last rep, you end up falling in your face. So yours is a safer version of what we were doing but then again, we were stupid children. So if you fell in your face, that was a badge of honor. It’s like, how’d you break your nose? Pushups. Cool.

Nick Nielsen:

Pushups, yeah. Right on, man. Oh, yeah.

Steven Sashen:

In fact, quick story for the fun of it, my gymnastics coach, who was the junior high gym teacher, he was also a, I think three-time world and five-time national tumbling champion and just one of the greatest teachers of all sorts, just happened to be gymnastics. Our first day at gym practice, gymnastics practice, he hands us young boys a sheet of ten to the inch graph paper and says, “Each one of those squares is 10 pushups. Whoever fills out the page first, front end back, gets a Coke.” And five young men immediately dropped and did as many pushups as we could, and it got to the point where we would just be doing them throughout the day.

We would just drop into a set of however many we could and the next day it would be. So how many yesterday? A thousand. Shit, I only did 800. And then we would drop into a hundred, and then the other guy would do a hundred, and then I have to do 150. I mean, we were literally doing a thousand plus pushups a day, and it was just this super sneaky way to get us to do strength training by competing with each other, because anyone who’s going to show up for the gymnastics team, he knows it’s just a competitive douche.

We’re there for a number of reasons. One is we’re competitive, and this is just one way of it showing up, and it worked. It was brilliant. I will tell the story, and I’m not trying to throw any particular gender under the bus, but that’s what it’s going to sound like. Eventually, they killed the men’s gymnastics program in the county that I grew up in, and Jack started switching to coaching women, which he was brilliant at. In fact, after this one gymnast in the Olympics, I watched her floor ex routine. I think she might’ve won.

It was Dominique Dawes, and I called Jack and I said, “Are you coaching Dominique Dawes?” He goes, “Yeah. How’d you know?,” I went, “Because that was my floor ex routine with two moves that I can’t do.” And he goes, “Yep.” So it was great. But anyway, when they killed the men’s gymnastics program, I said, “So now you’re coaching women. What’s the difference?” He goes, “Remember that thing with the graph paper and the pushups?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Remember when I gave it to you guys, you just immediately started to pushup.” So I went, “Yeah.” He goes, “I gave it to them. They immediately started crying,” and now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t highly competitive women there are, but just as a general group, a bunch of 12-year-old boys versus a bunch of 12-year-old girls will have a different attitude about, you want me to do what?

Nick Nielsen:

Versus I can’t wait to do that.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, absolutely. No, and again, if you’re not having fun, don’t do it. And for me, and you know what? For the fun of saying it, I mean, it does really amaze me frankly, that you are doing all of this effectively on your own, if you can think of it that way, because having a partner or having someone walking you through it or having someone you’re competing against, depending on where your mindset is such an important motivator. I mean, my friends that I race with on the track, every time we get together, we each say, “I’m so glad you’re here,” because this is so much harder to do on your own. And even if someone’s not training with you personally, the fact that you are coming out with these things, it does give that feeling that you are part of the process. And I imagine, I mean, I haven’t thought about this until now, but I’m wondering if you hear from people who just talk about how they’re relating to you from the fact that you’re just constantly putting out all this stuff for people to explore and experiment with and discover the effect of.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, and honestly, a lot of that really does help me a lot. I’d be doing this regardless, but when I do put this stuff out and I get feedback from people on how it’s inspiring them to do stuff similar to that, that’s really drives me too. To give you an example, actually, just yesterday, a guy on Instagram messaged me and sent me a video of him doing zercher carries, 315 pounds, walking back 10 feet, walking back into the rack, 10 feet, 315. I think he weighs 160 pounds. So that’s awesome.

Steven Sashen:

Well, hold on, hold on. Let’s describe what the zercher carry is, because if someone hasn’t seen it, just describing it will make it seem even crazier than it is.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. So basically, your arms are kind of at your side. You have a bar across the inside of your elbows here, and you’re carrying it like that, tucked into your body. So you’re not holding it in your hands, you’re holding it in the crooks of your arms, right in front of your stomach essentially. So it’s not on your body, it’s supported by your arm. It doesn’t hurt your biceps. It’s so close in that there’s no chance of that happening. But basically, the guy was taken almost double his body weight and stepping back and stepping back into the rack, and he was inspired by a video that I had posted showing me doing this with double my body weight. So I was about 190 something pounds at the time, and I did it with 400 pounds, and I carried it 30 feet down my gym, turned around, carried it back, and I had these little squat stands.

These are 1950s rusted out York squat stands. I’m using an easy curl bar because the easy curl bar is smaller and it’s easier to turn with, and it has the bends in it, so it actually fits perfectly for your elbows and doesn’t roll forward. So over the course of a few different weeks, I gradually built up to see how much I could do with that exercise. So I worked up to over 400 pounds on this easy curl bar, walking down my gym, turning around and walking back, and that’s the closest I’ve ever come to passing out while doing weight training. I’m not even kidding about that, and that’s even including the time that I squatted 315 pounds for 40 reps.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, my God. Well, this is another thing that you do that I wonder how many people actually take you up on. I mean, the exercise you come up with, the workouts you come up with, these are all doable really by anybody and under any condition. There’s body weight stuff, there’s weight stuff. If you have a certain amount of equipment, you can find something. If you don’t have that equipment, you can find something. But then you do some, I think the technical term is crazy ass endurance shit. So I mean, just describe and talk about any of these and why you do them and what kind of response you get, and if there’s anybody who is trying to have a virtual competition with you on some of this.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. One of the things I’m actually training for is called the Inman Mile, which is the guy who created, his name was Inman. He didn’t accomplish it. Nobody in the world has ever accomplished it. He has not that, no anybody has claimed to have accomplished it. There’s tons of videos of people trying and they don’t get anywhere close to it, because the capability of doing this is very specialized. And I actually think I have a shot at doing this kind of with one modification. So basically you’re carrying 1.5 times your body weight on your back on a bar for a mile nonstop. No, setting it down.

Steven Sashen:

So you weigh 200 pounds, you got 300 pounds, you’re going to do a squat.

Nick Nielsen:

Exactly, yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Okay.

Nick Nielsen:

So the goal is to do this nonstop without moving the bar, without taking the bar off, without setting it down, anything. That’s what I’m training for right now, and I was thinking to try and get this last year, but I didn’t get anywhere close. I could see this was going to require a lot more training, specific training for it. So right now, I’m basically, once a week, I’m doing very specific carry training for this goal. The modification I’m going to do is instead of using a straight bar, I’m going to use what’s called a safety squat bar, specifically a Marrs-Bar, which kind of sits on your body more like a backpack, more padding, doesn’t mess up your shoulders.

I tested that long distance with actually a straight bar, and I got about probably about 400, 500 yards with my body weight before my shoulders started really starting to hurt. And within two days, I’m like, there’s no way I can do this physically without breaking my shoulders. So it’s like, I’m going to do this with this specialized kind of bar instead, and right now, I’m to the point where last week I did five sets of two minutes carrying 700 pounds.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, my God.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. So I literally, inside my rack, I put 700 pounds on this bar and I’m just carrying it, stepping back and forth, forward and backwards inside the rack for two minutes straight, no break, set the bar down, rest a couple minutes, do it again. So I did five sets of that with 700 pounds, and that’s going to train those capacities, which actually as I’m getting stronger at this, those weak links are actually changing. So at first, it was breathing capacity. Now it’s kind of lower traps, and I’m to the point where I can literally have 500 pounds on my back and have a normal conversation with somebody without even literally, I shot a video on this a couple of weeks ago where I literally have 500 pounds on my back ,and I’m talking to the camera and I’m explaining what I’m doing, and you wouldn’t even know that this is real weight, but it’s literally like 500 pounds on my body.

Steven Sashen:

What a trip. Needless to say, when you’re ready to actually go for it. Are you planning on calling the Guinness book or recording it so that they can note it?

Nick Nielsen:

Oh, yeah. It’ll definitely be recorded. Nobody will believe it if it’s not recorded.

Steven Sashen:

So Inman never actually did it. He just came up with this idea and somehow people have decided, sure, what the hell?

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah. There was drinking involved as I understand it, and he just say yeah. He was an Olympic weightlifter and said, 1.5 times body weight. Let’s see what happens. I think he got maybe 600 yards with 1.5 times body weight, so he made a good distance out of it but yeah.

Steven Sashen:

And it is interesting if you think about doing it, I mean, most people think that it’s the weight itself that’s the problem. But the first thing I thought is just holding a bar on your back that way. In and of itself is difficult and stressful. Ironically, when you’re actually squatting, you get to kind of relax your shoulders and your upper back a little bit, because as you’re going down, you’re under that vertical position where you’re having to keep things in place, I mean, holy crap, there’s things that get activated that you would just never think of that would be the limiting factor.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, and it’s continuously changing. I got up to the point where I did about 80% of my body weight for a mile continuously in September, and it’s about 25 minutes to do all that under load. With a lighter weight, it was about 22 minutes. With, by the time I do it, I’m going to aim to be about 180 pounds body weight, so lifting, carrying 270. After I did the 700 pounds in the sets, I actually put 335 on the bar to see if I could go for 10 minutes straight, and I managed to get to eight minutes straight. So basically walking back and forth in the rack under 335 pounds for eight minutes, and that was like, okay, now I see where this weak link is, and I keep up this training. Once a week, I’ve been doing this and kind of working everything else alongside that, but with the goal of doing that exercise, that distance for that period of time.

Steven Sashen:

What’s the mental component of doing that? I mean, because you’re getting into some very, for lack of better term, elevated spaces physically that… I’m reminded, I was at an event with a ultra runner named Tony Krupicka , and someone said to Tony, “I’ve run a 50-mile race, so I want to train for a hundred-mile race. What do I need to do?” And Tony said, “Nothing. If you can do 50, you can do a hundred physically. It’s just all in your mind at that point.” What are you experiencing when you’re doing these endurance things that are really pushing the limits?

Nick Nielsen:

Essentially, you have to kind of separate yourself from your body in a lot of ways. I was talking to another guy, he does some stuff like this as well, and he said the Navy SEALs call it the portholing, where it’s like you visualize your body yourself as being outside the porthole of the ship and looking in on what’s happening. So you’re not actually trying to experience the pain of it, but you’re outside of it looking in on somebody else experiencing the pain of it essentially, and it does work, and you really have to kind of pull yourself back and out from that. It is totally mental though. I could probably do this in the mile challenge right now, but mentally, I’m not ready for it because I’m probably about 70% ready for it physically. That other 30% would be mental. I want to get closer to the point where I’m closer to a hundred percent physically ready for it, so I’m within reach mentally of it, if that makes sense.

Steven Sashen:

Do you think it does? I mean, it’s sort of like I say on the track, no one’s ever set a world record in training. It’s the pressure of the competition, the adrenaline of the competition. It’s not like you’re going to be running a 13 second a hundred and suddenly run a 9.9, but if you’re running 10 low, there’s a decent chance that in the right conditions, you’re going to do nine high. So how much do you think about when you’re going to do it? What’s going to make you feel, I mean, there’s one way you feel ready because you’ve just done it 10 times. It’s like, no one’s watched but now I can do it. It’s easy. But there’s another where it’s like I’m close enough that in the right condition, I think I can do it and still be scared shitless, I imagine.

Nick Nielsen:

Oh, yeah. No, that’s the element of fear right there, and having it within reach, but knowing that you haven’t done it yet before and no one’s really done it yet before, it’s like that’s what’s kind of okay, now it’s time to put up or shut up. This is time everything has kind of come together. Now I’m going to do it. When I was telling you about that 315 squat for 40 reps, that’s kind of what I did, and that’s kind of what I’m basing the mental aspect of this on. When I trained for that, I wanted to develop that capacity. It was a Tom Platz’s program, if you can believe that, but if you’re not familiar with Tom Platz, he had legs the size of literal tree trunks and-

Steven Sashen:

No better. So Tom Platz was 5’2, 5’3 and his legs were, I mean, what was the measurement? Like 26, 27? No, no more than that. I mean, his legs were bigger than my waist.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, his legs were just enormous. So this was a program that he had done.

Steven Sashen:

God.

Nick Nielsen:

Right before I did this thing, I did a warm-up set of 225 for 50. That was a warm-up, and literally I just blew through that like it was a warm-up and then rested seven minutes, that was the rest period, was seven minutes, put 350 on the bar. It was at my university gym. I went and told my weight room monitor there. If I’m on the floor, hold off on calling an ambulance. Just come and see, check in with me first because I’m going to be on the floor at the end of this. So they were kind of keeping an eye on me as I’m doing this. And so I get the bar off there, a rack and everything is dialed in right now, and I didn’t have 40 as the goal. I had 20 as the goal.

I did 10 reps, felt like nothing. I got to 20, still actually felt pretty good. So I’m like, I’m going to see how much I can do. That’s when the whole different mindset really kicked in and the next 10 reps were tough. They were a grind. Once I hit 30 reps, I literally had an out-of-body experience where I didn’t have any perception of anything else around me except the rep count in my head, that’s it. It was the most zen thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s literally 31, 32, and I was visualizing like flaming numbers in front of my face. Everything in my body is activated. And on that last rep, all I could think was just 40, 40, 40, 40. It was just like that one thing. There was no other existence except this number 40 that I had to finish. And then I racked the weight and I fell down, and I couldn’t get up for 10 minutes.

Steven Sashen:

I was going to say, did you rack it or just drop it? Holy mackerel. I mean, you and I talked about it, I’ve been doing some workouts lately where long time under tension, similar things. I mean just let’s do abs. So okay, you’re going to do V-sits or crunches. It doesn’t really make a difference and you’re going to do them for a minute to two minutes, and the first, let’s just do a minute. The first 30 seconds feels fine. Then the next 10 seconds, all right, this is hard. Then the 40 to 50 is like, okay, I really would like to stop and the last 10 seconds, if you can make them, you’ve slowed down by 50% and it’s just why am I doing this? And so yeah, it is wacky when you do push for time. And for me frankly, so 40 reps, I mean, what was your cadence? I’m guessing that was probably a good two minutes.

Nick Nielsen:

At least, yeah. The first 20 reps, literally, it was almost easy, almost easy, but those last 10 reps probably took as long as the first 20 reps I’m sure, and I’m sure the last rep probably took as long as previous three or four reps. It was literally, it was just like, and I’m not kidding when I say it was out of body. I remember the feeling, but I remember not having any perception of anything else around me other than just that number flaming in my face that I had to get. And yeah, it’s always taught me that you always have more left in you because I would’ve normally stopped at probably like 25 in a normal set, but I got another 15 reps out of that.

And I’m like, I’ve got nothing else to do after this. I’m not doing anything after this. I’m just going to do as much as I possibly humanly possible. I’m not going to let my mind say no. And I just pushed until literally my body actually physically gave out. And that’s something you don’t normally hit. So I know when I’m doing this long distance stuff, I know I’ve got that capacity there, but it’s just a question of is my mind ready to go there again? And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. What was the recovery like after that?

Nick Nielsen:

So literally, I could not get up for 10 minutes. I was just laying on the floor. I couldn’t even raise my head. I was just laying on the floor just… The weight room monitor came over and she said, “Are you okay?” I just did a thumbs up with my arm on the ground, and there were other people around. They’re like, “Dude, what happened?” So yeah, literally, it took me 10 minutes to be able to function like a human being. And then the worst part of it was is that that gym was actually located in the basement of the university. You get where I’m going with this. There’s no elevator there. So it probably took me 10 minutes to climb that flight of stairs to get back out of the gym.

Steven Sashen:

The closest thing I have to that was over this past summer, we’re in Europe at our European office and we staying at a place. We were in Budapest actually, was staying at the top of a hill. It was the castle district for anyone who’s been there. And the closest gym I could find was at the bottom of the hill and it was, I’m trying to remember, it was something like a thousand steps to get to the gym. And the gym was in the basement and they had some great old school equipment.

I mean, it was a dingy, dirty basement gym from the turn of the century. It was delightful. But the guy I was working with, he put me through a workout that was the hardest workout I’d ever done. And then I had to walk back up the thousand steps and then Elaine and I went, we were sightseeing and we went up the tower of this church that was like 300 steps up and down. And by the next day I couldn’t walk. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean the only way I could move, I couldn’t move my legs, I had to just swing my legs and kind back and forth.

Nick Nielsen:

Like a marionette.

Steven Sashen:

Like a marionette. It was bad. I’ve never had soreness like that in my entire life. And it occurred to me, this was probably when I was doing it, this is probably not a good idea, but I felt kind of okay.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, I can sympathize. I actually had one workout for calves where I got soreness before the workout was done.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, that’s not good.

Nick Nielsen:

It was really not good.

Steven Sashen:

I got to put this in context. The fact that you’re willing to enable and showing that you’re doing these things, it’s not, wait, let me say it differently. When we turn to people that we look to for advice or inspiration or help or whatever, on the one hand, we kind of want to emulate them. Now, on the other hand, sometimes it’s not possible. When you’re seeing a bunch of these bodybuilders who are just jacked up on every steroid known demand, you’re not going to be that. You can’t do that workout. You’re not going to look like that.

Doug McGuff did a great video saying, “I’ve done every workout known to man, and what I can tell you is, if you’re not taking steroids, they’re all the same. You’re going to hit your genetic potential and that’s it.” And you don’t know what that is. You might be someone who gets really big. You might might get really strong, you might not but regardless. But the point is that to have someone who is pushing beyond where you are in a way that even, I can’t imagine doing what you’re doing because it seems like so not fun to me. I don’t know where to begin, but there’s an element of it that is inspiring because I get it, I understand, and it’s not like it’s superhuman. It’s crazy human, but it’s not impossible obviously, because demonstrating that.

And so I guess what I’m saying is you’re doing these abnormal things in a way that feels normal-ish, that makes it inspiring and not disappointing, depressing like I could never be that, do that, et cetera. You’re not actually even doing it to say, you should be like me. And that’s one of the things that I appreciate about what you do is just how accessible it is, even when it’s something that there’s no way I’m going to be able to do anything remotely like that.

I guess part of it’s you’re showing things that work for the gamut of people’s skill, ability, and interest. As a sprinter who’s all fast twitch and does not have that kind of endurance component, I like watching it, watching a basketball game or a car wreck, but I know I’m not going to do it, but then I know the next day you’re going to have something and where I’m going to go, I can go do that, and it is hard to describe, but seeing that thing that there’s no way I could do followed by the thing that I can do makes the thing that I can do seem even more doable.

Nick Nielsen:

Honestly. I do that on purpose. I literally do that on purpose. I consciously do that when I’m putting out some of this crazy stuff. It’s like, okay, this is crazy, but I’m doing it. And I’m sure there are other advanced people who could do it, but the next time it’s like, okay, now here’s something that literally anybody can do. It’s like, here’s a variation of a dumbbell curl that you can maybe shift your hand over to one side so that you have more space on this side, so you get some additional resistance on the supination. Anybody can do that. You don’t have to be advanced. You can be a total beginner. And so I actually do post this crazy advanced stuff because some people may be able to do that or be inspired by it, and some people are like, that’s nuts. It’s a car accident. But literally the next time it’s like, okay, here’s now something that you could do. Total beginner. Oh, that’s interesting. I’ll set my feet like this when I do curls, and that’ll feel better on my lower back.

Steven Sashen:

Well, wait. I want to highlight the one that you said just before that. So if anybody does have a set of dumbbells at home, try this here. You’ll feel the subtle difference between the way you think you should do something and the way Nick has identified how to do something where it’s better, where if take dumbbells and you’re going to do a curl and just imagine you’ve curled, and so they’re all the way up. So you’ve done the full curl, and typically you’ve got your hands in the middle of the bar part of your dumbbell, and so instead shift your hand. So it’s as far out as it can go. So you have more, there’s just more dumbbell on the inside than the outside.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, so on your thumb side is right up against the plates.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. Thumb side is right up against the plate or against the whatever, the hex or whatever it is, and then do the curl from there because it’s putting some torque where it’s making you have to turn your wrist. If you have your wrist facing your face, turn it so your pinky is getting closer to your face, that supination and that supination just turning your wrist that way, turning your forearm that way activates your bicep more. And so putting your thumb against the weight that way makes it harder to do that and puts more strain on the bicep in a place where it’s actually really functional. And so it’s a simple, simple little thing that you will feel the difference.

Nick Nielsen:

Yeah, immediately and literally anybody can do it and feel the difference.

Steven Sashen:

Exactly. Exactly. So we could do this all day long. This has been a total blast. Do me a favor, Nick, for people who want to find out more about the kind of stuff you’re doing and the broad collection of things that you’re doing, where should they go? And if you were going to recommend where someone might start, if they’re a total novice, if they’re an intermediate lifter or athlete, or if they’re advanced, what would you recommend in those cases?

Nick Nielsen:

Sure. My more beginner to intermediate website is fitstep.com. F-I-T-S-T-E-P.com. More of my intermediate to advanced stuff is on madscientistofmuscle.com, the stuff we talked about with the physiological adaptations, returntoprime.net That’s my latest book, which covers in depth all this stuff about fighting, aging with your muscle and strength essentially, and literally turning the clock back 20 years on what your body is capable of doing. And that stuff works. I mean, I’m actually 51 years old and I’m carrying 7, 800, 900 pounds around in my basement. So this stuff works and I’ve been doing it for a long time. But it’s something like you were saying too, it’s reachable. Just different level of resistance is everybody’s at a different level of resistance. So you just do these things to your level and that’s the difference, but those are the primary places that you’ll find me. I have links to social media on there as well, so you can follow me via those links as well.

Steven Sashen:

Awesome. Well, Nick, it’s been a total, total pleasure. For everyone else, I hope you do go take a look at Nick’s stuff. There’s a bunch of it if you just opt in so you can watch what he’s doing on Facebook or Instagram, et cetera, that’s going to give you a lot of motivation and a lot of ideas. The new book is incredible. It’s just this compilation of like you mentioned, the things that we talked about, but in much more depth and with some of the other principles we talked about as well. And you’ll see how to apply them, and it’s the kind of thing that makes you go, all right, I got to give this a whirl. So I hope you do and let both of us know what the experience is. And in general, just as a reminder, thanks for being here. Head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.

There’s nothing you need to do to join. It’s just the fun URL I got. But again, you’ll find previous episodes, all the ways you can find us on social media, spread the words so that people become part of this movement about natural movement. If you have any questions or comments or complaints, if you want to tell me that I’ve got a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, if there’s someone you want to recommend that I should talk to, have them on the podcast, drop me an email, just send it to move, M-O-V-E, @jointhemovementmovement.com and I will get it and I will reply. And until then, just go out, have fun, and live life for you first.

 

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