Gabe Salinas on Performance, Habits, and Coaching
“I’d love for people to come in forever, but my understanding is I know this, like they’re going to get busy or they’re going to move, they’re going to go college or whatever. So I want to give them all the tools that I possibly can for them to succeed outside of here. ”
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Gabe Salinas is the owner of the Sports Performance Facility, The Sports Lab, a former professional MMA Fighter, and a speaker on the topic of performance in various facets.
Gabe has helped Professional Athletes to Weekend Warriors and everything I'm between to achieving their peak athletic performance. As someone who desires to learn and improve daily, Gabe stays on the cutting edge of the research on Human Performance in hopes of helping both his athletes and himself.
Connect with Gabe Salinas:
Show Notes
[00:05:47] Where did the interest in movement begin?
[00:07:04] Were there any coaches or mentors to help guide him early on?
[00:07:49] MMA Early On
[00:10:54] Using the gym as a place to fail
[00:12:38] What makes a high performer?
[00:14:24] Motivation only gets you so far
[00:18:07] Recommendation for the average person
[00:20:27] Getting into the body
[00:23:35] Is it better to specialize or generalize?
The Talent Code by Dan Coyle
Range by David Epstein
“So basically, what happens is when you look at these kids, and if you have a tennis player, for example, a soccer player doesn't matter.
And they start at five years old and, and all they do is play tennis for their entire life. They're going to be better than the kid, sorry. And the kid who plays baseball and soccer and volleyball and tennis and all those other sports up until I believe 16 or seven. Yep. And then when they hit 16 or 17, that kid tends to specialize it around 1415 that kid will start to overtake them, and then their ceiling is a lot higher to the kids that specialize.
Sorry. Generalize. Tend to be the ones who are on Olympic teams and go professionally and so on and so forth. And one of, there are a lot of reasons behind it—burnout and injuries and so on and stuff. And one of the big ones is the kid who played multiple sports not only avoided the burnout and the injuries and all that but most importantly, they developed this incredibly big bank of movements, right?
Multilateral development. They learned how to throw a ball, and they moved through it. Try to. Backpedal, and they learn how to throw side, arm, and throw, and catch. And they learned how to start and stop, and they learned how to do so many different things, so many different ways that when they go and play their specialized sport, they can play it at a much higher level.
The data is just overwhelming. Yeah, it's a really important piece.“
[00:28:19] How did Gabe's training evolve?
[00:31:04] Being a fighter doesn't mean you are aggressive
[00:33:45] Why did Gabe stop pursuing MMA?
“I kind of reached that, and I was like, okay, this is pretty close to my ceiling. My ceiling is a little bit higher if I keep training, but I'm certain. Sadly, I'm not going to be number one in the world. Right. And if I'm not going to be able to be number one in the world, unfortunately in this sport, that means I'm not going to have a career right. If I'm number 40 or 20 in the world, in the NFL, I'm going to make $20 million or $10 million a year, no problem.
I can live with that. Realistically, if you're number 20 in the world in almost anything, you're going to be fine. Right? In MMA, it doesn't really work like that.“
[00:39:50] Not wrapping his identity as a fighter to tightly
[00:42:58] What were Gabe's other interests?
“I always tell people that I'm infinitely curious. Yeah. And it's true. I am and I really appreciate other people who are infinitely curious as well cause it's rare.”
[00:44:39] How do you filter information?
[00:48:28] Good Coaching or Teaching
[00:49:24] The Diet Wars
[00:52:33] Diet Recommendations to his athletes?
[01:00:05] View on supplementation
[01:01:31] The Three Big Pieces
“I think the most important thing that it comes down to is like if we're talking about high performance or just regular weight loss and everything in between, the three big pieces are nutrition, hydration, and rest.”
[01:03:33] Getting Recovery Right
[01:04:24] Overestimating the good and underestimating the bad
“There's a research study, and when, when people estimate their green vegetable consumption, it was something like three servings more than it actually was. Now on the flip side, when they estimate their French fry and cookie consumption, it was like two or three servings less than what it actually was.”
[01:07:33] Breathing work
[01:09:42] Back to sleep data
[01:12:34] Why We Sleep
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Sleep is your superpower | TED Talk
[01:14:13] Alcohol and Athletes
“So here's what I've learned with elite athletes. And this is a little bit different. The elite athletes have the ability to be very black and white in their training in their period, and their relaxation period is a skill.
So what I mean by that is I've rarely seen. They're out there. There aren't tons of elite athletes who are partying, getting hammered during the season. Yeah. And there aren't tons of elite athletes who are partying and getting hammered a month or two prior to the season. But in that month or so, the fall season ends before I start training again.”
[01:18:23] Where does the discipline come from?
[01:19:48] Having a reason to get in shape
[01:24:10] Giving someone all the tools to be self-sufficient
“I’d love for people to come in forever, but my understanding is I know this, like they’re going to get busy or they’re going to move, they’re going to go college or whatever. So I want to give them all the tools that I possibly can for them to succeed outside of here.”
[01:25:47] Recommended Books
Malcolm Gladwell (Any book) - Outliers
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence
So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
[01:27:21] Advice to someone entering the "real" world or starting on a new path
“Probably the biggest thing going out of your way to increase, this is from Cal Newport to increase what he calls career capital. Like I said my grandfather taught me that if I'm constantly learning and constantly improving, good things are going to tend to happen.”
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Full Transcript - Gabe Salinas: Performance, Learning and Coaching
[00:04:37] Erich Wenzel: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of feeding curiosity and today's episode. We're joined by Gabe Salinas.
[00:04:43] Gabe Salinas: What's going on?
[00:04:44] Erich Wenzel: Nothing much, man. Just a weekend here in rainy, cold Chicago. It really is. At least it's not as bad as they were making it seem like it was going to be so Gabe give everybody your background and then where, what are you mostly focusing your time and currently?
[00:05:03] Gabe Salinas: Yeah. So I am a strength and conditioning coach. I own a gym here in Addison, lovely Addison, Illinois called the sports lab. And that's kind of what I've been putting all of my effort into and time into over the past.
[00:05:18] It's been a long time, probably 17 years. I was a strength coach at Virginia tech prior, I've got a strength coach, a few other places, and smaller schools. And so now I have this facility here and we've been open for seven years, I believe, six, seven years. And. It's been going well. So that's what I, that's what I put all my effort into.
[00:05:39] The goal is to, no matter the sport, no matter the gender, no matter the age, help our athletes prepare and perform better.
[00:05:47] Where did the interest in movement begin?
[00:05:47] Erich Wenzel: Cool. So where did that interest in movement begin? Because normally people like yourself, it's very deep rooted at a very young age.
[00:05:55] Gabe Salinas: That's actually, it's so true. So I was a terrible athlete in high school, like, like absolutely just garbage athlete in high school.
[00:06:04] And I went through my all four years of high school, not really playing a whole lot. I had a sophomore start over me in varsity when I was a scene, you know, like that kind of thing there. There's nothing about athletics that I was good at in about mid senior year. I started. Learning how to lift weights.
[00:06:23] I'd been lifting a little bit and I started picking it up a little bit more and starting to research a little bit more and learn a little bit more about how to become a better athlete. And from there I started getting decent athletically and then I continued to grow and improve and ended up competing at a fairly high level in mixed martial arts and the most, a few other things.
[00:06:45] So I kind of want to take that knowledge and I'm analytical in nature and. I appreciate actually learning objective data. I think the rare thing in 2020 so I like kind of putting those pieces together and helping athletes perform better.
[00:07:04] Were there any coaches or mentors to help guide him early on?
[00:07:04] Erich Wenzel: That's very cool for someone like yourself, like you said, do you want a good athlete?
[00:07:09] In the beginning, was there anyone around you, like coaches or teachers who kind of helped break it down for you or saw what you wanted to be?
[00:07:16] Gabe Salinas: Not really. If I'm being honest, I look back and I don't think there was anyone necessarily who helped me with that part. I think there were some people along the way.
[00:07:27] He helped me do certain things. There was one guy named movie. He was a really nice set. The gym I went to, he let me, I was 1617 helped me and let me vacuum the gym for free membership kind of deal, train from there. And he was encouraging. But outside of that, not really it was more of a just I want to learn and continued to learn and thankfully
[00:07:49] MMA Early On
[00:07:49] Erich Wenzel: That's really cool. So again, to pick on the MMA thread that had to be really early on in MMAs life cause it, cause it started in 93, 94 really realistically with the UFC. So for you to pick up at the end of may and I like the beginning of it. That's got to be rare.
[00:08:05] Gabe Salinas: So I have a story for that.
[00:08:07] I've done an interview when I was fighting, I did a few interviews and I remember telling you stories and this is my favorite story to tell. So I'm Richard Jesse, he's still a good friend of mine. I went to this gym called the Weight club in Blacksburg, Virginia, which is where I went to college, Virginia tech, and I must've been 18 at the time, and I'll never forget, I'm sitting on this machine and I'm working out.
[00:08:30] And to give you guys a little point of reference, I'm six one at this point, two 42 50 right? And I'm sitting on this machine and this little five foot, 555 pound guy kind of talks like this, you know, looks at me. He's like, Hey man. You should come check out your Jitsu and keep in mind, like you said, this was 2002 maybe, and MMA.
[00:08:54] No one really knew what it was at that point. Come check out your Jitsu. Well now if someone's says, come check out jujitsu, , McGregor and this and that, you know, everyone knows MMA and UFC and jujitsu
[00:09:06] Back then nobody did. So I'm looking at this guy, I'm like, ah, you know, I don't want to go to karate is what I thought it was.
[00:09:12] He's like, Hey, just give it a shot. I'm like, all right, fine. So this place, the Weight club had this little room, it must've been 20 by 20 and we went in there and they're having, as you Jitsu class, there must have been six, seven, eight people there. And again back then he kind of had to prove to these people that this stuff works.
[00:09:31] No one has to prove that anymore. But back then, he's like, this stuff even works with the biggest guy. And I was the biggest guy in the room and he comes in and he's like, you know, show me an arm bar. I showed everyone around the armbar and I'm this asshole who likes, I'm big and strong and this guy just kind of curls him out, crawl out of that arm bar.
[00:09:47] And I tried to, and he kinda just rolled through and put some pressure on and made me tap out. So I'm looking at it. I need to get good at this. You know, I kept going and that was my first two years of jujitsu, and I've been doing it ever since. And I absolutely love it. But one of my favorite pieces about that story is not just Richard Jesse and how he got me into it, but I think a lot of people in life, and definitely in jujitsu when they go to a class like that, especially guys.
[00:10:22] And they see that they suck at it, right? And they see that they get their ass kicked and they'll see that it's uncomfortable and blah, blah, blah. There are two types of people there, the types of people who I want to hide that blind spot in their ego. So they just pretend it was a fluke and pretend that stuff doesn't work and then they never go back.
[00:10:38] And then on the flip side, there are the people who are like, shit, like, I suck at this. Like I need to get better. And they just keep going and they get better. And I just think that's a really interesting thing. You know, a lot of people tend to shy away from the stuff that they're bad at instead of attacking it.
[00:10:54] Using the gym as a place to fail
[00:10:54] Erich Wenzel: I tend to look at working out as a safe area for failure. You know, the whole point of going to the gym and lifting weights is you push yourself beyond what you think you're capable of, even if it's a little bit, you know, it's push yourself within limits so you're not hurting yourself.
[00:11:10] But. It's a point where you can say, can I do a little bit more? And then you fail. And you're like, all right, well, I guess I couldn't do it today. And then you come back tomorrow and you do it over and over again. And then slowly but surely, you just get better. You know? And it doesn't matter what category it could mean in like more flexibility.
[00:11:26] It could mean in jiu jitsu it can mean, and you know how much you bench press or deadlift. It's all of those things. And then when you can extract those lessons to the real world. Is it where it pays off because, because you're less negative, reactive, you know? Cause when things don't go your way, you're just like, eh, whatever, I'm going to go get choked out at the gym tomorrow or something.
[00:11:47] Gabe Salinas: You know? It's, it's so true. You say that like the lessons that you get, whether it's in a jiu jitsu gym or whether it's in a weight room or any other gymnastics facility, it doesn't matter. I've talked a lot, and I've heard this a lot from parents of my athletes and I work from anywhere from middle school all the way to professional athletes.
[00:12:06] What you hear is they paid for their kids to come to my facility or any other facility to get a better coach to get better, but it's not just that piece. It's the life lessons that you receive from that training. Right? The hard work and the discipline and the ability to handle failure and continue striving on.
[00:12:27] Those are all things that are huge, huge building blocks for success in life, and I think a lot of times people tend to forget that aspect.
[00:12:38] What makes a high performer?
[00:12:38]Erich Wenzel: I couldn't agree more with that. I tend to look at a lot of elite performers and through the lens of their elite in the sense that they chose this one thing, be it football, basketball, baseball, anything CEO.
[00:12:52] Right. They chose that. And they're really good at it, but they could have picked anything from the alphabet soup and they would have been just as good in those other categories unless they're out of a freak accident.
[00:13:03] Gabe Salinas: That's so true. I remember reading an article a while back about the salaries of college football coaches.
[00:13:12]So my mom, like my whole life is athletes and athletics, and my mom. Doesn't quite understand it, right. She doesn't quite understand why people like sports so much and why so much money is involved and so on and so forth. And without getting into that, you know, I was talking to her about this and I not reading this article, and I told her about this, and Nick Saban was in the middle of a contract negotiation or this article many years back.
[00:13:37] And his agent was talking exactly. He said exactly what you said. And he's like, Nick Saban chooses to be a college football coach if he didn't want to be. He would be the CEO of IBM, right? Or anything else. He would be a high performer somewhere else. He just happens to also really like football. And that was really good, you know, it's a really good piece of information to hear because it makes a lot of sense, right?
[00:14:03] If you do the little things right, they turn to big things and so on and so forth. So. I think you're, you're exactly right. And in terms of that high performers or high performers, because of the choices that they make and the discipline that they have and the consistency that they do those things with.
[00:14:18] It's not that they were just lucky and they would probably do really well and most of the time do other things too.
[00:14:24] Motivation only gets you so far
[00:14:24] Erich Wenzel: You just said like one of my favorite words ever is consistency and it keeps coming up over and over again right now is, it's early in January. Everybody is all about new year's resolutions and things like this.
[00:14:34] And I'm going to bounce off an idea from you that I keep thinking about. and kind of thinking about resolutions in a different way. People, people talk about, yeah, I get motivated and you'll have ones, you have motivations. You'll get to the end. And I think. Motivation only goes so far. Motivation only lasts until things get difficult.
[00:14:50] What you really need is to have a mission, something that you are so invested in that this is my thing to accomplish. It sounds very Jocko Lake, but I've been thinking about trying to reformulate a way for other people to think about why they want to lose some weight or or do some sort of achievement that they want to kickstart in their 2020 basically.
[00:15:11]Gabe Salinas: I think. One of the things that I like about working with athletes is for the most part, specifically higher level ones, they remain consistent. They come to my gym and they're there for, you know, three days a week and they get better. And I don't have to worry about a whole lot in terms of their buy in, right.
[00:15:32] They're buying is pretty high. And over the years I've been doing this, and one of the reasons why I think that is, and I'm fairly certain that is, is because they have set. Points that they have to be prepared for. So what I mean by that is if I play football, if I'm not ready by August 15th then I'm going to be in a world of hurt.
[00:15:54] And not only am I going to be in a world of hurt, I'm going to be in a world of public hurt. Either my coach or my teammates or the fans, or somebody is going to see that I haven't put all of my effort into my off season. And it's not showing on the field. Nobody gets lucky. In the off season by doing that, coming back and being amazing, and that's just not how it works.
[00:16:16] Yeah, and when you look at adults and you think of the adults in your life out there, the people who tend to get in shape after let's say 25 or 30 right? They get in shape or even after 22 let's say after college, they get in shape because they're going on vacation because they're doing a tough Mudder because they have a wedding coming up.
[00:16:36] Because there's some events down the road that they have to be prepared for, and they know that come May 15th on my wedding, if I'm not prepared, the pictures are going to show it, right? Everyone's going to see it. And so I think what happens is a lot of people after 22 and they stopped competing in things and they stopped doing things so they don't have anything that's forcing them to be prepared for a specific date.
[00:17:02] There's no competition. There's no. Events, nothing like that. And instead they say, well, I'm going to start next week, or I'll start next year. I'll start next month, because there's nothing that's holding them to it. And so I think that's a big piece of it too. And you talk about a mission, you know, I think it's, it's, it's, it's a good concept, but it's kinda be something like, what is it that's going to make me for sure be ready when I was training to fight?
[00:17:30] I knew that if my flight was on October 15th if I wasn't ready on October 15th then I'm screwed. Right? I'm not ready for it. And, and, and not only that, but like not only am I gonna maybe be there's, but like I'm might get hurt too. So every time I had an opportunity to drink or eat poorly or miss my training session or whatever it may be, I'm not doing that man.
[00:17:52] Cause I want to be prepared. So I think that's a big piece too, if you have to have some sort of. Timeline that I need to be ready for this, or I want to be prepared for this because if you don't, it makes things a lot tougher to,
[00:18:07] Recommendation for the average person
[00:18:07] Erich Wenzel: Would you have any recommendations for us to say someone who's an average per se maybe works in the office?
[00:18:12] Gabe Salinas: You know, one thing that we live in, if you look at the data for this, right? If we're talking, I'm not talking about competing here, Just getting in shape. If you look at the data. It makes them habit based goals instead of outcome. Right? Instead of saying, I want to lose 20 pounds by X day, tell yourself if I can make sure that I have one bad meal a week and I eat and cleanly the rest of it, and I work out four days a week and I go to bed and have seven hours of sleep or more.
[00:18:39] Like if I do all of those things right, then I might lose 18 pounds or 15 pounds or 30 pounds. But good things are going to happen. And not only that, you're not putting extra stress on yourself and you're not trying to, you know, you're just taking those small steps and making sure that you're doing the right things consistently.
[00:18:56] Yeah. Consistently. Like you said, that's an important concept, and when you start stringing those together, good things tend to happen.
[00:19:03]Erich Wenzel: I did the same thing for myself and I still do that. I, I try to say, okay, you're just got to get there more than anything. Cause there's a lot of times where there are days where I just don't feel like going.
[00:19:13] Like everybody else, we just don't feel like going. Does it do something? And normally when I get there, I normally start feeling one feeling better. Once I start getting moving and it's like, Oh cool, I'm glad I came. and the other part of it was just like if I, I made these things a habit for myself so that I started doing it when I was about 2122 and I said, okay, if I can get this as a habit now as I'm balancing work and school.
[00:19:35] By the time I'm 30 and I'm balancing work school in a family or whatever combination of like, I'm not going to get any less busy, is my point. You know, life doesn't get less busy. It just gets busier. And so I, I looked at it the way of like, okay, I'm just going to make these habits now before it's too late, before it's that much more difficult and that I have someone else who's yelling at me.
[00:19:56] I'm like, why are you going to the gym? When do you need to, you know, take care of other responsibilities or something like that. And it helps me just decompress after work. Yeah. For me. I don't know if you could explain this cause you do work at a gym. It's a little bit different, but I've told coworkers of mine who just don't get it and I'm like, if I'm going to work like 12 hours, I might need to leave for lunch at like for an hour and decompress because I just can't focus at work.
[00:20:19] Cause there's something about, you know, getting into the gym and moving physically that has such an awesome pressure, stress reliever for yourself.
[00:20:27] Getting into the body
[00:20:27] Gabe Salinas: No. Yeah. I mean, that's, there's tons of data on that too, for a variety of different reasons, right. You know, getting the blood flow going and endorphins. Right.
[00:20:36]I think there's psychologically you just feel so much better too, you know? And so I think that it's a big, big piece. And when you look at high performers, CEOs, and you lead people and whatever, I think there's really three things. And from all the books I've read and podcasts I listen to, so, and so, they're like three things.
[00:20:54] They, they tend to wake up early and they tend to read and they tend to work out. Right. And so anecdotally, and then also from a research perspective, like if you wanted to be. Have a better shot at being successful or doing, I should probably work out. Right. Because it does increase performance and it does increase.
[00:21:12]you know, there's a study, I can't remember exactly what it was. It was, it was children. It was so, like, one of the big things now is they're trying to get rid of PE. Right. I've seen that there's, there's something that's interesting that specifically, Illinois I know has been, had some votes on getting rid of PE, and I think across the country, federally, there's, there's some, they should get rid of heat, which is ridiculous.
[00:21:34] And there is some data on, on children who, and I'm going to, I'm going to bond with this. I'll have to look it up, but children who, who had. Let's say 30 minutes of activity, physical activity a day. There's children that did it right, and I don't know if it was an intelligence test, like an IQ test they did, or if it was testing itself, they just did some tasks.
[00:21:54] But I'm certain that the kids that worked out tended to score higher on tests, which isn't a crazy thing to think, right. It's pretty obvious. Right. And the data backs it up, but. When you think about that too, like you're going to get smarter probably by working out. Right. And there are a lot of different mechanisms for why, and I'm not sure what they are exactly.
[00:22:11] Yeah. So there's a big piece there too.
[00:22:14]Erich Wenzel:I think that's an important thing to bring up because I had this intuitive sense going into my journey is like boarding physical activity was, okay, there's this idea that I've always been an intellectual, I said this on the podcast multiple times, and I love to pick on it because I think it proves a lot of points.
[00:22:31] Yeah. But I knew that there is this physical component that was lacking. And I, and I thought about it in a way of like this symbiotic circle where it's like when you, when one side of the blade is dull. Yeah. And the other is too sharp. You, you're, you're, you know, you've got to balance out the system and they feed into each other.
[00:22:46] And like, you see, one of the things I notice now is, is that I've done it is like when you get used to movements, it's like the neural neural processes of like getting used to moving the body in certain ways, you know, be at doing a squat or being at. Doing a deadlift or any sort of movement. Someone who's just doing it really early on as a beginner is super clumsy.
[00:23:07] But then over time you get like real, it's like, it's like in real time learning where you get to see how the person's brain is, is, is learning these movements and like the body is able to work as a unit. And I think it's really. Awesome way of being able to teach, young kids like what learning looks like, because learning, because we're so used to sitting still and not moving while learning that we you, it just doesn't feel like an interactive process
[00:23:33] Gabe Salinas: when it really is a neural adaptation, by the way.
[00:23:35] Is it better to specialize or generalize?
[00:23:35] Oh, okay. Call it. Right. So, yeah, I know. I completely agree with you. I, it's when you build it out that talking about kids moving and all that building. A big movement bank, so to speak, right? It's called multilateral development. Is, is an incredibly important piece. And if we're talking about elite athletes, when you look at the data for that are, I think, three long term longitudinal studies in different countries for.
[00:24:08] Is it better to specialize or generalize your kids?
[00:24:12] Erich Wenzel: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Gabe Salinas: If you'd ask a 2020 parent or 2020 club coach, they would say, specialize. You asked the data, and if you ask people who are at a very high level, every single one was st generalized and it backs it up. So basically what happens is when you look at these kids, and if you have a tennis player, for example, a soccer player, doesn't matter.
[00:24:35] And they start at five years old and, and all they do is play tennis for their entire life. They're going to be better than the kid, sorry. And the kid who plays baseball and soccer and volleyball and tennis and all those other sports up until I believe 16 or seven. Yep. And then when they hit 16 or 17 that kid tends to specialize it around 1415 that kid will start to overtake them and then their ceiling is a lot higher to the kids that specialize.
[00:25:01] Sorry. Generalize. Tend to be the ones who are on Olympic teams and go professionally and so on and so forth. And one of, there are a lot of reasons behind it, right? Burnout and injuries and so on and stuff. And one of the big ones is the kid who played multiple sports not only avoided the burnout and the injuries and all that, but most importantly, they developed this incredibly big bank of movements, right?
[00:25:22] Multilateral development. They learned how to throw a ball and they moved through it. Try to. Backpedal and they learn how to throw side, arm and throw, you know, and catch. And they learned how to start and stop and they learned how to do so many different things, so many different ways that when they go and play their specialized sport, they can play it at a much higher level.
[00:25:44] The data is just overwhelming. Yeah, it's a really important piece.
[00:25:48] Erich Wenzel: You've definitely hit on a huge topic for me, cause that's part of the reason why I do this because I've always been this person who believes in being a Jack of all trades, master of none. You know? I really do believe that the more you know is not a hindrance.
[00:26:03] It's only. A helps you pull tools, you know, just all different tools from the toolbox that apply in areas that you never thought possible or wouldn't think would be useful in that scenario. All of a sudden you're like, Oh wow, look at it. I'm using this thing that I learned and you know, my retail jobs that I never thought I'd use again, or something like that.
[00:26:20] And there's you're picking on a book. I don't know if you've probably read it, but it was range.
[00:26:24] Gabe Salinas: Yeah. Epstein.
[00:26:26] Erich Wenzel: Yup. David Epstein, I love his books. A talent code was one of the first books that I read by him, and he really broke down the doors for me of understanding how to move.
[00:26:34] Gabe Salinas: So it's funny you say that.
[00:26:35] I've read the Talent Code. I have not read range, however it is in my queue.
[00:26:39] Erich Wenzel: It's really, really good. You'll get a lot out of it. I got a ton out of that book. It was, it was one of my most impactful books for 2020 because it's like, it's one of those books. When I read it, it was like, if
[00:26:50] everybody read this book, it would, you know, change the world, so to speak.
[00:26:53] You know? And then it just goes to show that, that the things that are the least intuitive sometimes cause the biggest gains when it's just. I think the other part of it too is this interest. If someone is interested in learning something, they're going to get a lot more from it. Then they're going to get ed.
[00:27:12] Like if they're just doing it to check a box and it's hard to generate interest. I think, you know, we, at least from a school system perspective, we kind of say everyone has to learn these certain amount of things. But if I had the ability to change how school was run, what I would do is BCV test each student and.
[00:27:31] Independently track their progress. Kind of like how college even does it, where you're able to track the student's progress in different categories. And instead of saying, okay, at this grade they go up one level, you say at this grade, if they don't test it in a certain standard or they just keep staying, you know, kind of like an RPG character.
[00:27:48] And if you have a board game, it's like, okay, you're really good at math and you're just gonna Excel at math and you're going to be way above your peers at your certain age group. And then everything else kind of finds its own place. You know? Yeah, but it's the same thing for movements. You know, you can learn how to do, you know, eventually you'll just figure out like, Oh, I'm really good at being strong, so I'm going to be better at weightlifting and, or I'll be good at doing like gymnastics, like body weight stuff.
[00:28:11] Because everyone's body is unique and what your interest is usually kind of where you're good to some degree.
[00:28:18] Gabe Salinas: Always. Absolutely.
[00:28:19] How did Gabe's training evolve?
[00:28:19]Erich Wenzel: So back to kind of what your, your focus was like for MMA was like your first foray in jujitsu. How has that evolved over time for you? Like you, are you still, I'm assuming, competing and training regularly?
[00:28:32] Gabe Salinas: Yeah. So, no more, no more MMA stops MMA in 20 1314. I'm not 100% sure, to be honest. and, and I've continued you Jitsu and I have competed, I don't compete times, I only compete at the bigger meets, the bigger competitions. So the last one I did was the world championships two years ago, and I had an injury last year.
[00:28:56] So I'm planning on doing one, I'm doing the world championships this year. And one of the reasons I do that is because it's, it's tough to find, you know, I'm already on the far end of the bell curve as a bigger guy, right? With bigger guys comes poor athleticism, poor technique, and a poor gas tank.
[00:29:21] It's a lot tougher to find someone who has all three of those as the 250 pounder than it is to find it as it's 170 pounds. Right? So I've done in some of these foreign tournaments in the past. And it, it's just that it's just bad. You go to these guys . They were like turtles and stuff back there, done, you know, and then all of a sudden, I don't know if you've ever been to wrestling competition, jujitsu the competition, but it's all day man.
[00:29:51] And it, yeah, it's a full day of so boring and you don't even know. You wait, I just want, I wanted to train, like, let's just roll whatever. And you know, so you spend. Six hours there to get three matches, you know? So I tend to try to avoid that at all. I do like the bigger wines. But I still compete and there's just something about it, man.
[00:30:12] And I don't have any data to back this up. There's just something about like, being able to like beat someone else up and, and you know, from a, from a control standpoint and from a testosterone standpoint, and from a. You know, I don't really know how else to describe it. It's like a primal thing, and it's just awesome.
[00:30:33] And after training for so long and becoming proficient in any type of combat or self defense or whatever, the way that you walk and the way that you carry yourself is a completely different thing, and. Whether it's wrestling or did you jiu jitsu or judo or boxing or whatever, just the way that you carry.
[00:30:50] And so it's just a great thing and it's something that I'd like to be able to do for the rest of my life. Right. And it's always going to be a part of me because it's just, it's just a great, you know, just specifically, it's just a great. Great piece. So to add some great things to do.
[00:31:04] Being a fighter doesn't mean you are aggressive
[00:31:04] Erich Wenzel: I think that's really interesting because you know, the, the detractors to these movement, like especially fighting anything that is fighting, as a whole, people say, if you're going to be do that, you're going to become more aggressive.
[00:31:16] You know, it's like saying if you own a gun, you're a more aggressive person. When in reality, it's like, if you. Learn how to use your body as a weapon in quotation marks. You're less likely to use that on people who don't see it coming. You're more likely to diffuse the situation. Be like, man, I don't want to hurt you.
[00:31:33] Like just let shit and I, and I think that's one of the things that's really important because it's these people that know how the body works and know that they can, when, when. They need to is they're more likely to be even handed about situations and deescalate the situation. And I think that's a really important thing because most people kind of, like we were saying before, it was like the pressure relief valve, we're so.
[00:31:58] If you take an average person and the average person's stress meter is like they're driving to work, they sit at their desk all day and they're, you know, maybe they get yelled at by their boss or they're just stuck in meetings all day and they just kind of are stuck in their computer world, right?
[00:32:11] Whatever it is, and they don't have this physical outlet that is to just use jujitsu as the example. Then whenever it happens that, you know, they get stressed out at home, they're gonna blow up at people. You know, they're going to have road rage and they're going to have these, you know, anger issues, probably anxiety or depression.
[00:32:30] I mean, that's totally generalizing, but in reality, that's usually kind of the cause and cause it's like they don't have an outlet for their own aggression and place in life, or even a lack of control. And when you have this ability to put yourself, you know, one on one with another human being. And you have a mastery of your body and a mastery of then another human being and nobody has heard at the end too, which I think is really important.
[00:32:54] Sure. You know, it's just you versus another person. And at the end of it you're hugging and say, good session.
[00:33:00] Gabe Salinas: That's so true. You know, some of my best friends I be talking like all a lot of my best friends are guys they came up training with. Right. Cause when you, when you share the, the sweat and the blood and the punches to the face, like it is impossible or not.
[00:33:15] Because that's friends with that person really is. And so I completely agree with you. There are so many benefits to the internet. Again, it doesn't have to be jujitsu, right? Let's use an example. Yeah. For sure. You see the benefit from anything, you know, wrestling to you. There's so many things that those sports bring to the table.
[00:33:34] Yeah. It's unbelievable to me that people wouldn't have their, you know, would want to disagree with doing it or would not want their kids to do it or across the board. It's crazy.
[00:33:45] Why did Gabe stop pursuing MMA?
[00:33:45] Erich Wenzel: I mean, I guess for me, the only one I would caution against is anything punching to the head.
[00:33:52] Gabe Salinas: I've dealt with that too. You know, not even the CTE part, but it's just not that awesome to get punched in that.
[00:33:58] Erich Wenzel: I was going to ask you if that was kind of like a reason for it. Is. Cause I CTE wasn't really a known no,
[00:34:03] Gabe Salinas: It wasn't that. And so I, the way that I fought, I was a, I was a counter fighter, ground fighter.
[00:34:08] So thankfully I think I had one concussion and my entire career here. Wow. That's pretty good. Wasn't even that bad. It was borderline concussion. and I just didn't get hit a whole lot, so it wasn't that I ended up going to do with that really what came, what it came down to was like, I kind of reached my ceiling.
[00:34:24] Got it. You know, at my peak I was ranked I think 40 or so in the world. and I, and I had trained with a lot of guys who were top five, top 10, and I knew what my shortcomings were. You know, I was a smaller heavyweight. I wasn't terribly tall. I didn't have, you know, the large majority of these guys who are at a high level in the UFC, especially at heavyweight, are elite, elite wrestlers.
[00:34:46] You know, guys that are. Olympic team or national champions, or you know, Curtis blades a is a number three or number two in the UFC right now. And we've trained a few times, and I remember rolling with him back in the day when he was still green and we'd kind of go 50 50 but I'm like, man, like I'm like. I should be way better than this dude right now.
[00:35:09] And he is just a giant, he was a national champion, a junior college wrestler, and, and he's just long and he's six, five and he, wow. What caught me there, you know, two 80 area, maybe not quite that much. It's probably two 85 cutting to two 65 and you know. And this guy is just so strong and he's begging, he's got that ceiling, you know, firmly buttoned.
[00:35:29] And we have the same manager at the time. Everyone's actually, no, and I told him something along his ceiling is UFC champion. Right? And so far that's kind of coming to fruition. I mean, he's super close to that, you know. So his ceiling, when you look at that is his UFC champion. My ceiling was top 20 yeah.
[00:35:47] You know what guys in the UFC who are top 20 make $80,000 a year. No benefits and nothing to speak of, retire, you know what I'm saying? So, I got to that point where I wasn't there. Mike Russo was a guy who was a top five heavyweight and, and we, Tre, you know, he was my main trading partner for, for four years or so.
[00:36:06] Great guy. And, and you know, we would, he'd beat my ass when we first started and I got to the point where I could hang with him, I would to do all right. But. But still, man, like he was the elite national level wrestler in college. And so I basically got to this point where I was getting a little older. I was maybe 28 or so, and I put myself in position.
[00:36:28] I had some great experiences and I want a lot more than that, I lost it, two losses in my entire career. But my last, you know, two of my last three are my last two I think we're lost is where I kind of got to that point where like, Hey, like. I'm losing split decisions. I'm losing close to decisions to do so, or you know right there as well, but, but I go up the ladder and I'm going to put all this work in and I'm probably not going to get the reward and being realistic.
[00:36:51] Right. Because there's a certain point where I'm not tall enough or I'm not big enough, or if I can't, you have the , you know, there, there are a lot of pieces there. You know, or a little bit, you know, size and genetic dependent and I just didn't feel that I have the time to put into becoming that good of a wrestler.
[00:37:10] Right. And becoming that good of a Striker or whatever, you know, and I've trained hard and I had great coaching and so on and so forth. But you know, you get to that point where like, Hey, like maybe I should start laying some roots for the rest of my life. . I read a great article, it must've been sports illustrated by this hockey player.
[00:37:28] And he played at Boston college or Boston university, I can't remember. And the year that he played, he was second for the Hobey Baker award, which is the Heisman for college, NCAA hockey Heisman. He was second. He got drafted to the Boston Bruins. Super good hockey player that's there. And he says, I get in the weight room for the first day, and Chara , he's a six, seven, a Bruin red giant guy.
[00:37:57] Walk in a Speedo and reps out 30 pull-ups. And I realized right then and there I wasn't ready for the NHL. So, this guy, You know, he toils a few years I think in the age shall, and then he went overseas and he said he just kept trying, kept trying. He got to a certain point, you know, he's saying things, it's 26 27 28 and there were guys who were in these minor leaks with 35 and they're still trying to make it right.
[00:38:27] And they were always going to be good enough to play in the minors. But if you haven't made it to the majors by 35. You probably not. Right? Yeah. And he said, I didn't want to be like that. You know, I didn't want to be that guy who was like, you know, my dreams get, because at a certain point, if it hasn't happened, it's not going to happen.
[00:38:44] That's just the reality. And so he was smart and he, you know, he enjoyed his time in hockey and then he did something else. I can't remember what he ended up doing, but my point is, I kind of reached that and I was like, okay, this is pretty close to my ceiling. My ceiling is a little bit higher if I keep training, but I'm certain.
[00:39:00] Sadly, that I'm not going to be number one in the world. Right. And if I'm not going to be able to be number one in the world, unfortunately in this sport, that means I'm not going to have a career right. If I'm number 40 or 20 in the world, in the NFL, I'm going to make $20 million or $10 million a year, no problem.
[00:39:20] I can live with that. Realistically, if you're number 20 in the world in almost anything, you're going to be fine. Right? In MMA, it doesn't really work like that.
[00:39:27] Erich Wenzel: Especially not then,
[00:39:28] Gabe Salinas: especially not that. That was, that was a big piece and, and I'm certainly grateful I had some of the best experiences.
[00:39:35] I've made some of the best friends. I traveled almost, you know, all over the world. And it was, it was awesome. That was a great experience, but I was also realistic. Hey, like I can take a lot of this stuff that I learned and I can apply it to something else.
[00:39:50] Not wrapping his identity as a fighter to tightly
[00:39:50] Erich Wenzel:] I think that's, I mean, it gives you a unique perspective as a person who is into the ground floor of MMA. To be a coach for those people who maybe want to be into it now, because you're going to get those 20 something year olds that are going to want to be like, yeah, I want to be an MMA fighter now. Which it was unheard of back then. And, and I just think for you it's, it shows a certain level of.
[00:40:12] Mental resilience too, to not wrap your identity into being an MMA fighter. Cause there's a lot of people when they pick a thing, you know, that's all they are. And I mean, to some degree you do have to be that too, because you're not going to be the best of the world unless you, you commit to it 110%.`But I think it shows a certain level where you can actually distance yourself and be like, okay, let's look at this with objectivity lens and say, okay, can I really be number one here?
[00:40:41] Gabe Salinas: It has to. You know, but you're right. And a lot of people did, and I'll, I'll never forget, I had a flight in Nashville, Tennessee for an organization called the SFC and I was, it was a pretty big organization at that time.
[00:40:53] I was the co main event and I found a guy named , I can't remember. I see his face. Scott Barrett's got there. So if I, this guy's got there, then we were on the, we were the, call me an event, and this was live on national TV. It was a big deal. Well, I was talking to the owner of the XF see about three or four days prior, we were down in Nashville and he told me that.
[00:41:20] He had called one of the guys who was on the card and told him he was going to be a swing bat. And so the way that these fights work, some of you may not know normally in the UFC and strikeforce next to see all these, they have four or five televised or per view herds, and they have a swing bow. And the way that swing belt works is.
[00:41:38] If these fights are going really slow, that swing bout will be at the very end. Right. If they're going really fast, a lot of knockouts, they're going to need some filler. Yeah. That swing bat will kind of go right. Just based off of the timing. Got it. So call it and tell this guy, Hey, you're, you're probably going to be on TV, maybe going to be on TV because the swing bouts, if it's injected, it's going to be on TV.
[00:42:01] If it's at the very end, it won't be right. So. He tells a sketch basically that maybe it'll be on TV, maybe you won't. He's like awesome. I'm like, I'm going to quit my job. You know? Like,
[00:42:12] Erich Wenzel: Oh wow.
[00:42:13] Gabe Salinas: He's like, no, no, no, don't do that yet. It's just one TV, you know? And so you're right. And I heard that, I remember him telling me. I'd like to sit down with this. Can I talk to him like, dude
[00:42:28] Erich Wenzel: talk them off the edge a little bit.
[00:42:30] Gabe Salinas: You know, you need to focus on a lot more. There's a lot more out there, and it's nice, it's nice to be that. It's nice to be good at fighting and it's nice to be on TV and blah, blah, blah. But there are some other things that you should.
[00:42:42] Erich Wenzel: As like an athlete or anyone who does physical stuff, unfortunately there's a time limit, you know, like you're not always going to be able to compete in your sport of your choosing, even if you're good, you know? So you kind of have to like think about skill acquisition outside of it.
[00:42:58] What were Gabe's other interests?
[00:42:58] And so for you, what was that like? Like just what were you interested in outside of just physical movement?
[00:43:03] Gabe Salinas: One of the things that I loved about. This podcast is, I always tell people that I'm infinitely curious. Yeah. And it's true. I am and I really appreciate other people who are infinitely curious as well cause it's rare.
[00:43:17]so my grandfather, when I was younger, would always stress, his whole thing was daily learning and self improvement.
[00:43:24] Erich Wenzel: That's so cool.
[00:43:25] Gabe Salinas: Hey, it was, he was a doctor, very wise man. And you know, he's always like that. What would he would ask me? What did you learn today? Back then I was 12 or 13 I'm like, that's kind of stupid.
[00:43:34] I don't know. I look back and like, man, like he was really smart. So, you know, there are a lot of things that I like and a lot of things that I've, I've, I've tried to learn and improve on. Even before and during the MMA piece, you know, in addition to the strength conditioning and the research, you know, I've worked on research projects.
[00:43:55] In fact, we have one coming out on hockey soon now on the top 68, 14 year olds in the country for hockey. you know, I've learned how to code. I've done some stuff with various cryptocurrencies back in, back, back then in the craze and, with a buddy of mine is also a coder. And so those are, those are some things that really interests me.
[00:44:12] I've always had. An entrepreneurial mindset where I tend to like to do a lot of different things. Right. You mentioned it before, a Jack of all trades. you know, master of some, I like to see and still get really good at a lot of things. So, yeah, I mean, they're really like, just again, just infinite curiosity, you know?
[00:44:31] I, I really appreciate it. Learning new things and getting better at that, and then from there if there's a way to monetize them.
[00:44:39] How do you filter information?
[00:44:39] Erich Wenzel: That's the goal, right? I think that you're hitting on something really interesting in today's world because there's a lot of information out there, right? Like we have the internet, you have all the, all the sum total of information available at our fingertips.
[00:44:54] Quite literally. but the problem is, finding the good information. So how do you go about finding what's worth your time to ingest, well,
[00:45:03] Gabe Salinas: I think I certainly start by staying away from Buzzfeed, right. so, but, but really it comes down to what am I trying to answer? Is there data to back it up?
[00:45:16] Yeah. And I think so few people that have certain, so few people do that. Right? And so I'll give you one example, and this is, you know, there are a lot of things and we'll use research, and so I like to drink monsters, right? And there's tons of data on them, right? Red bull and monster, same thing. So when you look at, when you look at the data on them and they've compared it to.
[00:45:37] So why are the caffeine pills the black coffee to red bull and then sugar free red bull, right? Yep. And I'll be holding it and all parents or kids will be like, well that's bad for you. So I asked him like, well, why do you say that? But I just know it's bad for you. Like, okay, like why? You know, well, my mom told me, or it's, it is a mom.
[00:45:58] Those are really bad for you. I'll keep it. Why? When you look at the data, it's actually fine. The only things that are the only ones that are bad are the ones with sugar. The ones that affect your blood pressure and your heart and all that, guess what? They're the sugar full ones, not the free ones.
[00:46:15] Right. And then when we talk about drinking, you know, 500 milligrams of caffeine, it's kind of like that. You know, you're pushing it a little tighter. So as long as you stay underneath that, you're fine.
[00:46:24] Gabe Salinas: So I think that's where a big piece, I think a lot of people have this, well. My grandma told me this, or my dad told me this, or my mom told me this, or I heard this on the radio.
[00:46:34] Erich Wenzel: Someone they trust that, right?
[00:46:35] Gabe Salinas: And because they trust them, they think that they take that as fact. Right. Well, I'm really interested in like, let's find out what it actually says, and I understand that scientific research is not always right. Completely. Right. But at the same time, it's probably a lot better than the opinion you got when you were at the mall and you're onset something you know.
[00:46:53] Erich Wenzel: Or the guy at GNC,
[00:46:54] Gabe Salinas: Correct right. So, I think that's really if it's something that really affects my life. Right? There's something that can make me better, or it could possibly wake me up and make me worse. Like, let's get on, let's get on Google scholar. Right? Or let's get on pub med and let's see if there's something out there that we can maybe figure out.
[00:47:13] And are there competing viewpoints? Right. Are there other things? I think that's another piece too, is do I have an open mind enough to be wrong? Yes. Right. And I have to be and I, you know, I tell my athletes that all the time. If you asked me why we do something, I really try to bring it back because. I don't want my athletes to do things just because I tell them to.
[00:47:32] Yeah. I want them to do things and understand why and buy in for why we do them. Because I tell them, right? So if I say you have to do this exercise, and they're like, well, why? Well, I don't have an answer for you. You don't have to do that. I tell them that all the time. Right. But if I can say, well. If you do this, then this tends to happen.
[00:47:52] And by telling this to happen, you can jump higher. You know, use examples. You know, you watch Lamar Jackson, you know, he does this. This is what he does to get better at that, whatever, right? So if I can show them those things, right, and we do certain exercises, certain drills, and they get better at it, and I can show them in real time that this is going to affect your performance this way.
[00:48:13] Not only are they going to do it, but they're going to be a lot more bought into it. Then if I just say, well, because I said so. Right. You know? So I think that's really what it comes down to is I want to have something to back up all of my decisions by reasoning.
[00:48:28] Good Coaching or Teaching
[00:48:28] Erich Wenzel: I think that's a really important way of putting it, because I tend to look at good coaching or teaching as a way of laying a bread contrail for the student.
[00:48:36] Yeah. Like you should, you should be explaining something to the student. But they shouldn't need you to hold their hand through the process. Yeah. They should be able to look at that and be like, Oh my God, that's why this works. And then they can take it from me, cause that's the best teachers that I've had are the ones that do that for me.
[00:48:52] And then all of a sudden, you know, they're talking about a lecture and then my brain is going through three or four steps down the road. And I'm like, no, I'm in it. You know? Then I'm really in it. And then you get, you can see that light go off it behind someone's eyes and it's like, Oh, they got it. Don't need to worry about him anymore.
[00:49:07] Gabe Salinas: That's that makes so much. And you're right. Once they, once they understand it and once they get it. A little selfishly this another nice piece to it is you don't have to explain it to them again because they really believe in it.
[00:49:20] Erich Wenzel: Well, they're gonna be advocates for you then.
[00:49:22] Gabe Salinas: Correct.
[00:49:23] Erich Wenzel: That's really cool.
[00:49:24] The Diet Wars
[00:49:24] I think, you know, just going back to life looking for negative viewpoints is such a huge thing, and that's why I do podcasting as a format in its own right. Because there is no such thing as like a five minute sound bite, unless you just want to be campy about it.
[00:49:37] Yeah. You know, and a lot of this kind of is within the fitness world with diets.
[00:49:42] And I, and I like to make, you know, it's, it's a. Almost religious version of diets now is how it's kind of, it's insane. And then just how people react to it. I think of it as like the diet Wars, if I'm going to be like sell it because everyone just kind of picks their favorite flavor and it's not that they like made them, maybe they do know the science of it, but they latch on another aspect of it that makes it, it's a feeling based, like they're helping the environment there.
[00:50:10] Or this helped them through some sort of autoimmune disorder that they couldn't eat anything before they tried this diet. You know? And which is fine. Like I, I totally think whatever diet works best for you, you should go and do that, but you shouldn't put it on other people to say, you should be eating this way.
[00:50:26] You should say, this works for me. And then maybe you could try it, but I'm not going to be angry at you for not committing to it.
[00:50:34] Gabe Salinas: Well, and that's you're, you're absolutely right, because at the end of the day, the best diet out there is the one that works best for you and your schedule and that you're going to adhere to, right.
[00:50:44] If you ended the day.
[00:50:46] Erich Wenzel: And if you're not eating sad, you know, the standard American diet, which is the best acronym ever.
[00:50:51] I actually, I want to ask you a quick question about that since you've been part of weightlifting and working out. So when I first started working out, I was like three or four months into it and I made sure not to go super heavy in the diet.
[00:51:00] Like new general guidelines of bodybuilding diet, you know, the broccoli, chicken, Brown rice, that whole thing that everybody kind of knows about after getting into it. But my dad, I came home one day from school and my dad. He's like, Hey, I gotta tell you something, and he's a little bit more serious than usual.
[00:51:14] I was like, huh, what's going on? And he's like, I'm, I'm type two diabetic. And I was like, Whoa. I'm like, there's another nail in the coffin for why I should have been working out . I was basically mimicking my dad's diet, you know, eating or drinking, pop drinking, you know, or eating pizzas, frozen pizzas, all that kind of stuff.
[00:51:28] And I was like, well, up there, there's the warning sign on the wall. They're like, yeah. You know, if I would have kept down that path that was right there for me too, I was like, I was drinking six cans a day, like crazy. Like it was almost like a thousand something calories just in sugar. And I wasn't like overweight or obese or anything like that, but I wasn't, I wasn't thin, you know, I wasn't thin though.
[00:51:47] I still had like a little bit of fluff around it. And. But then he gave me the pamphlet that the doctor had given me or him at him and was like, Hey, here's one of the things I got to eat. And I like, it had slapped me across the head and I was like, what is going on here? Because here's what a diabetic is supposed to eat.
[00:52:02] And I knew what bodybuilders were supposed to eat. The only difference is the amount of carbs that someone can eat. And I'm sitting there and looking at this and I'm like, why are we not just following this guideline already anyways? Because then we can avoid this whole scenario that costs how much Metformin bills and regular blood checkups.
[00:52:21] Like however, you know, blood measures blood glucose and things like that. I'm just like, this is ridiculous. And so how have you been trying to figure out ways to kind of make this approachable to people too? Because it's such a cultural based thing, which is a problem.
[00:52:33] Diet Recommendations to his athletes?
[00:52:33] Gabe Salinas: Correct. There's, there's a big culture piece there without a doubt. you know, I really, I don't know if I have an answer for that.
[00:52:40] Erich Wenzel: but do you recommend anything for your athletes and like what they pay attention to?
[00:52:43] Gabe Salinas: Yeah, for sure. So, one of the big things that I, especially with my younger athletes, right? High school and down we don't focus, again, we talked about outcome versus habit base.
[00:52:53] We don't focus on the outcome, right? Right. Our goal is let's make sure the habits that we use are the right habits. So I give all of them machines. Right? And I'll have some. Some just very basic guidelines for weight gain and very basic, what guidelines for, for weight loss, right? Depending on what their goals are.
[00:53:11] And then from there we'll do things like gold, silver, and bronze. So cool. Gold choices for protein would be grilled chicken and lean steak and eggs and so on and so forth. And then, you know, all the way down to the bronze would be. You know, bacon, right? Whatever. And then same thing for the carbs. Gold would be broadened, rash and Kean, wide oatmeal and all green veggies and so on and so forth.
[00:53:34] And then bronze would be cookies, right? So basically the premise is, Hey, 90% of the time I want you from Gold when you're with your friends, or if it's a plan, whatever. If it's a planned party, if it's your birthday party, if it's new year's, whatever, you can eat from the rocks. Yeah. The large majority of the food that you eat is supposed to be gold.
[00:53:51] Then. But the cool thing about that, especially with high school athletes in middle school athletes, even college athletes, is. They are working out and moving times. They're walking into class, they're playing their sports, they're lifting, they're doing another other words, et cetera. So it's really hard to overeat a nutrient dense food.
[00:54:10] Right. So when you were talking. Five feet, 2,500 calories a day, 2,500 calories of chicken breast, broccoli and rice ends up being like two and a half pounds of chicken and like five cups of rice and like eight cups of broccoli. Right? It might be a little bit more, but it's right around there like that's really hard to eat.
[00:54:29] 2,500 calories of McDonald's is one value, which just about anyone can put down to one standard, right? So when you think about that, right. All we need to do is start changing into more nutrient dense food and less calorie dense food.
[00:54:46] Cool. And if we can do that, that's where the big rocks come. Now if we, for whatever reason, you eat way too much, then we can start dialing it down if that's a big issue. But that kind of fixes the problem for like 90% of them. Right? Yeah. And then the rest, that smaller percentage, we start playing around a little bit more with macros and we start playing around a little more, like we'll write down four days.
[00:55:06] Right? So for example, I had a figure skater who had an issue. She was maintaining weight. She needed to drop a little bit of body fat very little, but write down what you're eating and everything she had told me up until that point was pretty good. You know, they really, well, they're, you know, she's having this blah, blah, blah.
[00:55:24] So she writes everything down and I go through with them. They're creating it, and the only thing I see is she's eating, she's eating ribs every single day, right? Plus for days I was like her meat. Right? And she's to know, she's there to know like. We can eat the same amount of chicken and have the same amount of protein and drop like 200 calories worth of fat every single time.
[00:55:48] Well, guess what? When you're a hundred pounds, 200 calories is a giant decrease, right? A giant decrease. So we look at that, that's all we need to do. You know? So like those little things where you start seeing that with, with people. Very rarely will I see something like that, but more it's like.
[00:56:08] You know, I had a girl come in one time and her mom's adamant that her daughter is eating perfectly. She's adamant she's not dropping body fat. Luckily for the most part, like the cool thing about this is the feedback's very, very objective. Like you say, you're eating well and you're not dropping weight
[00:56:25] so like, just write down what you're eating for the next four days. Her mom's still fighting me on this. Yeah. I'm telling you, like she really, she has chemo salad, Sheetz chicken, like I'm sure like, I'm sure that's fine. Just write it down. And she's still fighting me like she wants to be, something's wrong, you're wrong, blah, blah, blah. Right? Like, all right, fine. Like what'd you eat this morning?
[00:56:46] Well, she had a smoothie. What kind of smooth? Well, it was one of those Java juice packets. Let me add an orange juice and then we added berries, right? So you're taking a hundred grams of sugar, literally in the beginning of the morning. I'm like, hold on. She's like, wait, that's not good. Like the mom. No it's like, I don't know if there's anything worse that you can eat. Right? I mean, like maybe a few things, but like you're, you're getting close to the worst thing that you can eat.
[00:57:10] Erich Wenzel: You might as well just give a pop
[00:57:12] Gabe Salinas: and like four pounds.
[00:57:13] Yeah. So, so again. That's, I think the biggest thing is it's more of an education piece where the large majority of people either don't necessarily see that long down the road, right?
[00:57:26] They don't think to themselves, well, these Skittles that I eat every day or this. Yeah.
[00:57:31] Erich Wenzel: It's the reverse consistency, right? Yeah.
[00:57:33] Gabe Salinas: That's not going to really, it's not going to affect me and it's fine. Right now. It's that short term versus long term. Yup. That's one piece in it. And then the next big piece is just an education thing.
[00:57:46] A lot of people, everyone knows that the snicker bars are bad, right? But not a lot of people know that a Jamba juice smoothie is bad for you. Right? And, and like you and I, we know that it's obvious. And in fact we were like, well,
[00:57:57] Erich Wenzel: cause we've done the homework though,
[00:57:59] Gabe Salinas: might be better eating the sickest party to be honest.
[00:58:00] Right. But, but that's what we know. That's what the large majority of normal people don't know. Cause you're right, we've done the homework. And so I think that's really what everyone knows. McDonald's, everyone knows cookies are bad. But, but those, those things that you're like. Well, I think this is, it should be healthy, right?
[00:58:18] Shouldn't be healthy. Or sometimes a lot of times gets marketed as being healthy, right? So again, we're trusting this company that's trying to make money off of me to be right. That's a problem as well. But so I think really a lot of it is just education. And there, there are some big rocks there in terms of education. I think it would solve a significant percentage of the problems.
[00:58:43] Erich Wenzel: I think what you said there, it was really good, was like having the scale from, you know, gold to bronze. I think that's really, really good. Kind of framing it in a way that it's not like
[00:58:55] you can't eat this, because a lot of times when people die as they say, no, I can't eat this, and what the problem is that it puts a negative pressure on that person.
[00:59:02] It's like I'm losing out on this thing that I really enjoy. And I can't have that. And one of the people that I had on this podcast, she was an Olympian, Nicole Davis, she was a vegetarian and she has little nieces and nephews and they're like, can you eat this? Like, just messing with her. And she's like, no, I can't eat this, but I chew.
[00:59:21] Or it's, I choose not to. It's not that I can't, I choose not to. So you put the control in your court, which is a really good way of sticking to those things. Another big sticking point for me is supplementation. I went down the rabbit hole of supplementation and I, you know, had a fridge full of all the different things that I could ever imagine.
[00:59:40] And you know, every single thing I was doing had its own separate container for protein to two BCAs to all of that. And I was like. At one point I kind of tallied up my monthly expenses cause when it's ridiculous, it was like $220 or something over like two months or something. It's like insane. I was just like, what am I doing?
[00:59:56] I'm like, wow, this is the best industry ever to be in because everything costs $30 and you got to be buying it every month to be on top of it. What is your thought on?
[01:00:05] View on supplementation
[01:00:05] Gabe Salinas: I'm an anti supplement guy. Now I think everyone should have a protein pie as your protein powder goes a long way, right? Just it's easy and it's good for you. I think the protein powder is great. I have nothing against creating, and I think caffeine is awesome, right? The stuff that's been studied for 20 years, they're great, but when you start adding in, like BCAs for example, like those have been proven to really help at all.
[01:00:32]multivitamins. some studies actually say they might get a little bit worse for you than not taking them, but there's no study out there. There's like, you should definitely take tons of multivitamins cause your body just doesn't utilize them. Right. So there are tons of supplements out there that I completely disagree with.
[01:00:47] And there are a lot out there. There've been a lot of lawsuits where these companies will take this, these supplements, and they'll put them out in the market for the first six months with some testosterone precursor steroid in it, right? And then everyone's great results. Like, I took this thing for six miles and I gained 15 pounds of muscle and blah, blah, blah.
[01:01:06] And then they call it. Right?
[01:01:09] They pull that piece and then now they're selling this crappy supplement and it's not really working. And they already have that marketing hype and that buzz. Then they sell for another year and a half and they get a lawsuit. They pay $4 million, but they made a hundred or, you know, whatever.
[01:01:21] Erich Wenzel: Whatever it is.
[01:01:22] Gabe Salinas: You know, I think there's a lot of that too. I know there's a lot of that. Right. Cause we see it.
[01:01:26] Erich Wenzel: Especially being in the professional sports business too, right. You hear about people who take tainted stuff.
[01:01:31] The Three Big Pieces
[01:01:31] Gabe Salinas: Yeah, you're right. so. That's a thing. But really, I think the most important thing that it comes down to is like if we're talking about high performance or just regular weight loss and everything in between, the three big pieces are nutrition, hydration, and rest.
[01:01:49] So number one is my nutrition, right? Most people can't say that as soon as my hydration, right? Most people can't say that. Number three is my sleep, right? Most people can't say that. So if I can't say yes to all three of those, I have no business taking stuff. That's my personal say, so I'm just wasting my money.
[01:02:05] Right, right. Cause those are three for the most part, free things. Right. And, and not only that, like you look at sleep, the data on sleep when you, I think I'm going to have to look it up, but I believe it was 15, 18 and 20 or something like that. But if you get, it was seven hours, I want to say versus five hours.
[01:02:22] So if you get five hours of sleep versus seven hours of sleep. If you start getting that seven hours of sleep, the increase in testosterone was 15% increase in cortisol was 20% and the increasing growth hormone was like 13% I those, I know there were around 15 to 20% my point is that those numbers right there are better than steroids, right?
[01:02:45] If you're taking a regular dose of testosterone and growth hormone, those numbers still beat. Yup. So if you're telling me that you want to go by, you know, animal pak or animal stagnant or whatever, but you're not getting seven hours of sleep.
[01:03:01] Erich Wenzel: You're shooting yourself in your foot.
[01:03:02] Gabe Salinas: You're shooting yourself in the foot, man. You're stepping over a hundred dollars bills to pick up, die, you know?
[01:03:08] And. And that I think is the biggest day is not once you get that stuff right. Now we're starting to talk about how you lead athlete territory work. What are some other things? Like now we're like, okay, maybe there's a vitamin D deficiency. That's a big one, right? Maybe
[01:03:20] Erich Wenzel: they're taking that now. It's huge for the winter times. I couldn't believe it.
[01:03:24] Gabe Salinas: There's a Zinc and magnesium deficiency. Those are things like I'm all in for a man, but again, if we're not getting the big rocks, then you have no business doing the other stuff.
[01:03:33] Getting Recovery Right
[01:03:33] Erich Wenzel: [01:03:33] Yeah, I, it's, it's a huge one for me. You know, like I showed you before we started recording my whoop and Oura Ring Both of these, track my sleep, and it's huge for me.
[01:03:43] I'm super bullish on talking about this stuff to get it right, because if you can get your recovery right as a big bucket, for sure, because that's what you're basically talking about is you can, you'll have more in your gas tank to put in the other areas of your life and when that's not. When you're underperforming in those areas, it shows, it really does show and a lot of times we're over assuming how much we do sleep.
[01:04:03] And that's what I was doing for sure. Like I was thinking, I was getting like seven hours, seven and a half hours of sleep when I had reality, I was getting maybe six. And then, you know, it's, they could get to the motivation thing. Like when I was really in it, I had like an awesome bedtime routine and then that started slipping because of holidays or whatever, and all of a sudden I'm sleeping at one, you know?
[01:04:21] And then I'm looking at my thing and I'm like, Oh shit, there it goes.
[01:04:24] Overestimating the good and underestimating the bad
[01:04:24] Gabe Salinas: It's really funny you say that because the research says that we tend to overestimate the good stuff and underestimate the bad stuff, and it was something I was a great company called precision nutrition.
[01:04:36] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I've heard of them. I want to take their nutrition class.
[01:04:39] Gabe Salinas: I don't know where it is. I have a book here, but yeah, so they talk about, there was, there's a research study and when, when people estimate their green vegetable consumption, it was something like three servings more than it actually was. Now on the flip side, when they estimate their French fry and cookie consumption, it was like two or three servings less than what it actually was.
[01:05:02] And it's not, it's just a selective memory, man. I mean, can we just don't, you know, we just don't know. We just think that,
[01:05:07] Oh, he's going to blinder on doing great. Right. And the basketball wasn't too much, you know, so, again, like those are so important. I've got athletes who come in, you know, like.
[01:05:15] Cryotherapy is the big thing. Now
[01:05:18] Erich Wenzel: there's temperature therapy across the board, high ankle, pretty,
[01:05:21] Gabe Salinas: pretty inconclusive, you know, and, but again, like I think a lot of times they like doing it because, Oh, I saw it on Instagram or like this athlete did it or whatever. But like, people forget like when you're talking about in Eastern season this year, but he's one of the best of all.
[01:05:36] I don't like Tom Brady. Like, yup. Nobody talks about Tom Brady's cryotherapy or this or that. What they talk about is Tom Brady goes to bed at 9:00 PM every day. Right. I just saw a great piece, a LeBron James was talking about how over the course of his career he realized that nothing takes the place of sleep.
[01:05:55] He has tried everything else. He's done massages and occupies, he's done blah, blah, blah. And I'm not saying any of that stuff doesn't work, man. What I'm saying is that the 1% or 2% benefit that you're going to get from massage or acupuncture. It's not outweighing the 20% performance benefit that you're getting from sleep.
[01:06:13] And when you look at it like that, it's so common centrally, man, because at the same time, I've got 18 year old. As soon as you're on kids who are going to go play division one football, but they play four days until four you up and
[01:06:25] Erich Wenzel: then the blue light on top of the head, all that extra stuff.
[01:06:27] Gabe Salinas: Yes. So again, it's just like the end of the day, like, yeah, I don't like to go to bed at 9:00 PM I try to go to bed at 10:00 PM you know?
[01:06:35] But like. If you really want to perform at a high level, specifically athletically, and even not even athletically, even in your office, in the workplace, right. If you want to do that, like you should sleep more. And the data is so conclusive. I like, I don't know if being talked about scientific research is not being the book, like the only thing that is true, you know, I mean like there's no, there's nothing out there and it's like, well, you don't need to sleep that much.
[01:07:00] The only, the only people. I don't need to sleep that much. I can't remember. You might know what I'm talking about. It's a specific gene. Yeah. Should write like Elon Musk. I think
[01:07:10] Erich Wenzel: They think he has it.
[01:07:11] Gabe Salinas: Yeah. They think he is the correct. Right. And that's where they can get by on very,
[01:07:15] Erich Wenzel: they're saying now that that's even inconclusive,
[01:07:18] Gabe Salinas: but, but you understand my point. Right. And I think that was like. One in however many,
[01:07:23] Erich Wenzel: 100,000 or more.
[01:07:26] Gabe Salinas: So, yeah. Like if you want to do something better, like you find the time, you sleep low. Yeah. And I think there's,
[01:07:33] Breathing work
[01:07:33] Erich Wenzel: it's a change in the paradigm, very much so. Really it, you know, it goes, it goes completely against that grinding mentality of the early 2000 entrepreneur types where it's like.
[01:07:42] You know, the Gary V's are like grind, grind, grind, all day, you know, and I'm just like, you know, like no we need to chill out a little bit. Like, you know, I get really big on like mindfulness and like breathing work. I dunno if you've entered into the breathing work space a little
[01:07:54] Gabe Salinas: bit yeah.
[01:07:55] Erich Wenzel: It's kind of new.
[01:07:56] It's still part of the like kind of thing. Temperature therapy stuff. but I've been doing stuff like that where I try to just force myself to nasal breathe on the treadmill, like right at that speed. That's kind of too hard to like where I wanna mouth breathe, gosh. Where I'm trying to get CO2 tolerant basically, and I try to push myself right at that very low limit.
[01:08:14] And then just nose breathe through that. And then over time, that helps you basically work on biomechanics within your body, so then you can, you can take that to weightlifting and breathe better while doing heavy squats or something,
[01:08:26]Gabe Salinas: I've actually always done that. There's a reason I do it and it's different.
[01:08:31] And the reason I do it is because when I'm training and force myself to nose breathe, because if my mouth's open, my opponent is going to know that I'm tired and I don't want that to happen. Right. So there's a psychological piece there for me.
[01:08:45] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. You have a different layer on top of that. That's good. I liked that.
[01:08:50] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, that's, it's kind of like those people who use the Masti I'll do training mass butcher complete bullshit. Well, it's like, it's like, why would you force yourself to put on a mask when you can just use your nose already because your nose is there to humidify the air and it takes out more.
[01:09:06] Gabe Salinas: I'm unsure whether this popular kickboxing coach would do that, and he would, he would have his students. Put water in their mouth.
[01:09:13] Erich Wenzel: Oh, interesting. So he couldn't force themselves.
[01:09:15] Gabe Salinas: Well, the deal was water in their mouth and they would go a round and whatever they were doing, and then he wanted to see the water after that round. That was forcing them to breathe with their nose. And I remember that as well. That was another thing. So yeah, that, it's funny how some of this, like stuff comes up, but it's been. Done for a long time. our pockets of, you know, society or smaller pockets of,
[01:09:40] Erich Wenzel: just specific sports and stuff.
[01:09:42] Back to sleep data
[01:09:42] Gabe Salinas: So getting back to say one really quick thing or two really quick things that we were talking about, it was really interesting to me.
[01:09:49] There was a study done on basketball players, NBA players, and they did it when they looked at athletes who were playing the next day. From the night before, they looked at their social media accounts and they looked at anyone who posted past 11:00 PM right. So it's not an exact science, but it's pretty solid, right?
[01:10:08] Yeah. So they looked at, you know, if so-and-so was posting past 11:00 PM. And they marked it down versus the ones who weren't. And they found a statistically significant difference in performance from the ones who are on their phones after 11:00 PM the next day and performance. Right. And we're talking points per game and renounce versus the ones who weren't.
[01:10:31] So again, we're talking about how important sleep is, and when you're talking, and I think it was a 3% decrease or a 4% decrease, but a 3% decrease of performance in the NBA. Is
[01:10:45] Erich Wenzel: MVP missing, that's MVP by two points.
[01:10:48] Gabe Salinas: I mean, it really is. I mean, that's how many games are decided by three points. Right? Right. Two points and, and so, my point is like, that was a really interesting thing.
[01:10:59] Another thing that they've started learning, I can't remember where I think it was, was the NBA strength coach conference I went to, you're talking about what used to happen in the past. They would play a game. So let's say you're the warrior, so you're on the West coast and you play against the Knicks on the East coast.
[01:11:16] What, what happened in the past is they were there, finished the games at 10 30, 11:00 PM they got on a flight and they would fly back. They get back to LA or I'm sorry, where are they? Oakland. Great. Yeah. they get back to Oakland at whatever it might be, 4:00 AM and that shirt, and then they would go to sleep.
[01:11:33] What they do now. As a student, as they finish with their game, they go to the hotel, sleep and then they wake up at 6:00 AM or whatever and then they go down. It's like that's a lot better for the circadian rhythms, which makes sense. Yeah. That way you're not sleeping through the day cause there's a lot of data on people's, in essence.
[01:11:51] What you're doing there is a night shift. You're working a night shift, and we all know, like working the night shift is really tough.
[01:11:58] Erich Wenzel: Not to mention planes too,
[01:11:59] Gabe Salinas: like all of the planes as well, and
[01:12:01] Erich Wenzel: atmosphere you're in and whatnot.
[01:12:02] Gabe Salinas: So, that's what they're doing now because there's been enough data on sleep to say that.
[01:12:07] Hey, we're going to get a better performance and better recovery out of our players if we go to a hotel right now and get them to sleep, and it happened. Wake up a little earlier than they'd like, but guess what? That's a lot better than having them get on a plane, fly through the night, get home at 6:00 AM and then sleep.
[01:12:24] So that is my point as we start seeing this more and more like. That's how important it is that NBA teams are literally changing their entire travel schedules. to oversleep.
[01:12:34] Why We Sleep
[01:12:34] Erich Wenzel: It's a radical shift. Honestly. I think it's kind of mind blowing to even think about wanting to talk about something as mundane as sleeping with as much data as we have it now because it's so important.
[01:12:43] Like so. Well, the book I read on this was a man by Matthew Walker. Why do we sleep? It's fantastic. He has a Ted talk. It's called sleep is your superpower, and it's just, it just lays out all of these different categories of like, if you do this, it has a positive impact. If you don't do this, here's the negative impact.
[01:13:01] And I talk about how people are sleep deprived and you have micro sleeps. Basically. Where when it will happen is if you look at the EKG of your brain and you have like standard brainwaves, and if you're like sleep deprived, your brain literally shuts down into deep sleep for like a split second. And then comes back up to waking and then does it over, over and over again.
[01:13:17] And if you do that, like if you're not sleeping and you're driving your car, going 65 miles an hour, you're, you're crossing two lanes of traffic, you know? And he talks about how that's a huge problem with, with just not sleeping. And then there's like IQ deficiencies. Like if you're, if you're sleeping like six hours or less, you're dropping 20 points in IQ.
[01:13:35] Which is insane, you know? And it's just, it just, the more I talk about it, the more I'm just like, we just need to fix this as a, as a society and if we start fixing all this extra stuff, it's, you know, you just let it bubble up. Like you don't need the government to kind of make routines for you. Just like if you're focusing on it, then the people around you are going to start focusing on it and then, you know, they're just going to see the repercussions of all of it.
[01:13:55] And then not to mention it, it has repercussions and diet choices. Because when you're eating sleep for five, you go for the more calorie dense food by like 20% or something, or 30%.
[01:14:05] Gabe Salinas: There's data on that. A few different studies I've seen all the way up to 800 extra calories. Oh my God.
[01:14:11] Erich Wenzel: That's insane.
[01:14:13] Gabe Salinas: Yeah.
[01:14:13] Alcohol and Athletes
[01:14:13]Erich Wenzel: Is there anything that you do for, like alcohol for older athletes that you work with? You talk about that stuff?
[01:14:20] Gabe Salinas: I do.
[01:14:21] Erich Wenzel: or at least just warn them.
[01:14:23] Gabe Salinas: You know? So here's what I've learned with elite athletes, right? And this is a little bit different. did he lead athletes the ability to be very black and white in their training in their growing period and in their relaxation period is a skill.
[01:14:41] Yeah. So what I mean by that is I've rarely. They're out there. Right. There aren't tons of elite athletes who are partying, getting hammered during the season. Yeah. And there aren't tons of elite athletes who are partying and getting hammered a month or two prior to the season. Yeah. But in that month or so, the fall season ends before I start training again.
[01:15:06] That is your opportunity to do everything that you possibly want.
[01:15:11] Erich Wenzel: They're cutting loose, hardcore,
[01:15:12] Gabe Salinas: hardcore, not only is that. A good thing mentally. Yeah. But it's also a good thing physically not to get hammered, but taking a break from there. You know, your body needs a break
[01:15:24] Erich Wenzel: for decompression, basic depression,
[01:15:25] Gabe Salinas: right.
[01:15:26] You know, recovering from injuries, sleeping more, blah, blah, blah. Being lazy, you know, you just relax a little bit more. There's not as much stress on you and so on and so forth. So that's kind of the deal is when you're ready to relax, relax, and when you're ready to turn it on, turn it on.
[01:15:41] Erich Wenzel: You know, that's an interesting thing.
[01:15:42] And you know, that ability to toggle from. You know, switching on to switch off I think is part of the elite athletes superpower. It is. Or elite performer, not just an athlete
[01:15:53] Gabe Salinas: without a doubt. And that's one thing that I've definitely noticed and I've seen, I had one of my athletes, parents played 15, 20 years in the Stanley Cup one more full on understanding the cops.
[01:16:06] And, it was an MVP for a few teams or I, sorry, Catherine for a few teams, you know, picked up a hockey guy. And he was very well known as kind of like the guy who started weightlifting getting strong in the NHL. He was one of the first few guys who started doing that. We would talk, and he told me that as soon as the end of the season, like the average use of a defender, the average defense community, and actually I was around 11% body fat.
[01:16:31] So this guy was around 10-11% really in shape. Right? He would go in a month. Right? And he might've been exaggerated, but I still don't think he was. It's hard for me to fathom this is how you go from in a month. As soon as he finished the season. So a month into the off season, he'd go from 11% body fat to 22%.
[01:16:52] So like, I don't know anyone who's done that man, and I don't have a path for that. But my assumption to that is, and he told me he drank tons of beer. Right. Which makes sense. And probably ate tons of pizza and burger, you know, like, and so like, there is nothing healthy about what he did for the next one.
[01:17:07] But guess what, his soon as he hit that month, right, he was done. And then he came back for the next three months of the off season, got back down to 11% and continued on being a high performer. That's not something I advocate, but at the same time, to a degree I do. Right. Maybe don't go from 11 to 22%.
[01:17:26] I may go to 15 or 16 like, cause it's good for you, man.
[01:17:29] Like you, your body is going to need that because eventually you're going to break down either physically or mentally and eventually, you know you're going to have to, you know. Not be able to do that stuff, you know? So, it's a really important thing I say, to learn how to have safe periods. Right? So my safe period where there's nothing coming up, nothing.
[01:17:50] I'm not, I don't have to be ready for anything. Right. I can kind of have fun and let loose a little bit. You're going to need that. But then when it's time to be ready, like, let's get ready. So I think that was a big piece and that was a really interesting thing to hear from him. And I've, I've heard that from others, and I've seen that in a lot of my athletes too.
[01:18:07] They'll go, you know, they'll go hard for, for three weeks and they'll go hard, but as soon as it hits, and they'll always have a date in their mind, like, Whoa, January 15th or when it's whatever, June 10th like, I'm done. And guess what? They're done. Like they're done.
[01:18:23] Where does the discipline come from?
[01:18:23] Erich Wenzel: They're all in. Right. So what do you think that discipline comes from?
[01:18:27]Gabe Salinas: Honestly what we were talking about before, the off season is going to air. The season's gonna start in three months. And I know how long it takes me to get ready. Yeah. So every hour about, we know, like, we know how long it's going to take for you to be prepared to be at your best or something. Right?
[01:18:46] So like, if I told you right now, like I have a big competition in two ways. I'm like, Oh, I'm not gonna be ready. Okay. What I do, I'm having you read it, right? But in three months, like I'm going to be ready. So I think that's really what it comes down to is, if you've had enough experience in your body, in your sport, in your training, to say, well, this is how long it takes me to be in my best physical shape.
[01:19:08] It hasn't taken me four months. It takes me three months. So I haven't a little. Three week period to play around with. And then once I hit that, now I can be prepared. Now I can get it out of my system. Aggravated credit. And that doesn't mean they might not go to a party occasionally or whatever, but like for the most
[01:19:22] Erich Wenzel: it's not before the game though.
[01:19:24] Gabe Salinas: You know, but they're drinking water at that party or they're drinking tie coats, whatever.
[01:19:27] Erich Wenzel: They limit their drinks.
[01:19:30] Gabe Salinas: Correct. So that's really, I think what it comes down to is they toggle that switch because they know they have to be prepared. Guess what? Especially if I'm playing the NFL or the NHL or the NBA or whatever, if I'm not ready, not only am I probably going to get fine, but like I might not make the team right.
[01:19:45] I might lose
[01:19:46] Erich Wenzel: sponsorship, you know?
[01:19:48] Having a reason to get in shape
[01:19:48] Gabe Salinas: So, I think that obviously it makes it a little bit easier. but, but that's really, you know, again, who's this guy you might know what I'm talking about. He is in Silicon Valley. Indian dude, starts with the care, I believe.
[01:20:02] Erich Wenzel: Naval Ravikant, or
[01:20:03]Gabe Salinas: no, not Naval.
[01:20:05] I'm sorry. The TV show. Silicon Valley.
[01:20:08] Erich Wenzel: Oh, TV show. Got it. Okay. I thought you meant actual Silicon Valley. Like someone who's a startup guy.
[01:20:20] Gabe Salinas: So his name is, I'm looking it up right now. Kumail Nanjiani right. You see this guy before. So look at him now. So this guy, there's no way he's not ripped. Yes. Well, that wasn't him, but yeah, so look at him. Now I'm going to show you a picture. So here he is, right there.
[01:20:34] Erich Wenzel: Wow. Oh yeah. This is all just like last week, guys.
[01:20:36] Gabe Salinas: You just got into a Marvel movie.
[01:20:38] No way. Got into a Marvel movie. And, and so, and here's what he said, this just got a quarter. I would not have been able to do this if I didn't have a full year with the best trainers and nutritionists paid for by the biggest studio in the world. And I'm glad I look like this, but I also understand why I never did before.
[01:20:53] It would've been impossible without these resources and time. And here's the thing, I'm going to disagree with him. That to a degree, I'm going to disagree with it, right? This dude is, this dude's net worth is at least $5 million, right? If you wanted to find trainers and a chef and all those things and get look like that he would have been able to. It would've been way easier for him to do then you or I or anyone else out of 5 million plus bank account. Right. Various me.
[01:21:18] Erich Wenzel: Absolutely. The amount of time you get to spend in the gym just to look like that.
[01:21:21] Gabe Salinas: Right? So if you really wanted to do that, he could've, but he did it.
[01:21:25] And the reason why I did it, because there's no reason for him to. Well, now he's going to be in a Marvel movie.
[01:21:30] Right? You gotta look the part. Al, I have to look the part. So there's a reason
[01:21:33] for me. And not only that there's a deadline, you think Disney get hooked on him with all those trainers and those nutritionists and blah, blah, blah, and said, just figure it out.
[01:21:41] Whenever you're ready, let us know.
[01:21:42] Erich Wenzel: Cause you have to figure not six months or whatever. Right.
[01:21:45] Gabe Salinas: You're not ready by January, 2021 then we're cutting you. You get no money. We're done. So again, like if he really cared about looking like that. He had every resource. He lives in LA, I believe it was in California,
[01:22:00] Erich Wenzel: Somewhere in there. He's a Hollywood guy, so
[01:22:02] Gabe Salinas: there's plenty of sun. He can go work out, he can go hiking if he wants. He can lift weights. Some of the best trainers are out there and he has the money for it. The best nutritionists are out there, chefs, whatever. You have the money. But he did it cause it wasn't that important to him.
[01:22:15] Erich Wenzel: Right. Cause the money doesn't bind those things. Correct. Not really. It gets you so far.
[01:22:18]Gabe Salinas: So now he has this actual deadline. I have to be looking like this. I have to do this by this day. Now he gets ready. Right. So that's a really interesting thing to me is like when you have that and when it's that important to you, that is what made it important that it wasn't important before.
[01:22:36] So what is it that's going to make? What is it that's going to make that so important to you that will make you do that, right? And a lot of people, and you know, when you get up there and age out of people, it's so kids, right? I can't walk with my kids. I can't run around with my kids,
[01:22:49] can't bend over my diet,
[01:22:51] you know, like, so like those are big pieces.
[01:22:54] And that's where I'm like, Oh shit, I'm going to have a kid. Like, I gotta be ready for this. You know? so that's really what is that pain point, right? What does that, what does that thing that's gonna really force you to really be disciplined to reevaluating? Is. Well, I look at people who lost, and I've worked with a decent chunk now of people who've lost 80 a hundred pounds, you know?
[01:23:12] Yeah. There's, there's always a big pain point, but the most interesting thing to me is for a full six months to a year, when they lose that weight, they don't cheat once, man, they don't cheat. Once they've gone their entire life eating McDonald's and cheating all the time and cookies and so on and so forth.
[01:23:29] But whenever it hits that, right? Whether it's, you know. Karen had a heart attack. Red diabetes, right? Like, that's the thing, right? Or, or, you know, their doctor tells them if you don't fix this, you're going to die in four years, whatever. Whenever they hit that pain point, it's like a complete switch off
[01:23:46] Erich Wenzel: new person shows in person
[01:23:48] Gabe Salinas: and they don't cheat, start out slow and they just do it.
[01:23:51] Right. And it's not that yo-yo thing. They've been just, so my point is like, there's, there's, there's a big piece there like that, that psychological mental piece. Something is going to happen, right? Finite deadline. Yeah. It could be death. It could be diabetes, it could be a Marvel movie, whatever, and then a switch turns off.
[01:24:09] It's really interesting.
[01:24:10] Giving someone all the tools to be self-sufficient
[01:24:10] Erich Wenzel: I think it's a really good point to bring up because we don't, we don't think about it in this way. We hear the other people who are like, yeah, I'm going to do that. And then you get cynical about them. Like, Hey, they'll gain all the way back once they hit their 30 day Mark. Right.
[01:24:22] But for me, it's like you need to give someone control of their
[01:24:26] life. Right? Like you give them.
[01:24:28] This, this tool of working out, like, here's like how you eat, here's how you move, here's how these things, and then when they get to. Like experiment with it, and then they notice how their body is adapting to what they're doing.
[01:24:40] They're like, wait. It's like maybe, yeah, you're telling them what to do and giving them a program, but there's a certain point where they really don't need you anymore to, to keep these habits in place. Then maybe they can go to you for specific questions like, Hey, here's this thing that's bothering me.
[01:24:53] I'm not really sure how to proceed, but for the most part, they're able to take control of their own destiny with how their body is performing at some point.
[01:25:00] Gabe Salinas: Yeah. And that's what you want. Like if you don't, my job, that's my job. I'd love for people to come in forever, but my understanding is I know this, like they're going to get busy or they're going to move, they're going to go college or whatever.
[01:25:11] So I want to give them all the tools that I possibly can for them just to succeed outside of here and outside of this facility. And that's where, like we talked about before, explaining why we do things, instead of just saying, well, this is what we do. Right. Or making sure that their, you know, their form is correct.
[01:25:26] Making sure that this is how we program things out and this is why we program things out. You know, like those are all important pieces because I don't want them to just do well here. I want them when they go out. In the world to do well, whether they go to college and they train with a different strength conditioning coach, right?
[01:25:42] Or whether they move away, I have to go to a different gym or whatever. Like let's get him prepared as well. Yeah.
[01:25:47] Recommended Books
[01:25:47] Erich Wenzel: That's awesome. So we've already been doing this for almost an hour and a half, and so we'll wrap up with some more general questions. So the first one will be, since you've been mentioning books and research, any like favorite books or most gifted books that you've,
[01:25:59] Gabe Salinas: Yeah, so, Any Malcolm Gladwell book. Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite author.
[01:26:02] Erich Wenzel: Outliers a couple of years ago. I love that one.
[01:26:05] Gabe Salinas: phenomenal author, and those phenomenal books. The Go Giver is another one of my favorite sets of books that I try to read every year. It's a fictional book, fixed pub business book about, I don't know if you've ever heard of it before.
[01:26:17] Yeah. It's a fictional business book about a guy who's trying to. Meet us quota, at a big insurance company, and then ends up meeting with, guru, so to speak. you know, dude is worth $3 billion or whatever and kind of walks them through how to do that, but it's a completely different way than what he had thought it was going to be.
[01:26:36] Right phenomenal book. It's fictional and it's really good. And, and then we talked about Tim Ferriss who spoke, I really liked the Tools of Titans. The type was when I was a big fan as well. Probably my, my favorite book of all time, and I read it a while back, was still my favorite, was, How to Argue and Win Every Time by a guy named Jerry Spence, he was a lawyer in Wyoming, I believe.
[01:26:57] And at that point he had a few, like big, high profile cases. He had never lost a jury trial at that point. And like three of his trials were lifetime networks. TV, movies, like that's how big, you know. Wow. Yeah. That was a really good book. And then I really liked the book. So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport.
[01:27:19] Erich Wenzel: Yup. I've heard that one recommended before as well.
[01:27:21] Advice to someone entering the "real" world or starting on a new path
[01:27:21] Cool. the second and last question is, if you had any advice for either someone who's just entering the real world or looking to take a new path, what would you tell them to do or avoid?
[01:27:35] Gabe Salinas: Learn everything that you can be. Probably the biggest thing going out of your way to increase this is from Cal Newport to increase what he calls career capital.
[01:27:49] Everyone goes to their job and does what they're supposed to do, their bare minimum and then walks away and then is upset when they don't get a promotion. Like find ways that you can be more valuable and generally speaking, that's going to be by learning new things and offering those to your employer or to your.
[01:28:06] So the owner or whatever. Right. So I think that's probably the biggest thing is, is just learning and constantly be learning, right? Like I said my grandfather taught me that if I'm constantly learning and constantly improving, good things are going to tend to happen.
[01:28:20] Erich Wenzel: Cool. So, the last thing is just where can people connect with you?
[01:28:24] Gabe Salinas: I am not. I'm on Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter if that makes sense you have it, but don't want to say my website, sports lab, llc.com and that is also the Instagram. Cool. And I do have a Twitter at gifts lists, but I.
[01:28:42] Cool. Well, I'll have that in the show notes so people can find and connect with you if they have any questions or anything like that.
[01:28:47] And I appreciate you taking the time. This is awesome. For sure. Yeah, thank you.
Coach Karlee is a movement coach who teaches her athletes to move their bodies as nature designed: strong, secure, pain-free, and forward. Utilizing slow-motion video assessment, she can assess, address, and correct pattern errors that are causing pain and/or hindering performance goals. With a background in soccer, endurance running, and strength and conditioning, Karlee takes an intense passion for competition and athletics into her coaching style to help build mentally and physically capable athletes, regardless of age, gender, sport, or background. She prioritizes foundations for durability through awareness and integration of pain-free movement practices to maximize performance and longevity. Are you ready to unlock your INNER ATHLETE?