Richard Aceves: Movement Ayahuasca

[00:00:00] Boomer: Welcome to decoding superhuman. Thisshow is a deep dive into obsessions with health performance, and how to elevatethe human experience. I explore the latest tools, science and technology withexperts in various fields of human optimization. This is your host. Enjoy thejourney.

My guest today is Richard Aceves, and if there's three peopleover the past, let's call it two years that have had an impact on my movementpractice. It's Richard, Julian Pineau and Dr. Ed caddy. And all of these peoplehave had impact in various ways with how I look at movement for specificallymental performance, as well as physical performance.

So today Richard comes on the podcast to talk about somethingcalled movement ayhuasca. But before we get into that, we talk about his developmentas a trainer and a person himself, we get into various things about trainingthat can help with mental performance. And for all of you focus gurus outthere, you're going to want to tune in.

And we close things off with that practice that Richard hascalled movement ayahuasca and I went through something very similar to thatmyself, which left me in a bit of a funk right afterwards, but allowed me toperform mentally much better in the next several days. You're gonna want tocheck out the show notes for this one.

It's decoding superhuman.com/richard. Right now I'm aco-founder in or running about six different companies. That means I have ahell of a lot of email addresses and I get a hell of a lot of electronic mail.And so how do I manage it all? How do I manage it with a memory that is almostakin to my ex-girlfriend's Jewish grandmother?

My favorite program is superhuman. Superhuman allows me tomanage these emails with ease I can set timers for when I send something, Icould simply archive it to get out of my way and I can. Remind myself to comeback to an email later, it allows me to stay at inbox zero and every single oneof those email addresses every single day.

If you want to try this, if you want to really get on top ofyour email, I encourage you to head on over to the show notes of this episodeand click on the link. Superhuman is by referral only, but we'll be able to getyou in there. So check it out and let's get back to the show.

Richard, welcome. How's it going?

All right. So this is the first conversation we've had in awhile. It didn't involve bourbon, barbecue, or a few other things. And firsttime you second time, you're on the podcast, but first time. So,

um, I'm going to record all these intros and talk about yourcrazy life story and all this amazing stuff separately.

But I want to get a little bit into. You know, this frameworkthat you're developing or have developed. And I know everything's in evolution,um, the Barracuda way, tell me what that means, because like I've been chasedby a Barracuda free diving. It's terrified. Uh they're they're apparentlyharmless. I was told later, but it's kind of terrifying.

Have the damn thing, you know,

[00:03:41] Richard: unless you have something shiny, theywill fuck you up. Yeah. They can fuck you up.

[00:03:46] Boomer: And, um, you know, I've, I've had thepleasure of training with you and you can fuck me up too. Um, so let's talk alittle bit about the Barracuda way. What does that actually mean?

[00:03:58] Richard: Yeah. So my Instagram handle is rareBarracuda.

Um, I found I was diving in Cozumel, found a Barracuda. There'ssomething so glorious about a Barracuda because they can fuck you up, butthey're kind of harmless unless they see something shiny. You know, it's, it'sa, it's a wild ride, you know, when you see them. Cause they're, they're scarylooking. Um, and they can get very big.

And the, I kind of created rare Barracuda cause I saw a verybig one when I was diving in Cozumel, um, and thought nothing of it. And as theyears kept coming, people always ask me like why that Instagram handle justsounds weird. And I was like, well, it just rolls nicely off the tongue. I justlike how it sounds.

Um, and you know, fast forward to 12 years, I think it's been,uh, 10 years, whenever Instagram came out and I started to. Create kind of likethis identity around it. Right? Like it was, it was interesting. I was inLondon and somebody recognized me as Ribeira critic because they've heard mefrom a podcast.

Um, and for me that was just like mind blown. I was like, I'vemade it, you know, I'm a rock star. Um, and so I just kind of created this,this identity around it and in the last six months or so I started to createthe Barracuda way. Um, I'm very unconventional in my approach to fitness andmovement. Um, I choose to be educated in, you know, the methods that are outthere, the principles that are guided by it, but I'm not going to teachanything that's outside of my intuition.

And so if I haven't experienced it, if I haven't tried it, um,I won't really put people through it because I don't think that that's a, Idon't think it's a fair way and I don't know how to deliver that messagecorrectly. Um, so we were sitting in my, in my living room in Amsterdam with mywife and I, and you know, I was so.

Stubborn. I'm very, I'm a very stubborn person as well. Um,asking about, I just, I liked the sound of the Barracuda way, cause I'm rareBarracuda and it's the Barracuda way. And she goes, don't why like it doesn'tmake sense of fish and fitness and movement and you know, emotional. And I waslike, well, let's look up what the Barracuda means.

And the first page that comes up, it goes, you know, uh, theBarracuda as your spirit animal, and it goes, get ready to take a walk on thewild side. Um, the Barracuda is going to teach you strength. It's going toteach you courage. It's going to teach you patience. And it's going to show youthings that you might not be ready to see.

Uh, but soon enough you will be able to understand how to acton them. And I was like, whoa. And I was, I was having some wine at the time,but I was like, every time I work with a client, like that's kind of theirexpression of what it is like to be with me because I'm not your normal.Fitness trainer or, you know, health guru, that's me.

Like you're not going to drink and you're going to eat onlypeas and pies. And you're going to have, you know, like you're going to countyour macros. I'm like, no, like the whole point is I want to create a lifestylethat you enjoy. I want to be able to have you go do this shit that scares you,but be excited about it rather than terrified.

I want you to be able to go out with friends and have drinksand, you know, have a little bit of access, but then understand how to comeback to a balanced lifestyle and how not to go overboard, but, you know, stillbe able to take the pleasures of life and take the hardships and, and be ableto have a different perception on, on your outlook on life.

Right. And just be able to have a great perception of what yourlife is. Um, and that's just kinda how the Barracuda way kind of buildinformed. It's this beautiful culmination of. You know, taking movement andtruly applying it for quick and rapid changes in behavior, uh, being able todeal and handle stress and, you know, blockades in your life, being able totruly enjoy the special moments that you have in life, rather than thinkingabout the future or the past, uh, being able to strategize, correct me as tohow to take action forward.

Um, it all comes down to starting with movement, you know,dealing with the mindset, going into your emotional blockades that you have.And then I, I call it spirituality, which I know is maybe not the right word,but dealing with your spiritual yeah. You know, dealing with your spiritualself and, and just really being able to form the identity that you've alwayswanted to express outward.

And so that's the Barracuda way in a nutshell.

[00:08:24] Boomer: Oh man, that's a, that's beautiful.It's a beautiful summary. Now I get the pleasure of unpacking this. So yeah.All right. So I want to unpack this with you because you mentioned a number ofdifferent things here, uh, expressing identity, spirituality, strategy, uh, youknow, energy, all of these beautiful things.

And some people may be listening to this and saying like, Heydude, you know, I, I do my three, three by tens at the gym. I have chest a backday, et cetera. Um, I don't understand how all of this stuff kind of comestogether in movement. And why movement is the mechanism that Richard's using?Uh, maybe before we get to the why I'd love to understand, like how you kind ofcame to this framework and realize that movement is much more than just the sixpack abs and being able to run a six minute mile or whatever you choose to do.

Yeah, because that whole mental component of it is notnecessarily. Something that people think about. And so I'd love to just hearhow you kind of arrived at, right?

[00:09:32] Richard: So before all of the fancy scienceit's out, I mean, there's a lot of science out there right at the body keepsthe score talks about it's a medic therapy.

You have the neuroscience, the observation, the prediction, thenarrative brain, and how the body communicates subconsciously to the brain. Andall these signals are being put through. Uh, but before all of that, I traineda lot. I mean, I moved a lot and I used to be very strong. So I was inpowerlifting. I was in CrossFit, functional fitness, rock climbing,mountaineering.

Um, I've done a lot and I've always noticed that it wasn't mymindset. My mindset helped in how I approach the exercises, but it was how mybody was feeling that allowed the behavior and the expression of the movement tobe done. Um, you know, and it's a very simple thought experiment go when you'reextremely sad or depressed and go do back spots.

There's going to be some timidness that to approach it. Right.And let's not say, you know, it doesn't need to be bad spots, but you know,whatever exercise you want it to do, it's a by-product anyways. Uh, theexpressions will be very different the way that you approach the exercise. Um,you know, the way that the, the, the exercise is executed.

And if you. Are trying to mentally force yourself to do amovement. The body doesn't want to do. I started to notice that there would bea displacement of tension or the muscles that weren't supposed to be doing. Theexercises started to do the exercise, and that's when I would notice a shift inpersonality and behavior.

Um, and it was, it was very interesting. Uh, you know, thatthen later came the, you know, Willem Wrike and the muscle armoring concept ofthings. And, and, you know, a little bit of the, the body keeps the score andthe somatic therapy and the tallest view of things. But I started to understandthat. And so as, as we started to kind of, you know, evolve this idea, I wouldmove a lot and I started to notice.

Emotions come up based on the true connection that I could makeor the biggest neural output I could get with muscles and, you know, the righttype of breathing and the right awareness. And so the mindset was always thelast thing, because when you truly calm the mind and let the body speak to you,you're able to see the changes that need to happen.

And so, you know, I, I hope that kind of answered it. It's aharder, harder question to answer. Right. Uh, but I've experienced it and, and,you know, I, if you look at me and if you go back and look at my pictures andthe way I talk and, and, you know, if we ever hang out, like, you know, I, I'mnot a bro, but you know, like, I'm just, uh, I just enjoy life.

Like, I'm not a spiritual, like we need a meditate for 30minutes a day and, and, you know, like I don't. I'm not, I'm not in eitherextremes. Like I'm, I'm, I'm just me. Um, but you would look at me and youwould never think about do this guy wants to talk about emotions and wants tocry on my shoulder. And, you know, I'm, I'm, um, I I'm very much in connectionwith my, with my feminine side.

And so when I started having these experiences, you just can'tnegate them. You know what I mean? And you're, and so I started to have theseexperiences and I got to work with people around the world. And I started tonotice a pattern of the same behavioral traits, the same type of traumas basedon muscles that I was activating and a fair muscles that I was seeing, um, uh,centralized points of discomfort.

And so when people were having shoulder pain, based on wherethat shoulder pain was, allowed me to see a glimpse into their life of pasttraumas or behavioral traits of inaction. Right. So if you're over socializing,And you're starting to feel overwhelmed by if, if you have been oversocializing and you have an event coming up, you're going to notice that thepain is down in between your shoulder beds, as it starts to get closer.

And you start to actually go to that socializing state. You'regoing to start to be in the middle part of the shoulder. So the neck juststarts to feel super tight. And then once you're done, if you still have to gosocialize again, it'll start to go towards the high neck. And so I just startedto notice like, these really trippy things, that every time I would put them onsomebody, it would come true.

Like, not that I would make it a reality because I wouldn't putexpectations on them, but I would just ask questions and they would, theywould, they would respond. And so that philosophy for me came, it makes sense.You know, we have kind of like this, this principle that the body communicates tothe brain, right?

And the brain brain sends signals as to how. And so it, itmakes absolute sense that if certain muscles are turning on or turning off,it's sending signals to the brain, we just don't know how to hear them, or wechoose to turn them off because we're being forced into situations like havingto go into the office every day or meetings with the boss or staying quietwhile you're having a, an argument with your wife.

You know what I mean? Like things like this or your partner,um, you know, so we, we, we choose to not listen to the signals. And so I'vegotten, I'm getting better and better and better. And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'malways extremely humbled because I'm constantly learning and evolving thesetechniques, but I've gotten very good at being able to see how behavioraltraits lead to movement first, proper activation of muscles lead to change inbehavior and surpassing trauma fears.

So on and so forth.

[00:15:12] Boomer: All right. So I've had the pleasure ofboth working with you and just getting to know you as a person. And, uh, again,reiterating here. One of the things that I love is that you're constantly inthis state of a willingness to learn and be open to new ideas and everythingfor people that are listening to this and are saying, you know, Hey, what doesit look like when I come into a gym with.

Like, what does that actually, cause I imagine the moment thatI walked in the door down here in Damon, like you're like, oh shit, that guyhas issues with his ladder or whatever.

[00:15:50] Richard: Um, no, I don't judge,

[00:15:54] Boomer: but when you're, when you walk into asession with you, like how does, how does the, um, evaluation process look?

What are you, what are you looking for? I know you mentionedcertain things around social anxiety, but take us through like how you notbreak down a client, but assess them in order to kind of progress or know whereto go to make progress. Yeah.

[00:16:19] Richard: And, and, uh, you know, the firstthing I do is I make it up as I go along.

I don't have a system. All I know,

[00:16:28] Boomer: but by the way guys, like it, fuck itworks

[00:16:31] Richard: because if a habit. That means that Ican only work with a certain character type of person. Um, and I work withwhatever walks in that door and, and, and so for me, it's, it requires a lot ofenergy on my part. And it's not easy because I have to be on fire as soon asthat person walks in the door.

Right. I may have a person like you, that's kind of wanting tohave the experience, but also wants to understand the why. And once you know,there there's a whole, there's more conversation. And then we kind of bring itback to have you have the experience where it's like, what the fuck justhappened. Um, and then there's clients that are just, dude, my back hurts, justtake back pain away and I'm happy.

Don't explain to me what, just tell me how to breathe, how tomove, what I'm looking for. And I allowed them to learn their lessons withinthat. Um, but yeah, the first thing is there is no actual system to what I do.I. I connect with the human that's in front of me. So whether that person ishigh stress, whether that person is low, low energy level depressed, whetherthat person is fucking happy, go lucky.

Uh, you know, that person came in and has had a very roughnight because couldn't sleep because of the baby or, you know, God, whatever itis, my job as a coach, as a providing of a service to you is to meet you whereyou are. And then from there elevate you to where you want to be. So I'm nothere to judge.

I'm not here, you know, and I'm not here to set precedents, uh,to make you feel like you don't have anything that works in your body. I'm hereto show you what does work. And if you want things to work better, this is howwe can go. But it's, it's up to my client to understand where they want. Right.I'm a navigator.

I'm not the captain, you're the captain. And that's the firstthing I always tell people, like, what do you want out of this? Like, I, I'mnot, you know, I'm not inexpensive, I'm accessible. Um, but, but I require alot of buy-in from my clients, because I want you to get what you want. You arethe fucking captain, and I will show you roads that you can take.

But in the end, you know, it's, what do you want? And fromthere, it's up to me to set my side of the expectations and to meet them. Andso you want this, then let's figure out how to get there, whatever that is.Right. Um, and if I can't meet them, I'm always very on to somebody.

[00:18:59] Boomer: Yeah. So, Richard, uh, I want to justunpack this for a second because I do some amount of consulting, but not reallyin the movement side of things, maybe more on like the health data side.

And I'm always curious what percentage of your clients come inwith. Let's say maybe an aesthetic goal or some other goal, but that goal ofevolves over time. They, once they get to whatever that goal is, or feel evenjust a slightest inkling that that goes within reach, like how quickly doesthat evolve?

In most cases,

[00:19:29] Richard: I think I've never positioned myselfas an aesthetic coach. Um, so I don't get that many of those clients, I haveclients that are overweight, but don't company for weight change. They come tome for behavioral change or because of massive amount of inflammation in jointsand pain. So just wanting to get out of discomfort.

But I get, I, I would say I get, you know, 50, 50 on 50% ofclients that come for getting out of discomfort. So whether that's, you know,the shoulder has been hurting, you're the last road, you know, you're like thelast stop before I have to go get surgery. Or, you know, uh, that type of pain,or I want to be able to compete in this sport, but this is stopping me.

This is my roadblock, which is usually discomfort aftertraining, during training, I can't get out of bed type thing. And half of myclients usually come to me because they're like, Hey, I just, you know, I, Ineed, I need a navigate. And I think I've sort of positioned myself in that alittle bit more, especially with podcasts that I've done.

And, and every time I, I, I have these conversations, it'slike, we need to understand that there's so much more that we're doing ascoaches and so much more that I do with my clients with that 50% of people thatcome movement related or, you know, discomfort. Pain-related I would say about35% of those start going, whoa, what is happening here?

Because now I'm starting to have a different perception onlife. And then we kind of start to get into the emotional side, but I won'tbring the emotional side if you don't want to get there because there's peoplethat, you know, they're not there, they're not ready for it. You know? Sothat's, that's the percentage I would say.

And,

[00:21:15] Boomer: and I, and I remember thisconversation and our kind of work together because right before Thanksgivingand you and I were sharing a love of Turkey and how we couldn't get it here inthe Netherlands. But, um, a lot of people listening to this and just a lot ofpeople in the world, uh, have issues with anxiety.

And, um, it's something that is becoming thank God a lot easierto talk about publicly. And I know for a fact, you and I had a conversationaround that and you kind of work with people. Uh, I know you do work withpeople in this state and sort of overcoming. Learning to live with it andmaybe, uh, manage it a little bit better.

Is there sort of a particular movement archetype that thesepeople have, or maybe somebody listening to this can say like, Hey, that'sinteresting. I noticed that my movement patterns, maybe I have a discussionhere that I can have with Richard because of my anxiety. Um, or is it generallylike, Hey, I'm anxious and therefore I need to do this.

[00:22:21] Richard: Right. Um, yeah, I mean, and there'sa, there's a complexity to anxiety, right? Um, anxiety symptoms complex.

[00:22:30] Boomer: I gave you the most complex thing todo. And on the spot, man,

[00:22:36] Richard: um, listen for me, the, the, the, theone that's helped a lot right. Is always breath work. Um, I think that thebreath work is amazing and it, it, it covers up to so much, uh, movement wise.

I think the psoas major on the left side and the right calf areprobably about the most important ones that I've dealt with. Um, when talkingabout clients that have anxiety or thinking too much into the future. Right.And so, again, it depends on your symptom of anxiety and kind of what you'relooking at when it comes to up to anxiety.

But the biggest overall thing that I see when dealing with, youknow, kind of cognitive anxiety, uh, PTSD more towards social anxiety is a lackof connection to self. So if you don't have a connection to self, how do youexpect to connect to the outside world? A lack of presence and lack of beingpresent with the outside world, because you don't have a connection withyourself, then that's my philosophy.

Um, and maybe other people have said it before me, but youknow, that's, that's the way I look at it and they have a hard time makingdecisions because there's so many options. Right. And so for me, the left, soas major creating awareness there, you know, going into Eastern methods intoEastern philosophy, the three shockers that connect there, the true sense ofself is there for me, the, the true connection to self, the seed of self isgoing to be between there and the transverse abdominis.

But the, so as major really allows you to find empathy withinself. And so if you can spend, and I have videos up on my Instagram and youknow, I can send you the links if you want for people. If you can just spend 10minutes a day with breath, work along with connection of the muscle. So notjust breathing, but breathing while connecting and creating tension in themuscle.

I think that it won't be a night and day difference, right. Itjust depends. It's not a, this exercise is going to fix me again. I'm anavigator. You're going to fix yourself by using the tool of the exercise. Butif you're just doing the exercise and moving the lay expecting changes, it'snot going to happen.

Being able to be mindful for those 10 minutes, creatingawareness in that muscle and breathing along with it. And so we can, we can divein and, you know, it might be easier just to kind of put that I'll send you thelink so people can kind of click on it and just go through that, through thatvideo, if they want to choose to do that exercise.

But for me, the left, so as major is really. The, I think it'sthe seed of self it's, it's where your true identity lights, because it's, it'sit's, you know, when we look at, when I look at the body of the left side isthe feminine side, but the, so as major is where the true empathy towards self comesin.

It's where you're really allowing yourself to show your. Showsoftness and kindness to yourself, which I think so many people nowadays lack.So that would be the first one. The second one is the right calf. And I choosethe right calf. Uh, for me, both caps are the pensive muscles. That's why whenyou start to get in heated arguments, or if you're ever just sitting down andyou start to like put your leg, you'll start to notice that you pay attention.

I don't know if I mentioned it with you last time or not, buton the left side, whenever you start to go like this, it's usually you startthinking about the self and when you start to go with it on the right side,it's usually towards the outside environment towards an argument, things likethis, if you're ever on a phone or that's why like, some people love to domeetings while they're walking with clients is because the calf muscles startto really ground yourself.

And it starts to kind of get blood flowing through the wholebody. But the calf muscles are the the act CIM side of thinking.

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[00:27:18] Richard: boomer. So I can get people toactually relax their neck just by activating their cops. Interesting easy. Andso the right calf muscle for me, if I'm able to connect the right calf muscleI'm I I've noticed with clients that I've had that have finals coming up orthat have, you know, crazy meetings are able to hone in on all these differentoptions and all these different scenarios that you're playing in your head.

You're able to hone in on the one you want to take. So itallows you to create a road of a roadmap forward. That's direct, not goingwell, shit. There's 10 different options. And I kind of like two, but I don'tlike three, but I like four, but now I just thought of five more and nowthere's too many. So I'm just not going to do any of them.

So for me, every time I'm having these issues, like I'llliterally just start to create tension, right? So it's not just about movingthe cap, really try and focus on making it warm on creating that heartcontraction on feeling that muscle. And you're going to start, that'll start togo all the way up to the head and your mind and your train of thought willbecome a lot more direct.

[00:28:19] Boomer: Wow. So by activating and my initialquestion was going to be like, what do you mean by creating 10? You explainedto the intention, right? Yeah. Um, but it's fascinating to me that the calf isreally, it just sounds like a key to presence in many ways. So, but it allstarts with an awareness of the actual muscle that you're moving.

Right. So rather than being the bro, that's doing three by 10and just checking the box on the way. It's feeling the movement. So when you'regiving people a

[00:28:53] Richard: homework, yourself,

[00:28:57] Boomer: feeling yourself moving. Okay. So whenyou're giving people homework exercises, are you giving sets and reps? Are yougiving something completely different?

The

[00:29:05] Richard: puzzle, you know, the answer, right?If I have a very type a person, I'll give them a range, uh, that I'm lookingfor. Um, but I also like to challenge people. So I just give them muscles.Sometimes I'll just give people muscles. Sometimes I give them exercises. Um,it won't necessarily be sets in reps. Um, you know, cause if I'm looking, youknow, if we're going back to this archetype of anxious person, um, if I givethem sets and reps, they could be in their board meeting, they could be tradingtheir Bitcoin.

They can be. Going to the, you know, meeting with their kids'teachers and, you know, thinking of everything while they're moving the weightsand they're never truly present. So the first thing that I wanted to do iscreate presence when they're training. And so for me, my favorite go-to isalways being able to use a song with a repetitive word, just because it's avery simple facet,

[00:30:00] Boomer: right.

Yeah, you push me and you still, like, I still use the songsquite often pulling terror playlist on

[00:30:07] Richard: Spotify. Yeah. I think it's a simpleway for people to, if you're not sure what you're going to do, pick fiveexercises, put on these repetitive songs and every time you hear the phrase orthe word you do a rep, and what that does is it creates uncertainty, whichmakes the, the mindset a lot more elevated because you're having to listen andbe present.

Um, it creates random variables. So you're a having to do anisometric hold, where you're able to explore and find the muscle that I wantyou to connect with and, and create awareness to. Um, and you don't really knowwhere you're going to go, right? So I always tell people, the goal is more thanlikely you should not be able to of survive the whole song.

That's not the point to finish the whole song without a failed,but the point is to have the muscle fail so that we expose it to new. Becauseif I let you know, for example, like if I'm doing a bench press, right, and I'mjust surviving, I could put all the stress on my neck or the joint to survivethe song and finish it.

But the goal is to make the Peck fail. So there's an abundanceof blood flow. There's a higher neural output. And, you know, I always think incartoon, so I always think of the PEX, like screaming, like boys, we needreinforcements. Right. And so they start to actually create more awareness,exactly the capacity to contract the muscle.

Right. And to bring it to, to a fight, to, to be able tosustain more stress. So the problem with sets and reps, especially with type a,are more anxious. People is a, they will never go towards the lesser repsbecause they're overachievers and B they're very good at enduring and beingvery, very hard with themselves.

So if I have a type, a personality with high anxiety that canrun 50 K at O at a womb, because I said, go run 50 K. They're like, I'm goingto show you that I can, and I'll do 51. Thank you very much. Um, they could useany muscle, right? They can use the joints. They will finish that, that lot,that they will cross that finish line and be destroyed inflammation through theroof, rhabdo, um, you know, all the symptoms of just a deteriorated body, butthey'll be like, but I did my 50 kilometers.

That's not the goal that I want. What I want is I want you tounderstand what it takes to run 50 kilometers the correct way and build up. Sothat when you have the a hundred K race, you understand when you're displacingor when you're going, you know, kind of towards that discomfort and, andcreating pain to your body, but, you know, we can still finish.

And so for me, the, the, the, the real goal here is longevityin life, you know, and that's physically, mentally, emotionally. And so theyall require you to have proper exposure to stress, but it requires you goingout and searching for a new perspective on fitness and on movement than justchecking the boxes or, you know, accomplishing the tasks, because there's a lotof people out there, you know, my wife being one of them, they're very good atcompleting tasks.

And so no matter what they'll endure and they'll, you know,they'll go through hell and high water to survive the past. Is they? Well, Idid what you told me to, but my shoulder is still. So I need to be very carefulon the words that I use in order for them to understand that it's not about therepetitions.

It's not about the sets. It's not about what you see of therange of motion that the bench press like with, you know, functional fitness orwith weightlifting. It's not a set range of motion that has been defined by acadaver joint movement. It's not a set definition of range of motion that hasbeen decided by a competition.

It's the range of motion where the muscle can still maintainthe proper tension or the proper contraction. Right? So, very simple. If I putmy hand right next to my sternum, cause it's something that anybody can do.Even if they're listening at home, if you'd take your right hand and you put itnext to your sternum and you squeeze your Peck, right.

Kind of lower towards the nipple and you feel the chestactually engaging. And as you start to inhale through your nose and you push,or you put your arm further and further away from me, try to straighten it out.You're going to go towards your end range of motion. That's your true mobilityof your shoulder joint while having the proper tension or the propercontraction of the Peck and the terrorist major, anything past that, you'rehaving to displace the tension to survive the exercise.

So now you can be going towards your upper trap. You can gotowards your mid trap. You know, you can go towards your side Delt, and then westill go to the superspinatus, which is this little small stabilizing muscle,because we're deciding to survive the exercise. That's where we start to seelong-term injury discomfort starting to come about in the shoulder, which canthen also start to lead towards anxiety.

Even though we think that it's anxiety towards a movement, itstarts to relate towards anxiety, social anxiety. It starts to relate towardsanxiety in the workplace. It starts to relate towards becoming more type a why,because the body is an observational piece. If it feels threatened, it needs toprotect itself.

If it needs to protect itself, it sends signals to the brain sothat the brain can start to make all these different predictions so that youdon't take action. So now what turned out to be anxiety towards Ben trustingsomeone to hurt my shoulder is now anxiety towards being social. Now it'sanxiety towards having more ritualistic behaviors and making sure thateverything is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, because that's how I'm not going to get hurt.

So that's how the body starts to speak to the. So that's why,you know, this huge rise in this huge revolution in fitness and functionalfitness and people wanting to do marathons triathlons, iron mans starts tocreate discomfort in the body. The brain wants to be stronger. We want thebrain to control everything.

So we don't, we choose to not listen to this. We choose manualtherapy or passive therapies to get rid of the discomfort, which is really thebody telling you you're going to get hurt. Now it starts to leave for a changein behavior, in work and family and everything that you do outside of the. Wow.Sorry.

I went off on a rant there, but that was no, no, no, no,

[00:36:25] Boomer: absolutely. It absolutely beautiful. Imean, there are so many places I can take in at one point I was like, wow.Okay. So that makes sense. Why people always, you know, you hear a lot, some,not a lot, but you hear certain people. I think Kelly star, it said like thebench presses Kelly.

It is like the bench press is like the worst sexercise but inreality.

[00:36:50] Richard: Yeah. Yeah. They don't, they have thewrong parameters for the bench press.

[00:36:54] Boomer: Yeah. And so it's just a matter of, insomething I've heard you say before, it's more about tension over position. Isthat

[00:37:01] Richard: the, yeah. So tension over positionand it's it again, it's creating your own girl guidelines, right?

I mean, it's being able to understand what you want out of thebench press. The problem is that bench press in the 19, what was it? 1940s,1950s, 1960s became a company. Yeah. And that's what set, how people shouldbench press from there on. And so

[00:37:29] Boomer: powerlifter man, like, like I'vetrained with the west side guys, so like I've had one of them train me.

Um, I never got invited a west side. I wasn't that strong, butlike you've trained with in powerlifting and there's particular form that youuse and these people all have like rec shoulders, elbows, et cetera. Right. Isit because they're just using the wrong form or they're just trying to getlike, to the, basically the shortest path of movement to their chest or is it

[00:37:57] Richard: yeah, it's because they're, theirobjective is to move as much weight as possible for one repetition.

Right. And so that's where you start to see, and that's whathas become the norm for everybody. And so you start to see that and then youstart to see like, again, simple exercise, like finding the right tension, yourproper mobility. You start to see people like, if you, if you go back and watchpumping iron, one of my favorite movies and it's a side rant, but it's related,um, you know, and you start to see, I think as John Franco, John Franco, uh,when he's doing the shoulder presses, the guy that played whole I'm horrible withnames.

[00:38:40] Boomer: I need to stop saying I don't. Anddon't worry. I, I think I remember the senior talking

[00:38:44] Richard: about, but I can't really well, hewas doing the presses, right. And he's going from high level up, pop, pop, pop,pop, but, and everybody's like, oh, you know, the full range of motion. And youknow, this is after like basically CrossFit started to come into play and youknow, things like this, but you start to see people coming all the way down.

But the reason that he's here is because he's staying in theright tension to build the muscles he wants to. You know, you see thebodybuilders when they're in the gym and they're doing half reps, that'sbecause they're trying to build muscle. It's a different objective. It's adifferent goal that they're looking for, but also they're creating awareness inthose muscles.

And so, again, it just depends on what it is that you'relooking for. It's not the bench press. It's how you're doing the benchpresence, wrecking your shoulders. You know, all exercises are great in theirown means. You just need to understand what it is that you want out of it. Andso that's, that's where we need to start having the conversation is thatthere's no good or bad exercise, just like with diet, right?

Like, I mean, a donut diet, probably not the best, but there isno, there is no good or bad here. It's just, how are you applying it? And doesit apply towards what you want? And I think that that's where we really need tomake the shift in fitness is being able to understand that, you know, 99% of usdon't want to be at west side 99.9%.

You know what I mean? And 99.9% of us don't want to be in apowerlifting meet. Most of us, I would say the majority want to have healthyshoulders, sexy looking pecs, you know, and the ability to, you know, for me,it's like, I want to be able to throw my son over my shoulders, you know, andlike have them and be able to move around freely.

And so I think that the, the biggest misconception that we havein fitness is. As personal trainers or as the people that we aspire to train,the reason that we get inspired to train is by the 1%, right? So Joko and, uh, Rowlands,and you know, all these guys that are doing phenomenal things, you get inspiredand you want to do this stuff, but that's not really what you want.

Like, yeah, I've been in fitness. Uh, you know, it's been 14years, 15 years now, just now starting to understand what I want. And Iunderstand where I went wrong, left and right left and right, right. One wasfor business. Only one was because I thought I wanted to become this CrossFit,you know, top level athlete, you know, powerlifting.

And I started to realize like, and this, this came with, youknow, especially being here. I was like, what happened to me having fun? Like,that's why I started doing. Right. And, and, and I love crossing out. I'll saythis over and over again. I love CrossFit for what it is like the root root ofit is, which is functional fitness done at high intensity, uh, you know,constantly varied, but the best part and the thing that, that, that coachGlassman said.

And if you guys don't know about CrossFit, go look at theroots, go look at the beginning. Videos of CrossFit from 2001 to 2003, they'regorgeous. Right? Um, like go play new sports. Yeah. You know, and again,talking about anxiety, we started a fire,

[00:41:55] Boomer: right? Yeah. I think at the top it was

[00:41:58] Richard: like sport-specific well, no, the topwas sport-specific but now we all only do sports specific.

Like we started running to get in shape and because we enjoyedbeing outside and now it becomes, I need to run a marathon and I need to run amarathon faster. What happened to the let's go and enjoy the outdoors. Let'sgo, you know, let's go try new things. Why do you want to be healthy? Let'sstart with that.

And there will be those crazy people are like, I want to behealthier to do marathons and awesome. But outside of that, what happens afterthe marathon? It's like, w where's your family, where's your, you know, therest of your life in this, in this discipline. And so, you know, for me, it'slike, I came to realization when I was here.

Cause my wife has always asked me, like, what is it that you'retraining for? Like, I don't see you doing powerlifting anymore or CrossFit or,you know, running or, and so for me it was like, what the fuck am I trainingfor? I'm like, I want to be good looking. But the problem is that I look atmyself in the mirror every morning.

I'm like, dude, I'm fucking sexy. You know, which I think isalso like,

[00:42:59] Boomer: self-confidence is not an issue here.

[00:43:01] Richard: You know what I mean? Which I alsothink is, is, is a, is a different subject. But I think it's very important tolook at yourself in the morning and create self-acceptance, but you know, I'mlike, I feel like I'm extremely good looking all the time.

Um, What am I training for? And I was like, I miss just beingable to ha have somebody go, Hey, you want to go try and do this crazy race?I'll be like, yeah, let's go do it. You want to go, like right now, I'm settingup next week. I'm going to go jump in the water with whales. And we go to thefree diving with them.

I'm like, you know, if I'm fat out of shape, if I'm, you know,and it doesn't need to be fat, but if I'm just out of shape and I can have lungcapacity and you know, I'm not going to be able to do that. So my, my reasonfor health is so that I can do super cool things, but so that when my kidsstart to grow up, I can show them how to do super cool things.

Like that's why we're in this beautiful world for the outdoorsare beautiful. And even if you don't like the outdoors, like the indooractivities that we can do are so much fun, right? So like, that's my reason forhealth. It's not so that I can go to a competition, but so that I can surpassthat. My own limitations.

So I have the Barracuda at 90 and that might have to be a differentpodcast. And I'll share with that with you, but I've been really working onthis. Like, you know, I've been, I kind of leveled off and went off in adifferent direction and now I'm coming back and, you know, I see all thesechallenges of creating discipline and, you know, becoming a high performer.

And I'm like, what about just creating balance? Can we juststart with balance? Like, why do we need to go to one extreme of fulldiscipline and endurance and survival and you know, like, can't, we just havefucking balance. And so I, I did this. I've been doing this now for the last,since this is January, I started and I've really kind of evolved the system,but I'm in my second month now.

And the second month is do something that scares you, right?When was the last time you did something that's scary. The cost you anxiety.Right? And so for me, like you have my rock climbing accident. So I just, um, Iwas like, fuck, like it's been 12 years since my accident, 14 years, since myaccident, 14 years, um, this past January, I was like, I've never gotten nonehearing again.

Like I, I T I went hiking here and there, but I never went backto mountaineering Y right. I talk about breaking plateaus about, you know,overcoming PTSD. And when I first started climbing, I got caught mid pitch inthe rock climbing wall on the cliff. Um, we were on our second on our secondpitch and I froze completely like full blown.

Like that's when I really understood PTSD. Cause everything wassafe. Like we were, it wasn't difficult, but there was some Shaley rocks and Ifroze, I couldn't move. And so w we had to lose gear, we down climbed, uh, butcompletely completely froze. Um, and I never went back to it and I'm like, youknow, and, and I've gone so far to just stay comfortable.

And so. I started doing cardio again, I started pushing and,and, you know, bringing my cardio level up and my, my lung capacity and CO2tolerance up. And I'm like, I'm going to do shit that scares me and excites meat the same time. Right. Not scares me shitless, but you know, that, that, thatI can change the narrative.

And so one of them is, I love like from my balcony here, I cansee the whales jumping every morning. I'm like, I want to hug a whale, but it'snot enough to me just saying it. Right. Like, it's cool to just say itpassively, but no, I really want to go. I'm not going to actually hug a whale,but I want to be impressive of something so much larger than me.

Right. And so I was like, why am I not doing it? Like what'sstopping me. And I'm tired of having these limitations of just not of creatingthese excuses and just letting time go by without me doing shit on my bucketlist. And so that's part of the Barracuda. 90 is like first month is get yourshit together.

Where has, where have you led your life? Led you astray thatnow you're too busy for everything that you've always wanted to do when youwere taking. Right. So can we bring back balance, right? Whether it's family,whether it's work, whether it's obsessions with something, whether it's fear ofeverything, social anxieties, like let's get our shit together, right?

Whether it's becoming more present, whether it's becoming lesspresent or whatever it is, let's get our shit together. The first month, secondmonth, let's go do something that scares us. What, what has been your blockade?I talk about facing fears and all this stuff and breaking PTSD and you know,like overcoming all this shit.

And yet I haven't gone back up on a mountain. What the fuck? SoI'm like, I'm going to go do it. So March 2nd, I'm flying March 5th. I'm goingto be at the top of the mountain. Right. And so, you know, and then after that,it's like, okay, let's create balance. Let's remember where these parametersare so we can keep going.

But it all starts with movement, you know? And so, and soagain, they all start to relate. I don't know where I, where I went off on thistangent, but that's uh,

[00:47:47] Boomer: it's beautiful, dude. We're going tohave another conversation on the Barracuda 90. I need to unpack because with,with you, I remember sitting at a table in the jordanh with you and you weretossing around this, this term, uh, movement Iowasca and I was like, dude, likewhoever does your brand name is incredible, right?

Because it's a great SEO term. It's very, very trendy rightnow. Um, I myself have done the actual compound itself, DMT in a differentversion, but I want to spend a moment with you understanding movement. Iowascaam I going to have tea with Richard and then go puke my brains out? Or is it adifferent type of experience?

[00:48:32] Richard: It's, um, it's a very different typeof experience. So I, for me first

[00:48:37] Boomer: let's get into the Genesis of itbecause I just remember when the term came up and I was like, wow, that ison-point. We're where we are right now as a society. But talk to me a littlebit about how that

[00:48:51] Richard: term came up. I had a client was thefirst time that came about is I had a client of mine.

I was playing around with the emotional mapping and behaviorswith movement and such. Um, and I was doing some really cool and fun things.And I had a client that did Iowasca to help him overcome Lyme disease. Uh, soagain, I'm all for it. If you guys want to do all your Wasco and everything.Fuck. Yeah.

Let's, you know, chase it. I think it's a, it's a, it's a at myplace next weekend. Yeah, let's do it. Um, but it's, um, we finished thetraining session. He had broken down crying, um, and he said it felt morepowerful than the Iowasca, uh, session that he had done. And I was like, I loveit. And it's stuck around kind of like, you know, the Barracuda way, like itstuck around.

I tried building it and I wasn't sure how to have it. Andagain, I think there's this 20, 21 and 2022. You're seeing two years of beingstuck indoors and people really starting to go, like we got to do shit that wewanted to do. And I was like, I'm going to build it. Like, I love working withpeople in a very emotional, spiritual, true, authentic level.

Right. And I think authentic is now being extremely in the trueyou and the true self is being overused, but I want to be able to connect withboomer. I don't want the superego and the ego wall to kind of be there. I wantto connect with you. And I know I can get you there through movement. And, um,you know, if you're wanting to go there.

So that's kind of where the term came about is I literally juststarted playing around. With the, with what this guy had said, my client hadsaid, and I was like movement. I WASC, I really enjoy it. And then summer oflast year I was with my brother and he goes, that's just genius. Uh, I waslike, my brother's, you know, extremely smart.

And he has a great way of, of viewing the world. He goes, whatyou said, he's like branding wise and everything. And I was like, I don't careabout any of that shit. I just really want to work and help people. Um, andhe's like, well then why don't you. And I was like, well, why don't I start?He's like, well, first thing you got to do is brand it.

And so that I was like, fuck it. And so I went home and Ibought the copyright for it, and I made sure that everything is done, you know,to protect the brand. Um, and I just kind of started building it out. Andthankfully my wife has the type, a personality, as I mentioned earlier. And shereally was able to bring the structure together.

So she she's, you know, and, uh, you know, she's the one thatis able to streamline my fucking, my forest of thoughts because I get thisforest of thoughts until I have boomer in front of me. And now it's like, I'mhere with you and nothing else matters except for me and you, and let's get youthere. Um, and so that's where moving Iowasca came from.

It's an experience that, you know, can vary from three days,you know, from one day to three days as with you, like. But I really started tosee the turnaround in three days. So three to four days is perfect where I havean intake of the client. We have a conversation. And then from there, I startto set certain parameters to your training.

Um, it doesn't require high skill level of movement or trainingor exercise, knowledge or body. Um, I basically guide you and what I reallyenjoyed about it. And when I see out of it is DMT and MTMA allows you to, youknow, kind of bring the walls down. But with the Iowasca, can you explain yourexperience?

It's unique, right? You can explain, and you can describe yourvisions, but they still don't make sense. It's your own personal experience.And that's the same thing with movement Iowasca, but movement it's movementbased with DMT and with mushrooms and all these things, it opens up kind oflike this new universe where you're kind of saying.

Multi-dimensional um, and you don't have much control of thedoors you're opening or not. Right there, there is some control with somepeople, some people don't have control. So with movement Iowasca you have thecontrol of the doors that you're opening and the doors that you choose not toopen or what I see it as the body.

Doesn't think your narrative brain is strong enough to handleright now. So there's a little bit more control in that sense as to how far youwant to go or not go. And again, understanding for me where the displacementcentralized displacements of tension and where that kind of centralized paincomes in when we're doing certain exercises and we have our chats afterwards, Ican go.

Okay. So I, I, I do some release therapy as well, so I'll dosome manual therapy and then I'll all start to create tension in right. Musclegroups. Uh, but it gives you. The captaincy, you get to decide where the bodyneeds to go. And, and though I D I just did one here in Mexico. And the coolestthing that I saw out of it is people that were coming for very specialized, youknow, kind of direct route of things.

They walked away with a completely different outlook on life,um, and absolutely different lessons that they were expecting, but there was alot of resolution that happened in those three days. So for me, it's, it's,it's putting you in a, in the driver's seat, um, and really allowing you tokind of navigate your way through your past and through your future and, andkind of seeing what needs to change in your, in your life, right?

For you to perform better for you to have more empathy foryourself, or for others, for you to be more stern, more, you know, have moreconfidence and be able to handle confrontation better, whatever those thingsmay be. Uh, you're in the driver's seat, and there's an actual. Blueprintforward. Right? So leaving the, the movement Iowasca um, I give them a kind ofthree month plan of, okay, so these are the muscles that we really need to beworking on.

I showed you the exercises through the movement. Iowasca thisis a breathing technique. And I have an entire journal that, that we hand outthat gives them kind of the parameters, the guidelines as to how to, how tokeep progressing. Um, and the Barracuda at 90 is now going to be a part of it.Cause all of them that were in the movement, I Alaska did it and they're alljust loving it.

So that'll be also a part of it. So it's, it's a way for you todo the DMT trip, but then it's like, okay, so what do we do afterwards? That'snot such a, you know, spiritual kind of pure emotional way of working throughyour issues, but what are the actual. Actionable movement and, you know,progressive way forward, what is, what is an actual action you can do now tochange your behavior for the future that you saw with the movement dialogue?

And so it's,

[00:55:39] Boomer: so it's like the experience plus theintegration as well. So you tell people how to, rather than, and this has beena common complaint of mine, particularly about the psychedelic realm is that peoplesometimes just go out and blow themselves up, particularly in Mexico and CostaRica and those types of places.

And then they come back to the world and it's like, oh shit,what do I do now? My whole world's been turned upside down. Well, you may, um,using your analogy earlier or what actually happens is going through thissuperego and the. You may have that kind of experience, but you're providingthe integration elements as well,

[00:56:15] Richard: right?

Yeah, because, you know, and again, this is, I may becompletely off on this, but in my perception of it is, you know, I see a lot ofthese therapies being done, but then afterwards it's more cognitive, uh,reconciliation. It's more just, let's talk about your problems and let's justkeep talking about it without actionable pieces forward without, you know, thecognitive brain can, can understand and can accept things much faster, but thebrain, the body needs to express the anger and frustrations that have blockadesfor you to have that acceptance.

So even though the brain has created acceptance, the body hasnot expressed the energy that has been blocked. And so it's, it's that actualpiece that I think is missing. So, you know, for me, it's, again, I'm all forthe psychedelics. And I think that it's a, it's a great place to start or agreat place to finish.

Uh, again, with, with everybody that you talked about, Iowascafor whatever reason that though we see that the Iowasca speaks to you for me isI want to be at now, it could be a movement dialogue. Right. Um, but it's,it's, it's a way for you to have an actionable piece forward. So it's not,let's just keep talking about it or let's just create acceptance without everexpressing the anger.

I have a lot of clients that have suffered from massive traumasthat have truly never expressed the anger physically to what happened. Right.Because you can't go and beat up the abuse or you can't go and you know, how doyou express anger towards that rock Georgia? My rock climbing accident, likewhat, you know, like take a sledgehammer to the rocks.

I mean, that is a way forward, but you know what I mean? Likethere needs to be a proper. There's a, there's a certain, I would say a seriesof movements that I do with movement Iowasca that allows that true expressionto happen. And if, and you know, if it's not happening, I will tell you there'scertain blockades that you need to go through because sometimes people arevery, very disconnected and it takes me two to three months to allow them to,like I said, connect to that.

So as like women that have come from abuse to be able toactually go, like, it's amazing how much the body will not allow that vibrationto happen, there'll be a whimper or a fight. Hum. And so there's, there's a lotof pieces and moving pieces that are, that are happening. And so for me,movement Iowasca is unconventional fitness that allows you to have an actualplan forward, but to heal mentally, physically and emotionally and, and shortenterms.

[00:58:49] Boomer: All right, Richard. I know I'm comingup on your time and you've been very generous with this. If people want tolearn more about the Barracuda way, the Barracuda 90 movement. Iowasca wherecan I send them? Because I know this is going to go out and March 22. And so wewant to know where they can find you because you're gallivanting all around theworld right now.

I can't even track it.

[00:59:15] Richard: Where can we get you? Instagram iswhere. If you go on movement, iowasca.com. And then I have the Barracuda wayare the two websites movement Iowasca will have all my retreats that are comingup. And, you know, I always do. I have private retreats as well. So if you havea group of executives, you have a team that wants to come together and have theexperience.

We can always set that up. Uh, the Barracuda ways where I havemovements simplified. So I'm taking passionate coaches or passionate movemententhusiasts from the beginning as to what is the primal function of the muscle,all the way to the emotional side of muscles and how to better connect withthem, how to move them, how to find the range of motion, all of that.

That'll all be under the Barracuda way. Dot com.

[01:00:02] Boomer: Beautiful. And now you're in sunny,Mexico. Right now. Can't wait to welcome you back to Amsterdam. I think youhave a better barbecue this time. So, uh, you know, it look forward to, todoing that come April when you're back

[01:00:16] Richard: here. So, perfect. Good catching upmy friend, have a good one.

Thank you guys for listening.

[01:00:24] Boomer: You guys get a little taste today ofthe conversations that I get to have with Richard all the time. I'm veryfortunate to have people like this on my phone, where I can say, Hey, this isfucked up today. What do I need to do to fix it? And Richard always comesthrough.

Sometimes he come through very, very brutal workouts, but it'sa lot of fun to the show notes for this one again, or a decodingsuperhuman.com/richard.