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What You’ll Learn
- Top 5 exercises to “reset” your bodies health
- How proper breathing can restore your mobility
- How to make hard exercises easy
- Why aging does not mean getting stiff
- Tim’s daily exercise routine
Listen Now
Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.
Helpful Links
- Original Strength Website
- Original Strength Youtube Channel
- Original Strength Instagram
- Tim’s Books On Amazon
- Hindu Push Ups
- How To Feel Amazing
About Tim Anderson
Tim has been a personal trainer for over 20 years. He is an accomplished author and speaker and is known for streamlining complex ideas into simple and applicable information. He is passionate about helping people realize they were created to be strong and healthy.
Tim has written and co-written many books on this subject including Becoming Bulletproof, Habitual Strength, Pressing RESET, and Original Strength. When it comes down to it, his message is simple yet powerful: We were created to feel good and be strong throughout life.
Transcript
Marc Perry:
Hey guys, welcome to the BuiltLean podcast. I’m Marc Perry, the creator of BuiltLean, which helps busy man with demanding careers get lean, strong and functionally fit with exceptional vitality. And today, I have a very special guest with me, Tim Anderson, and Tim is the founder of Original Strength, which teaches health, fitness and education professionals, a system to restore, build, and enhance the movement of their patients, clients and athletes. And as a movement restoration specialist, Tim has written and co-written several books, including ‘Becoming Bulletproof,’ ‘Habitual Strength,’ ‘Pressing Reset,’ and ‘Original Strength.’ And I came across Tim years ago and even wrote an ‘Original Strength’ book review on builtlean.com website many years ago. And Tim is lean, he’s strong, he’s fit, he’s flexible, and he’s achieved a level of fitness I personally aspire to, and he’s able to move his body so effortlessly and fluidly, literally like a child. You’ve got to see it to believe it. And Tim is a phenomenal teacher. In fact, he’s a teacher to the teachers. And so with that said, Tim, thank you so much for joining the BuiltLean podcast today.
Tim Anderson:
Marc, thank you so much for having me, this is awesome. Thank you.
Marc Perry:
Cool, so I guess to start out, if you could kinda tell me a little bit more about the genesis of ‘Original Strength,’ how did it all come about?
Tim Anderson:
Well, it was a complete accident, I was dealing with overuse injuries from being over zealous with everything I’ve ever done, all types of training, mostly what set me off though was back in 2006, I really dove hard into kettlebell training. And my rule was, well, just show up anyway and just push through, push through, push through. It turns out that’s not the best rule to have. So I got overuse injuries, I got frustrated with them. So I looked in corrective exercises, so I started learning about how to fix myself and the more I learned, the more frustrated I got then because it felt like I was chasing my tail; like if I thought I was fixing something, something else would pop up.
Marc Perry:
Right.
Tim Anderson:
And I just got into this cycle. And then one night I was having a self-pity party, ’cause my whole life, even as an adult, I’ve always loved Superman. I wanted to be Superman, and I was sitting around one night just thinking that this sucks. I don’t feel like Superman. So I just honestly, I asked God to show me how to train to be bulletproof, and within two weeks, I picked up a book on learning disorders and children, and God just connected the dots and I just saw how wonderful the human design is, and how it’s… The body’s made to heal. It’s made to be strong, always. So that’s really how all this started.
Marc Perry:
So this is really fascinating and let’s dive in a little bit, so what do you mean by the body is designed to be strong, designed to heal, that sort of thing?
Tim Anderson:
So you know when… Do you have children?
Marc Perry:
I don’t, but many of the listeners do.
Tim Anderson:
Okay, so… But you’ve seen a child?
Marc Perry:
Of course, I have seen a child, I have nieces and nephews.
Tim Anderson:
So when a baby is born, when you were born, when I was born, we were all born with an original movement program, an original operating system, and in that program is the developmental sequence, and we’re designed to go through a series of movements that build our nervous system and tie our body together. And the purpose of that is, is to get us strong and resilient so that we can go and explore the world and live and enjoy life. So no matter how old we are, we have that program in us. My point to that though is, is we have a program that’s designed to make us strong; what we don’t have is a program that’s designed to make us weak and break us down, and we never lose the program that’s designed to make us strong. And there is no a program to make us weak, except for this right here. We can program ourself with our thoughts and everything, but we do not have… There’s nothing in our nervous system that has a date of expiration on it, that says, “Alright, let’s start tearing things down here,” that doesn’t exist. So at any time in your life, you can tap back into your original operating system and your body just starts laying down that solid foundation of strength again. That’s kinda how it works.
Marc Perry:
So how do you do that?
Tim Anderson:
You move like you did when you were a child. So when a child… In the developmental sequence, in ‘Original Strength,’ we teach five movements; breathing with the diaphragm properly… I mean, everybody breathes with their diaphragm, but to use it fully to its functionally. Then we do learning head control, how to master the movements of your eyes and your head, because you need to activate your vestibular system. And then rolling around on the floor, just like children do, rocking back and forth on your hands and knees just like children do, and then crawling. And crawling, you could also extend that out to walking, marching, skipping, running, but it’s the gait pattern though, and if we do those five things, we’re effectively pressing Reset on our bodies and telling our… Strength in our nervous system, telling our nervous system we are safe, giving it great information, where it feels safe to allow us to move.
Marc Perry:
And so I’m kind of thinking from this from different perspectives, on one hand, someone might be listening and be like, “Well, dude, I just wanna work out and get some abs or just get strong, get fit.” How does this fit in? Or what would you say to someone who thinks that?
Tim Anderson:
So if you love working out and lifting weights, or whatever your workout is, the better foundation you have for movement, the better you’ll be able to work out and enjoy the things you love to do. So if you have a solid movement foundation and you get that when you move how you were designed to move, by engaging in those five things that I was telling you about, now, yes, they are the developmental sequence, but yes, you’re actually supposed to engage in them in your entire life; you’re always supposed to breathe properly, you’re always suppose to activate your vestibular system, you’re always supposed to engage in your gait pattern, that should never stop. And that is what gives us a solid foundation for movement. And when we have that foundation, that means we can move any way we want to effortlessly with full strength, full expression of mobility, flexibility, stability, ’cause they all dance together. It’s just all expression. So however you wanna express yourself, whether it’s CrossFit, whether it’s body building, whatever it is, you can express yourself better and optimally, if you have your solid foundation of movement.
Marc Perry:
That’s great. And so I’m kind of curious to ask, what does your own exercise routine look like?
Tim Anderson:
Now? Today? I have come to a point in my life where I don’t really like… I don’t exercise anymore, I just… I move a lot.
Marc Perry:
Okay.
Tim Anderson:
Most days I wrote a book called ‘Discovering You’ where I go through this morning program of 21 repetitions of certain movements, I do that every day, I just call it the 21s. And I do a lot of body weight stuff, if I were gonna look at exercises that I really love to do, Hindu squats, Hindu push-ups, I hang from a bar a lot throughout the day, I do… Right now, I practice hand stands, but I just explore and play. I don’t really… I haven’t lifted weights in a very, very long time.
Marc Perry:
Wow. Okay.
Tim Anderson:
So in this season of my life, that’s what I’m exploring right now.
Marc Perry:
Okay, and I was… And this is a big question and it’s… You kinda talked a little bit about this in your answer… How has your routine evolved… Let’s just even call it in the last five years, how has your routine evolved? And we’re always evolving. I know my routine has dramatically evolved, I just wanna hear about you.
Tim Anderson:
In the last five years well, so ever since OS… So I would say it’s really the last 10 years, ’cause even five years ago, I was, when I trained inside of OS, like say, crawling, I would make crawling as miserable as I possibly could.
Marc Perry:
Right. Well, you did do a mile on YouTube, which is amazing, people could check that out, and that’s something that I watched back in the day. But anyway, continue.
Tim Anderson:
So five years ago, I might, would crawl across the football field.
Marc Perry:
Right.
Tim Anderson:
Three or four times, dragging 100 pounds of chains or something like that, you know, and I would do those kind of things, whereas now, my motto is, it feels good to feel good and make the hard things easy. So the thing about making hard things easy though is once you realize you have the ability to shut the mind down and just enjoy the suffering, where it’s not suffering anymore, you no longer really have to physically try to make hard things easy because really, it’s the mind that you wanna get control of. So I don’t really train hard anymore, but if I want to, every now and then, I’ll be like, “I wonder if I can still do battling ropes for 10 minutes?” and I might not have touched it in two years, but then I can just do 10 minutes consecutive of making waves on a rope with nasal breathing because though, not because I’m special, but just because I’ve learned how to not… I already know I can make hard things easy, so it’s like this just mindset when you go into it that you’ve done this before.
Tim Anderson:
You’ve done it 100 times, even though you haven’t done it in years, it’s still there, which is kind of neat, but a lot of that though, plays into reflexive strength, being able to manage your diaphragm, breathing properly, functionally, under stress, having a very good efficient movement foundation. So, the more efficient you can move, the easier things are, so even though you’re doing harder things, they’re not necessarily that hard, because you have, all your gaps are filled in.
Marc Perry:
So I was gonna ask you, how do you make hard things easy and quiet your mind? How do you make that shift?
Tim Anderson:
So my favorite way now, in today’s world, this season, I love crawling in super, super slow motion for time, like say, my phrase is “Make sloths jealous”, but I might go for, I like… I’m a fan of 10-minute blocks of challenges like that and I’ll just crawl… And I collect dust for 10 minutes, while I’m controlling, trying to control every fine movement in my body. And so you kinda… Your mind’s gotta… You have something to focus on and it just kind of drowns out the rest of the noise, so it becomes easy.
Marc Perry:
By the way, that’s so fascinating. And just for people listening, crawling is an amazing pattern, it’s something I actually… I learned from Tim, and I’ve built into my own training and warm up, but it’s tremendously challenging to do it slow, as he’s saying. It’s just a different level. And I’m gonna include some videos on the article, so I’m going to kind of include this kind of interview we’re doing on the article, just so you can see how unbelievable… It’s really… It’s amazing to see you do it, to be frank, to see how controlled and fluid it is, so I appreciate that.
And by the way, just as a personal note, from crawling forwards and backwards, and you were the one who kind of… I started learning about backward crawling and I realized how unbelievably hard it is, and I’ve actually… I had this one triathlete who I trained a while ago, and he was smoked… Just crawling backwards and forwards with just some jumping jacks, but anyways, just going backwards and forwards, crawling, I could do a one arm, one leg push up without too much trouble. It’s like, alright, not that big of a deal. Whereas before, it just seemed like a silly, ridiculous, it’s like, “How could you possibly do that?” Right.
Tim Anderson:
So that’s the great thing about crawling, is it ties your body together so well, I didn’t even… I could not do a one arm, one leg push up until I started crawling, and then I just discovered I could do it by accident, and it was a great discovery, and then I learned that… Well, heck, everything else I wanna do in the weight room is so much easier now too. So it really takes the breaks off of your strength and allows you to fully express yourself.
Marc Perry:
That’s really cool. And that’s in line with the Core X concept, which I learned from you. Right?
Tim Anderson:
Yeah, yeah, ’cause your body is an X, and when we do that crawling pattern, and when we crawl a certain way, like maintaining the optimal posture like a child does, it just really ties the X together, connects the shoulders to the hips, solid center, so that you can really create force and transfer force very efficiently through your body.
Marc Perry:
Okay. Cool. And so, in the ‘Original Strength’ book, you mentioned how you do not advocate the use of foam rollers or stretching. Why not?
Tim Anderson:
Well, I am pro, you can do it, if you like. If it brings you joy. If it brings you joy.
Marc Perry:
Okay.
Tim Anderson:
But if you’re doing it to try to fix a problem, it might not be the best route to go. Okay, like if you have a trigger point, instead of addressing the trigger point, it might be better to address the reason you have a trigger point, and the reason you might have a trigger point is because your nervous system is not getting optimal information and is compensating somehow, and it’s showing up as a trigger point. Whereas, so a foam roller, while it could feel good and could give you relief and help you perform a little bit, maybe it could be a temporary solution, if you haven’t addressed what your nervous system is really looking for. Now, if you love foam rolling, and it is something that brings you joy, great and do it. Our original one, when we first wrote the book, it was though, if you’re foam rolling every day and you’ve been foam rolling every day for a year and it still hasn’t fixed the issue that you’re foam rolling, it’s probably not working for you the way you want it to, and now it’s become a ritual, and you’re not really getting what you want out of it.
Marc Perry:
Okay, and so a question I have also is, does strength training with weights interfere with your body’s ability to be mobile and to restore your original function?
Tim Anderson:
Not if you have a solid foundation. Now, so if your body’s tied together, well, no, strength training with weights is just, it becomes an activity you can enjoy and express yourself wonderfully with, but if you don’t have a solid foundation, it can set you up for other issues, for injuries and things like that, so it could be a detriment to you. The easiest way I can explain that is, so powerlifters are very, very, very good at three lifts. Super strong at the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift. And so you could have a power lifter, let’s just say he pulls 700, 800 pounds from the ground. That’s amazing strength. But if he can’t walk up and down his steps without doing the hand rail, putting his hands on his knees because he hurts where he can’t move well and efficiently, is his strength really applicable or helpful in the real world, or is it only good for the deadlift and the squat? And that’s temporary, but living your life well into your 90s being able to walk up and down your own stairs with ease, that should be the big goal.
Tim Anderson:
So powerlifting is not bad for you, on top of a solid foundation, but if you don’t have that solid foundation and you just grew those three patterns, then… So, you’re weight training, then you could be setting yourself up for non-optimal movement, which could end up taking away more and more and more of your mobility, your flexibility, and your range of motion.
Marc Perry:
Okay, well, I think that… It’s all great stuff, Tim. And I was just… I’m thinking about kind of like a hypothetical case study. Let’s just take a guy, he’s 40 years old, he’s pretty stiff, he’s [16:39] ____ work on a computer most of the day. Shoulders are stiff, hips are stiff, and he’s just feeling, overall, he just has tightness. So where does he start? What does he do?
Tim Anderson:
Well, without seeing him, my first guess would be, the great place to start, would be his breathing.
Marc Perry:
Okay.
Tim Anderson:
Chances are if he’s sitting at a desk all day, he’s likely breathing up… Especially with the tightness issues that you were talking about, he’s likely breathing with his accessory breathing muscles, he’s likely breathing through his mouth, not his nose, he’s likely not resting his tongue on the roof of his mouth. So just those simple things could be what really restores his shoulder mobility, takes the tight tension out of his hamstrings, takes the pain out of his low back, just by changing how he breathes and how he holds his tongue. And it could be that simple ’cause it’s all about restoration, and it’s just engaging in that original program, it’s like a Reset button, and then all of a sudden, all the other programs on top of the original program just aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.
Marc Perry:
That’s fascinating. So why… I’m almost thinking, how does someone implement that… How do you implement these different types of breathing exercises? Where do you start?
Tim Anderson:
So, that’s tricky…
Tim Anderson:
The good news is, everybody’s done it before when you were a child, so your nervous system remembers how to do it, you just… But now, because of neuroplasticity and we’re trying to dust off old connections and remake other new connections efficient, we just have to show up. So it might be that we bring the awareness of the breath to the person first and show them how it works, right? Because here’s a cool thing: Change happens in the body at the speed of the nervous system, so just learning how to breathe with 10 good breaths is gonna totally change how his body moves.
Marc Perry:
I’ve seen it.
Tim Anderson:
Just like at the snap of a finger because it’s that fast. So once he understands that, ’cause he feels it in the experience… Experience is the best teacher ever. So when you experience how these movements can change your body that fast, well, now we have a reason to show up. So then we just show up every day for maybe two to five minutes, and we just start accumulating reps by showing up, we’re just consistent. So we do the same thing we did as a child, child shows up every day, has nothing else to do, so it shows up day in, day out, and it’s moving and living through those movements.
So as an adult, if we just show up every day and be patient, just like we did as a child, day in, day out, we’re gonna start accumulating those repetitions in our nervous system, and our nervous system is gonna say, “You know what, I really do remember how to do this and you don’t have to think about anymore. I got it. You’re gonna move well, I feel safe, I feel good. You’ve given me good information, I’m gonna let you move, Johnny.” And then Johnny’s moving happy as he wants to be, just like he did when he was a child.
Marc Perry:
That’s fascinating. And is this like five, 10 minutes a day? Are we talking crocodile breathing? Are we talking… I know I’ve seen… You’ve done breathing in kinda the rocking pattern. How do you go about doing this?
Tim Anderson:
It could be crocodile breathing. So at OS, when we teach workshops, we show all these different positions, and then we have you test which one your body really likes.
Marc Perry:
Oh wow.
Tim Anderson:
So once you know what your body really likes, great, let’s go with that. And because that one can start to fill in the gaps of all those other positions without you even trying to worry about those other positions, because we just wanna get the reps in where we’re successful, where the body says, “Oh yeah, I’ve… This… I’m gonna… This feels great. I’m gonna, I remember how to do this.” So it’s not… And here’s… The trick is, is we’re all individual, we all have different backgrounds and histories and things that are in our bodies, right? So the position for you may be different from me, that… Your [20:45] ____ position.
Marc Perry:
Interesting. Okay.
Tim Anderson:
And that’s fine, because we just wanna meet the person where they’re at, give them what their body needs, and then… So once we find that position… And it’s not hard to find, it’s not hard to find at all, then they… We just… Then it can just be five minutes a day getting in those reps, accumulating those reps and breathing in, in that position. And see what happens, though, is is you become mindful of your breath, eventually. So instead of just practicing that five minutes in the morning, when you’re on your way to work, you find yourself practicing with your tongue and with your mouth, breathing in and out your nose, down into your belly. When you’re sitting at your desk, you catch yourself. And so, as we build our practice, mindfulness also seeps in, so now you got two things that are accelerating the process. And then eventually, one day you just notice that, “Well, dang, I don’t even have to think about this anymore, I breathe the way I’m supposed to. And I’m always… I feel good. My back doesn’t… My back hasn’t hurt in weeks, holy cow!” So it just… Or, “Man, I can stand on one foot and put my shoes on again, that’s crazy. All I’ve been doing is practicing breathing and moving my head a certain way.”
Marc Perry:
It’s amazing.
Tim Anderson:
Huge things start happening. And it just makes life better.
Marc Perry:
Right. And so I just wanna add something on for the people listening. So I’ve done the Functional Movement Screen for years on different people, and there’s that hurdle step where someone has to lift up their leg and then go over a hurdle. And some guys are all over the place. And we do… I do crocodile breathing, and all of a sudden, it’s like their bodies move perfectly, you’re like, “What the heck just happened?” And so I guess what I’m saying is I think some of the people listening would be like, “Dude, breathing? This sounds so out there,” but until you see it, until you see it, you don’t bel… And I’ve seen it, I’ve seen how it just changes the game. And anyways, what were you gonna say?
Tim Anderson:
So, here’s why that works. So the diaphragm’s a spinal stabilizer. So if you’re using your diaphragm properly, that means you’re stabilizing your spine. Well, if your body knows your spine’s stable and it’s not gonna get hurt, it’s probably gonna let you move. But if… The body is crazy smart, but if it knows you’re not, you’re not stabilizing your spine, ’cause you’re breathing up in your neck and your chest, and you’re not using your diaphragm properly, your nervous system knows it. So now it’s not going to let you move with grace and ease, and it’s gonna make you wobble around and stuff, because it’s unsure about what you’re trying to do. And it’s gonna try to give you compensations, so that you can achieve the task. So instead of being able to step over it without any hitch in your giddy-up when everything’s level, you’re all over the place, because now you got compensations going on, because you don’t have a stable spine, and your nervous system is just trying to help you out.
Marc Perry:
That’s an amazing answer. I never even… I hadn’t heard that before. That’s great. And so let’s just say… Okay, once someone is able to reconnect with their breath and diaphragmatically breathe. And I’ve certainly seen a lot of guys, when I’ve done posture assessments, you breathe straight into your chest versus kind of diaphragmatically. And so I guess my question is, okay, once you have the diaphragmatic breathing down, and you’re kind of restored your breathing pattern, if you will, then what? What’s the next step?
Tim Anderson:
Well, there can be a next step or it could just be everything at once. So we breathe with our diaphragm, that’s the first thing a child does when it comes into the world, right? And that’s really important, ’cause it’s also the last thing you’re gonna do when you leave. But the other thing, the next thing, like if we were looking at the developmental sequence… And there’s no order to any of this stuff, but if you’re just looking at the sequence, would be head control, activating the vestibular system. And for an adult, that may just be… An easy way to think of it would be, “Hey, eyes and head on the horizon often,” because that’s how we’re designed. We don’t live that way…
Marc Perry:
Interesting.
Tim Anderson:
But that’s how we’re designed. And getting up and down from your chair, often instead of sitting eight hours a day… Activate your vestibular system, tell your body you need it by moving, getting up, getting down, don’t be static, really easy ways to activate your vestibular system or to integrate the movements of the eyes and the head, just like a child does. So you wire your early… I mean, that’s how we’re wired. So where the eyes and the head go, the body follows. So you just start sharpening those reflexes you had as a child, and you make them efficient through use. And then the body just starts working the way it’s supposed to.
Marc Perry:
And so you’re mentioning some of these exercises, like the head nods, kinda rolling, rocking, crawling. And I imagine you’ve chosen those exercises, ’cause that’s what essentially, how babies develop their movement. Is that right? Is…
Tim Anderson:
Yeah, that’s… Those are the movements that make a baby strong enough to get up on two feet and go play on a playground or do whatever babies wanna do, right? It gives them the strength to fill their curiosity so they can get from here to there and just start discovering the world. Truth is, is as an adult, we should still have that same curiosity and wanna go discover the world, and we should still be moving the same way we did as a child. None of the… So our design… We’re clearly designed to move because movement is what builds the nervous system and keeps the brain healthy, which means we’re not designed to sit still, because if movement keeps the brain healthy and builds the nervous system and ties the body together, than that would clearly mean that not moving doesn’t do any of those things, it actually does the reverse. So, when we create a demand on the body, the body meets the challenge. When there is no demand, there’s nothing to meet, so it just lets everything go.
So if we ask nothing of our body, it will give us what we ask for, it gives us nothing. So then all of a sudden, if we’ve sat for… Say, we’ve sat for 10 years behind the desk, and then one day, our old high school buddy calls us up and we reminisce and think we want to get together for a flag football game one weekend, why would we think we would perform well since we haven’t asked our body to do any of that stuff for years? But we’re gonna go do it anyway, ’cause that’s how we are, and it’s fun, but we’re likely gonna get an injury because nothing’s tied together well. We don’t have good posture, we don’t breathe right, we can’t generate power and explosive-ness, and we can’t make turns anymore because we just haven’t accessed those, we’ve never asked our body to do that. But if we live in our design, we’re always asking our body, telling our body we wanna use it, and it knows and it’s gonna let us use it. It’s really about showing up.
Marc Perry:
So what would you say to someone… There’s certainly a lot of people who believe this, which I think is a limiting belief, but it’s a belief people are like, “Hey, you know what, you get stiffer as you get older.” What would you say?
Tim Anderson:
I would say you’re absolutely right…
Marc Perry:
Okay.
Tim Anderson:
If you believe that.
Marc Perry:
Interesting.
Tim Anderson:
But then you could go, “Why, why do we get… ” So you look at all the data, you can start looking at, well, we lose is what? 8%, 10% muscle mass after age 30, every… There’s some percentage that we lose every year. Well, what are we looking at? We’re looking at the current population. And what’s the current population doing? They’re not using their body. So yes, those numbers are probably very accurate, but they’re also looking at a sedentary body, a mass population of sedentary bodies that all are not supposed to be sedentary, they’re just not using their bodies. But what if a man is in his 60s and he never stopped using his body, he’s gonna be able to perform close to what he did in his 30s, he just is, because he never stopped creating the demand, he never told his brain, “Hey, I don’t wanna use my body anymore,” he always shows up. That’s why you see some people that are so healthy and they look great in their old age, but the secret is, is they’ve always been moving, they’ve not just decided to get still one day and sit in a chair for eight to 13 hours a day. And we’re gonna have to sit in chairs, but we don’t have to stay in them.
Marc Perry:
Right, it creates that kind of inflexible cycle, it’s like an inflexibility cycle, it’s like, okay, you feel stiff or you sit down, then you feel stiff and then you don’t wanna move, and then it’s just that kind of inflexibility cycle. Right?
Tim Anderson:
What if also, you do believe that, “Well, once you get over 30, things start falling apart”? If you believe that, you’re gonna set your mind on that and you’re gonna accept it, you’re not gonna do anything to… You’re not gonna do a lot to try to reverse it, ’cause you’re already thinking, “Well, that’s just the way it is.” And the crazy thing about the brain though is, so the body is made to follow the head, and that’s true, very true in movement, but it’s also true in mind. Everybody knows whatever you set your mind on, you can achieve, which also means whatever you set your mind on, you’re gonna end up having. It works both ways.
You can set your mind on positive things and go get it. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. You’ve heard that before. Well, it works in the other way too, ’cause if you’re not thinking one thing or if you’re thinking something, that means you’re not thinking something else, and if you’re not thinking something else, that means you’re thinking something. So you’re going in that direction all the time.
Marc Perry:
Right. How old are you, Tim?
Tim Anderson:
45.
Marc Perry:
Guys… It’s funny, you talk about, “Hey, a guy in his 60s can move like guy in his 30s.” I’m like, you move you’re eight years old. It’s insane. People have gotta see it to believe it, it’s unbelievable, and… Continue, what were you gonna say?
Tim Anderson:
I didn’t always. I move better now than I did in my 20s, and that is like… That’s undeniable. I wish I could have moved this well when I was in my 20s.
Marc Perry:
Right. I think it’s just so cool. And so, let’s talk a little bit about lifestyle tips, ’cause we’ve talked a little bit about the exercise, and I’m gonna include some more resources for people in the article, it’s just… By the way, the YouTube channel is amazing, but what is… Do you have any lifestyle tips to help guys kind of improve their health, restore their health? ‘Cause obviously, that’s just such an important part of all of this.
Tim Anderson:
One would be, in your brain you just gotta know that you’re made to be strong, your body is designed to be able and capable your whole life. You gotta know that. And if you look at it from, just from a distance, if a person lives to say 80, why would it make any sense that the best years of their life are zero to 20, and then the worst years of their life where everything starts falling apart are the next 60 years? That doesn’t make any sense, that’s not even meeting in the middle at the halfway point.
Marc Perry:
Right.
Tim Anderson:
So, beyond that, beyond mindset or just knowing that you’re designed to move, would be move, show up every day and it doesn’t have to be hard, it can just be checking in with yourself, make sure you’re breathing well, the way you’re designed; it can be literally 10 minutes a day, moving your head, rolling around on the floor, rocking back and forth and crawling on your hands and knees. It might be all you ever need to do to ensure that your body can move well. But you know what? The truth is, is 10 minutes is so ridiculously easy, you might… It’s okay if you do more, but if you keep… If that’s all you did, you’re gonna be good, okay, but if you made an intentional effort to move often throughout the day, again, whether it’s every hour, you get up from your desk and intentionally walk down the hall or go get a glass of water, go to the bathroom, you’re just deliberate on moving often, it all adds up. I think you just gotta show up and just know that your body is made to be strong. None of us are made to be weak. And if you know that, you’re on the right path.
Marc Perry:
Cool. And so, just out of curiosity, what does your own kind of morning routine look like?
Tim Anderson:
So I get up… This season, I get up at 4 AM and I read for about an hour. And then at five, I start rolling around on the… I do my 21s, and they take about, I don’t know, about 20 to 30 minutes, and it’s mostly rolling around on the floor, rocking back and forth. And then I’ll do, a couple of times a week, I’ll do Hindu squats, Hindu push-ups, and then I’ll go downstairs and I’ll grab a… I do have kettle bells and I use them to carry out in the neighborhood. So I’ll just pick up… For 10 minutes on the clock, I’ll just set a timer and I’ll just carry a kettle bell, back and forth across my cul-de-sac, holding it in different places because that’s great strength training, it’s old man strength training, you’re just using your body carrying stuff. And then after that, I’ll go for about a 30-minute walk in the neighborhood. The rest of the day, every hour or so, I might do, currently, I might do a handstand against the wall for 30 seconds or a back bridge or squats, or I’ll just lay down on the floor and get up 10 times, just practice and see where I can move. I just play.
Marc Perry:
Cool.
Tim Anderson:
I just play, nothing crazy.
Marc Perry:
And so in terms of doing it throughout the day being more mobile, is it like just when you need to… How would you recommend implementing that, or how do you recommend people move more? I think as a society, we’re all getting more and more sedentary, so to speak, like how do we build that in, how do we move more?
Tim Anderson:
Lowest hanging fruit would be to be intentional in setting a schedule that you have at least one movement block in the day. And for most people, because once the day gets started, the day takes… They get carried away with the day. If you don’t know it before your day, it just typically seems to be harder. Some people do throughout in the afternoon, but there are all these excuses can mount up in the afternoon, not to move. So lowest hanging fruit would just be intentional, set your small schedule, maybe you just move for 20-30 minutes, great, great, more intentional, if you really, really wanna make sure that you stay young and able and mentally thriving throughout your life, you just… If you’re working, in the COVID world and you’re working from home, it’s way easier, you can take those… You can take those movement breaks, you can deliberately not have water at your desk, and every time you get thirsty, you get up, walk across that house, go to the kitchen and get it, and then come back to your desk. Or you just take a 30-second rocking break where you just get on your hands and knees, rock back and forth, or you do some windshield wipers and just loosen up your spine, it feels amazing.
Even if you only got up and did a big stretch, like a lion would when they get up from sleeping in the day, your body will love it and you’re telling your body something, “Hey, I wanna keep you, I wanna use you, I’m just gonna stretch you a little bit.” And it’s gonna allow you to continue to have function. So every 30 minutes to an hour, it doesn’t have to be hard. You can just… And you can… The easiest way is just set a stopwatch that goes off every hour and you get up for… And do something for three minutes. We’re not talking about taking a 15-minute siesta or anything, it’s just three minutes of movement and then go back to work.
Marc Perry:
That’s really powerful. And out of curiosity, what is your eating like?
Tim Anderson:
You don’t wanna know that one.
Marc Perry:
Uh-oh.
Tim Anderson:
I’ve had a lot of… So, COVID taught me a lot of things. There are just a lot of uncertainties in life, and I’m very loose on my eating. When I say loose, I mean I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying food. As a matter of fact, I think the secret to that is just to be grateful for it. So I practice… My goal, my hope is that I approach a meal with gratitude and I trust that it’s going to end up where it needs to go. So, in the past, I would be, well, is it organic? Is it grass fed? Has it been treated well? Which is important, those things could be important. But you know what, at the end of the day, sometimes you just can’t help how your food is treated and sometimes you just… You have what you have. So I try to be grateful for it and enjoy it. I have taste buds, I think I have them for a reason, so I like things that taste good. I’ll be honest right now, I’m on a big cereal kick, I love eating cereal.
Marc Perry:
Okay.
Tim Anderson:
But it brings me joy, and I cannot see… I haven’t experienced anything negative from it.
Marc Perry:
Nice one. You’re in impressive shape. And could you… Is it cool? Could you kinda share maybe like a breakfast, lunch, dinner? Do you eat snacks? Just kind of curious.
Tim Anderson:
Breakfast is, I’ll eat a banana with peanut butter, those two things go… So for me, I just love taking, just spooning peanut butter on a banana. And then I might make pancakes or eat a bowl of cereal. And then for… If I eat around nine or 10, I probably won’t eat again until dinner. And then for dinner, a salad, meat or eggs, nothing crazy. On the weekends, I may have pizza. I like sushi. So my evening meals would be very healthy-esque looking, but my breakfast is, “He’s just eating banana, peanut butter and cereal or something.”
Marc Perry:
Alright, hey, I think it’s great that you have that balance and it’s like… You’re also incredibly in tune with your body. I can imagine someone else, if they have pizza, they might have… It might not have the same effect on their body as it does you, I imagine.
Tim Anderson:
Well, and now here’s where we get crazy, so the mindset thing…
Marc Perry:
Right.
Tim Anderson:
If I go into a meal thinking that’s gonna be bad for me, I shouldn’t eat that and I’m already guilty before I eat it, I’m better off not eating it…
Marc Perry:
Interesting.
Tim Anderson:
Because what I’ve done is I’ve taken my nervous system and put it in fight or flight mode. Well, it’s not gonna be able to digest whatever I’m eating anyway, because now I’ve already laced it, I’ve wrapped it in negativity, I’ve made my nervous system feel unsafe about it, because it’s all information, so my thoughts are information. But if I approach a meal thinking, “Man, I’m grateful for this. This is gonna be good, I’m really gonna enjoy this, and it’s not gonna hurt me, it’s gonna help me.” So if I go into it with that mindset, now I’ve wrapped it in positivity and the nervous system knows. So, now… But if I’m in parasympathetic mode, I can rest, I can digest or I can get rid of inflammation that bad food might cause, if it’s not bad to me.
Marc Perry:
So, sometimes… And this is crazy, I know, but sometimes we set ourselves up for the expectation and the outcome based upon how we go into it. And our beliefs, our beliefs are strong, and our body responds because the body follows the head. And I’m not saying… I know it sounds crazy, but you could test it, you could test it out and see how your body does with it, and then you know for yourself. ‘Cause again, it’s the experience that teaches us. But if I’m not afraid or I don’t have guilt or shame, or if I’m not already beating myself up or beating myself up afterwards. So say you eat a meal and then you feel extremely guilty, what are you doing to your nervous system? What are you doing to your digestive system? Your vagus nerve is like, “Oh gosh, what? Oh, fight or flight. Let’s fight. Let’s fight. Let’s fight.” You can’t get any of the nutrition out of it, but if you ate a cookie with joy and gratitude and there was no concern in your nervous system whatsoever, could that cookie be used for something beneficial? Possibly.
Marc Perry:
That’s really powerful stuff, Tim. And so, we’re getting up on the 45 minutes here. And again, this is really powerful stuff and I’m so excited to share this with guys out there and ladies who are listening as well, to help shift I think, the mindset that a lot of guys have with fitness and exercise, and say, “Dude, you gotta push yourself, you gotta push yourself.” Whereas this is a whole different angle and perspective, and clearly what you’re doing is working. And so with all that said, how can people follow you and learn more about you?
Tim Anderson:
So I do have the YouTube page where it’s tons of free videos on just… On how to move, and not necessarily how to move but fun ways to move, that may be very beneficial for your body. We have a website called originalstrength.net, and that’s where we have articles and videos, also. And if you’re… And we also offer education courses and content. The easiest place like if you really wanna know more about how Pressing Reset works, if you go to Amazon, I’ve got several books, but the Pressing Reset, Original Strength Pressing Reset Reloaded, or… The Pressing Reset book.
Marc Perry:
Okay, okay. Yeah, you’ve got a bunch of books by the way. I have seen the Amazon page.
Tim Anderson:
I get so confused.
Marc Perry:
That’s all good.
Tim Anderson:
But that one will definitely fill in all the gaps on why these child-like movements, how they can help your body, even if you’re 80. That, and to me, that’s where the power comes in, is the movement. All my crazy thoughts about nutrition or whatever, you don’t have to worry about those. But if you just wanna know how your body is designed to move, the books are a great place to start.
Marc Perry:
Awesome. Well, Tim, man, I really, really appreciate you sharing all this information. I’m excited and I think it’s gonna help a lot of people out. So with that said, man, enjoy the rest of the day. I really appreciate it.
Tim Anderson: Marc, thank you for having me. This has really been a lot of fun.
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