354: Brian Bradley: The Connection Between Posture, Pain Relief and Performance

0:00:04 – Jeff Pelizzaro
The 18STRONG Podcast, episode Number 354 with Brian Bradley from Egoscue. Hey South guys, welcome back to the 18STRONG Podcast, where we’re here to help you build a stronger game, because we believe everybody deserves to play better, longer. This episode we have with our good friend, Brian Bradley. I think this is Brian’s third time coming on the 18STRONG Podcast. Brian is the Vice President and Head of Brand Development and Special Programs over at Egoscue. He’s also on a mission to help millions of people learn how to live healthier lives and basically achieve complete fitness and pain free way of living.

Brian speaks and consults with tons of corporations all over the world doing training for corporations and other organizations like Tony Robbins, the Titles Performance Institute, as well as the NFL and YPO. In this episode we talk about all kinds of different things. In fact, what I love about having Brian on the show is we always go in many different directions that I don’t anticipate going in. We talk about living in pain and really how we can utilize the idea of pain and change our perspective on pain. Rather than it being something bad and something that we have to deal with, it can actually be an alert of something that needs to be changed or something that we can do to make ourselves better, and we even talk about some other random things, including breast implants. So stay tuned for that. But Brian is always an incredible guest on the show and I know you’re going to enjoy this one.

Our partners over at Linksoul have been providing us with the best apparel for both on the course and off the course, from polos to t-shirts like the one I have on right now. Everything that they have is meant to be worn from the golf course to wherever you’re going next, whether that be casual, whether that be to the beach, there’s all different options over there. So go to 18strongcom slash Linksoul. You’ll get 20% off of anything in your cart over on Linksoul’s website. Go again 18strongcom slash Linksoul for our favorite brand of apparel for anything on the golf course and off. Now let’s get to this week’s interview, Brian Bradley. Welcome back to the 18strong podcast. It’s so good to be here.

0:02:28 – Brian Bradley
It’s been such a long time.

0:02:30 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I know, I know we got to catch up on all your pickleball and everything that you’re doing these days. You’re traveling all over. You’re at the Tony Robbins events. Tell me a little bit about the pickleball these days, cause it used to be that you’re playing a ton of table tennis, but now I see pickleball everywhere.

0:02:49 – Brian Bradley
Yeah, listen, the difference between the two sports is one’s not as nerdy as the other and pickleball is the most social sport I’ve ever seen in my life. Like you know, when you go golfing with your friends or whoever, let’s say, you get thrown into a foursome. You’re all pretty good friends by the time you’re done, depending on how much money you take from them. Pickleball I played for three hours yesterday total and played with 14 different people eight, six or eight of them, I didn’t even know. Now we’re all pretty connected. It’s just amazing. So it’s just much more social. There’s going to be 70 million people doing it by 2030. And you know that’s why. You know I saw this a while ago and I’m like, okay, so that’s why I started paying free pickleball for that kind of stuff, not to teach how to. It’s like teaching golf. Right, I know just enough to be dangerous to be teaching golf, but you shouldn’t be teaching golf, Brian. Lead that to the pro. So I’ll leave it to the teachers.

What I am going to show you is how your body’s moving on the court. It is not serving you. So when you go for a backhand just hitting it back across, which they call a dink, I don’t know where it came from. Nice slow ping pong shot across, but you didn’t bend your legs or your knees or your ankles. 100% of that went into your lumbar spine. Your low back takes a beating and you wonder why? I got hurt by pickleball. That’s more embarrassing than saying CrossFit hurt me. Come on.

0:04:12 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, I would imagine that you know and I’ve even heard this from a few docs that I know that and it used to be CrossFit. It’s funny that you said that because a bunch of orthopedic surgeons used to say CrossFit was the best thing to ever happen to their, to their profession. And I have now heard them switch that over to pickleball or say that you know that’s kind of the up and coming version of it, because they see so many people and to your point, most just aren’t prepared to be out there moving and cutting and dinking and doing all these different kinds of activities because they haven’t prepared their body, they aren’t doing the things on a regular basis or they just don’t know what they need to be able to do out there and they just jump right in.

0:04:51 – Brian Bradley
Listen, dave Phillips from TPI are out at a couple of car events, because we’re both car guys like to go to the track, stuff like that. When we start talking pickleball he’s like dude, I see you’re killing it, you’re doing this, blah, blah, blah. But the highest I’ll ever get is probably a four or five. Like I’m not going to go for a five. Oh, and go to the senior crow. Yes, all this stuff I actually enjoy the rest of my life outside of pickleball. But they’re going to start a whole certification and division. I guarantee you, because of it, just the numbers.

0:05:22 – Jeff Pelizzaro
It makes sense. I mean, just like golf, you know, helping people prepare, especially because there’s such a huge population of non-professional players, right, people that, just like in golf, you can play this up to whatever age you want to play it. But that also means there’s that much larger of a population that needs to be prepared or needs to be in preventative treatments for those injuries or post rehab related stuff from the injuries. And so it is. It’s a huge, huge market, and I’m sure we’re going to talk about a lot of the crossover of things that we need to prepare our body for, both for pickleball, for golf, and how we can remedy or how we can prevent a lot of, really some of these useless injuries that shouldn’t even happen.

0:06:07 – Brian Bradley
Well, listen and I’m not judging what you just said, other than I’m judging it let’s take the word useless out of there and go these absolutely useful injuries, because now, if we start viewing them as a gift, they’re there to teach us something. My body’s not working the way that it should. The injury is a signal. I just put this stuff up yesterday on a post on my Instagram, talking about guys you’ve got to start moving. This is you were talking about, start asking better questions. Well, the whole premise was move better, not just move, move better.

You and I have been in this mindset for well over a decade more. I mean just with golf. But I would back in the day when I sat there and watched Jack Nicklaus hitting and I’m calling my dad going I just gave Jack Nicklaus a golf lesson and he was like, yeah, so much for golf. It wasn’t that I was teaching him golf. Very simply, it was in a basic nutshell are you able to separate? Well, we do the same thing with our NFL teams.

I take an offensive lineman, left tackle who’s the real? You know, he’s got to be the guy that’s protecting the backside, the blind side. He gets down in his stance and his butts up like this and his head’s down. He’s already a second slower. Take a look at the Niners and just watch Bosa. He’s lining up and he’s like this. He is literally like an animal that’s ready to attack you that way not here, and then having to lift, and all you have to do is give them the disassociation test, which we can show your people here if they haven’t seen in a while.

It’s the number one, in my opinion, the number one way to assess whether somebody has athletic ability or not. Second would be the hanging test. Are you hinging from the pelvis or are you bending from your back? I don’t care how you look, how are you moving? And then I’ll give them the Jeff to go golf specific or whatever you’re into. Now you know that kind of stuff. So for me it’s just such a diverse thing. Rotational athletics is what I’m interested in, but if you think of every sport you know, including walking, they’re all rotational athletics, right.

0:08:25 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, everything revolves around just movements of the body. You mentioned just learning to move better. When you say that, what are some of the things that you see people doing on a regular basis? I love watching your Instagram because sometimes you’ll just like take a snapshot of just, you know, people in the wild and just draw little pictures or little arrows showing what we all tend to do just naturally, positions we hold ourselves in, ways that we walk that aren’t really natural, aren’t the way that we should be doing. Can you give us a little insights and maybe people can kind of catch themselves on a few of the things that they might be doing on a regular basis that you would take a picture of and snapshot and point that out?

0:09:09 – Brian Bradley
So for those of you that are driving, waiting until you get home to look at this visual, but if you’re looking at it now, I’m going to show you a gate video Somebody walking. I was in Florida and thank God I rented from Turro because I got a Tesla so I could sneak up on him because there was no noise, right, I was like the creeper, 55 year old, sneaking up on this dude. But just take a look at bilateral. For those of you listening and don’t understand, I just very simply you should be balanced. From left to right, the same arm swing, the same leg swing, the same calf size, the same calf size on the other side. The feet are turned out on one side. They should at least both be turned out. You know, if you’re going to have your feet and turning out, then have them be equal. So think of balance when you’re looking at this and then say is this person balanced? Look at the lack of arm swing on one side versus the other. Look at the calf size on one side versus the other.

0:10:06 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You can even see him kind of tipping and leaning and walking to one side.

0:10:11 – Brian Bradley
Yeah, because he’s trying to pick up a leg that no longer works, which is why he leans that direction. That’s the arm that’s over swinging. The other one’s not swinging. So, as a therapist, we can go no, that arm doesn’t swing, that’s a problem. Versus that arm doesn’t swing. I wonder if it’s trying to lock itself down to protect you in some way. So I’m a glass half full guy and I’m going the body will never make a mistake, even with that gate. There’s nothing wrong with it. They’re just trying to get from point A to point B. They’re just doing it like this, whereas you and I might be doing it like this. It doesn’t mean we’re better, just means we’re better aligned.

So I got the guy and I said hey, excuse me, sir, how are you Now? First of all, you’re driving a Tesla three, so he’s probably not threatened, because you never hear about gang members going. They pulled up in a Tesla three and they killed everybody. So you know what I’m saying. He’s not really that guy. So I pulled up as probably pretty safe. I said excuse me, can I show you something? You’re out exercising today. Why are you doing it? I’m in the field. I work with a lot of pro athletes.

I dropped three or four names so he went oh, I remember those guys over golfers and stuff like that. I said look at your walking. And I said do you notice how one arm doesn’t swing? And he goes. Well, I have a lot of pain, but your, I applaud you for being out here to try to lose weight. Be more functional, get strong. He said, yeah, I retired down here a while ago, but my body’s not my body didn’t get the message. So what do you think I had him? Do I have literally 30 seconds to impress the guy as I’m the creeper or I’m the hero to him, right? So I’d rather be the second. What do you think I had him do?

0:11:49 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I guess you had him stand up, maybe turned his toes in, put his hands locked his hands behind his head and pulled his elbows all the way back. That’s going to be my guess.

0:11:59 – Brian Bradley
Yes, except I didn’t have him stay still. I said will you do me a favor and walk 20 yards forward, 20 yards back with your hands, like this, drop your traps, elbows back. Completely different, completely different, Jeff. It was so simple. But the guy came back. He’s like what just happened. I don’t hurt. And I said were you also?

You’re not any thinner either, but you’d like to be. So why don’t you do some of your walk with your hands on your head? And maybe your ass will pay you back, because now you’re moving your length system. Now you’re really getting a good heel strike. Listen, there’s a heel strike. That’s how you cure glute amnesia by getting the heel to hit correctly.

For those of you listening, walk around your house, put your hands on your butt cheek. Every time your heel hits the ground, your glute should fire. That means my foot’s in front of me, Jeff, when my glute fires to help me transition back to the mid stance and back through terminal. So why don’t we go to the gym and do butt blasters where we’re donkey kicking behind us? It makes no sense. That’s why, when I’m talking to a guy’s like Lance Gill, he’s like you know what? It’s interesting because I do a lot of these glute amnesia things and their glute amnesia is no better Like buddy. Their glute amnesia is a positive. Their glutes aren’t firing for a reason.

Now dig into that. And for this guy it was changes thoracic spine. How about for this guy before and after? Yeah Right, that’s no different from what you just saw, except in the green shorts. I got him 14 days before that green fight and look at the difference. And he punched the guy in the MMA fight with the top of his shoulder four times and broke his nose with his shoulder. For those of you, listening.

0:13:54 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That was a picture of Conor McGregor that Brian had worked with and you know that’s something that I had always noticed about Conor and I guess most of us in the field would is the way that he would stand was so internally rotated, rounded shoulders, thoracic spine really flexed over, and it always just looked so strange to me. But you write that picture. So for those of you that are listening, definitely go to YouTube and watch the video so you can see that picture of the difference in his posture there. It’s amazing.

0:14:27 – Brian Bradley
Listen, I don’t like to disparage him because if he gets pissed off he knows where I am and he can put a beat down on me. But I can say this probably one of the top three smartest athletes I’ve ever had the chance to work with, fred Warner being probably number one. You saw what he did to Dallas the other day. I mean the guys that he just gets it, he understands, do your functional movement and look what he does. Conor was one of those ones that just says okay, pop, pop, pop. Oh, okay, good, that’s in this position where he’s rounded over. We gave him one exercise which moved him back, kind of like hands on head, but it was all loaded up and I said now throw your punch, because I saw that his feet went from 45 degrees out to almost completely straight as he was walking. So I already knew that the base of support was firing better, his so as his deep hip muscle, the circuit breaker, was turned back on because his feet got straighter. So now he went pop, pop, pop. He looked at his coach and said I don’t know what it looked like, but that felt so much more crisp and sounded louder and faster and they were like whatever you did keep doing it because he they were getting the fighter back versus the entrepreneur, the very successful businessman that doesn’t win you fights. No, it makes you $200 million a year in the most successful athlete ever. I get it, but it’s comes at a consequence, and maybe part of his stuff was when he was working with Tony Robbins too, where he was going through the psychological stuff where he threw the thing through the bus at Khabib.

I mean, you don’t talk stuff. People react like that because they’re just in a different mound. Their mind and their hearts aren’t synced into one. Is that a word Synced into one? My God, my dad taught English too. I’m sorry, father. So you know just one of these things where, when you can change the body, mind and spirit together, you have a fighter that showed up for the cowboy fight. When the, when the body is not congruent and the mind and heart are not linked up, then you have the Khabib fight, which is that before picture. He was lost and he knew it and I got him just by sending him the picture from the fight and said Khabib cheated, he had a hole in me. If you want to talk about it, and it’s not the Khabib cheated, look how Khabib entered the fight. I mean, this is, this is the picture you should be really interested in. Is this? Look at Khabib’s position versus Connor Wow.

0:16:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Look at that difference that’s so drastic between the two of them.

0:16:51 – Brian Bradley
And it wasn’t that Connor couldn’t fight and just couldn’t breathe. And for those of you who know your diaphragm is your breathing muscle, over 24,000 times a day should be firing my body breathes in and out, front to back. It doesn’t, paradoxically, breathe like this where I’m heaving up, like that.

0:17:11 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Can you take us back to the gentleman that you saw walking on the road and you know you said you had yet 30 seconds with them to a minute? Why choose that specific exercise and can you tell us this cascading effects of how that impacted him so thoroughly, from head to toe?

0:17:29 – Brian Bradley
Okay, you ready? This is. This is top secret, nasa level information. I’m going to give you this, so just show how smart I am. Here’s what I said. Well, one arm doesn’t move and the other one does. I wonder what happens when he puts his hands on his head and puts them both in the same position. That, honestly, was the genius at work.

And remember, you have to know your stuff so well you can. I’m not calling people dumb, but you have to be able to dumb your stuff down, like we can get into biomechanics. My my talk yesterday was going into rehabilitation of the spine Pavel Kolaj, vladimir Yanda, craig Liebenson and Vojta Carl Levitt all these guys from the Czech Republic, and that’s. That’s science beyond science. But I have to be able to read something and then dumb it down where my little brain can understand it. And then I say, well, I wonder how I could even make it not smaller, more understandable, more relevant to that person. Cause, Jeff, think about marketing, Jeff, what do you do for a living? So I’m going to ask that question what do you do for a living?

0:18:42 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I help golfers get stronger so they can play the game longer and and better. Why?

0:18:48 – Brian Bradley
do you do that? Hold on. Why do you do that?

0:18:55 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So I can help them enjoy the game more, so I can help them enjoy their, their life more, so they can, you know, go through the day with less pain and play the game that they love even better.

0:19:07 – Brian Bradley
I hope everybody heard what he said. He scooted around what and why. Very well, because he clearly understands his clients. He went right to how it affects them.

I don’t care what you do, Jeff, I don’t even really care. Remember it’s me. I’m the golfer. I don’t even really care why you do it. I care how it’s going to make me better. I’m selfish. So if we can all just accept that we’re all just selfish, speak to how I’m good at. Speaking to how, cause I don’t need my significance jumped up by going. Let me tell you what I do and why I do it, and make it about me. I don’t care about me and you’re looking at the most selfish human on the planet. I’ll get into a 34 degree cold plunge in the morning because it serves me. I’ll do infrared at night for 30, 40 minutes because it serves me, even if it gets in the way of doing something around the house. I’ll do that later, because if I’m not happy, then nobody’s happy. You know it’s happy husband, happy life. Okay, that doesn’t rhyme at all, but still we’ll come up with something you know what.

0:20:20 – Jeff Pelizzaro
It’s funny you mentioned the cold plunge, the infrared. I know that you are really involved in a lot of the restorative care, the recovery, and it’s a topic that we hear a lot about. We see people cold plunging, we see people doing cold showers. Cold showers is one of the things that we have our people do during our 40 day forge. But I want to dig into the recovery piece from your perspective. Why is it so important and why do you take so much time to educate yourself? You mentioned you do it personally, for yourself, because, selfishly, you want to feel better, you want to move better. But what are some of the biggest components that we need to know about recovery and how the heat, how the cold, how the infrared, how they impact us.

0:21:03 – Brian Bradley
Okay, here we go. I just made the sign of the cross because I hope I know what I’m talking about. Otherwise I’m going to send you right to a Huberman lab and let them talk to you about it. Right, let’s just let we’ll just clip some of Andrew Huberman in here right now. We should just cut away to Andrew Huberman now talking about cold shock and heat shock proteins. So, knowing enough to be dangerous, I don’t do any of these for recovery Zero. What am I recovering from?

0:21:34 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Don’t know.

0:21:35 – Brian Bradley
Hickleball Like. But if you think about it, I am recovering from pickleball because it does beat the heck like me, but I’m not doing it for recovery. I get up in the morning to serve myself heart, mind, body, whatever. To get in that water, and there’s no. Tony Robin says it perfectly Once I get in, there’s no negotiating. Once I see that water, there’s no negotiating. You have to literally say that to yourself, otherwise you go right into that sympathetic nervous system and go. I could easily talk myself out of getting in the cold today. 34 degrees, 34 degrees and I listen does it do more than 50 degrees? On the research side, 49 degrees doesn’t really give me more than what 34 degrees does, except I’ll argue with anybody about this. I will argue with you that it does this. I’m just going to give you a visual. Hey, forget this picture with me without a shirt on. But that’s what you get, right?

0:22:37 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Oh my gosh, the lice.

0:22:40 – Brian Bradley
But listen how calm the water is about 34. Stay in here for three to four minutes. Get off my nipple. Okay, you didn’t need that part. Okay, sorry about that part, but you know, one of those pieces of ice started to head toward my chest and I had to talk to it to get away. But that’s four inch pieces of ice that I had to break up because it was that cold.

Well, that’s the psychology, that’s the known negotiating. We understand the physical side, what the liver is going to do. So during your 40 day forge cold showers, in my opinion, are more difficult sometimes because that water is just beating the H out of you. It’s just never, it’s relentless. When you get into freezing, calm water, then you can, and there’s your sympathetic to parasympathetic shift, there’s your control of that cortisol shift. Once you can control and I know controls and illusion, but let’s just use it Once you can embrace cortisol and sympathetic so it no longer has control of you, can you imagine what the toughest 40 yard pot to win the opens going to do to you? Absolutely nothing. You may make or miss the pot, but you’re not going to miss it because of the Yips. You’re going to miss it because your cat aligned you incorrectly. Okay, we’ll blame the catty, but I do it mainly for the hormonal response and my overcoming the quote fear of what the water is going to feel like.

0:24:24 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s one of the biggest reasons that we put that in that challenge because and it’s fun to hear people respond when they initially say, oh my God, I can’t do that, there’s no way and then they do it and they get out and they’re like I felt like a whole new person when I stepped out of that first shower. And there’s one gentleman in particular that I can think of. He did the forge two years ago and has done a cold shower every single day since. Because of that feeling right there, Because of I didn’t want to do it. I told myself I was going to do it. I did it. It sucked, but I got through it and then was obviously elated with the change of state, the change of physiology, but it was the building of the confidence level that also changed.

0:25:14 – Brian Bradley
You don’t know what you really don’t know, right, until somebody shows you that kind of stuff, what you’ve done. Like Wim Hof, we wouldn’t have started really looking at the fascia if it weren’t for Thomas Myers doing some guesswork, then some scientific work, and then you know. Whether he’s right or wrong about certain things, I don’t really care. It’s that he’s got us to look at. Hey, do you realize that I could release your eyebrow up here with pressure points and your plantar fascia goes away, like, what? Like, no, that’s. We were in university. Nothing like that was taught, but yet it’s effective enough for us to release. Look into the research, and it’s true. So when you look at cold, the Agassiou method which is what I do and have been doing it for 33 years whatever has completely changed my view? And Pete Agassiou himself is a great question. Asking therapist, when you report yourself in tears, I have this and blah, blah, blah, blah, he just goes. Okay, okay, he’ll let you talk. He’ll let you talk Because remember, we’ve said this before the person in charge of the conversation is the one listening. He’s looking for that one opening to speak to how it affects that person. And now we have buy-in forever.

That’s how I get raving fans who just literally say I’m in this forever, and then they can’t shut up about it, because when you’re given the opportunity to live pain free and it takes a minimal dose to get it done somebody posted about this thing I did yesterday and the guy said you should just go to a chiropractor. Well, if you’re not a confident individual in your own line of work and who you are then you can’t give away what you don’t have. My answer could have gone two ways. I’m going to take that statement personally. How dare you come on my post and promote chiropractic? I’m not a chiropractor. That’s competition. No, it’s not. We’re in this together. We both, as a field, want to do this together.

So I could have gone left and taken it personally and gotten in a fight. I chose to go right and say okay, real quick. Yes, chiropractic is amazing. I go to a chiropractor because I want to, not because I have to. When you do your minimal dose of a goscue every morning, you’re now making the chiropractor’s job easier, so he or she can now take you to the healing process of why they went into this work in the first place not to see you over and over and over and over again for the same stuff. So when your people do these cold showers, they are forever hormonally changed. That’s what you’re hearing. Is the hormone change?

0:28:08 – Jeff Pelizzaro
When you’re talking with different clients, different people that you come into contact with athletes and they present with these seemingly impossible injuries or things that they’ve had in the past and they feel like they’ve done everything they can, they can’t change. I know that that’s not something that you believe in. How do you help them to realize that? First of all, it takes a lot of responsibility on their part to make these changes? Even the gentleman that you saw walking down the road probably doesn’t think that at this point of his life he can make a whole lot of changes to make himself better. You showed him in a quick glimpse that there are things. How do you break that barrier when somebody kind of pushes back on that, and how do you? What would you tell our audience that is maybe struggling with pain, maybe struggling with something that they’ve been dealing with for a long time and they haven’t been able to find that answer yet?

0:29:05 – Brian Bradley
Change your verbal relationship with pain. So I’m going to read you something, and this book is Rehabilitation of the Spine. Just some light reading yeah, it’s a lot, but over my shoulder here. And then we’ll talk about the biocharger and not that. I other than remember we were talking about biohacking and the crazy stuff we’re doing. This is just crazy.

So pain equals harm, is there? That’s their relationship with pain. Okay, I have pain If I get on that bike again at Herbie last time, so now the bike hurt me. Now I have a bad relationship with biking or golfing, and yet you want them to get over it. We got to change that from pain equals harm to pain equals.

I wonder what it means. It’s a message, it’s a signal. Well, I wonder what that signal is. And the signal doesn’t have to be the police lights where it’s blue and red and you’re going oh no, somebody’s going to get arrested for bad things. I view it as Christmas lights. It’s here for a good reason, like it’s Christmas. Let’s learn from those lights. Let’s learn from that signal so that we can break the cycle, because even when the pain goes away, that bike, that son of a bike think about that person getting angry every time they look in the garage because that $7,000 bike can hurt them. Still on the wall. Well, it’s not. It’s not. You got to break that cycle by helping them embrace it. So it’s like my my knees got kicked in the face literally by a horse when she was younger, destroyed her whole face, got surgeries, all that stuff or whatever healed it. But think about the PTSD that goes with that. Does she ever want to be around a horse again?

0:31:01 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Likely not.

0:31:02 – Brian Bradley
It’s that movie, the Horse Whisperer. It’s literally that movie. And you know, Robert Redford the horse whisperer was able to change the psychology by going. The horse did not want to hurt you, the bike didn’t want to hurt you, the golf club didn’t want to hurt you, CrossFit didn’t want to hurt you. Break the harm cycle. But again, you can’t give away what you don’t have If you don’t have a belief system, as a practitioner, that the body is trying to tell me something versus something’s wrong. You’re always focused on something’s wrong and I’m not saying ignore kidney symptoms, ignore liver symptoms and don’t get an MRI to see if it’s the C word. You know you got to go check that stuff, but even at that point, damn, I’m as diagnosed with cancer. Okay, let’s get busy, or let’s get busy dying.

0:32:02 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I choose, let’s get busy.

0:32:04 – Brian Bradley
If it’s my time, it’s my time. I’m here for a good time not a long time, right, but I’d like to live like I’m 55. I’m one third of the weight through my life. I have a long time left. So if I bleed in the harm, then everything about it is harmful and then what happens is you go to fear. Avoidance equals deconditioning and then the endurance starts to wail because you start to go to bed. Rest that Instagram I posted yesterday 10% strength loss. For every week you’re immobilized. When you will mobilize a knee, you get permanent changes in how the knee is able to relate to different movements and the capsule shrink said all these different things happen. Now I don’t ever believe permanent is permanent. I believe you can interrupt permanent with the correct alignment over my left shoulder. Once you establish that, then everything becomes non permanent again. I think you can start that healing process. I think you can start that healing process. I think you can start that healing process as we’ve seen with people with bunions.

0:33:11 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I want to take just a second to thank our new partner, which I’m really excited to announce is First Form. First Form is a company that is here in St Louis, based in St Louis. It’s a nutritional company that is doing incredible things in the world of nutrition and one of the reasons that we decided to partner with First Form is obviously we’re very impressed with their dedication to their products and the quality of their products. It really is the dedication to them and them helping their customers get real results, aside from just the products. We got a chance to go and actually visit the facility again here in St Louis and really walk the halls of the corporate offices. But we got to see the manufacturing plant or the warehouse, and it’s not just a place where they’re packaging supplements and shipping them out. It’s a culture, it’s a community and you can see that amongst the employees. You can see that their culture and their core values that are not just pieces of art on their wall. They’re actually letting them there and they’re helping to expand those into the community and really that’s why we partner with First Form. Obviously, their products are incredible. Otherwise we wouldn’t suggest them either. We use them on a regular basis, so you’re going to be hearing a lot more about their products and what they can do for your fitness, what they can do for your golf game, the protein powders, the multivitamins, the protein sticks, the hydration packets All of those products we’re going to highlight in future episodes. But we just wanted to really celebrate our new partnership with First Form. You can go to their website, firstformcom forward slash 18STRONG and we’re going to be doing a giveaway every single month with anybody that buys through that link. So go to FirstFormcom that’s P-H-O-R-M com. Forward slash 18STRONG. That’ll take you directly to their website and you can check their whole suite of products, including some of their fitness apparel and anything that’s purchased over there. You’re going to be enrolled into our list for our giveaway.

I saw you make a post this might have been a couple of years ago and I thought it was really interesting, because at first I was like I’m not even sure what he’s talking about here. But you were talking about faith and you said that it’s important to have faith in your healing and I think when people hear faith they think of different things. But you said it’s important to have faith in the fact that what you’re doing is going to get you there and the methods that you’re doing, because if you don’t have faith, you’re not going to be committed to doing the right things right, you’re not going to be committed to doing your daily agascus, you’re not going to be committed to doing your, as we like to call our, efds. Can you speak on that a little bit, about knowing the right track that you’re moving on?

Because I think that many times we’re in this place where you have back pain, you have hip pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, whatever it is, and you have all these different things you’re trying. You’re scrolling through Instagram. You see Brian Bradley post something, you see somebody else post something, you see all these different exercises and we all have this, you know, fix it now mentality, and we don’t know where to start, we don’t know where to go, and so if you don’t know which ones right, you keep grasping at straws. But when you recognize that there is a path, how do you help somebody figure out what that path is and give them that faith to continue and be committed and compliant Again?

0:36:29 – Brian Bradley
this is very scientific, almost NASA level stuff. Here you ready, we’re sharing it all. You’ve got the hashtag STFU, because if you don’t, then you’re no longer listening for the opening. Remember I said Peter Gossky was a master at listening for connection. That’s what I learned, because I love to talk, but only when there’s a goal. The goal would be to help that other person. So if my goal is to help that other person, let’s find the easiest route there by just actively listening to them.

Tell me your story, take your time. Here’s a box of tissues. Okay, great. So I just have a question about your car wreck. Are you driving again? Well, of course, where’d you drive to last time? Let’s see where I’m taking them. Well, I went to Walmart. What’d you get? Well, I just bought stuff for the house and then you drove home. Yeah, but you’ve changed their state about that injury or that PTSD type of this. That will help them with the.

The quote faith in their own body by getting rid of the pain equals harm. That’s not faith. That’s being scared. I’m not telling you not to be scared. We all have reasons to be scared. Look at what’s happening in the Middle East right now. I don’t even live there and I’m scared for all of them and this divergence. We have to literally find a way to have these discussions. I have faith that it’s going to remedy itself at a certain point. I truly do. It’s not going to be tomorrow, I can tell you that. But if you don’t have faith in and it’s a glass half full kind of thing, then you’re always looking for problems. Imagine dating somebody who’s always looking for problems, and that’s an analogy I give the people. Sometimes you hear yourself You’re always negative. How’s that ever going to be positive? If you’re always well, the other shoe is going to drop.

Well, I was watching this show on Netflix the other day and I recommend everybody to watch the series, whether you agree or not, I don’t care. The fab five from queer I remember those guys. Yeah, dude, they just came. They just did a new series where they’re going into people’s homes and businesses and doing makeovers on everything. But there’s a young black man that’s in there with them who’s one of the five, and his play on psychology and how he understands and listens. I think the guy’s amazing. And the guy that does the hair, who wears the dressings he’s so flamboyant, makes the show, of course, but to watch. These guys have good intentions. I can’t stress enough what you’ll learn just by watching the show.

And they had a young man in there where you had a really kind of beautiful fro and he was a. He’s a. I’m teaching people how to garden in their city to bring people that aren’t wealthy healthy food. I mean, come on, it’s so great on what he’s really focused on. But he had no idea because he he didn’t grow up like this. And here’s what he always said I don’t have a dress. Well, because I don’t feel like I deserve it. I don’t. I go into these board meetings with dirt on my fingernails and all this stuff and people look at me and I’m asking them for $100,000 to fund this. Excuse me, but you can’t give away what you don’t have.

And he didn’t have self-confidence, self-love, until they got involved and said are you kidding? So we’re going to make you over physically, we’re going to help you understand things. Mentally, we’re going to have you walk into a new house with your wife Everything’s new because it’s time to step away from who you were not step away from what you were doing and what your goal is, but you got to bring something new to it and I just. I was traveling so I got to binge this a little bit. It was amazing to watch what they’re doing. Now. Remember, listen, I live in the Tony Robbins world. Which is what if you ask a different question? What if you do make that two millimeter shift and your faith, your belief, takes over versus you going well, I hope to someday be successful. Well, there’s a big hole in hope and when we get clients in chronic pain or limitations.

I’m seeing a baseball player tomorrow who has he’s had Tommy John surgery. Now he’s worried about it coming back and I’m going to literally walk in and go congratulations, you’re all the stronger than it’s ever been. Well, what’s going to protect your shoulder? Because you’re still throwing wrong. Now let’s find a way to get you to Conor McGregor Hip drives the throw. The same thing we did with the guy walking hands on head brought his feet back in. Now he became a little bit more hip driven. You and I live in the hip driven world. If you’re not swinging a club with your hips, you’re going to lose clubhead speed. I don’t care what wedge you’re using, you’re going to skull it. You’re not going to hit under the ball.

So faith is tied to beliefs and my job and all my therapists at Agasku are very well versed on shut up, listen for the opening and then ask a question. And then, when they ask a question, you can come in with your expertise. Let me show you the diaphragm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that’s great, but that’s what we do. I need to know how this translates into how it affects that person. And when you get to how, Jeff, which you do very well, there’s few people out there that can get to how, because they don’t have calm in their life. And I mean, I don’t even know how to say it any differently than when you decide to have calm in your life. It’s a whole different story, and I have it. You know, road rage doesn’t affect me. You can drive the way you want to drive. I drive a 500 horsepower car, but it’ll never be in a street race. You know it’ll never, because that’s my ego taking over and ego stands, in my opinion, for edging God out and I end up killing somebody. Not fun. I’ll give you a little story on that real quick, because judgment is one of the biggest things that shuts down all this belief system.

There was a young kid and I live in a small town here in San Diego, but it’s a smallish town, call it, 8,000 houses or something right. You know that’s what they do. You know that’s what they do. This kid’s driving like a 1994 Mustang GT and he’s coming through the downtown like a bat out of hell. I mean he’s flying and I’m thinking, my God, there’s a park there, there’s a dog park, there’s the middle school, there’s the elementary. What is this kid doing? So I would be the jerk if I chased them. So I knew there were two red lights and I’ll finally catch them. So then I started following him. Now he’s thinking who’s the creeper following me? Kind of like the guy in Florida.

And I caught him on a cul-de-sac where I rolled down my window and he rolled his down. He goes, what’s up? And I said beautiful car, I’m 55. I remember having one of these GTs in 1986 when they first started moving over to the five liter. Is that the 4.6 liter? Oh yeah, I’m no longer there to fight him, but I’m going to get my message across. And I said amazing. I said you know what’s going to ruin it for you with that car when my son’s leaving middle school and you run him over because of how fast you came through downtown. Please, for your own good, slow down, because your life will never be the same if you run over someone’s dog or someone’s kid or cause a wreck. And you know what his answer back to me was. I will absolutely do that. Thank you so much for not yelling at me.

You have a way to communicate to your client, your customer, or to your lover, to your partner, to whoever which is why I referenced the Queer Eye stuff on Netflix, because I’m going to post about it. I’m going to film some of the show, probably get sued for it, okay, but I’m going to say you guys aren’t watching this for any other reason than just listen to how they’re speaking to this person and how they bring this young kid who was in a car wreck and he’s in a wheelchair and he’s thinking about suicide, and how they empower this kid to use his chair as a way to empower other people. And we’re going to make it easy on you we’re going to pay your rent for the next year, wow. So you got me into an apartment that’s all wheelchair friendly. You got me new clothes so I can walk out with a shirt that says look at me versus don’t look at me, I’m in a wheelchair, don’t judge me.

Why did God do this to me, changing that belief system? I mean, I’ve been around that for 30 years. Robbins was one of my first clients I ever worked on and his whole belief system was why is it happening and why is your reaction that way? What if you chose? What if Peter Gosk you? What if your pain is there for a reason? And so that guy that got out of the shower. I would say to him tell me more. Well, what do you mean? Okay, I don’t need a video, thank you, but just tell me more about what you’re really feeling. What did the cold water do? I understand? You felt like a new man. What new man? And just listen. So this whole belief system I know we’re off track a little bit on sports performance, but half of it’s 70% of it is mindset. Forgive me one more example. I did a podcast on breast implants. What the hell do I know about breast implants? I’m a straight guy and I love breasts when I was younger.

0:47:30 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Okay, great, wait you don’t still love them.

0:47:33 – Brian Bradley
No, I love them. But see, I was the only kid out of five that breasted. So my mom said I had a fetish. I don’t know something like that.

But this young lady was doing a podcast on breast implant removal. Because of the toxins that go into that, no matter what, that her body was fighting it. Well, I can get on there. And she said Well, what made you the expert? And I jumped and said oh, my heterosexual male fan of boobs, blah, blah, blah. Breast fat, all this stuff.

I’m joking around about it, but this is not a joking matter to her. And I said to her but this isn’t a joking matter. Call her Lisa, lisa, this is not a joking matter, so forget what I just said. I have a question for you before we start. You’re getting your breast implants removed in a week. Yes, I’m so excited. She’s smiling. I said I just have a question for you. Why’d you get them in the first place? When you can answer that question, then you’ll really be healed, because taking them out is not going to heal you as to why you were so insignificant without them. And I said you better have a box of tissues before you start talking, because here it comes. Sure enough, she starts crying and it’s her podcast.

But if all these women could learn one message what about me? Didn’t I like that? I needed to go get that. So other people liked me and I’m not judging them. They look amazing, but why’d you get them? And to joke, on the other side, my mother. She had liver tubes in and I walk in and she’s 80. She has her top off and she’s cleaning the things. I go Mom, come on please, I’m your son, I can’t see you like this. Put those away”. And she goes oh, you don’t like my 36 loans. And we had that kind of relationship and I’ll remember that because they both passed away. But things like that, they happen to you for a reason. But you’ve got to be aware of yourself to be able to have those things happen to you, otherwise you’re just gonna skim by them.

0:49:30 – Jeff Pelizzaro
But I love about our conversations, Brian, is that we go in way different directions than I ever ever would imagine, but they’re always so pointed on deeper topics that mean so much more.

And talking about the different, most of the people that we work with or that listen to the show we’re finding are kind of either they’re in the fitness profession, they’re in the medical profession or they’re the golfing crowd that’s pretty much kind of in the 35 and beyond, typically males.

And what I found working with a lot of these guys is they find themselves in these positions where now they’ve been working, they’ve been raising a family, they’ve been working their tails off, they’re at a job all day, and it’s almost to the point where they just kind of get in this rut of doing their daily things, doing living life the way that they know how to live it, doing the best they can to get by, to support their family, and they’re not taking care of themself, they’re not doing the things that are going to really allow them.

Let’s forget about golf. I mean, golf is a big piece of it, but they’re not allowing themselves the opportunity to live as fully as they can from a physical standpoint, from a longevity standpoint, and I think that it comes onto a lot of what you’re talking about, of having some of that respect for yourself and understanding that the only way that we can take care of the other people in our lives is that we have to take care of ourselves first. And what are some of the strategies that you found to help some of these types of individuals maybe break that cycle, break that mental state of I’m doing all these things and I don’t take the time to do it and take care of myself.

0:51:13 – Brian Bradley
Okay, so if I heard you right, we men cavemen me big dumb animal. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus and we get upset at the woman because she doesn’t understand us and she gets upset at us because we don’t understand her. There’s not a chance that’s happening, unless you realize at first we’re different and as a man, I choose to self-deprecate a little bit and go I’m the big dumb animal here. You better dumb your conversation down so I get it and then I paraphrase stuff back to them. So when one of your guys, for example, let’s say a fitness guy there’s a fitness guy on Instagram who always has his shirt off. Long hair looks like a really bad version of Jesus. I don’t know. He’s on there, he’s like. So if you really want to, you know back pain to go away. You got to do this. I’m like whatever floats your boat, but instantly I go to my God. If this guy could only see himself through other people’s eyes and they’re asking why. You might as well get breast implants because your shirt’s off for a reason. Listen, I’m in pretty decent shape for 105 years old, but you’re not gonna see me going. Look at that. You know that bad. When I post something, there’s a reason I’m covered up, because I don’t need somebody coming in saying you look like shit or you look amazing. I don’t need either one of those, but what I am gonna do is I’m gonna speak the truth that that person needs to hear. And Paul Chek said it perfectly about nutrition, which I really liked the way he said it. He said look, there’s a lot of people teaching nutrition out there, but if you can’t teach nutrition without your shirt on, you shouldn’t be teaching nutrition. Right, that was a pretty decent statement, but that’s just not true. I’m an amazing pickleball coach. I’m even an amazing golf coach, amazing table tennis, amazing biking, downhill, boxing, baseball cause I’m a much better coach than I am player. When I watch a person throw, I’m looking not at where the ball is going, I’m looking at what they’re doing, what’s the release point, where’s the elbow, all that stuff and then simplifying it back to them when I hear and see people speaking. If you said to me, Brian, can you critique this video of this person showing core abdominals and a triangle on yoga, I would say, yeah, really wanna, really. I don’t even need to see it, just turn it up. Let me hear the language first. Okay, now let me see it. Oh, okay, now they’re barely wearing anything. Okay, I got it.

But if you’re truly looking to affect people at a deeper inner level, then you gotta speak their language that fits their how. How does it affect me and how does it make me better? So when I was saying, look the biochargers over my shoulder, here I have this in my office. I do three recs a day. They’re about 12 minutes long. If I’m reading a book or like that book, I was doing some research in there yesterday Because I’m trying to get three things done at once.

I don’t have so much time during the day, but when you can get a person, a male, especially because that’s the question you asked me, mostly guys when you can get a male to understand that he or she let’s see what I did there whether he or she can affect, can affect their lives in a positive way by thinking and acting differently. But you need to give them a reason to do it, which is how it makes them better, versus judging. The guy without the shirt on doesn’t speak to how it makes them better because he already thinks that does make them better. But let me tell you, sir, how it makes me feel. On the other end, I tune you out instantly. So your valuable information gets tuned out a lot of times. Listen, I’ve probably tuned people out with okay, every once in a while I drop a bad word. Okay, I get it. I’ve tuned them out with God. This guy’s loud and he loves to hear his own voice. I get it. I’m not for everybody, but the methods that I employ are absolutely for everybody.

When you can get your aligned body first to do its job, then every other system, including your emotional reaction to something, changes. When you’re out of alignment and incongruent, then so is your reaction to stressors, and that’ll show up as I push the ball to the right. I suck at golf when I made 50 of these before. I can’t handle stress. I, I, I, I, I, I, I. I don’t hear any we in there. This is just about I, kobe Bryant. The Mamba mentality was not because I’m a failure, it’s I’m gonna outwork everybody, michael Jordan, I’m gonna outwork everybody. But it wasn’t to say to everybody, it was I’m gonna show you and I’m gonna perform at this level. That takes a major shift in psychology, absolutely. I know that was the longest answer to a very short question, but that’s what you get. That’s all right. That’s why we’re here. Long story, long story.

0:56:59 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s all right. That’s why we’re here. Long form podcast, right? Yep, all right, brother, I know you gotta get running. Is there anything else that that you wanted to mention anything you’re up to before we let everybody go, and where’s the best place people can go find you?

0:57:12 – Brian Bradley
Yeah, guys, you can find me personally and I answer all my own DMs. If you’re confused about something, upset about something, if you wanna know something else, go to Instagram under the Brian Bradley T-H-E. Brian Bradley, because Brian Bradley was taken and the guy wouldn’t sell it to me. You also have at Igotsky method. I do have a URL which would be igotskycom slash podcast. You do that. It’ll move you into a place where you’ll be opting in for some emails from us and then, if you wanna talk to me personally, my team will get you in touch with me.

0:57:43 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Excellent, Brian. Always a great pleasure, always fun to catch up with you. It’s been way too long and just thank you for coming on helping out the 18-ster on crew and look forward to bringing you on again in the near future, hopefully.

0:57:59 – Brian Bradley
Near future would be a good thing, instead of us reading five years or whatever it was that we did because there’s a lot of good information and maybe we open it up to something where you allow some of your insiders to come on and ask questions good idea.

0:58:15 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s a great idea. We will definitely do that, and good luck with the pickleball, my friend. I expect to see some more pickleball videos.

0:58:23 – Brian Bradley
Yeah, I don’t need luck, I put in the work.

0:58:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Spoken like a true champion. Thanks, Brian.

0:58:30 – Brian Bradley
Buddy, love you. Talk to you later. Tell your tech crew thanks for the help too.

0:58:33 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You got it. You got it. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for joining us this week on the 18-Strong Podcast with our good friend, Brian Bradley. If you want any more information on this episode any of the links we talked about in the show just go to 18strongcom. It’s episode number 354. You’ll find all the information over there. And don’t forget to check out our partners, linksoul and FirstNorm. Train hard, practice smart and play better golf.