Episode Highlights

• The one simple focus that led to Jeff’s significant weight loss.
• Why small goals leads to massive (and more importantly, sustainable) results
• How you can build a workout routine that you remain interested in (and why mine involves nunchucks)
• The unexpected way that sleep affects your dietary choices
• The secret behind Jeff’s consistency (HINT: it’s not accountability)
• The dark side of healthy habits and over-training prevention
• How to maintain a positive relationship with the scale (and all other methods of tracking your numbers)
• The difference between positively and negatively using data to track your fitness
• Why rest periods (even for weeks at a time) are the secret to making you stronger
• What boredom does to your brain – and why you need it

Useful Links

• LMNT electrolyte drink mix
• Nuun electrolyte tablets
• Happy Scale app

About Guest

Jeff Greenberg loves the tools of film making craft, whether it’s Avid, Adobe, Apple, or BlackMagic.

He teaches them to other editors, to sports teams, three-letter government agencies, large/small corporations, and sometimes those people with the gold statues. His biggest joy is teaching something so cool it makes you cry.

As a consultant, he helps smart people become smarter.

Facebook, Follow our guest on Instagram, Linkedin, Click to visit our guest’s website

Transcript

Zack Arnold: Well, let's dive right in. And I'm here today with longtime collaborator and friend, Mr. Jeff Greenberg, who is an educator and editor, a consultant and author, you essentially, when you break it down, help smart people become smarter. Man, I love the way that you phrase that. I saw that and like there, because there's so many things that you do so many hats, I'm sure we'll talk about some of them. But it just it's simply comes down to you love teaching and educating and making smart people smarter. So very excited to talk more about what that looks like in your transformation story.

Jeff Greenberg: Sure, one of my favorite ways to do that is introduce people to your podcast,

Zack Arnold: which I appreciate, thank you so much for that.

Jeff Greenberg: You don't have to thank me. I'm going to say, say I'm a fan. I've been a fan from the beginning. And you have that just that wonderful message of positive change and something that I come back and I think of you often even though I'm on the wrong coast, I'm, I'm in Delaware, I'm in the middle of nowhere, Delaware.

Zack Arnold: You're the one that lives in Delaware.

Jeff Greenberg: I'm originally from Philadelphia, and I met a wonderful, wonderful person. And the only condition was she was a school teacher. She is a school teacher. And to get married, I had to move to Delaware.

Zack Arnold: Well, it's funny because even though the industry itself is in LA, and that's why I came here. The only reason I'm still in LA is because this is where my wife is, is where her family is, is where her job is. I'm at the point where you give me a fast internet connection. I can work, do what I do from anywhere, but Los Angeles is still my home, very much tied to the way that you are tied to Delaware. So boy, can I relate. So one thing that I want to clarify to anybody that's listening, when you say you've been around since the beginning, we're talking the O G, beginning when there was this thing called Fitness in Post. And the longer time passes, the less people know what the hell I'm talking about. But you my friend are very much an OG and I can remember way back in 2014, when all this first started. You were a bit of a skeptic. I remember I don't remember what the event was. But there was some event that we went to and you're not necessarily a skeptic.

Jeff Greenberg: I invited you to an event. I invited you to speak at the editor's retreat in 2014. And you did this wonderful, wonderful talk about post production editing. And you also did at this wonderful talk. That was inspirational Well, fitness, and my you know, one of the things I find a wonderful battle is I find I for somebody who's got as much woo going on in his life for years and years and years. My cynical voice is just awful some days and I grew up around fitness. I grew up legit. Back in the for those of you are over the age of 1000. I grew up in the old school Nautilus days. And I'm, like I I think that anything is better than nothing. And back in the day, man and you still are rough. You're rough on your body and the Spartan Race I gotta cut another friend who's in the Spartan Races our mutual friend. Did you just tell me, Monica Daniel did her first Spartan Race?

She did. She crossed the finish line got herself a medal. She has been talking about it for nearly a decade. Join my training program. She worked on it for six months, she crossed the finish line like a champ.

What what inspirational moment because I have to tell you, I won't jump out of an airplane. And I'm not interested in possibly damaging my wonderful instrument as a father. And but this, I'm cynical in the Spartan Races, but I can be wrong, and I'm comfortable being wrong. And if it gets you to the right place, then God damn and I am wrong. So that was probably my cynicism. back then. But I'm still I'm still I don't care. I love Fitness in Post. And I almost want you to like bring back a segment. In every interview you do. Like now here's our Fitness in Post moment, huh,

Zack Arnold: That's an interesting idea. I like that. What I find really interesting, though, is that your memory of the first time that we connected is very different from mine. Because we didn't connect when you invited me to the retreat. We actually met before that at an Adobe Creative conference months before where I had a table. It was the very first time I ever set up any type of an expo table. I don't remember which Adobe event. But I was there Kanan Flowers, was there. Dan Berube, was there kind of the you know, the old gang

Jeff Greenberg: Could it have been? Could it have been the SuperMeet?

Zack Arnold: It could have been I don't remember what exactly it was called. But it was at Adobe headquarters in San Jose and I had my little table I had my you know my packets of protein powder. I had my hand out and you kind of came over and you're like, What is this This, right because you know that world Yeah, Adobe video. There you go.

Jeff Greenberg: It was in your memory that I do, like,

Zack Arnold: What are you doing over here? What's this Fitness in Post thing? It was the very first time we ever met

Jeff Greenberg: So much. You impressed me so much. That's how you got to the editors retreat. So as much as cynical as I was, I was impressed the hell out of by you. Yeah, well, I, I always, I think part of my own cynicism that I have to fight is when it comes to you know, because it's now the rule of the day is referral referral programs, whether it's Beachbody or the like, and those things I, you know, I guess I don't I grew up. Are you a fan of Robert Heinlein? I don't know the name. Robert Heinlein wrote one of the seminal science fiction books, Stranger in a Strange Land. You might also know him for Starship Troopers. He was the guy who Yeah, yours, right. The book he wrote was totally different. Yeah, I'm sure but one of his, he makes to two interesting points through some of his characters. And one of them is, you know, anybody who's trying to do Princess Bride line, you know, never trust anybody who's trying to sell you something. And then the other one that goes with it is you can't if you try and truly be all altruistic, and this is the battle, this is the flip side. She trying to truly be altruistic people don't trust that. So if you show them your motivation, you know how it will make you money or make you smarter, something that they can buy into in a moment. But yeah, I remember Fitness in Post, I remember. And the reason that I made it a point to go and find out part of it's my fitness heritage, part of it is that those sorts of events, I want to meet every vendor to network to find out what it is they're doing what it is that maybe I'm not seeing. And here was this guy in a room full of a plugin manufacturers who wanted to talk to you about being healthy and I at the time, was that one of my low points healthy wise. I should look it up, I should grab my phone and look it up an Apple Health. I'll bet you I was at five, nine, I bet you I was 260. In that in that rain,

Zack Arnold: you sent me a picture that actually led to today's conversation that I don't know if it was the exact same time period. But you were the same person in your before pictures about the way that you were when I met you so 260s probably about right.

Jeff Greenberg: The the the spot where I was at, I don't think you ever i got i hope you never fell down this this rabbit hole. I was at that spot. Right? As you go to find pants and clothes, where you've got to like, go to that big and tall section. Right. And that's, by the way, around 44 inches on the pants. It's about the spot where like, oh, they go. Yeah, anything else you're going over there. And that that's was was like my top limit. Thank God, I the heaviest I've ever been was about a 270 ish. And I think one of the horrible things is the way we eat and treat our bodies in post production. And you had such, you still have such a wonderful message in those arenas that you don't park your car one blood down, I'm parking my car on the other side of the parking lot to force those extra steps in and you still have that message then I wasn't as receptive to it at the time probably.

Zack Arnold: Well, it's not a not an easy sell what I always used to say and it's so it's not as applicable. But it's still you know, it's not an easy sell what I do today, it's getting easier, but essentially, I would always mention to people that I'm selling chocolate popsicles at a white glove convention, right, like being around a bunch of editors that want to get healthier, like who does this guy think he is? And one of the points a little bit of cynicism that by the way very rightfully so. I was very, very early in my journey, just trying to figure out how do I do this? And yeah, one of the things that I did was I attached myself to Beachbody, and I wanted to do the protein powders and the fitness programs and you got to start somewhere. So I figured let me take a model that was working and quickly realized this is not a model that works for me. I don't want to be a part of it and very quickly, shut it and said I don't want to be a part of it anymore. But you found me when I was just trying to figure it out.

Jeff Greenberg: I love that sort of thing. And then because of you if I said the name Nicholas Hybl would you know the name? V was the head of post. He was The post guy at Beachbody Hmm He now works on Marvel films. Wow. And if you'd like at some point, I'll introduce you because he's sure wonderful person like you. And he's got a great you know, fits into your story. Yeah, I was amazed the way you figured it out. I bought, what was the remember? Remember the the vitamin powder? It was in tubes. I forget what? Nutrients? Yeah, yeah, yes. I think I still have some of them downstairs, they taste terrible.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I know I don't use them anymore I have I have a couple of different options that I use. Now I'm really into something that's called LMNT element. It's made by Robb Wolf, which is very much in the Keto paleo space, which is now something we'll talk more about with your journey. But I now do I do electrolytes every day just because of the amount of physical activity and exercise and sweating and everything else. If I don't take electrolytes I constantly cramp up, just because I need more than somebody so so elementi is now an absolutely daily part of my routine. Have you ever tried none tablets? I've heard of them. I haven't tried them. No, but I know of.

Jeff Greenberg: And you and you when I'm doing something that's going to exceed I can't believe I'm going to say this I we can talk about this as part of the journey. I hate aerobic work up until about the last 24 months. When I go to choose to do something of greater than 16 minutes, especially in a fasted state, I will absolutely hit the wall and die around 60 without some intake. But I find that the electrolytes and none get me to the 75 and 90 minute marks, I can't believe I I can't believe that. If you give me my choice. on a Saturday morning, I want to do 90 plus minutes on a bike.

Zack Arnold: I won't even do 90 minutes on a bike. So that's crazy. But what I want to really frame where we're going next, because we kind of talked about where we started how we met up years and years ago, you're very much on the OG train of having seen this process from the very beginning. But I got an email from you several months ago. And basically, you're literally half a person from the Jeff that I knew. And what I loved about you is it wasn't just this was my favorite part. It wasn't just hey, look at my transformation. Here's my before picture. And here's my after picture, you superimposed yourself over yourself in the exact same space just to get an idea of what a difference it was. So what we're here to talk about today is the transformation and how you made it happen both on because I know you like to get in the nuances and the biohacking in the weeds and how many milligrams of caffeine. But you've also realized and you're also very good at understanding and teaching that it is about these smaller steps. And it's about mindset, as opposed to all or nothing or no pain, no gain, like so I love that you bring the perspective of the old school world of fitness. And now this transformation you've made to oh, maybe I can, you know, take these smaller long term steps as opposed to change one way for 90 days. Right.

Jeff Greenberg: I think that so so I was a personal trainer. When I was 19 years of age, I would lift hard and this is old school Nautilus. And Patrick and Hoffer who runs mixing like has discovered my old school background a guy by the name of Arthur Jones invented Nautilus. Nautilus is what got circuit training and I'm not going to get into debates with human beings on pyramid sets and split routines. This guy appealed to my sense of, of general welfare of exercise. You can do hard work, you can do a lot of work, you can't do a lot of hard work. And my train partner at the time, was a naval academy graduate played football for Navy, stronger than me and every thing I could ever do, ever. He's currently the strength coach of Bo Dwayne, he was the assistant strength coach of the 40 Niners Kevin Tolbert, and there's like if you Googled Kevin Colbert's name, there's a photo of this guy holding an anvil at arm's length. You know, and he's just so instead of trying to become the biggest guy in the gym, my thing was look at his science, if you're not writing it down, it's not science. It's great. And I'm thrilled if you go and you benchpress but my whole goal was one thing back in the day, one more rep than last time. That's it. Okay, if I do one more rep in every exercise, I'm stronger period. A couple variations on that. And there I am in my 20s. I go back to school, and I discover post production and I love it. And what I'm not seeing is the cessation of any exercise and I was blessed. I get to Penn State my 20s couple phone calls are made. I have the opportunity to be working out with the strength coach of Penn State football JT The only thing thing was, I'd have to walk two miles in the cold in the mornings, we were going to train and have to listen to a lot of country music and

Zack Arnold: the country music sounds so much worse than the cold and the walking personally. But that's just me.

Jeff Greenberg: I brought Right, right. Turns out it was the walking, it was a production it was the I can do. I can do idiot dumb. I'm going to go without sleep. You know, it's almost impossible to fall asleep. If you're drinking water and standing up. And somewhere, I became known as like 36 hours, 48 hours, you know. And I took it as a piece of pride. And as I got older, I realized just how stupid it was.

Zack Arnold: I mean, it's so common, though, ever, when you first start, and even a lot of people will do it for decades. And it's just a cultural issue that I think is starting to shift but has been one of my missions. Is everybody wearing sleep deprivation, like a badge of honor? Like it's just like enough?

Jeff Greenberg: How am I not dead? Yeah, I drove from after finishing a film with my mentor at the time. I drove from San Francisco to Philadelphia, in three and a half days by myself. And how am I alive? Yeah, just from that one dumb move. I'm in post. I'm not moving. I'm eating the way I could at 23 Lifting hard, still hated aerobic work, what was the least amount of aerobic work and I'm putting on the pounds that I don't see it. I don't feel it. I'm ignoring it. I'm hiding it. Looser clothes on tuck shirts, stolen tuck shirts a bit. And and it just gains and you don't want to weigh yourself and you don't own a scale. And you're eating and and you're finding it, you know, nurturing your soul or covering up the areas where you're upset in life. And I did some really good therapy. I've taken the therapeutic drugs that come with it, which often don't help. But if they sorry, often don't help metabolism. If you're seeing somebody professionally, I am all for you on medications that help your sense of being I'd rather see you alive and fat than not alive. How about that? And there I am. I'm getting older and older. My feet are terrible, Zach, they're terrible. But the real secret of why I want to Spartan Race aside from getting hurt, is my feet. It three miles four miles on my feet. I will have to put my feet up the next day. I have bunions. I have flat feet lifting hard, where I've been wearing orthotics for 2030 years. And here I am teaching I'm been on my own for a decade. And about four years ago. I come across I still come across you know this stuff for the the Bulletproof Diet. The bulletproof.

Zack Arnold: Oh, yes, of course, the bulletproof coffee. That's where it all started.

Jeff Greenberg: Right? And I'm looking at this I'm like, okay, I can skip a meal for throwing a big bucket of fat, my coffee. Do you know that's can't be too bad for me. And if it wasn't, you know, my, my blood tests were just as bad or, like 250 twos, and suddenly I commit to breaking 245 And turns out that I'm eating a little less. And I'm on Reddit, I'm on Reddit too much. If you know it's not, it's not a Twitter for me, although Twitter and Facebook and I won't get on Tik Tok, they all have negatives, they all have positives if it's your platform of choice, not for me to criticize. I go over to Facebook because I left one forum group and I just needed a secret place to research from postproduction. And I pick up at some point a broom and I start cleaning up the place because I go I want the conversation to get better and I offered a moderate and I'm now checking in Reddit lots daily and I noticed this thing happening intermittent fasting, skip breakfast. Okay. You know, I can you know what, let me make it really easy on myself. We get up early. I got I got three kids now but the time I had to, we get up really early, you know? 536 in the morning. Maybe I don't eat already toes. 738. My wife's gone and I'm here traveling smart. Kind of take it to nine. Yeah, sure. Okay, can I get to 16 hours because you know, the first rule of threshold. There's a lot of different flavors of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting can be you eat five days a week and you skip two days a week it can be you go diurnal, you Go 12 hours you go 16 hours you go 18 one meal a day. Steve, Steve ordet, wonderful WGBH editor award winning. I've encountered him at an editor's retreat, having lost a lot of weight. But he was doing the I'm going to drink tea and only tea and I'm going to not eat for like three or four days. And I'm like, that doesn't sound fun.

Zack Arnold: Well here's the big thing that I'm not hearing that either. And we can talk about this more, and I'll let you continue what I'm also not hearing something that's sustainable.

Jeff Greenberg: It's not sustainable. But nine o'clock was easy. Suddenly, I get to 10 or 11 o'clock and I struggle a little. But my whole thing is is like, boy, I'm this old, I'm, I'm over, let's say, um, I've been 39 for a lot of years. Somebody can without too much trouble. Figure out my age. You know, I'm talking about Nautilus, which is a 70s item. Maybe instead of me just trying to get it out. Like I was 22 and I could go 24 hours without sleep instead of me. Let's just make this stupid, easy. Stupid, easy is a great way I like to think about things. I've read the books I forget the one where the author talks about you have to change both the head and the heart. If you were trying to steer an elephant you can pull him hard you can with your mind pull him hard to the right. But the elephant the heart only go right so long. From training people in the gym, people like make it two weeks they make it six weeks. Let make it 12 weeks. But something happens in our life and they fall off cycle and I'm just like everybody goes and I'm going okay, let's just get to 1616 hours. I could do pretty easy. 16 hours. Eat dinner at six o'clock. eat lunch at noon. Man that's that's not that rough. That's just skipping breakfast. Okay. I actually might have the wrong set. 18 hours. That's 18 hours I think. Yeah. Seen the 10 o'clock in the morning

Zack Arnold: Never do math live. I've learned that lesson you never knew about

Jeff Greenberg: I do math live. I teach. One of the things I love to teach and nobody does is compression. I do math live. I like being wrong. It's just me testing. I was suddenly hitting. It's only 10 in the morning. It's only 10 in the morning was easy. I begin to see this very weird thing happened, Zack. I'm losing weight. And I'm looking at the intermittent fasting subreddits. And these people are just that they'll openly say something. All of it works, keto works, Paleo works. Weight Watchers, we're all it is at the end of the day is a deficit of calories. With the argument being made by the people really serious about this, that as you go into a fasted state, your body starts to shed starts to have some shedding automagic response and the removing of the cleanup of some damaged tissues. And I'm like, oh, that sounds good. And I'll lowered insulin reaction. And I'm looking at a lot of the things around insulin and we'll go on okay, this is really, this might be really good. And I lean into at the same time. Some of the Keto low fats, I did some Atkins and you know, right around the 90s, which helped. But suddenly, I'm seeing weight come off. Now. I'm a numbers guy, as much as we don't. I like metrics. I like measuring. I get to scale and and I gotta just get on the scale. And I'm watching an app, and it goes up and down. You ever have an F with your head? Do you ever have one of those days where you go to the gym and it's off? I discover an app called Happy scale and happy scale. So just looking at my trend, and I'm doing what you shouldn't do. I'm weighing myself every day when I'm watching the trend, and it's putting me in control of my body. And suddenly here it is. I'm headed to an NAB. And it's on that to 35 to under 230 the first time like in 1520 years. And this is sustainable and some people notice it some people don't. And then we have this little pandemic. And by the way, at the top of the pandemic I was already got into what's called Wonderland I had already gotten under 200 pounds a week I hadn't seen till prior prior century as I like to put it but it was just tiny changes. I went to my doctor and said oh I'm not lifting you know I was about 230 I'm not lifting I know I need to lift She goes, Well why and I go, Well, it's gonna slow down my weight change. She goes, go lift weights, old school trainer, I hit the gym pandemic happens. I had a Bowflex already at home, which I wasn't using. I'm loving it again. And suddenly, it's a marriage of I could cheat. I cheated tonight. By the way, I exhausted I got sick kids, I had a slice of pizza slice of pizza is not cheating. The whole pizza is cheating. Slice of pizza is fine. But I'm making these tiny changes. And they're paying off. And any time that I think of cheating, I'm like, I go, Wait a second. I don't want the last week to not have value. Not that it would be valueless. But I want to keep this momentum going. And that's the thing is tiny, tiny changes you can't feel I cannot believe I don't care about breakfast. I love breakfast. I had breakfast for lunch today, I would have had it for dinner too. But it's the idea that we're this this is the part that breaks my heart is we think it's a failing and ourselves a willpower. I think this is across the board. I think number 1,000% You're dead on we need to be well rested as well rested as we can be as human beings. That's what how we can make change. Nobody ever struggles with their diet. When they're well rested. We all struggle in the grocery store. Shopping exhausted and hungry. Those are like the like that the combination that perfect storm of danger.

Zack Arnold: You know one of my rules whenever I grocery shop and I do a lot of it via Instacart now just because I'm you know mister time efficiency, and there are other things I could be doing. But my rule is if I'm gonna go in person, which is about 50% of the time I eat beforehand, I never go grocery shopping hungry.

Jeff Greenberg: It's a phenomenal idea. i If you asked me four years ago, I would say hey, you know what, grab a power bar, grab whatever kind of protein bar, eat it. We 10 minutes and then go grocery shopping. Today it would be go grab a pepper, go grab like five carrots eat that first. But I would actually tell you to eat a bag of Doritos or a slice of pizza before going food shopping, rather than going hungry. So rule one is the rest is critical. I'm not as Sure. And I would love to hear how much red light glasses although this is how highly I think of you Zack

Zack Arnold: Oh, my You got the you've got the goofy looking red glasses.

Jeff Greenberg: I don't wear them. But I bought them.

Zack Arnold: So my guess is that the idea, the thing you're thinking about is? Does any of that really make a difference?

Jeff Greenberg: I think that we should all treat our bodies at some level as an experiment. And well, mostly because most people won't let me experiment on them. But I think that we should all treat our bodies as an experiment, we should measure as best as we can try as best as we can. And just nudge the needle. And if he can't today, nudge the needle in a big way. None shouldn't in a tiny way. Just know that you can't with willpower. You can't, you cannot run a bad diet. Absorbed adults in the kitchen, not in the gym. But it's the tiniest changes. It's easy to change the course of the plane. When you're at the start of your journey. It's a lot harder as you get towards the destination.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I love all of that. And the one that I want to dig into deeper that I think is so important for people to hear is this idea that it to some level whatever is your comfort level or your slight discomfort level, treating ourselves like an experiment. And here's why I say that we do when we're talking about ourselves. And as an experiment. There's this concept that I've heard for years and years in the biohacking and you know, the personal development space of N equals one, right? It's just about me and my experience and gathering my data. Because it will be very simple. And by the way, we're not going to go down the rabbit hole of all the research and all the pros and the cons of intermittent fasting or anything else. But there are a lot of people that could be listening, thinking intermittent fasting doesn't work. That's a bunch of bullshit. That's all you know, something that Dave Asprey cooked up as a marketing scheme so we get some more of his coffee. And there's plenty of research on both sides of the equation. Some people say definitively no question. The science says yes, I'll definitively no question the science says that it has no effect. My response is, I don't give a shit. It works for me. This is working for me in a positive way.

Jeff Greenberg: I think that it i By the way, I think aspreys have nearly all this stuff is personally I think it's garbage. If it works for you, God bless you. But bulletproof Coffee got me into the idea of drinking coffee in the morning, I did not drink coffee until I had a child. String just that sound. Me too.

Zack Arnold: Me too. I just didn't started drinking coffee until I was 33. When I had my second child, first child wasn't enough. The second one was like, Alright, I give up, teach me this coffee thing. I can't do it anymore.

Jeff Greenberg: And I suddenly started to go, Well, if there seems to be this correlation between these people in the fasting and going drink tea or have coffee, black. Okay, I have mine, I don't have black coffee, I put three drops of a stevia, some other natural search, just enough that it's got a little bit of taste. And I got, I went down hard into the AeroPress lifestyle, travel and

Zack Arnold: Culture of being coming a coffee drinker. Ooh, look at you and your AeroPress

Jeff Greenberg: I didn't grind I should have, you know, I should have gotten to the, you know, the heavy grinding, but it was enough. It was enough to shave 800 a thousand. And it's this idea that and as you know, fasting has been around forever. In the first it's been around in some religions. It's been around by some athletes. Tim Ferriss, you know, huge. Hey, at least once a month I'm going without food because it has an I read the is it the four hour diet? I think four hour week was interesting for our diet for our diet gets into some weird areas. Okay, got, you know, it's great. He's had a lot. But to me, suddenly, the weights coming off. Okay, how do I get more of this? I'm lifting again. And I'm losing weight, eating less food and putting on muscle? How do I know I'm putting on muscle because I can do one more rep. I'm just moving the needle that much. Sometimes it's that much. But mostly it's that much. It's not willpower a Today's the day. I'm only lifting by the way, once every about four days. Three or four days. It's full body. I'm so exhausted from it. I'm sore a couple of days. Did you ever do negative only training?

Zack Arnold: Oh, yeah, that's a big need. Yes, a big part of me developing better grip strength and better pull up strength and fast twitch muscles for all the chaise and everything is I do a lot of E centric pull ups. So my trainer has gotten me actually timing it to the point where it's been a little while and I've kind of taken a break from the heavy stuff. But I did. It was well over a minute of an eccentric pull up from top slowly going down. I was able to go so that alone, a one minute dead hang is hard. But a one minute dead hang when you're essentially moving through the entire range of motion and a pull up is excruciating. So yes, I know all about all the negative eccentric motion. It's in

Jeff Greenberg: I want to talk to I want to talk to your trainer because I want to I want him to hurt you. It's hard. But yes, her I want her to hurt you because you're you. So this process. If you've ever heard of Kc theatre, the theatre experiment. The Colorado experiment from this is like 60s viator gets really sick loose. He was a bodybuilder loses a bunch of muscle. And in something like 30 days he puts on like 60 pounds of muscle. It's impossible. Unless you're on some drugs, you're training very hard. And there was a weight loss in one direction. Some atrophying so hypertrophy. He's only doing like one exercise one workout every two or three days. And a lot of it's some negative only work. I haven't, you are probably gonna do it later this week, I probably do need to do a separate for the end of the year. The negative Chin's I do. Negative chin ups is a great example. You get a stool, you put your chair. And by the way, don't do this in an untrained state. If you're serious about lifting, and you can do this safely, that's where I want you to do it. I do not want any human being on this planet who's not lifting regularly to go down this route it is you'll never listen to anything I would never say again. You put your chin above the bar, you get a stool, get your chin above the bar, you take your feet up, you lower yourself for 10 seconds, slowly put your feet back on the stool, you go back up. If you can do 10 of these 12 of these. You strap some weight around your waist and you make it harder. In the heyday of my wayward youth at my strongest, I was doing it with about 100 pounds from my waist nice. And that wasn't as safe as I'd like it to be. So what we started to do across the board with training, how can we make all of the compound motion safer, Zach. So instead of we would do pullovers first, instead of doing a negative squat or negative leg press we would do a leg extension immediately wouldn't be me doing set you do a set? Oh No brother. I'm going to sit back and do that leg extension into the negative leg press. And then you will or you will wait till I'm done my seven 810 sets of work and I'm done for the day can barely stand maybe thrown up. And then you'll go through the workout. You centric work we're stronger lowering than we are lifting. I'm doing negative Chin's by myself in my home. What am I thinking? looks wonderful. And I'm getting stronger. And before the pandemic, I was training at a gym in Philly. Have you ever heard of the X Force equipment?

Zack Arnold: Yes. Isn't that the one that's like that bar? It's like had like this big rubber band or something? Or am I thinking of something else?

Jeff Greenberg: thinking something else. X Force is the is where Nautilus went ventually a Swedish company. You will love the exercise equipment. If you find yourself in the Philly area, Zack I'll make a phone call to get you into the twister might be one in LA. The systems have a weight stack on a 70 degree angle. You do whatever exercise, bicep curl row, whatever top of the motion, you have to go nice and slow. The weight stack writes itself up and gives you extra resistance. Every single repetition has a maximum value positive and a maximum value negative. And I'm getting stronger. And suddenly, before the pandemic, when I was going to gyms I was strong, and I lose more weight across the pandemic. I go back to the gym, and I am stronger. Lighter than I was beforehand. I was at NAB when I sent you that picture. I was 182 pounds. I'm right now 193 I'm up about 10 pounds at life sometimes happens, you know it's okay.

Zack Arnold: Fatherhood happens, the world happens business happens when you were at 182 You were lighter than me. I I've been trying my ass off for years for Ninja Warrior and you're sending me this picture. And I'm like, you're lighter than me. What the hell is going on?

Jeff Greenberg: This wonderful editor from the editors retreat. Jason Kaluza. He's a Canadian editor. He, uhm Monica knows and by the way, but he he stops me, you know, because he hasn't seen me for a couple years because of the pandemic stops me that may be. And that photo is he and I is he and I recreating a photo we had from years earlier. And if you don't, you're totally welcome to use it in the podcast. You're totally welcome to use it on the site. I absolutely had you in my mind. As I'm getting fitter. In the back of my head. I'm going yeah, when I get when I get to 171 75 ish, then I'm gonna message back and I was NAB and I wasn't I was close. I was both disappointed and thrilled. I'm I'm doing aerobic work, because I've been doing trying to do aerobic work the way I would trying to lift weights, willpower. And that was what the mistake was. Why do you do Spartan Races at the end of the day, it's because it engages you and you enjoy it.

Zack Arnold: Not only that, it goes a lot deeper than that it engages me and I enjoy it. But one of the many things that I love about it is number one, it's such wide and varied functional fitness. It's not one discipline, I get very bored very easily. And I need to do a lot of different stuff. If you just said do the elliptical three days a week or do the treadmill or whatever, like I'd rather die it's so god awful boring what I need to do to be engaged with any activity not just fitness with any activity, but specifically fitness I have to be learning skills. Just getting leaner, just getting stronger bores me but if I develop skills, then I have something to work towards. So for me Spartan or tough Mudders or now American Ninja Warrior. It's such a complex varied set of skills that you have to develop that makes you a more holistic, functional human being that that just drives me and to be perfectly honest, I've kind of had the realization this year and I had it with another friend of mine that I run these with just the two of us ran a Spartan we did a beast. This was like 1415 miles. And we got done with it. And we were just like we're it's just it's not it's not engaging as it's not. We don't feel alive anymore. But then we ran a Tough Mudder with all the students that we've been training. We had the most fun we've ever had, because we're watching other people have that light bulb moment where they realize, well, there's no way I can do this. We'll give it a try. Oh my god, I can do it. That was the funnest thing ever. So now it's about inspiring others to realize that they are capable of doing more, but for me, it's all about the varied skill set. Functional Fitness and every single day of the week you do stuff totally different, like the kind of stuff that I do for my training, like an example would be that with my trainer, she's also a highly regarded stunt woman. She was like Galaga DOS, stunt double from Wonder Woman movies, right? So one of the exercises she has me do is I'm learning how to take two nunchucks spin them in multiple directions while I'm on one foot offset on a BOSU ball. Like you don't do that when you just hit the gym. Like it's all these crazy skills, that you're just you're developing so many different skill sets, which to me is fun. And then of course, going back to what you said, I can't remember how you put it exactly. But if something like if you're not writing it down, it's not science or something like that

Jeff Greenberg: It's exactly it's if you're not measuring it, it's not science. So I have

Zack Arnold: So I have a spreadsheet that tracks everything. Every single rep set, wait, I've got it for the entire year, I can tell you the day, the time the exercise, it's all there.

Jeff Greenberg: So so this becomes an like, interestingly, my question to you is you're spinning the nunchucks on one foot, how do you measure that? You measure time time on spinning them? Trucks?

Zack Arnold: Yeah. So how many combination combination of time because it's, it's a time to bought a set? So it's essentially, how long am I able to do it without my foot having to touch the ground because I'm off balance. But then a little a little bit more of it is qualitative and quantitative. It's, do I feel less burned in my forearms? Am I getting more consistent? One of the things she drives me crazy about she's like, straighten them out. They're all all all over the place, you need to make them perfectly parallel to the ground. Right? So it's about qualitatively is my form better is the speed more consistent is my transition between the upper and the lower and the figure eight like all these little things, that to me it like if you think about it, practically, I'm never gonna have nunchucks, Ninja or Spartan or anything else, but it's helping me develop forearm strength, but it's also developing a whole new level of coordination and balance that I've never experienced before.

Jeff Greenberg: Yeah, I I. Back in the day, I was doing some obscure martial art, full contact kickboxing. It's not important all the guys moved over to Gracie after I left it, but it took me and I was training two or three days a week, two days with a personal trainer one day with group training. It took me over a month over a month to spin Zack to spin I had such a disconnect with my body that like just for a month all he had me do was spin forward in the dojo spin back in the dojo spin forward and not throwing a kick not throwing just learning by the way he the guy was training me Alfie graves, Alfie was a an Olympic alternate one of the years for sprinting. He on the other hand, he could take two nunchucks spin the nunchucks without a problem. It wasn't just wasn't my DNA. And it wasn't it. That's not where I was finding joy, where I would find joy in the gym. Was that one more rep. And complicating it, here's, here's the how we didn't cheat. Our standard repetitions were more of a measurement of time under load, we were trying to find the safest way to work. This is this is my and I'm wrong. And I'm right. There's the other side of the fence. My struggle with Spartan with physical based activities and my brother right now he's just come off of orange theory off of a bunch of years, he's doing something else. My struggle was always the same as one. If you get hurt during training, something's wrong, too. How can you make it as safe as possible in its physical function? So I go to a gym and I'd watch a guy use too much weight squatting, use too much weight, bench pressing, play, you know, the game where the weights, the ego get involved. And I was working out with a guy who was just, I'm telling you like, you ever you ever see a squat bar bend? Because there's so much weight on it?

Zack Arnold: Yes, not in person, but I've seen them in videos and it's insane to see that happen.

Jeff Greenberg: I'm spotting a guy and it takes three of us to spot him at this point. Like, our joints just aren't going to keep up with this. So how do we make it safer? Where I this is the way I train today. Super slow. Every repetition. 10 seconds up. 10 seconds down. I wish I had a trainer there. I don't. If I cheat though, it's really obvious. When I go into muscular failure. It's really obvious there is no momentum there is no throw. It's time under load minimum for reps. You go for reps that sign a lot of reps and go what are you talking about? That's 80 seconds of work.

Zack Arnold: That's a lot of time under tension right there.

Jeff Greenberg: And there's no cheat. There's no resting, we would take the squat rack, the safety bars, and we put them at the top so you couldn't lock your legs. There was no rest. There was no pride in resting. We were trying to mirror that was where the willpower was. Zack was showing up, working hard, moving the needle just a little Not. Not. How many reps? Could you just do? How much weight was on there? And then interestingly, how little robic work could you do. And the reason that being on the elliptical sucks, is there was no way to measure how good or bad it was for me. None. And I stumbled into a DIY peloton, I'm like, okay, I can do this cheap, you know, knock off bike, find this thing, have you heard about Power Zone training? Basically speaking, you take a measurement, you can do one, there's a way to do it for three minutes, the one that they do is a 20 minute test of the maximum wattage you can hold to kind of predict what your our maximum will be. And you develop three zones below that three zones above that. And you've got the ability to now hit aerobic exercise, somebody goes, Hey, go to zone two, go to your, your tempo zone. And you can hold it all day long, because we know through measurement where you are. And if you retake that test, and the numbers are higher, all your numbers move or lower. I'm right now by the way, in week five out of week eight of a Power Zone focus. Right after the first of the year, I'll take a Power Zone test. And if I can be 10 20% Better, my aerobic my fitness is that much better. Aerobic ly doing 90 minute workouts as often as I can. I don't know what the hell that's about. But I know that my body physically can do it. And it's not. It's a little hard mentally. But it's not you getting on the elliptical and saying how hard and my heart is working hard and you know, physiologically your body can do it. 100%.

Zack Arnold: So here, here's the part that I think is so much more challenging not to take anything away from what's really challenging about a 90 minute workout, or II centric chin ups or anything else. But when you say you're doing 90 minute workouts, if I crawl into either the brain of our audience or frankly into my own, I'm thinking, Oh, you must have a different calendar than I do. Because I don't have the time. Where are you finding the time to be able to work out 90 minutes a day, if you're a teacher, and you're you know, traveling all over and you're a father must be nice, Jeff.

Jeff Greenberg: So with one kid, the first kid, it runs into your life like a train wreck. And if you're in post production whatsoever, the first kid and you're anything like you were me, Zack, you're arrogant. You're like, oh, I can handle not sleeping a lot. I've that's my whole career, except you don't get to pick when you can sleep. Second kid, our first kid, it was a terrible sleeper. Our second kid was a great sleeper. I kind of got this. That's by the way she had turned to and um, that's where I start the intermittent fasting to kind of still have like, barely a hobby, but a hobby, you know, third kid, which was on purpose, it wasn't that I needed a boy or anything like that. But I had a third kid about three years ago. I have no hobbies. I'm my my Twitter handle. My my instagram handle. My Facebook is film geek. I have not watched truly I watch right now about four films a year that are truly films that I want to watch. Versus 123 phones a week. And the reason is, is I don't have the space for it. For my the one thing that I get up and I remember is specially as an older parent, if I want to be there to see these kids graduate and get married, I gotta be alive. That's my motivation. That's the end of the day. So you know what, I'd really like to have a beer but I'm not, you know, which kind of sucks on a Friday and when I was traveling when travel was great, I could be on the road. As long as I was doing the intermittent fasting was pretty good. I could still take the class out for a bunch of whether it was an avid class or resolve class or an adult because I could still take them out afterwards. Have two three beers one of the nights that's fine. Since pandemic I'm not drinking at all. I don't have free time my my office is up mess. Okay. I got two kids right now, fevers who have been sick all week, I'm getting half days, if I'm lucky, have productive professional work, doesn't matter. I need to squeeze in right now, not a 90 minute workout, which is a Saturday, around our live schedules as we get towards the holiday. I need to be able to get that much stuff partially for Saturday, partially for health. But it's gotta get in. Otherwise, if it's not regular enough, it's not gonna see the benefit. If you said to me a year ago, I'd get up at 430 in the morning, because I got a sick kid, and my wife's got to get to work. And she's up at 530. And the kid said, You're out of your mind. I failed. By the way. I was supposed to be up this morning at 530. And I said, the hell with that I'm sleeping in.

Zack Arnold: Did you fail? Did you fail? Or did you make the best choice for yourself?

Jeff Greenberg: You want you want the real best choice. I had one kid with 100 and something fever. The 10 year old. She was an 11 year old she was upset. Because she hasn't had a parent. She couldn't get the bed in a bed with a parent. For like a couple years. I went to the guest room with the sick kid. The other kid came and slept. And I was in the middle and said, I'm going to be up to three times and that night and it was awful. I told them tonight. I can't you know back to the bunk beds. I can't do it tonight. And she's like, It's okay Dad, how sleeping the upper bunk. It's not a big deal. I didn't fail. And it's wrong for me to frame it like that. It's wrong. You know, you should never tell yourself you're stupid. Gregory House can say he's stupid Gregory House can be a fictional character. He's smarter than the rest of us hopped up on drugs, and he can call himself stupid. We shouldn't call ourselves stupid. Those negative words breed bad things in our brain. Eat the food before you go to the grocery store. And it was really simple. All I needed to do was get I need to get, by the way, a 45 minute workout. And as I'm training training harder, I generally want to get three workouts in a week. The minimum I want to get in aerobic LY is 330 minute workouts. 90 Stupid minutes. Okay, I'm gonna need an extra 10 to shower. I got to do that anyway. Didn't do that today yet. Oh my God. It's not going to happen. I'll do it tomorrow after I workout. But I got I wanted to push my FTP, my functional threshold power my Power Zone metric before the end of the year and in the same way that you gear up. For Spartan run, I'm gearing up for this. I got my best friend from college. He's got a bike. I'm like, here's the schedule. I laid it out for you. We're comparing notes. It happens to be 340 fives this week. It really only needs to be two. And a 62. We've done this week are hard, legit, hard workouts. I mean, we I forget the numbers on a scale of zero to 10 where the actual testing protocol has you going all out for a 20 minute duration? Let's call that a 10. One earlier this week was an eight five this one was an eight. I'm gonna get on the bike to do a low level I just need to put in the mileage. It'll be a four. It'll be a three. I feel better afterwards. I feel mentally better. I'll be clear. What's your resting heart rate right now? It's got to be something fantastic.

Zack Arnold: It's not like you know crazy levels low but do you tell you about resting heart rate while I'm sleeping? Like according to the aura ring. It's usually in the mid 40s

Jeff Greenberg: It's beautiful. I'm I was 48 last night.

Zack Arnold: That's pretty awesome. Nice.

Jeff Greenberg: Right? I'm still carrying too much fat. I'm okay about that. Not going to punish myself for it. I'm getting up. I'm going to get up tomorrow. I'm going to be intermittent fasting. It's become sort of a comfort lifestyle. It's not really hard. There's a spot where I get hungry and the leptons are kicking in. I do better when I'm measuring Itzhak that's not everybody's cup of tea if you will a cup of coffee. I do better when I'm measuring it. I'm using two apps one for my scale once for how long I'm going when I feel complacent, and I stopped measuring. That's when my weight creeps Do we have a thermostat and House Why are thermostats job is to let us know is to fix when it gets too hot or too cold. The function of a scale was the thermostat, the function of the ISS, the thermostat, you need a feedback loop. The reason that so many people seek out people like you to help them improve their lives.

It's a feedback loop. It's accountability. I don't like the word accountability. I don't you can't make somebody else accountable. You can't?

Can you we think we can tough it out, we can force our kids to behave a certain way. You can't, they resent you for it. But if you can intrinsically motivate them, it's a different story. We have feedback loops and post production all the time. So there's the editors caught, there's the Director's Cut, there's the producers cut, oh, my god. Bunch of people giving you feedback loops that you may or may not need, that may or may not be necessary. I got one instrument, I got one instrument I need to play. It's not the nunchucks this can't control how my face looks can't control being prettier. And that was, you know, can't be pretty like, you know if we should

Zack Arnold: I don't know about that, but I appreciate it. I'm sure that we share the same follicle look, for sure God,

Jeff Greenberg: except, except that I know what the shape of my head is. And that's why I gotta keep whatever little I, um, God, God bless. Like Wes played I mean, the I, I've seen pictures of him. I've known Wes when he he had hair and it just looks weird. Now. I really at the end of the day, don't think of it as accountability. It's just a, a thermostat. I'm just sitting back and looking, being able to hold up some level of mirror. Whether it's intermittent fasting or something else, it's always the same thing. If you're not measuring it, how do you know where you are?

Zack Arnold: What I want to challenge you with is this idea. And I don't think you're there. But I think you can identify with this. And I would guess in all of the Reddit groups that you frequent, there's a difference between your positive relationship with the data and the tracking. And the fact that this is a feedback loop that's motivating you, versus it becoming an addiction and becoming defined by the data, there are people to live what's called the quantified life, where it becomes this addiction, whereby it's 11:57pm, I haven't hit my numbers, I have to go run around the block three times to hit my steps. But then you just completely destroyed your sleep for the night. But it's all about the data. You're not there. But I think that's one of the challenges of this feedback loop.

Jeff Greenberg: That's so man, that is a great observation. So I think my Outlook, what is been influenced by two different spots. But both of them are the same thing. And they're a unhealthy relationship with numbers and addiction. And they usually are lower level signs of something else. Not always, but often. One, I had a parent with anorexia, and not like, you know, I mean, legit, she was hospitalized. They needed to make sure she was putting enough calories in. I've seen the apparent behavior of a relationship with a mirror and a scale.

Zack Arnold: That's very important, which is why you were talking about how I know I shouldn't be measuring every day, but I am. But it's important that you bring that in, because that's a really, really necessary part of your story. So yes, go on.

Jeff Greenberg: I grew up, I grew up with a parent who disappeared for six months. Who were kids, I gotta tell you, I'm like, nine, maybe seven. I don't remember the exam. Can't can't ask my dad with his past because of Alzheimer's. They both been gone for more than a decade. But like kids, when we talked about kids being resilient, my brother and I, we would love going to the hospital because we could race up the 10 flights of stairs, because that's the floor she was on. And then we can run down two flights, because we could get microwave popcorn there. And that was some like, that's, that's what I remember, all these years later. The second spot that I think is important is I was as I said I was a trainer. And I've seen two really awful stories of people addicted to exercise. There was one woman who essentially was running a half marathon every day, every single day. She went to the I think was the Philly marathon. And someone like on Mile was actually the guy who was like this. He was like a mile like 18 or so felt something weird. Got a fracture on his pelvis. But because he was fuming he was so deep To the feet, he finished the marathon. Before, you know he had an x ray. And then there was the woman who in our 20s, burned through her calcium in our body. Because she had to do more exercise in the food, she brought in every day, fell on the ice broke her femur, in her 20s had pins in her her leg would come to the gym, you know, two weeks, six weeks later, and be on the bike with one leg. And I say that, Zach, that I was lucky enough that these people were around early enough that I learned, oh, God, I need the feedback loop. I love the numbers. But there is a real spot, a real line that I am never going across. And that's the dysfunction and I can't evaluate that on other people. And some days my wife goes up, come on, you don't I don't want to hear about how you're losing weight because I'm not. But I'm obsessed with the numbers because it's a positive relationship. And you're dead on and I don't have the magic trick the magic flag of when it becomes obsessive. I think that if you're worried about making your steps, it's obsessive. I was obsessing for a while around meditation. I may

Zack Arnold: I remember you or you or I don't remember the 1000 plus days but at one point you have come up to me in between sessions at editors are like you got to see headspace. You got to see headspace. Can you show me the number like you are proud of that. And that that to me is positive. But tell me how it can be a negative obsession that you're doing something so apparently healthy for you every single day.

Jeff Greenberg: What's worse, what's crazy about that? One is the idea is that you're supposed to have some detachment of your you're supposed to have some level of distance of your emotions. So both good and bad, you're able to observe them. Consider them, but they're not who you are. What is it? The line is behind whatever clouds there's always blue sky. And you know, at that point, I stopped caring and I went out of my way to break my streak just because I was too attached to it. So yeah, it's definitely changed. But you know, that's, that's the spot where people's systems break because because, oh, you know where that that actually has a beautiful parallel is something I don't know how much you still really have deep talks about burnout being burnt out.

Zack Arnold: Oh, burnout is a core foundation of many of my conversations. That's that's never going away. I may not talk as much about nutrition and bulletproof diets and all that other stuff. Burnout is a foundational conversation I have all the time.

Jeff Greenberg: Every attachment to too much exercise too much fitness is the physical burnout. Oh, as your love eventually breaks.

Zack Arnold: Oh, I've I've gone through exercise burnout more than once, which I never thought I was even remotely capable of like me burning up from exercise, like sure the mental stress. I just burned out on too much intensity too often going back to what you said earlier, which is the idea that you can do hard work and you can do a lot of work, but you can't do a lot of hard work. Oh no, I'm gonna prove you wrong. Watch me do a lot of hard work until my body says nope, we're done. I've hit that wall more than once in the last five years.

Jeff Greenberg: I'm terrifically curious, do you then take an extended rest when was the last time you took because you know, the whole thing is because rest sleep may be the best educational piece for all of us. In this regard. The exercise we do is a stimulus. And the rest provides the space for the response. The rest is how you actually get stronger. And without enough rest the one of the things we did as an experiment we trained our we did our hard workout and then we took five days off and then we did our hard workout we took four days off we did our hard workout we took three days off and we took our did our hard workout. And what we found is somewhere between three and two days we suddenly hit walls hard because we were all lifting as hard as we could and it it's it's why sleep is so stupid important. And that's look forget the weight loss which I'm thrilled with forget the fitness and nothing else. I now have such utter respect for sleep and such utter disrespect of my own foolishness What is it just took me years and years and years to learn and if you're listening to this or listen to any Zach stuff and you go oh no, no, I get I get a solid seven to like, you know towards nine and I'm sure cracking it and I know I'm getting good deep sleep. God bless you. You're smarter than I am. Because I spent way too many years going oh, yeah, I got a 24 I got a 48 hour I got a 72 without sleep. Isn't my something something ego out of control?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, sorry. Hey, man, so I just shortened my lifespan by a month yesterday, you too. I just took off six weeks of my life span, dude. Awesome. It's like, How stupid do you sound?

Jeff Greenberg: We don't see it like that we have, unfortunately, this Puritan ethic, this Puritan and I'll even go further to say, it's driven by the capitalist level nature of that. And I'm not saying that. Working hard should be something that's shamed out of I think the Gordon Gekko greed is good, is much like Scarface. Neither of these people should be a my admired. These are both bad sort of influences. I see some of the stuff coming out of the UK where they're doing like four day weeks, and I go,

Zack Arnold: this is a big thing. In a sense, I do want to circle back to this idea of overwork the badge of honor, burnout, right. And also this idea of taking breaks, extended breaks. Because I too, ever was always of the mentality. I'm just going to work as hard as I can. At one point, I pride myself in being a machine, right? I could I could outwork anybody. And I still could, I wouldn't make that decision anymore. But I know I'm still capable of it. I just choose not to. But you would ask a question that I really want a chance to dig into a little bit deeper, which is, you know, what, what's the long rest of the you've taken as far as the the physical exercise? And for years I was doing p90x, p90x Two p90x Three.

Jeff Greenberg: Right. I want to add one. I want to add one question before you tell me about the break. Yep. Was it an injury that caused you to take the break?

Zack Arnold: It was not. It was not an injury. I've had one injury in the last five years. And I'm not counting that as the break. That was about three months of rehab. And like relearning is I basically tore the cartilage in my left shoulder from all the crazy swinging and pull ups and everything else. But that wasn't the thing. What I was working with a mobility coach, because I discovered that at my age and with my profession of being hunched in front of a computer, I literally couldn't get my body in the positions to do a proper pull up, or to be able to swing from one bar to the next without really severe injury. And I was just muscling my way through everything. And he said something really profound to me. He was a former strength and conditioning coach, I think it University of Kansas or something somewhere in the Midwest, I don't remember. But he was he was really into strengthen conditioning and football, I think he was like one step away from being a professional NFL quarterback, and decided I want to get into really learning mobility. And I had been pushing really hard my first maybe seven or eight months of ninja training after having not done any real exercise for a long time. And he said, I think that we want to go through a rest period. I'm like, yeah, cool, totally like, well, what should we do like a rest day, a couple rest days, he's like, No, you're gonna do four weeks, I'm sorry, four weeks, you mean I'm gonna lose everything that I've done. And I'm gonna go back to being out of shape and weak. And he's like, trust me on this one, like, and he did this every every year between seasons. And his father was also a professional trainer. And he said, The only thing you're allowed to do for four weeks is take walks, no heavy lifting, no intense cardio. And he said, watch what happens. And I was terrified this because I'd worked so hard. I was counting the numbers. I knew my max pull ups everything else. Four weeks later, I was stronger, like what the hell is going on. And I've now since applied that philosophy, not only to my training, where sometimes I'll go weeks, without doing any intense training, but my body knows when it's like, Dude, you need to lay off, I've learned to develop that awareness. But I also apply it to my creativity, I can now feel it when I've been really intense with putting together a brand new workshop or, you know, cutting scenes or whatever it is. I now plan those breaks. So I knew that when I finished Cobra Kai season five, for example, which was at the end of March 2022. I finished it. And I said, I'm just going to assume that for the entire month of April. I'm not doing any really intense creative work, I'm still going to do work and wake up and I did my coaching calls and answering emails. But I'm not going to plan anything that requires a lot of deep work and creative focus, because there's just not going to be there. So I now forgive myself and I plan for these breaks.

Jeff Greenberg: Three items. One. Every marathoner every professional athlete, I was training some professional athletes, some Olympians over the years, every single one of them about a week before competition. Stop. Stop fully because they need that extra recovery because they're all frankly a bit overtrained. So they can have the best game day possible to football players, even with by weeks, they can't recover in a single week because of how much impact and damage they do. And without the offseasons, they would never ever make it. Three. I think that there's, maybe there's even a foreign here, I think there's a little bit of a struggle with the consumerism or our need, or our important need to keep our family fed, especially with all the chaos going on in life. And it becomes really, really, really, really hard sometimes to take breaks, I find that I'm at my most creative when I'm bored. And now that I have to go out of my way to cultivate boredom, and the damage of social media, and it's dopamine driven items means you never have to be bored in life.

Zack Arnold: Yep. No, no, it means you never get to be bored. Because saying you have to be bored. Sounds like a negative thing. I am intentionally creating Word of him. I know you didn't phrase it wrong, I just I want to point out how powerful that language is. We don't have to be bored. And I'm thinking, I don't get to be bored. I love boredom

Jeff Greenberg: I don't want to be bored. I want to go out of my way to sit back to throw a ball against the wall, do repetitive, boring, non digital activity. My favorite place to be board Zack is while I'm my eyes are closed, and I'm washing my hair as I get close to a conference, a place where I'm speaking and there was a lot of people, I'm the cleanest I've ever been in life, because I'll take two showers a day to find those pieces of inspiration.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the shower is one of the top three or four places to create creative inspiration because you can't do anything else. It's warm, you're getting more blood flow. And that's where the creativity happens. Unless, of course, you have to have a podcast going or whatever, which I'm like, no, just allow space in your brain to create and collect and just connect all of those ideas. Like that's, that's really what it's all about. So,

Jeff Greenberg: so you know, it's the, the, you know, they go hand in hand that rests permits this moving the needle and tiny marks is the hardest thing to allow ourselves and it's that allow ourselves my, my my favorite trainer. So I'm doing peloton I'm not doing their strength, I'm doing my own way. I don't need the other stuff. I think it's great that they're doing it, they got to keep their business model viable. On the embracing, because one of the things I wanted to point out was the neuroplasticity of you standing on one leg spinning a pair of nunchucks it helps your brain function further. I'm doing this Power Zone training and it makes perfect sense for me the way it works. It's not heart rates based zones. It's something else. Matt Whoppers is the guy who is they considered the professor of it, they got a bunch of instructors to do it. I discovered this instructor Dennis Morton, he's a little long here and eventually gets his hair cut. Little out of my T shirt, some yoga classes. I'm like, really? You know what, I've never in my life been confident enough to go to a yoke. But now try this at home and I'm barely able to stand on a foot doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. I'm doing the ease doesn't matter. It's giving me it's something different. Doesn't doesn't matter. Wow, look at the way my mind is wandering doesn't matter. It's something different.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that something different is just absolutely so key. And when you're learning something new when it's novel, when it's different when you're developing a skill that at least for me, and I know that for a lot of people that's what makes it sustainable, which to kind of wrap all this up and as much as I'd love to go on for I could probably go another three hours because I love these conversations your we could go we've talked about fatherhood. And right now I have a very hard out to go pick up my daughter at gymnastics. So for anybody that has been inspired by your story, they want to learn more about colorlab.ai They want to learn what preferences you can share to make them cry in their tool of choice. What's the best way to connect with you?

Jeff Greenberg: The best way to connect with me is through jgreenbergconsulting.com. By the way that's colourlab with a U it's the English way, if you will. But I'm filmgeek on pretty much every social network except for Twitter except for Reddit. Where I'm greenysmac, I'm doing this fun little podcast with my good friend avguru1 Michael Kammes. It happens to be called Star Wipes and PVC I believe is going to start pushing it out as a podcast we do it more is a live item at the moment. Record switched live that we published on YouTube. And with that, my friend, I want you to go pick up your kid. I definitely am going to your background has It's got dad right there. mine right here. This one. That's my first kid right behind me. It's a joy. You promised though, we would get to redo this, where I revisit something where I interview you, and I'm gonna hold you to them probably after the new year.

Zack Arnold: Yes. Well, well, we shall talk about that are in the near future. So I love that idea. So all right, I'm going to bid you adieu for now, Ken, thank you so much. And I know the story is going to inspire me to make some changes. So really appreciate it.

Jeff Greenberg: Well, you know, fairly healthy, they're my friend. Nice, but not bad.

Zack Arnold: Well done. Well, the next time we see each other in person, we'll have to do a pull up or a dead hang contest.

Jeff Greenberg: We can do a pull up or dead hang up. I'd like to see if I know we're going to train. I'll go longer than a minute.

Zack Arnold: Nice. I love it. I will talk to you soon my friend. Yeah, good one.

Jeff Greenberg: Go get your kid. You too. Thank you.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.

The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).