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Jason Phillips on Macros and Mentorship

Jason Phillips

How does it feel to be back? How does it feel to be back? How does it feel to be back in my arms again?

The answer is that it feels to be good podcasting again.

First episode back is with my pal Jason Phillips. I’ve known Jason for awhile now. We’ve shared many clients, with me writing some exercising programs and Jason putting together some nutrition prescriptions.

Jason has been getting people lean, ripped and shredded for awhile now, but – more importantly – he’s been teaching CrossFit athletes how to eat appropriately to handle the volume and intensity that a lot of these freaks are putting in. (Hint: There can be long term hormonal consequences to training like a maniac while eating a low carb Paleo diet.)

Not only does Jason know a thing or two about how to prescribe some carbs, fats, and proteins, he’s also built a nutrition coaching business with multiple coaches. We dig into how Jason initially built his clientele, then how he started to replace his own work with clients in the business when he began to hit the point of overwhelm.

Listen Here

Learn More About Jason

Resources Mentioned

Show Notes

  • [5:04] Jason’s Background with eating disorders and HPA (Hypothalamic Pituitary Adernal) Axis dysfunction – as well as the trends of Paleo, Zone and macro counting in CrossFit
  • [8:08] Jason’s experience with overtraining while attempting to compete in CrossFit – including a torn biceps tendon and a torn labrum
  • [13:01] Understanding how hard to push – ignoring signals from the body can be valuable or destructive
  • [18:20] Understanding metabolic adaptation (sometimes colloquially referred to as “metabolic damage”)
    in clients and the role of leptin resistance in appetite dysregulation
  • [23:00] A UFC fighter’s weight cut from 156 to 135, and the role of dehydration in brain injuries in combat sports
  • [25:10] Tactics vs strategy in highly-motivated, self-researching clients and how to handle the influence of Instagram on clients. “Education drives compliance.”
  • [32:53] To create compliance in clients, it’s key to start them at an appropriate level of complexity rather than allowing them to go all in right away.
  • [38:21] Don’t worry about scaling your coaching business until you’ve demonstrated that you can help a lot of people on your own.
  • [41:27] How to go from a handful of clients to 160+
  • [44:10] There was no specific business tipping point. Just doing podcasts, trying to help people,
    and doing the right things repeatedly over time.
  • [45:48] How do you replace yourself in a technical service business? By mentoring people, finding the right ones, and teaching them the information they need to be successful.
  • [48:59] Business coaching with Bedros has given perspective on setting exact goals, dealing with self-limiting beliefs about abilities to achieve those goals, then coming up with concrete numbers that must be hit to move towards those goals on a consistent basis.
  • [52:34] How to balance hustling and grinding with focusing on being effective and efficient. Developing a routine that allows focused work time on major priorities.

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Stephan Guyenet, PhD – Author of The Hungry Brain

Stephan Guyenet

There’s been a culture war raging for decades – high carbohydrate diets vs high fat diets, paleo diets vs vegan diets, people tracking all of their food in apps while others shout that “calories don’t matter,” and a bunch of people off in the corner sipping exogenous ketones.

If you’re familiar with Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind or the moral foundations theory, it’s no surprise that our morality is easily intertwined with our basic biological urges for food. It’s also no surprise that strong emotions like disgust can mingle with our food choices, causing extreme reactions – people aren’t just failing to achieve optimal results by consuming the “wrong” macronutrients in their diet, they’re degrading their bodies through their impure and improper behavior.

But, how do our bodies actually regulate our weight? How do we regulate our levels of body fatness?

Everyone knows that one guy who is freakishly lean – seemingly no matter what he does for diet or exercise.

Everyone also probably has a cousin who lost a ton of weight on a low carb diet. And then there’s the friend who had great success with paleo. And the other who went vegan and swears it changed his life.

What about hunter gatherer cultures? Kitavans (eating a diet of approximately 70% carbohydrates – predominantly from sweet potatoes) to the Inuit (eating a diet of approximately 50% fat) all seemingly regulate their bodyweight at healthy levels and are free from chronic diseases that plague industrialized cultures.

Is there a thread that ties all of these things together? How can so many seemingly disparate approaches to eating all produce results in both individuals and populations?

There is a “middle way,” so to speak, and Stephan Guyenet has been promoting a framework that makes thinking about bodyweight, body fatness, and appetite all a lot more reasonable.

Stephan has a PhD in neurobiology, and has published research on the role of the brain in regulating body fatness – particularly the role of hypothalamic injury and inflammation.

Stephan has blogged actively for years – first at Whole Health Source, and now at his eponymous site www.stephanguyenet.com. He’s also been a presenter at conferences such as the Ancestral Health Symposium.

Fortunately for the unwashed, unclean masses who have been defiling themselves and their palate through improper eating behavior, Stephan has just released a book called The Hungry Brain that distills the complicated science of bodyweight and body fat regulation into a cohesive narrative.

Stream the episode below, or listen on your favorite podcast app to learn:

  • The “thermostat analogy” for how the body regulates hunger and activity
  • The hormone that stays out of the limelight, but has a much stronger global effect than insulin on fat storage (hint: it’s leptin)
  • The few months of the year that account for the most weight gain

Listen Here

Learn More About Stephan

Resources Mentioned

Show Notes

  • [0:25] Introduction of Stephan Guyenet and summary of The Hungry Brain
  • [6:50] Energy balance and the brain’s role in regulating energy intake and expenditure
  • [17:48] Body fat setpoint: is it a true setpoint or is it a “settling point”?
  • [22:42] Hypothalamic injury and potential dysregulation of the body fat set point.
  • [33:51] The unreliability of self-reported calorie intake – Does “reverse dieting” align with the science?
  • [41:38] Cheat meals and weight gain around the holidays.
  • [48:11] How do you sort through dense information in while conducting research and literature review
  • [53:37] What would be the next step in studying the processes and phenomena that you cover in your book?

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Peter Rahal, Founder and CEO of RXBAR

Peter Rahal

I remember Peter Rahal approaching me by the whiteboard at River North CrossFit. If you’ve ever met Peter, he’s kind of a quiet but intense guy. He has a sense of humor, but is also a weird guy with weird ideas, so sometimes you’re not sure if he’s joking or serious.

He comes up to me and says, “Hey, I’m thinking of starting a protein bar company. What do you think?”

I don’t remember what I said, but I know it was something to the effect of, “I don’t know anything about protein bars or the food business, but hopefully you do.”

A few years later, an annoying middle-aged woman in Trader Joe’s who doesn’t know anything about CrossFit or about how to properly check out at the grocery store (Help bag your groceries! Chat pleasantly with the cashier but be ready for when the card swiper is ready to accept your form of payment! Move it along, people!) was talking loudly about how much she “loves these new protein bars” while purchasing a handful of RXBARs.

Looks like Peter was on to something after all. RXBARs quickly spread throughout the CrossFit space and have now made the jump into the mainstream of alternative grocery stores like Trader Joe’s.

But, success on this scale doesn’t just come from having a great idea or a great product – it comes from execution. Scaling any business involves massive challenges in tactical logistics, as well as higher order thinking regarding how to maintain quality, create a culture, and hold employees accountable.

Check out this interview with Peter to learn:

  • When to quit your job and focus on your business idea
  • What benchmarks you see in a fast growing company
  • The best interview questions for hiring employees
  • RXBAR’s unexpected and comical branding problem
  • When to listen to marketing experts and when to trust your gut

Listen Here

Learn More About Peter and RXBAR

Show Notes

  • [00:22] Intro
  • [01:54] What made you think you could start a protein bar company?
  • [08:14] What have been the tipping points in the first few years of business?
  • [12:16] Why does disregarding the standard branding advice pay off?
  • [15:31] What happens between making bars in the basement and the re-branding of RXBAR?
  • [17:13] At what point did you fully “jump off the cliff” and solely focus on RXBAR?
  • [23:10] At what point did you hire people?
  • [31:35] Work/life balance….
  • [33:32] What does day-to-day look like for you?
  • [38:24] What would you choose to do if you had total control over your time?
  • [42:48] New flavors…. Yum, how does that come to pass?
  • [49:29] What was your biggest mistake?

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Dr. Shawn Allen of The Gait Guys

Shawn Allen

Anyone who has ever been to a physical therapist has inevitably been told that they have “weak glutes” and been given Jane Fondas or some other form of band exercise.

Does every human being actually have weak glutes? Is the contractile potential of the muscle limited? Do glutes really not “fire correctly”? Can we actually come up with biomechanical explanations for all of the injuries and issues that we find in athletes?

Dr. Shawn Allen is one half of The Gait Guys along with Dr. Ivo Waerlop – a duo renowned for their information dense podcasts and blog posts in which they dissect the latest research articles in rehab, injuries, nervous system development, and strength training.

Dr. Allen practices not too far from my parents’ house in the suburbs of Chicago, so I made the trek out to see him for some chronic groin issues I’d had from playing soccer. And, it turns out I had some glute issues myself.

However, it’s not as simple as simply contracting the offending muscle group over and over and over again. The pattern in which dysfunction is present must be identified, and then a new pattern must be learned to replace the dysfunctional pattern – which is a higher order way of approaching injuries and movement issues.

Dr. Allen and I have had several interesting conversations about injury mechanisms, the nervous system’s control of movement, and best practices in rehab and training, so we decided to record one of them here.

Listen Here

Learn More About Dr. Shawn Allen and The Gait Guys

Show Notes

  • [00:23] Introduction of Dr. Shawn Allen
  • [11:19] How do you balance the biomechanics with someone with multiple movement issues.
  • [21:11] How do you figure out when you should be trying to fix things or just let them go?
  • [29:05] Do you have an example of a thought process or example that you would go through to re-train a pattern on someone?
  • [44:23] How do you reconcile where pain actually comes from and how much biomechanics actually causes pain?
  • [56:26] Muscle testing…

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Brandon Heavey & Nicole Latimer of Evidence Based Athlete

Brandon Heavey & Nicole Latimer

If you have any interest in the fitness industry – for health, performance, weight loss, or otherwise – you’ve seen some sensational headlines.

“I tried the ketogenic diet and lost 15 pounds in three weeks – all while adding 30 pounds to my one rep max deadlift!”

“My squats had stalled out for years, until I tried this Russian squat program that the Soviets used for their most elite level weightlifters. I was sore for a month, but ended up adding 45 pounds to my one rep max!”

“Personal trainers hate him…”

“I’ve got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat…and it’s raspberry ketones.” Congress even got involved in this one, when they held hearings investigating Dr. Oz’s somewhat unscrupulous claims.

So, what’s a person who wants to burn belly fat or add fifty pounds to their squat to do?

Well, turn to the evidence of course.

Problem is – as anyone who has tried to read the scientific literature – evidence is messy. Evidence is convoluted. Evidence has all kinds of issues like p value hacking (using advanced data mining techniques to find statistically significant correlations in large amounts of data) and the repeatability crisis (a shocking number of studies don’t show the same results when other experimenters attempt to replicate them) – not to mention the challenges of setting up truly randomized, controlled studies when attempting to investigate complicated, mulit-variate, emergent systems that actually affect our health and wellness.

Fortunately, folks like Brandon Heavey and Nicole Latimer are willing and able to spend their time digging through the scientific literature while simultaneously coaching people in the real world, which gives them unique insight into both best practices as supported by evidence, as well as a filter for what actually works with real people in the real world.

I first met Brandon at an OPEX course in Scottsdale – taking Level 2 program design like a bunch of nerds who want to spend all of their time and money learning weird stuff.

A few weeks back, I was at the Ancestral Health Symposium in Boulder, and much to my delight, Brandon and Nicole ended up sitting behind me at one of the first lectures.

They used to own CrossFit 626 in Pasadena, and sold that to move into the mountains outside of Boulder and focus on their individualized coaching in both nutrition and program design. Brandon has an engineering background and Nicole is a pharmacist, so these are folks highly versed in systems thinking and understanding complicated webs of cause and effect.

Take a listen to learn how to filter all the conflicting and confusing information from articles, blogs, and research studies, how to organize that information, and how to figure out what really works in the confusing edges between fitness, nutrition, hormone testing, and human psychology.

Listen Here

Learn More About Evidence Based Athlete and Strength & Scotch

Show Notes

  • [0:23] Introduction
  • [1:23] What did you take away from the Ancestral Health Symposium?
  • [5:52] A brief summary of Dr. Gerstmar talks.
  • [9:29] Science of detoxification
  • [15:13] What is Evidence Based athlete?
  • [20:49] How do you get buy-in from people on changes you’re asking them to make?
  • [24:06] A run down of backgrounds…
  • [35:24] Interesting aspects of Evidence Based Athlete
  • [38:37] What steps do you take to avoid bias or common errors in why things are working?
  • [41:26] What do you guys do to educate yourselves and stay up to date?
  • [53:36] Continuing education resources.
  • [59:08] How do you decide that you trust a source?
  • [1:03:00] What does someone do if they want to get started with Evidence Based Athlete?
  • [1:06:00] What is the actual reliability of tests?

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Group Classes vs Training Templates vs Individualized Programming

Jon Colborn & Todd Nief

Everyone has an opinion on programming and training for CrossFit.

Quibbles over the best ways to train are nothing new in any sport.

Let’s see how many different ways that people can argue over intensity vs volume in training protocols with a few Google searches.

“intensity vs volume CrossFit”

“intensity vs volume bodybuilding”

“intensity vs volume sprinting”

“intensity vs volume triathlon”

With all of these competing opinions out there, what’s a helpless, confused trainee to do?

At this point, most people training competitively for the sport of CrossFit have a coach – often one who either individualizes training for that athlete or who gives them templated training that multiple competitors of comparable skill levels (or many wannabe competitors) follow.

Most people training in CrossFit affiliates participate in group classes with programming designed for an avatar of a specific person – then either modified or scaled to enable each participant to get their training in.

Each of these training methods has trade-offs, and many coaches out there have strong opinions about which method is best. Problem is, most of these people have some sort of business incentive for pushing their favorite version of training – and a healthy dose of confirmation bias backing up their opinions.

On this episode of the SLSC podcast, Paul, Jon and Todd discuss the positives and negatives of different types of training, and also dive into how to truly individualize a training program for an athlete.

And, as it turns out, there is a bit of a business interest and confirmation bias present here as well, as Jon and Todd have an individualized training business called Legion that you can scope out if you’re interested in having a coach filter through all of the competing information out there and guide your training.

Listen Here

Learn More About Legion Strength & Conditioning

Show Notes

  • [0:25] Intro
  • [1:25] Class programming vs. Individualized programming
  • [6:41] How do we write the class programming? What does that avatar look like?
  • [8:40] What are some of the major differences between class/individual programming?
  • [11:29] Catering to what athletes like and what they don’t like.
  • [16:46] Holding hands or flying free… How do coaches approach direction and encouragement.
  • [20:11] Sometime you have to walk away from you training day.
  • [22:03] Distinction between training in CrossFit and being a CrossFIt athlete.
  • [26:27] How to individualize programs and what that actually looks like.
  • [38:17] What makes a good individual coach/program?
  • [47:02] Can a coach be a good athlete?
  • [49:47] What does it actually mean to individualize?

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Ricky Hirsch: The Jerky King of Chicago

Ricky Hirsch

You’d think that having the most successful food-based Kickstarter campaign of all time would be a great start.

But, Ricky Hirsch was disappointed in having raised only $57,000. He thought his product was so good that he was going to get millions.

Now, there’s something to be said for staying off of the hedonic treadmill and appreciating what you have. But, there’s also something to be said for hustle, pushing your limitations and boundaries, and getting out into the world and making things happen.

After spending some time in the financial industry and running a mortgage company leading into the economic destruction of 2008, Ricky started Think Jerky after playing around with some other ideas involving hot dogs, pastries, and juice (maybe not all at the same time though…)

What does it take to create a business from nothing? Is it just a great idea and endless hustle? From Ricky’s story, it seems that those things are necessary but insufficient.

Check out the full interview to discover:

  • How to start a business – even after the economy has taken you for a ride
  • How to match your vision with the existing marketplace
  • What work/life balance means to an entrepreneur
  • What challenges you face trying to grow a successful business to scale
  • What daily meditation can do for an ambitious and driven person

Listen Here

Learn More About Ricky and Think Jerky

Think Jerky flavors

Show Notes

  • [0:20] Introduction
  • [4:36] Why Kickstarter?
  • [5:42] What about your background led to Think Jerky?
  • [11:15] What was the initial vision for Think Jerky?
  • [12:58] Low sugar… Why does jerky need sugar?
  • [14:58] What has your involvement been in food culture, CrossFit, Farm to table…
  • [16:30] What did you initial pitch look like, how did that evolve?
  • [22:14] So demoing the product is the best way to get it in new customers hands?
  • [24:16] What does scaling look like for Think Jerky?
  • [28:26] What does the day-to-day look like for the Chicago Jerky King?
  • [34:25] What will enable you to grow the company?
  • [35:52] What does long term Think Jerky business look like?
  • [37:35] Tell me about the meditation practice.
  • [45:46] Work/life balance?
  • [47:37] What happens when you do reach stability in work/life?
  • [49:43] What didn’t we ask you that we should have?

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Dr. Ben Fergus on How Being a Giant Baby Will Improve Your Performance

Ben Fergus

I've snuck into a lot of physical therapy continuing education courses that I don't belong in over the last few years. I've enjoyed putting myself in situations where I'm the least knowledgable person in the room, and trying to learn in a field peripheral to strength & conditioning has elevated my thinking as a coach in ways that I would not have anticipated.

I first met Ben at a DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization) course that he was hosting and assisting with – although I don't think he remembers me from that.

This was my first exposure to a lot of concepts that are a big part of how I train and coach people today like:
*Understanding proper breathing and core stabilization
*Understanding the value of joint centration and alignment for proper motor control
*Visually assessing not just range of motion in joints but understanding "how" the body and brain are creating motion

I remember feeling helpless and confused in this course as instructors and fellow students would watch someone laying on a table and make quick assessments of their motor control and stabilization strategies.

I was like, "Are these people actually seeing something? Or are they just making it up?"

I can imagine parallels here in terms of watching someone do a snatch at full speed. After a certain number of reference experiences, a coach can immediately see someone rushing their first pull or not getting their knees out of the way as they lift the bar. However, to an untrained observer, every rep probably looks the same. "They're just snatching. Not sure what you're seeing."

Now, not to say that my observational skills are anywhere near that of a trained clinician, but, after taking several more DNS courses, GRIP Approach courses, and getting plenty of reference experiences coaching people and trying to get clients to move better, I think I can sometimes see some of the issues and compensation patterns that were totally indistinguishable to me a few years back when I first met Ben.

Ben has created his own continuing education courses called GRIP Approach (Global Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention), and he is also a practicing chiropractor in Evanston at Cornerstone Clinics.

Through GRIP Approach, Ben takes some of the most effective – yet esoteric – concepts in physical therapy and rehab and makes them practical and accessible to healthcare practitioners, coaches, and trainers.

Ben has a huge wealth of knowledge on all things related to developmental kinesiology, soft tissue and fascial restriction and dysfunction, and the nervous system's role in controlling ranges of motion and compensatory patterns.

Fortunately, rather than just hoarding all of this information for himself, he's synthesizing what he knows and teaching it through GRIP Approach in a way that's one of the most actionable frameworks that I've seen for this type of knowledge.

Take a listen below to hear Ben discuss how he approaches assessment of clients, how he individualizes treatments for different people and different goals, where he personally goes to keep learning, and how he continues developing his craft.

Ben will also be teaching a course at South Loop Strength & Conditioning in July of 2016, so take a look below for more information on Ben's courses as well as his personal practice in Evanston.

Listen Here

Learn More About Dr. Ben Fergus and GRIP Approach

Resources Mentioned

Show Notes

  • [0:21] Dr. Ben Fergus Introduction
  • [2:26] How did you get into this field?
  • [4:35] An example of an athlete or patient that pushed you to break the standard model.
  • [7:02] Why is one person effected by an issue when another is not with similar patterning issues?
  • [10:55] What is your thought on people who are performing at a high level doing stuff "wrong"?
  • [13:27] Can you elaborate on how you assess people that come into your office? What do you look for?
  • [21:38] Why do people lose the ability to control these neutral zones of reference?
  • [24:54] Fear avoidance…
  • [28:25] How do you filter through what people really need?
  • [32:35] Mobility… Stability… What is happening in situations where you have different issues.
  • [37:18] PT exercises, joint manipulations… studies show that they work, why?
  • [40:41] What are so special about the DNS positions?
  • [46:07] How does the brain select specific ranges of motion and how do we change our ability to do that?
  • [49:58] How did training in Prague come about?
  • [54:17] How do you decide what to read, what courses to take?
  • [1:01] If you could do any study, what would be a massive win?
  • [1:04] GRIP Performance course

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James FitzGerald on Quitting Coaching

James FitzGerald

I first started coaching in CrossFit back in 2010, and at some point in 2011, I transitioned into the role of writing programming for the gym that I was working at.

In typical information hoarder practice, I began to search out as much as I could find on the principles of program design. I started reading dense training manuals from Yuri Verkhoshansky, Vladimir Zatsiorsky and Louie Simmons.

I remember downloading a PDF of Zatsiorsky's "Science and Practice of Strength Training" and somehow managing to read that thing on my Kindle – which is insane and a testament to an attention span that I think I no longer have.

Throughout this process of research, I started following along with James FitzGerald's "Big Dawgs Blog" and being confused at the contrast between the somewhat silly name and the extremely technical training prescriptions that made no sense to me.

James was well known within the CrossFit community as the champion of the inaugural CrossFit Games as well as the coach to many athletes competing at a high level in the sport.

At that point in time, I wrote my own training, but I would read the Big Dawgs blog and try to understand some of the "whys" behind the complicated prescriptions of tempos and work-to-rest ratios. I remember trying to put together my own lactate power training sessions with airdyne and sled dragging and heavy touch-and-go deadlifts, and just tragically missing the point – but simultaneously feeling like this guy FitzGerald was on to something.

I've taken all of James's OPEX CCP modules through Level 2, and that – coupled with my mentorship with his younger brother Michael – has had more of an impact than anything else on my understanding of not just the Xs and Os of program design, but the big picture questions that need to be asked to progress athletes in sports like CrossFit, soccer, and rugby vs. corporate wellness clients vs. doctors, consultants, and students who are members at my gym.

In this episode, James discusses what he learned from his relationship with strength & conditioning masterminds like Charles Poliquin and Paul Chek, how he integrated those learnings into his own coaching within CrossFit, how he removed himself from his coaching role with CrossFit Games athletes, and how he plans on growing OPEX's remote coaching services as well as his own continuing education modules.

James will be at South Loop Strength & Conditioning on April 23-25th leading the OPEX Program Design Level 1 module – any coaches or athletes interested in an upgraded understanding of the "whys" behind program design should click here for more information

Listen Here

Learn More About James & OPEX

Show Notes

  • [0:23] Introduction of James Fitzgerald
  • [4:53] How did the guys that inspired you create their different systems?
  • [07:50] How do you figure out what works and what doesn't?
  • [09:39] How did you come up with the original models for training energy systems?
  • [14:32] How do you figure out what is actually limiting people?
  • [17:08] What separates the best from the rest?
  • [20:49] It's about fatigue repeatability…
  • [25:37] The concept of dampening relevant to fatigue repeatability?
  • [28:06] Nervous system fatigue; what do you think is going on there?
  • [31:08] What's the value around learning? How are you continuing your education?
  • [35:45] What personal systems have worked for you?

  • [36:39] What does the internal OPEX structure and process look like?

  • [39:10] What have you changed in terms of how deliver information based upon what you have been learning?
  • [40:52] Have you found anything that helps people learn to learn?
  • [42:22] What for you is the process that helps you actually learn, retain, implement…
  • [43:18] How do you come to peace with things that fulfill only you?
  • [46:56] What challenges do they (your coaches) have that stops them from learning/retaining new information?
  • [48:38] You recently delegated most of your coaching roll. How did you come to that decision?
  • [51:07] How do you attempt to separate yourself from OPEX?
  • [54:37] What is a potential coach going to get out of the program design course being held at South Loop Strength & Conditioning?
  • [55:36] What do you get out of coaching from OPEX?

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Greg Anderson from Southern Lord Records and Sunn O))) on How to Build a Tribe

Greg Anderson

I've always been kind of a music freak. My first foray into "non-mainstream music" came in seventh grade. I was in some sort of special math program where I was bumped up a grade into the eighth grade advanced math class. At the time, bands like The Offspring and The Mighty Bosstones were popular on alternative radio, and I loved alternative radio. I begged my mother to allow me to put a Q101 sticker on her car, and she was like "absolutely not."

One of the eighth graders in my math class (Justin K was his name) somehow found out that I was enthralled with the ska and punk bands nudging at mainstream success, and he suggested that I check out Less Than Jake. I went to Beautiful Day, the local record store, and purchased "Losing Streak." I was completely blown away that a band could be so good without being on the radio, and my life changed in that moment.

Justin gave me other recommendations including Operation Ivy and Slapstick, and within months I had ordered pretty much everything from the Asian Man Records catalog.

From this point forward, I became a music freak – obsessively researching bands and genres and getting my ears on anything that I could find. This was in the advent of file-sharing, so I used Napster, Kaazaa, album thank you lists, John Peel playlists, and recommendations for charismatic and borderline cyber-bullying internet forum users.

At some point, as an older, darker, more depressed teen with a taste for heavy metal, I stumbled into the music of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson. This was probably a year or so after Sunn O)))'s "Flight of the Behemoth" came out. I quickly started back-tracking and checking out all of their other slow and bizarre projects, and I had a particular taste for Khanate and Burning Witch. At the time, I was familiar with Black Sabbath and a bunch of technical death metal and metalcore bands, but had pretty much no knowledge of doom metal. The idea of contemporary bands purposefully playing slow and non-technical riffs was insane and mind-blowing to me.

I also came across Thorr's Hammer a few years later while searching for bands influenced by Celtic Frost, and only later learned that the same slow-playing weirdos Greg and Stephen were responsible for that band as well.

Recently, my band Like Rats released an album on Greg's label Southern Lord Records. To have a person who unknowingly shaped your development and opinion of music put his name (and some of his own $) behind your project makes me feel a little bit weird if I actually think about it.

Greg graciously agreed to take some of his time to discuss his own creative process – and how this differs between his bands, how he built a tribe of like-minded people who want to hear whatever he puts out with his label or with his bands, and how he thinks about marketing and growing his business in a subculture that frowns heavily upon any sort of calculated or disingenuous salesy bullshit.

Even though this post and podcast are appearing on a gym's site, I considered myself a musician long before I considered myself a coach, so I think it's valuable to dig into the same mindsets and processes that we look for in elite coaches, athletes and therapists in areas outside of fitness. Just one insight gleaned from another industry or field can be game-changing when applied in an arena like coaching or performance.

Listen Here

Learn More About Greg and Southern Lord Records

Show Notes

  • [0:17] Introduction of Greg Anderson
  • [2:50] How do you create the music?
  • [6:08] How do you have quality control of what you release?
  • [13:42] During the editing process, is there one lead creative voice or is it a collaborative process?
  • [17:33] A basic history of Southern Lord
  • [28:46] How do you approach marketing without crossing a line you don't agree with?
  • [33:46] Do you do anything to create a following with the music you want to hear?
  • [36:44] A story about Scott Walker
  • [46:47] More information on Southern Lord and Greg's bands

Resources Mentioned

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