Fine Tuning an Athlete’s Performance with Dr. Andy Galpin

September 08, 2021

Dr Andy Galpin is a research professor that is leading the way, when it comes to athletic performance for combat athletes. He’s helped countless athletes fine tune their training to maximize their performance in the cage and on the mat. Download the podcast below and learn how some of the world’s best combat athletes are adjusting their training to improve their performance.

In this episode, we discuss…

2 Top Mistakes in Combat Sports Training

Varying the focus for each athlete

Creating a referral network of quality professionals

Staying humble and focussing on the athlete

and more!

Mentioned in this Episode:

It’s time to stop, take a breath, and hit the reset button in a big way. Unplugged provides a blueprint for using technology to meet your health and performance goals in a much smarter way, while reconnecting to your instincts and the natural world. In addition to sharing the performance expertise of Brian Mackenzie and the scientific insight of Dr. Andy Galpin, Unplugged features exclusive stories and advice from elite athletes and world-renowned experts like Laird Hamilton, Tim Ferriss, Kai Lenny, Kelly Starrett, Steven Kotler, Erin Cafaro, Lenny Wiersma, Dr. Frank Merritt, and Brandon Rager.

Purchase your copy of “Unplugged” here

Dr Andy Galpin is a professor in the Center for Sport Performance at California State University, Fullerton. He has a Doctorate in Human Bioenergetics and publishes research in the area of acute responses and chronic adaptations of human skeletal muscle in response to high-intensity exercise. Galpin is also a coach/consultant of numerous professional athletes, including mixed martial artists and boxers.

Stay in touch with Dr Galpin…

Instagram @drandygalpin

Twitter @DrAndyGalpin

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Dr. Andy Galpin

Interview with Dr. Andy Galpin to find out how to fine-tune an Athlete’s Performance

Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, is Corey Beasley with fight camp conditioning and I’m on the phone here with Dr. Andy Galpin. Andy, how are you doing?

Andy Galpin [00:00:07]: Fantastic, man. Pleasure to be back.

Corey Beasley [00:00:09]: Yeah, it’s always fun to talk with you. I know you’ve got a lot of good things going. So I’m excited to chat with you.

Andy Galpin [00:00:17]: Busy times appears always. We never really stop we’re not going to for a while, so it’s exciting.

Corey Beasley [00:00:24]: Yeah. So Andy, for everybody that’s listened that does not know who you are, can you give them a little two sense of who you are and what you’re doing?

[Absolutely not. No way. Like stop the recording. I’m just kidding]

Andy Galpin [00:00:37]: So I’m a scientist. I’m a PhD. I’m up here not too far from you. I run the than the co-director for the center for sport performance here at Cal state Fullerton and then on the director and founder of what’s called the biochemistry and molecular exercise physiology lab. Well that’s kind of a fancy way of saying, my job is to study muscle and performance mostly in athletes. And I’ve chosen, I guess for lack of a better word to focus a lot on combat sport athletes. Just like personally, I find it extremely rewarding and interesting as a place to study. And scientifically it’s also extremely fascinating because the sport of MMA in particular is very new relative to the rest of the sports. And so with the physiological demands and stresses are just really different. So for me, it’s a really interesting area to study and provides me with a pretty fantastic model for doing things besides your standard steady state an hour of jogging or your standard three sets of 10 of lifting It provide something in the middle. So it’s really fascinating scientifically. And I love working with the girls and guys in the sport. I used to do a lot in the NFL and stuff like that and I actively gave that up and gave up that paycheck on purpose to spend more time with these folks because I find it so much more rewarding

Corey Beasley [00:02:11]: Now. Andy, how’d you kind of get started with these combat athletes?

Andy Galpin [00:02:17]: Well, I don’t have any kind of a martial arts background at all. Like I didn’t do karate or anything as a kid. I didn’t wrestle anything. I played I was an athlete through school. I played college football and then I started competing in Olympic weightlifting and weight lifting as a master’s student. And then really what happened was my friend Mike started a company that some of you may have heard of called barbell shrugged. He started, he opened up basically a CrossFit gym. And at the same time, my other really good friend, we were all in school together, Doug Larson he had been doing jiu jitsu for years and competing and stuff and he was like, Oh, I’m going to find a school in Memphis because we moved out there and he stumbled upon Memphis jiu jitsu. And so Mike had opened up the strength conditioning gym and there was nothing like that. This is 10 years ago now or something. There was nothing like that in Memphis. And Doug was over there with the jiu jitsu guys and basically said, Hey, we’ve got a strike punishing place and help you guys a lot. So he started bringing fighters over and then I was like, well, these guys were fun to train. And when I kind of started finishing competing away the thing, I’m like, well, since you helped us so much, like you want to come over and train any time. So Alex Meadows is one of Marcello Garcia’s first ever black belts. I think his first in America or something like that. Alex and Joel and Dave and those guys helped me a ton. And I started playing with it and I just fell in love with it immediately. So I just continued to do as much of that stuff as I could as a doctoral student and then found a gym as a doctoral student and started helping the athletes. And it’s just a funny cause we were in this really tiny little town in central Indiana and probably five or six of the guys from my gym and not making it all the way to UFC or the ultimate fighter or something like that. It was crazy man. Like it was like literally, we were fighting in barns and it was awful and like a couple of years later, they just start springing up and a couple of them are still there. And I was like, oh man. So my job as a scientist, I’m like, man, I want to keep working with these people because it’s really fun and coming out here to California and like it just was a matter of time before I linked up with people and Ryan Parsons in particular and stuff and Jake Ellenberger and it just took off from there.

Corey Beasley [00:04:43]: Yeah. You’ve had the opportunity to work with quite a few different guys out here. I mean, Southern California one time or another, probably most guys have been through here. Who are some of the guys like top guys that you worked with so far?

Andy Galpin [00:04:58]: Well, I want to be careful. I don’t want to overstate like how much I emphasize were these people. Like one of the things, I get irritated with this when people say things like, Oh, I worked with so-and-so. And it’s like, you had one conversation with them three years ago doesn’t count as working because I have a full time job. I only work with MMA folks or combat sport athletes like out of passion and out of my free time, which is minimal. So I mean, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people, but like Jake’s a good example. I mean, I’m in close contact with him and he knows if he needs me, he can always come up or we can chat and, but sometimes he’ll go whole fight camp and I won’t talk to him at all. And then sometimes he’ll talk a lot and I’ll go to a bunch of practices and we’ll do a lot together. It just depends. But people have been around, you know him. I’ve worked with I still see Pat Cummings a lot I’ve worked with Kailin Curran in the past. And then probably the biggest success I’ve had, and this is pretty hard to top is I’ve been working really exclusively with Helen for the last two years or two and change. And if you’re not familiar with that name, she won gold in Rio last August. And she was the first female American to ever win gold in wrestling. And she beats Yoshida who was a three time Olympic gold medal of defending gold medalist and like a 15 times straight world title and she upset him for the gold. So she’s been tremendous amount of fun to work with them. But I’ve been around, I’ve been in the room, like had conversations with Rhonda and Fabrizio and like some of the big names, but like just because I gave them advice a couple of times. I don’t really count that as working with them.

Corey Beasley [00:06:59]: For sure. Now this, everybody understands like your role is kind of what? When athletes are coming to you, are coaches, are bringing their athletes to you, you’re kind of helping them in what aspect?

Andy Galpin [00:07:12]: That’s a great question. Like it’s totally different for every athlete. So a lot of the times it’s the coaches and they’re just kind of going, Hey we’ve had these problems in the last couple of camps, whether that’s we showed up to the fight flat or we think we’ve been over trained or we’ve had weight problems et cetera. Like, what do you think about the overall training program, the philosophy, what do you think about how we’re setting up the eight week camp? It could be very detailed supplement stuff. It could be get blood work done. Let me take a look at that. A lot of it is coming up to my laboratory and running a bunch of performance tests and stuff like that. But it’s so a mandatory, like it really varies probably half or more of the people I’ve worked with actually I’ve never even met because they’re in New York or they’re in Phoenix or they’re in like some other place and it’s phone calls for the whole camp or whatever. So it’s really anything I can do to help, again, I don’t want to oversell it. I’m not on the floor being a strength coach like you do or other folks. Certainly not anymore anyways just for time sake, but it’s more about, I’d say I can to like a consultant a thing like, Hey, this is what our blood work looks like, or this is what happened. What do you think we should do tomorrow with our calories? Or this is a problem going on? What food should I do or not do? And my job really is like, the way I approach him and tell him is like, there are certain things that I have a pretty good handle on and there’s others I don’t, and I will give you anything, piece of advice I think I can help you with, but I’m not going to come in and act like, like I got the whole show here and I can run it all. This is not how this sport works.

Corey Beasley [00:09:03]: Absolutely. Now from your experience, you work with quite a few different athletes. Like you said, they’re all different. They’re all coming in different positions and stuff like that. What are some of the common things that you’ve seen over the years that people are either misinterpreting or doing wrong or making mistakes or are there any common threads that kind of pop up consistently?

Andy Galpin [00:09:28]: Yeah, I would actually going to answer this one with probably the same thing that hopefully a lot of your other guests say and that the biggest thing from my scientific perspective is two things. Number one, they don’t have somebody who’s really in charge of the whole approach. So they might have a head coach, but that head coach might just be the person who knows MMA the most. That’s fine. But you really need a personal manager for all of your physical stresses. And some MMA coaches are very good at that and some of them aren’t good at that. But the biggest thing, they don’t have somebody who’s kind of overcharge of everybody and saying, integrating everyone together and working with the whole team. So because of that, they don’t set up game plans for the whole six weeks or 12 weeks or 10 weeks or whatever they have. And it’s a sort of like fly by the seat of the pants. That’s the obvious one that’s very easy. Like the nice part is, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’ve probably heard that one before, right?

Corey Beasley [00:10:32]: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it’s a pretty common thread I’ve heard from almost every guest.

Andy Galpin [00:10:37]: Yeah. So that’s the biggest one. The other one I would say that’s maybe a bit more novel or not talked about is the fact that the coaches themselves have too much ego. And I forget who it’s all about. It’s really about the athletes. Like this is team Corey, if I’m on your team and I was really fortunate actually, I want to give a lot of props to a guy named Eric I don’t know if you know him, he’s up here in Fullerton?

Corey Beasley [00:11:11]: Yeah, I interviewed him a couple of weeks, maybe a month ago.

Andy Galpin [00:11:14]: Well, I mean, the reason I worked with Helen is Erica, like he does nutrition for a lot of athletes and he himself is a pretty decent athlete, a lot of experience. But he came to me and was like, Hey, I want help with nutrition. And he didn’t necessarily need my help because I’m a PhD, but like he had the humility to come to me and every time we worked with Helen, it’s fantastic because we always like work as a complete team and he’s got to such a low ego. And I mean that as a compliment that I have no hesitation at all to go like, boy, I don’t know what to do here. What do you think? And he makes a call and I have no problem doing that. And he has no problem. If I’m feel strongly about this is what I think we should do, it goes back and forth. And I think a lot of coaches and athletes don’t surround themselves with people like that. I mean it a great example. Like Helen is a world champion at that time. She’s getting ready for real. She’s a year out. Eric easily could have been like, I’m not bringing anybody in because if this girl wins, I’m going to get all the credit. And that’s what the bad coach would do. That’s what the ego-driven coach would do. But he would the exact opposite. And I even did that several times. So we brought on more people and I just continually ask questions from people as different things came up because there’s very specific scenarios that popped up that I had never actually personally dealt with. I knew the chemistry behind it and I knew the textbook, but I’m like, I want to talk to somebody who’s dealt with this exact problem and see if my intuition is the same thing or not. So that’s the big problem is like you have to surround yourself as an athlete with coaches who are willing to do that because if not, they don’t really honestly have your best interests in mind. They have their best interests in mind and they’re trying to make their name off of you. And like I just did I just had a conversation with Phil in American top team you know the strength coach down there. He said the same thing. I was like, Hey man, do you know who John Jones strength coaches is? And he’s like Oh, that’s my point like the point is you was a strength coach like no one knows who you are core, even though you’ve trained a ton of world champion or a ton of NFL players, if you think you’re going to get famous being the strength coach or the nutritionist the rest of us, no one’s going to know who we are. So you got to have the right people in place who really want to do this to help you, not because they want to help you so that when you become famous, they become famous. Like that’s just the wrong.

Corey Beasley [00:13:51]: That’s for sure. That’s two very good points. I mean having no one in charge and it’s interesting the way, the way that you say it as many times as I have heard it, the way that you said that was very unique. Mean I’m one person managing all the physical stresses. And I think that’s a really cool way to put it. Because I mean there’s all kinds of stuff that these kids are stressing out about. Whether it’s financial, whether from a significant other, whether it’s whatever. I mean there’s so many different things that everybody’s going through, but all that stress is still stress and having a fluid program and the communication to adjust well communication or lack of ego or however you want to say it is huge because these kids just get run down pretty quick.

Andy Galpin [00:14:51]: Yeah. And it works and you can get away with it when you’re 22 and 24 and etc. But you’re shaving years up at the back end of the career is what you’re doing.

Corey Beasley [00:15:00]: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, for a kid, I can’t tell you how many 28 year old to 32 year old kids come through my garage now. That are hobbling, that are broken, that are talking like they’re 50 or 60 or 70 and it’s just like God, I mean, they’re killing themselves.

Andy Galpin [00:15:27]: Yeah. And I mean, the other points you brought up too are really important as well. Like the same person has to be a person that the fighter can trust and they don’t have to have full disclosure of their financials, let’s say, or their sports psych. But like, they have to have some insight into all of those things. And you need to, as athlete be able to be a little bit vulnerable. Like the athletes that I’ve had the most success with by far are the ones who are the ones that are the most vulnerable and they’re willing to be like, Hey man, I’m really nervous about this. And then I may be able to say like, good example, like I don’t act like a sports psychologist. I don’t even try. But if I can pick up on those things, I will say, Hey man, like I know a few sports psychologists and I’m not talking therapists, like a therapist is totally different than a sports psychologist. A therapist is a whole different issue. But like, Hey, you’re losing focus a lot in the fight. Like this is something we can work on or you’re getting too amped up or you’re not getting amped up enough or whatever. These are all things that we can work on but that person in charge of all the stresses that all counts and that person needs to be able to be like, Hey, I think it’s actually benefiting us if we train twice or train two times less this week and take that time to go get maybe one massage and then one time that hour, another hour to go work with this psychologist because I think that’s going to have a bigger bang. Well only the person that’s involved in all the stresses is really going to understand what they’re going through or other things sometimes relieving and saying we’re not going to go, we’re not going to go drive down to San Diego to work at this boxing coach anymore not because the boxing coach is and amazing, but because maybe it’s causing so much of a financial Crump on the person that that’s causing much stress that everything else is getting thrown in a whack.

Corey Beasley [00:17:22]: Well good stuff. I mean when you are kind of sitting back, I mean you kind of have a cool view or a cool position just because you are kind of as hands on as you are when you’re consulting those people you’re not completely involved as much day to day. So you do have more of a outsider or a 40,000 foot view, you maybe you see different things then the people that are with these kids every single day.

Andy Galpin [00:17:51]: Yeah, like a good example of that is a good relationship I have with Dennis Bermudez and I’ve been working with Dennis for years now. And any or he has like his strength coach, Rob and it was fantastic. I really like rod. He’s really sharp. Greg has other coaches, like I actually like a lot of his coaches and I don’t work as much. I used to be like literally every day during camp he’d send me extensive emails or texts about exactly what they did, how they did it. I’d go back and forth as coaches as well. Now I just kind of sit back and we generally talk before camp starts or I might even talk to him, but I’ll get on the phone with, Parsons or whoever else is putting the camp together. Or sometimes they won’t and they’ll just kind of look at me and they’ll come back. But I have now tracked so many of his, his fight camps. There’s been multiple times recently where I’ve looking I’m like, I don’t like this plan. Like now we’ve jumped up to say 25% volume over last camp and that’s, I’m nervous here. And I can see those things where like as the individual coach planning out the day to day to day, sometimes you’re like, that just creeps up on you. Like, Oh, I didn’t realize we got so much more so fast here. So like having that outside perspective, but the only way that that works is one because they trust me and two, because I don’t come in and talk to them like you guys are idiots. Like you got to know this is what we’re doing. I’d go in and be like, boom, Hey man, here’s my thoughts. How can I help? This is what I’m seeing. What am I not seeing from your side? Like tell me more so I can understand what’s going on here. And when you take it from that perspective of humility, it’s a lot less threatening to them because the last thing I want to do is act like I know how to run an eight week fight camp. Because I myself, I’ve literally never walked somebody through an entire eight week camp. Like I’ve never been to every single practice and every sparring session and everything for an acre, for a fighter like some of these coaches have. So for me to act like I know that information is pretty arrogant and that’s when people like me can get into trouble. So if you just step out of that and say like, look, I don’t know what it’s fully like, so let me know what you’re thinking or what you’re feeling. And I do know physiology though, and I know all these other things work and Hey, maybe I have some suggestions and that’s the approach I take.

Corey Beasley [00:20:12]: Yeah, I noticed these days with social media, there’s a lot of information that’s out there, right? I’m good, some bad and you can see people that are on their soap and then they could chirping everybody and telling everybody they’re doing things wrong. But I also see along with that, it’s cool because there’s all that new information. We have access to information more than ever before. Even with like from your perspective with people doing research studies and stuff like that. There’s cool stuff coming out our field like on a daily basis with new information and for coaches that will help us improve and fine tune our approach. From your perspective how do we kind of like streamline the communication between the researches to the practical application that’s going on in the gym and apply that stuff to our athletes without having to read research every single day?

Andy Galpin [00:21:21]: Yeah, I mean, in general, I would recommend that people don’t even bother with the research and reading it because it’s probably going to be misinterpreted. And usually what happens is somebody finds the title of a paper that confirms their bias and then they throw that up there. And that’s just not helpful for most people. But I think what we’re doing now is honestly the approach it’s these types of podcasts that are really good. And I’ve seen actually some other combat sport podcasts pop up that’s generally helpful. This is the reason why we started, I mean, where you and I first officially connected years ago was the NSCA is combat sport clinic. Putting on that, it’s been fantastic. That’s September 22nd, 23rd this year. And what that is if any of you out there haven’t heard of it. So the national strength and conditioning association, we went and put together a clinic based on training for combat sports and we actually partnered up with the UFC this year and it’s being held at the new performance Institute which is really awesome. And my good buddy Dunkin French is the new guy in charge of the UFC performance Institute. So he’s was sports scientist and he was the head guy for Notre Dame before he got here. Bo Sandoval, another friend got hired as a strength coach and he was the strength coach at Michigan for like the last seven or eight years. So it’s really cool. What we’re going to do. I mean, the way that we move forward, to really answer your question is we need to continue to put all these people in these rooms and have these open conversations where the ego is completely removed. And like that weekend, I can’t remember everyone, but Forrest Griffin is there presenting, of course Bo is going to present Duncan’s going to present. We’re bringing in Dan Gardner who’s a nutritionist who’s fantastic. We have just a ton of people that are coming in that are all world renowned. We’ve had all kinds of people in the past before come out and talk a concussion people hydration people. We’ve had Joel Jamieson and conditioning like all the people who are really doing this stuff. I tend to talk there, I won’t be talking to this year just to get more people in, other people’s voices in, but we want to get as many of these folks under one umbrella and like, we don’t make any money. In fact, we lose money on the event. We want to get this there so that we can have a solid resource and be like, this is where we do. And ideally we grow it to multiple times a year, but for now it’s like at least once a year we can get all these people that are either doing research or other high level practices and get together and start hashing stuff out. And then most importantly, figuring out a way to where we can deliver that to the practitioners and the strength coaches and the nutritionist and the athletes themselves. We’ve had a bunch of UFC fighters show up last couple of years. I have a ton this year there. So I mean, I think how we do it.

Corey Beasley [00:24:34]: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the one that we met, I believe that was two or three years ago in Colorado Springs. And I mean it was a huge eye opener for me just because you got to connect with a lot of different people from New Mexico or Florida or Arizona and they’re guys that I still talk with to this day. And even I found myself a couple of weeks ago going through that manual and just like rehash in on some things that I remembered but didn’t quite remember all the details. So I think it’s a cool resource.

Andy Galpin [00:25:14]: Yeah. We got Lawrence Herrera coming in who’s the strength coach at Jackson, Winkeljohn and down there and New Mexico. He’s coming in to talk this year. Another name

Corey Beasley [00:25:28]: He work with Jones, this last camp, right?

Andy Galpin [00:25:30]: Yeah. Jones and cowboy. And a bunch of those guys, in fact, Jones talked about him and his post-fight speech gave him a bunch of shout outs right after he won. So like he’s about as good as you get. And like we have just a bunch of guys and girls coming in. We’ve had people from Canada come down and we have Rob Schwartz who does a lot of boxers and Adrian Broner and a bunch of these other folks. So the best of the best we get them in. And then we have some, of course, always some special surprise guests and announce people and things like that that show up. And we talk about like a networking opportunity. This is the field you want to be in. It’s like, we’ve had so much of this stuff where you and I have even sent clients back and forth or at least toss names out and I would have never done that had we not connected there. I got to feel you a little bit. And I’m like, okay, this guy’s really sharp. Like, Oh, I’m going to not hesitate now to send some of my folks down there. Now I have this happen all the time now where I’ll know a guy, somebody is traveling through Albuquerque for a weekend or something. They’ll be like, Hey man, anyone down here, I’m like, yeah, I know this and this guy. Like this is where you’re going to go. And it’s really helped the athletes really appreciate it that you have this network, a really solid people that I know that if you’re in Florida, I know a guy. You’re up in in New York I know a guy in long Island, no problem. Like, I know a girl down here in Canada, no problem. So like that’s what it’s really all about and that’s how we move forward with connecting as many people as we can and making it really easy on the athletes so that they don’t have to spend the time vetting a new person. They can go, okay, like this person’s been vetted by a bunch of different people and has a lot of really good confidence and it’s easier on them.

Corey Beasley [00:27:23]: Absolutely it does. Well, I think I mean every industry that thrives, that’s how it needs to happen. Right?

Andy Galpin [00:27:32]: Well, I mean the big thing that like the, it sort of goes back to, we were talking about earlier, but the mistake people make in these fields is worrying that other people will take their shine or worrying that other people will take their stuff. It’s actually quite the opposite. Like when Corey Beasley has success, that means success for Andy Galpin and that means success for PJ Nestler and that means success for Lauren and I mean success for Mike Dolce and that brings us all up in value. So the more we can promote other people and more, we can bring this level up, this is what really raises the tide for us as more specifically as the professionals in the field as well as, again, for the athletes now, the people coming through their doors are legit strength coaches or legit movement specialists or legit physical therapists or whatever it is they need physiologist and that’s how we keep them healthier and we keep them in fights, we extend their careers and we make it so that when they do retire, they didn’t pick up any extra damage because us which is important.

Corey Beasley [00:28:35]: Exactly. So I always tell them, you guys get to be my age and I’m only 41. You guys get to be my, I don’t want you guys to be able to walk. Like just trust him.

Andy Galpin [00:28:54]: Yeah. I mean that’s what we did all this stuff too. Like I worked with Jeff Novitzky a couple of years ago getting ready to set up all these new weight cut rules. And I was just fortunate there was a lot of people and Jeff did a lot of work. But I was fortunate, one of the people that he reached out to and had a lot of conversations about, Hey man, we’ve got to change how this way and stuff works and we got to start doing different things here. Now that whole program has just like if you’ve been to a fight and last year the weigh ins are now different and the food they have available for him and the resources and I know very big plans for that moving forward. It’s going to make it even better on them, but they’ve spent a lot of money just on that so that it’s a little bit easier on the fighters and they don’t have to worry about that stuff. And any of the folks that are listening, like the weight cut is often the real fight. That’s a huge part of it. So like you take that stress down, you take it down a little bit and like, now you can actually focus on trying to become a better fighter in these last eight weeks instead of just trying to get in a position where you can scramble almost die and make weight.

Corey Beasley [00:30:03]: It’s so true too. I mean for most of these kids jumping in the cage and swinging, it’s something that they do three, four or five times a week. You and I would be sweating bullets and freak out a little probably. I’d probably die a little inside, but they don’t do it, that’s what they do. So I mean, if they could focus on that instead of being distracted, by the weight cut. It’s a huge point. It’s a big deal.

Andy Galpin [00:30:31]: Yeah. So all that stuff is how we move forward. But we do that by doing things like you had and putting out weight cut guides and putting out conditioning guides and putting this stuff there and supporting each other. Not being like, I’m going to come try to compete with this guy and I’ll do other product because I want minus to like that not what matters. What matters is we support each other because the more of those you sell and the more quality information that gets out about weight cuts, the more success people have and the less of an issue that is. So that’s really what we’re looking for. And it just very rare that you succeed by protecting yourself like that. Get your name out, get the things out and produce quality information so that we can fight that information battle when you see the nonsense out there, I mean I really see little benefit, not that there’s none, but there’s very little benefit in being the internet contrarian just going on and talking about how bad somebody’s program was and how stupid their weight cut program is and things like that. And that’s what actually makes it so people like me, I don’t want to put on a wakeup program because I know half of the thing I would get would be people talking about how I didn’t do something right.

Corey Beasley [00:31:41]: Right. Is that everybody’s a keyboard warrior. Right?

Andy Galpin [00:31:44]: So like that stuff doesn’t actually help because anyone knows that no one’s putting any athlete on the exact same weight cut program all the time. Like it’s just a rough estimate to get you started. But any nutritionist is going to take that like literally almost minute by minute. I mean the ones that I work with really closely, especially when the weight cut, it’s like, the last couple of weeks, even sometimes three weeks out, it’s not only like a phone call or a text every day, it’s literally like pre post-meal, pre post training. Where are we at? How we feel, what do you want to do? And you can’t put that in a program because that’s just going to be totally different. So, when you write things like that. You have to realize like that’s just a rough guide and so you can’t criticize somebody because they’re just taking a general approach.

Corey Beasley [00:32:31]: Everything just gets people a little bit more information and get everybody a little bit better than they were last time, everything moves forward is the way I kind of see it. Well good stuff Andy I appreciate it. We’ll definitely put the links and stuff over to that NSCA combat clinic. And that’s in Vegas in September, correct?

Andy Galpin [00:32:53]: Yeah. It’s technically outside of Vegas, but it’s at the new performance Institute. It’s pretty easy to find. They just spent like 20 million on the building or something.

Corey Beasley [00:33:02]: Well, good stuff. And then Andy, if anybody’s wanting to reach out directly to you what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Andy Galpin [00:33:12]: Well, there’s several ways. The easiest way is my social media. Instagram very specifically is just Dr, like DrAndyGalpin. But my email is easy to find. Just a [email protected]. And you can throw that directly up in the show notes. I don’t care. I don’t protect that. That’s out there. And then of course, you know there’s always my book that just came out.

Corey Beasley [00:33:41]: Yeah. So what’s, tell us a little bit about that?

Andy Galpin [00:33:46]: So I wrote that with a guy named Brian Mackenzie. So Brian’s last book was the New York Times bestseller called unbreakable runner. And Brian was really disruptive in the endurance running arena and he’s really sharp with his understanding of how to actually build endurance, which is completely contrary to how most people do it. And actually funny story about Brian is he was in John Jones, his corner all weekend walked him down to the cage, was actually sitting in front of the Rock, which is pretty cool. So Brian has done some really cool stuff with breathing in the last couple of years and I’ve actually published a couple of papers. Some studies before I even met Brian looking at some breathing stuff too and some MMA specific tasks and found some pretty impressive results. And so I was kind of like, there’s something to this breathing thing. And then Brian and I connected and somehow he and John got connected like Wednesday night. So UFC two 14 just happened last weekend. And so this is like Wednesday of fight week. So he gets on the phone with John on Wednesday. They’ve never met like he has no idea who he is and he takes him through some of these breathing protocols and John like immediately finishes and he’s like, can you fly down here this week? I’m going to fly you down here. Had him down there. And he had the whole team back there like doing these reading drills and it’s cool. They had a bunch of shops, like I’m in the locker room and Brian is back there taking through him all these breathing drills before the fight, before we walked down. And as he’s walking out of the cage and he’s doing all this breathing stuff and in between rounds he’s got them doing this stuff. And so it was cool Brian’s right next to Dana white and then like right in front of the Rock. And I was like, Oh, like you’re sitting in front of the Rock, like not next to the Rock you in front of the Rock. Like I think they just like, you’re coming down the cage and they didn’t have a spot for me, was like right here, stand right here. But anyways, so we got connected and the book is called unplugged, evolve from technology to upgrade your fitness, performance and consciousness. And so really it’s a guide to how to use fitness technologies, performance technologies. So think everything from heart rate monitors to HRV to dark fish or a mirror or any app, all that stuff. So it’s a guide to how to use those things, but how to also not use them and how they can screw you up the pitfalls and all that other stuff. So that just came out a few weeks ago. And it’s doing great so far. So you can check it out. The website, athleteunplugged.com or there’s honestly not much on the website though, but it’s up on Amazon which is great. Like I recommend getting the hardback over the Kindle because we spent a lot of time, it’s a very high quality pages and we put a lot of photos in there and we put a training program in the back as well and some guides and some rubrics and stuff. So it’s a very different experience getting on the Kindle. And Tim Ferriss wrote a section chapter for us and Hamilton did one. So it’s a pretty cool people come on board and it pretty awesome.

Corey Beasley [00:37:31]: Well, good for you. I’m happy for you. So guys, I will put all those links and stuff like that down below. Andy, thanks again for chatting with us. I always appreciate it and have a great week.

Andy Galpin [00:37:45]: Yeah, man. Thanks for the time. Again, the platform and again, keep doing this. This is exactly how we make the field better. So cheers to you for the whole website and all the products you do they’re all fantastic.

Corey Beasley [00:37:56]: Thank you so much.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Dr. Andy Galpin
Interview with Dr. Andy Galpin to find out how to fine-tune an Athlete’s Performance
Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, is Corey Beasley with fight camp conditioning and I’m on the phone here with Dr. Andy Galpin. Andy, how are you doing?

Andy Galpin [00:00:07]: Fantastic, man. Pleasure to be back.

Corey Beasley [00:00:09]: Yeah, it’s always fun to talk with you. I know you’ve got a lot of good things going. So I’m excited to chat with you.

Andy Galpin [00:00:17]: Busy times appears always. We never really stop we’re not going to for a while, so it’s exciting.

Corey Beasley [00:00:24]: Yeah. So Andy, for everybody that’s listened that does not know who you are, can you give them a little two sense of who you are and what you’re doing?

[Absolutely not. No way. Like stop the recording. I’m just kidding]

Andy Galpin [00:00:37]: So I’m a scientist. I’m a PhD. I’m up here not too far from you. I run the than the co-director for the center for sport performance here at Cal state Fullerton and then on the director and founder of what’s called the biochemistry and molecular exercise physiology lab. Well that’s kind of a fancy way of saying, my job is to study muscle and performance mostly in athletes. And I’ve chosen, I guess for lack of a better word to focus a lot on combat sport athletes. Just like personally, I find it extremely rewarding and interesting as a place to study. And scientifically it’s also extremely fascinating because the sport of MMA in particular is very new relative to the rest of the sports. And so with the physiological demands and stresses are just really different. So for me, it’s a really interesting area to study and provides me with a pretty fantastic model for doing things besides your standard steady state an hour of jogging or your standard three sets of 10 of lifting It provide something in the middle. So it’s really fascinating scientifically. And I love working with the girls and guys in the sport. I used to do a lot in the NFL and stuff like that and I actively gave that up and gave up that paycheck on purpose to spend more time with these folks because I find it so much more rewarding

Corey Beasley [00:02:11]: Now. Andy, how’d you kind of get started with these combat athletes?

Andy Galpin [00:02:17]: Well, I don’t have any kind of a martial arts background at all. Like I didn’t do karate or anything as a kid. I didn’t wrestle anything. I played I was an athlete through school. I played college football and then I started competing in Olympic weightlifting and weight lifting as a master’s student. And then really what happened was my friend Mike started a company that some of you may have heard of called barbell shrugged. He started, he opened up basically a CrossFit gym. And at the same time, my other really good friend, we were all in school together, Doug Larson he had been doing jiu jitsu for years and competing and stuff and he was like, Oh, I’m going to find a school in Memphis because we moved out there and he stumbled upon Memphis jiu jitsu. And so Mike had opened up the strength conditioning gym and there was nothing like that. This is 10 years ago now or something. There was nothing like that in Memphis. And Doug was over there with the jiu jitsu guys and basically said, Hey, we’ve got a strike punishing place and help you guys a lot. So he started bringing fighters over and then I was like, well, these guys were fun to train. And when I kind of started finishing competing away the thing, I’m like, well, since you helped us so much, like you want to come over and train any time. So Alex Meadows is one of Marcello Garcia’s first ever black belts. I think his first in America or something like that. Alex and Joel and Dave and those guys helped me a ton. And I started playing with it and I just fell in love with it immediately. So I just continued to do as much of that stuff as I could as a doctoral student and then found a gym as a doctoral student and started helping the athletes. And it’s just a funny cause we were in this really tiny little town in central Indiana and probably five or six of the guys from my gym and not making it all the way to UFC or the ultimate fighter or something like that. It was crazy man. Like it was like literally, we were fighting in barns and it was awful and like a couple of years later, they just start springing up and a couple of them are still there. And I was like, oh man. So my job as a scientist, I’m like, man, I want to keep working with these people because it’s really fun and coming out here to California and like it just was a matter of time before I linked up with people and Ryan Parsons in particular and stuff and Jake Ellenberger and it just took off from there.

Andy Galpin [00:04:58]: Well, I want to be careful. I don’t want to overstate like how much I emphasize were these people. Like one of the things, I get irritated with this when people say things like, Oh, I worked with so-and-so. And it’s like, you had one conversation with them three years ago doesn’t count as working because I have a full time job. I only work with MMA folks or combat sport athletes like out of passion and out of my free time, which is minimal. So I mean, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people, but like Jake’s a good example. I mean, I’m in close contact with him and he knows if he needs me, he can always come up or we can chat and, but sometimes he’ll go whole fight camp and I won’t talk to him at all. And then sometimes he’ll talk a lot and I’ll go to a bunch of practices and we’ll do a lot together. It just depends. But people have been around, you know him. I’ve worked with I still see Pat Cummings a lot I’ve worked with Kailin Curran in the past. And then probably the biggest success I’ve had, and this is pretty hard to top is I’ve been working really exclusively with Helen for the last two years or two and change. And if you’re not familiar with that name, she won gold in Rio last August. And she was the first female American to ever win gold in wrestling. And she beats Yoshida who was a three time Olympic gold medal of defending gold medalist and like a 15 times straight world title and she upset him for the gold. So she’s been tremendous amount of fun to work with them. But I’ve been around, I’ve been in the room, like had conversations with Rhonda and Fabrizio and like some of the big names, but like just because I gave them advice a couple of times. I don’t really count that as working with them.

Andy Galpin [00:07:12]: That’s a great question. Like it’s totally different for every athlete. So a lot of the times it’s the coaches and they’re just kind of going, Hey we’ve had these problems in the last couple of camps, whether that’s we showed up to the fight flat or we think we’ve been over trained or we’ve had weight problems et cetera. Like, what do you think about the overall training program, the philosophy, what do you think about how we’re setting up the eight week camp? It could be very detailed supplement stuff. It could be get blood work done. Let me take a look at that. A lot of it is coming up to my laboratory and running a bunch of performance tests and stuff like that. But it’s so a mandatory, like it really varies probably half or more of the people I’ve worked with actually I’ve never even met because they’re in New York or they’re in Phoenix or they’re in like some other place and it’s phone calls for the whole camp or whatever. So it’s really anything I can do to help, again, I don’t want to oversell it. I’m not on the floor being a strength coach like you do or other folks. Certainly not anymore anyways just for time sake, but it’s more about, I’d say I can to like a consultant a thing like, Hey, this is what our blood work looks like, or this is what happened. What do you think we should do tomorrow with our calories? Or this is a problem going on? What food should I do or not do? And my job really is like, the way I approach him and tell him is like, there are certain things that I have a pretty good handle on and there’s others I don’t, and I will give you anything, piece of advice I think I can help you with, but I’m not going to come in and act like, like I got the whole show here and I can run it all. This is not how this sport works.

Andy Galpin [00:09:28]: Yeah, I would actually going to answer this one with probably the same thing that hopefully a lot of your other guests say and that the biggest thing from my scientific perspective is two things. Number one, they don’t have somebody who’s really in charge of the whole approach. So they might have a head coach, but that head coach might just be the person who knows MMA the most. That’s fine. But you really need a personal manager for all of your physical stresses. And some MMA coaches are very good at that and some of them aren’t good at that. But the biggest thing, they don’t have somebody who’s kind of overcharge of everybody and saying, integrating everyone together and working with the whole team. So because of that, they don’t set up game plans for the whole six weeks or 12 weeks or 10 weeks or whatever they have. And it’s a sort of like fly by the seat of the pants. That’s the obvious one that’s very easy. Like the nice part is, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’ve probably heard that one before, right?

Corey Beasley [00:10:32]: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it’s a pretty common thread I’ve heard from almost every guest.

Andy Galpin [00:10:37]: Yeah. So that’s the biggest one. The other one I would say that’s maybe a bit more novel or not talked about is the fact that the coaches themselves have too much ego. And I forget who it’s all about. It’s really about the athletes. Like this is team Corey, if I’m on your team and I was really fortunate actually, I want to give a lot of props to a guy named Eric I don’t know if you know him, he’s up here in Fullerton?

Corey Beasley [00:11:11]: Yeah, I interviewed him a couple of weeks, maybe a month ago.

Andy Galpin [00:11:14]: Well, I mean, the reason I worked with Helen is Erica, like he does nutrition for a lot of athletes and he himself is a pretty decent athlete, a lot of experience. But he came to me and was like, Hey, I want help with nutrition. And he didn’t necessarily need my help because I’m a PhD, but like he had the humility to come to me and every time we worked with Helen, it’s fantastic because we always like work as a complete team and he’s got to such a low ego. And I mean that as a compliment that I have no hesitation at all to go like, boy, I don’t know what to do here. What do you think? And he makes a call and I have no problem doing that. And he has no problem. If I’m feel strongly about this is what I think we should do, it goes back and forth. And I think a lot of coaches and athletes don’t surround themselves with people like that. I mean it a great example. Like Helen is a world champion at that time. She’s getting ready for real. She’s a year out. Eric easily could have been like, I’m not bringing anybody in because if this girl wins, I’m going to get all the credit. And that’s what the bad coach would do. That’s what the ego-driven coach would do. But he would the exact opposite. And I even did that several times. So we brought on more people and I just continually ask questions from people as different things came up because there’s very specific scenarios that popped up that I had never actually personally dealt with. I knew the chemistry behind it and I knew the textbook, but I’m like, I want to talk to somebody who’s dealt with this exact problem and see if my intuition is the same thing or not. So that’s the big problem is like you have to surround yourself as an athlete with coaches who are willing to do that because if not, they don’t really honestly have your best interests in mind. They have their best interests in mind and they’re trying to make their name off of you. And like I just did I just had a conversation with Phil in American top team you know the strength coach down there. He said the same thing. I was like, Hey man, do you know who John Jones strength coaches is? And he’s like Oh, that’s my point like the point is you was a strength coach like no one knows who you are core, even though you’ve trained a ton of world champion or a ton of NFL players, if you think you’re going to get famous being the strength coach or the nutritionist the rest of us, no one’s going to know who we are. So you got to have the right people in place who really want to do this to help you, not because they want to help you so that when you become famous, they become famous. Like that’s just the wrong.

Andy Galpin [00:14:51]: Yeah. And it works and you can get away with it when you’re 22 and 24 and etc. But you’re shaving years up at the back end of the career is what you’re doing.

Andy Galpin [00:15:27]: Yeah. And I mean, the other points you brought up too are really important as well. Like the same person has to be a person that the fighter can trust and they don’t have to have full disclosure of their financials, let’s say, or their sports psych. But like, they have to have some insight into all of those things. And you need to, as athlete be able to be a little bit vulnerable. Like the athletes that I’ve had the most success with by far are the ones who are the ones that are the most vulnerable and they’re willing to be like, Hey man, I’m really nervous about this. And then I may be able to say like, good example, like I don’t act like a sports psychologist. I don’t even try. But if I can pick up on those things, I will say, Hey man, like I know a few sports psychologists and I’m not talking therapists, like a therapist is totally different than a sports psychologist. A therapist is a whole different issue. But like, Hey, you’re losing focus a lot in the fight. Like this is something we can work on or you’re getting too amped up or you’re not getting amped up enough or whatever. These are all things that we can work on but that person in charge of all the stresses that all counts and that person needs to be able to be like, Hey, I think it’s actually benefiting us if we train twice or train two times less this week and take that time to go get maybe one massage and then one time that hour, another hour to go work with this psychologist because I think that’s going to have a bigger bang. Well only the person that’s involved in all the stresses is really going to understand what they’re going through or other things sometimes relieving and saying we’re not going to go, we’re not going to go drive down to San Diego to work at this boxing coach anymore not because the boxing coach is and amazing, but because maybe it’s causing so much of a financial Crump on the person that that’s causing much stress that everything else is getting thrown in a whack.

Andy Galpin [00:17:51]: Yeah, like a good example of that is a good relationship I have with Dennis Bermudez and I’ve been working with Dennis for years now. And any or he has like his strength coach, Rob and it was fantastic. I really like rod. He’s really sharp. Greg has other coaches, like I actually like a lot of his coaches and I don’t work as much. I used to be like literally every day during camp he’d send me extensive emails or texts about exactly what they did, how they did it. I’d go back and forth as coaches as well. Now I just kind of sit back and we generally talk before camp starts or I might even talk to him, but I’ll get on the phone with, Parsons or whoever else is putting the camp together. Or sometimes they won’t and they’ll just kind of look at me and they’ll come back. But I have now tracked so many of his, his fight camps. There’s been multiple times recently where I’ve looking I’m like, I don’t like this plan. Like now we’ve jumped up to say 25% volume over last camp and that’s, I’m nervous here. And I can see those things where like as the individual coach planning out the day to day to day, sometimes you’re like, that just creeps up on you. Like, Oh, I didn’t realize we got so much more so fast here. So like having that outside perspective, but the only way that that works is one because they trust me and two, because I don’t come in and talk to them like you guys are idiots. Like you got to know this is what we’re doing. I’d go in and be like, boom, Hey man, here’s my thoughts. How can I help? This is what I’m seeing. What am I not seeing from your side? Like tell me more so I can understand what’s going on here. And when you take it from that perspective of humility, it’s a lot less threatening to them because the last thing I want to do is act like I know how to run an eight week fight camp. Because I myself, I’ve literally never walked somebody through an entire eight week camp. Like I’ve never been to every single practice and every sparring session and everything for an acre, for a fighter like some of these coaches have. So for me to act like I know that information is pretty arrogant and that’s when people like me can get into trouble. So if you just step out of that and say like, look, I don’t know what it’s fully like, so let me know what you’re thinking or what you’re feeling. And I do know physiology though, and I know all these other things work and Hey, maybe I have some suggestions and that’s the approach I take.

Andy Galpin [00:21:21]: Yeah, I mean, in general, I would recommend that people don’t even bother with the research and reading it because it’s probably going to be misinterpreted. And usually what happens is somebody finds the title of a paper that confirms their bias and then they throw that up there. And that’s just not helpful for most people. But I think what we’re doing now is honestly the approach it’s these types of podcasts that are really good. And I’ve seen actually some other combat sport podcasts pop up that’s generally helpful. This is the reason why we started, I mean, where you and I first officially connected years ago was the NSCA is combat sport clinic. Putting on that, it’s been fantastic. That’s September 22nd, 23rd this year. And what that is if any of you out there haven’t heard of it. So the national strength and conditioning association, we went and put together a clinic based on training for combat sports and we actually partnered up with the UFC this year and it’s being held at the new performance Institute which is really awesome. And my good buddy Dunkin French is the new guy in charge of the UFC performance Institute. So he’s was sports scientist and he was the head guy for Notre Dame before he got here. Bo Sandoval, another friend got hired as a strength coach and he was the strength coach at Michigan for like the last seven or eight years. So it’s really cool. What we’re going to do. I mean, the way that we move forward, to really answer your question is we need to continue to put all these people in these rooms and have these open conversations where the ego is completely removed. And like that weekend, I can’t remember everyone, but Forrest Griffin is there presenting, of course Bo is going to present Duncan’s going to present. We’re bringing in Dan Gardner who’s a nutritionist who’s fantastic. We have just a ton of people that are coming in that are all world renowned. We’ve had all kinds of people in the past before come out and talk a concussion people hydration people. We’ve had Joel Jamieson and conditioning like all the people who are really doing this stuff. I tend to talk there, I won’t be talking to this year just to get more people in, other people’s voices in, but we want to get as many of these folks under one umbrella and like, we don’t make any money. In fact, we lose money on the event. We want to get this there so that we can have a solid resource and be like, this is where we do. And ideally we grow it to multiple times a year, but for now it’s like at least once a year we can get all these people that are either doing research or other high level practices and get together and start hashing stuff out. And then most importantly, figuring out a way to where we can deliver that to the practitioners and the strength coaches and the nutritionist and the athletes themselves. We’ve had a bunch of UFC fighters show up last couple of years. I have a ton this year there. So I mean, I think how we do it.

Andy Galpin [00:25:14]: Yeah. We got Lawrence Herrera coming in who’s the strength coach at Jackson, Winkeljohn and down there and New Mexico. He’s coming in to talk this year. Another name

Corey Beasley [00:25:28]: He work with Jones, this last camp, right?

Andy Galpin [00:25:30]: Yeah. Jones and cowboy. And a bunch of those guys, in fact, Jones talked about him and his post-fight speech gave him a bunch of shout outs right after he won. So like he’s about as good as you get. And like we have just a bunch of guys and girls coming in. We’ve had people from Canada come down and we have Rob Schwartz who does a lot of boxers and Adrian Broner and a bunch of these other folks. So the best of the best we get them in. And then we have some, of course, always some special surprise guests and announce people and things like that that show up. And we talk about like a networking opportunity. This is the field you want to be in. It’s like, we’ve had so much of this stuff where you and I have even sent clients back and forth or at least toss names out and I would have never done that had we not connected there. I got to feel you a little bit. And I’m like, okay, this guy’s really sharp. Like, Oh, I’m going to not hesitate now to send some of my folks down there. Now I have this happen all the time now where I’ll know a guy, somebody is traveling through Albuquerque for a weekend or something. They’ll be like, Hey man, anyone down here, I’m like, yeah, I know this and this guy. Like this is where you’re going to go. And it’s really helped the athletes really appreciate it that you have this network, a really solid people that I know that if you’re in Florida, I know a guy. You’re up in in New York I know a guy in long Island, no problem. Like, I know a girl down here in Canada, no problem. So like that’s what it’s really all about and that’s how we move forward with connecting as many people as we can and making it really easy on the athletes so that they don’t have to spend the time vetting a new person. They can go, okay, like this person’s been vetted by a bunch of different people and has a lot of really good confidence and it’s easier on them.

Corey Beasley [00:27:23]: Absolutely it does. Well, I think I mean every industry that thrives, that’s how it needs to happen. Right?

Andy Galpin [00:27:32]: Well, I mean the big thing that like the, it sort of goes back to, we were talking about earlier, but the mistake people make in these fields is worrying that other people will take their shine or worrying that other people will take their stuff. It’s actually quite the opposite. Like when Corey Beasley has success, that means success for Andy Galpin and that means success for PJ Nestler and that means success for Lauren and I mean success for Mike Dolce and that brings us all up in value. So the more we can promote other people and more, we can bring this level up, this is what really raises the tide for us as more specifically as the professionals in the field as well as, again, for the athletes now, the people coming through their doors are legit strength coaches or legit movement specialists or legit physical therapists or whatever it is they need physiologist and that’s how we keep them healthier and we keep them in fights, we extend their careers and we make it so that when they do retire, they didn’t pick up any extra damage because us which is important.

Corey Beasley [00:28:35]: Exactly. So I always tell them, you guys get to be my age and I’m only 41. You guys get to be my, I don’t want you guys to be able to walk. Like just trust him.

Andy Galpin [00:28:54]: Yeah. I mean that’s what we did all this stuff too. Like I worked with Jeff Novitzky a couple of years ago getting ready to set up all these new weight cut rules. And I was just fortunate there was a lot of people and Jeff did a lot of work. But I was fortunate, one of the people that he reached out to and had a lot of conversations about, Hey man, we’ve got to change how this way and stuff works and we got to start doing different things here. Now that whole program has just like if you’ve been to a fight and last year the weigh ins are now different and the food they have available for him and the resources and I know very big plans for that moving forward. It’s going to make it even better on them, but they’ve spent a lot of money just on that so that it’s a little bit easier on the fighters and they don’t have to worry about that stuff. And any of the folks that are listening, like the weight cut is often the real fight. That’s a huge part of it. So like you take that stress down, you take it down a little bit and like, now you can actually focus on trying to become a better fighter in these last eight weeks instead of just trying to get in a position where you can scramble almost die and make weight.

Andy Galpin [00:30:31]: Yeah. So all that stuff is how we move forward. But we do that by doing things like you had and putting out weight cut guides and putting out conditioning guides and putting this stuff there and supporting each other. Not being like, I’m going to come try to compete with this guy and I’ll do other product because I want minus to like that not what matters. What matters is we support each other because the more of those you sell and the more quality information that gets out about weight cuts, the more success people have and the less of an issue that is. So that’s really what we’re looking for. And it just very rare that you succeed by protecting yourself like that. Get your name out, get the things out and produce quality information so that we can fight that information battle when you see the nonsense out there, I mean I really see little benefit, not that there’s none, but there’s very little benefit in being the internet contrarian just going on and talking about how bad somebody’s program was and how stupid their weight cut program is and things like that. And that’s what actually makes it so people like me, I don’t want to put on a wakeup program because I know half of the thing I would get would be people talking about how I didn’t do something right.

Corey Beasley [00:31:41]: Right. Is that everybody’s a keyboard warrior. Right?

Andy Galpin [00:31:44]: So like that stuff doesn’t actually help because anyone knows that no one’s putting any athlete on the exact same weight cut program all the time. Like it’s just a rough estimate to get you started. But any nutritionist is going to take that like literally almost minute by minute. I mean the ones that I work with really closely, especially when the weight cut, it’s like, the last couple of weeks, even sometimes three weeks out, it’s not only like a phone call or a text every day, it’s literally like pre post-meal, pre post training. Where are we at? How we feel, what do you want to do? And you can’t put that in a program because that’s just going to be totally different. So, when you write things like that. You have to realize like that’s just a rough guide and so you can’t criticize somebody because they’re just taking a general approach.

Andy Galpin [00:32:53]: Yeah. It’s technically outside of Vegas, but it’s at the new performance Institute. It’s pretty easy to find. They just spent like 20 million on the building or something.

Corey Beasley [00:33:02]: Well, good stuff. And then Andy, if anybody’s wanting to reach out directly to you what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Andy Galpin [00:33:12]: Well, there’s several ways. The easiest way is my social media. Instagram very specifically is just Dr, like DrAndyGalpin. But my email is easy to find. Just a [email protected]. And you can throw that directly up in the show notes. I don’t care. I don’t protect that. That’s out there. And then of course, you know there’s always my book that just came out.

Corey Beasley [00:33:41]: Yeah. So what’s, tell us a little bit about that?

Andy Galpin [00:33:46]: So I wrote that with a guy named Brian Mackenzie. So Brian’s last book was the New York Times bestseller called unbreakable runner. And Brian was really disruptive in the endurance running arena and he’s really sharp with his understanding of how to actually build endurance, which is completely contrary to how most people do it. And actually funny story about Brian is he was in John Jones, his corner all weekend walked him down to the cage, was actually sitting in front of the Rock, which is pretty cool. So Brian has done some really cool stuff with breathing in the last couple of years and I’ve actually published a couple of papers. Some studies before I even met Brian looking at some breathing stuff too and some MMA specific tasks and found some pretty impressive results. And so I was kind of like, there’s something to this breathing thing. And then Brian and I connected and somehow he and John got connected like Wednesday night. So UFC two 14 just happened last weekend. And so this is like Wednesday of fight week. So he gets on the phone with John on Wednesday. They’ve never met like he has no idea who he is and he takes him through some of these breathing protocols and John like immediately finishes and he’s like, can you fly down here this week? I’m going to fly you down here. Had him down there. And he had the whole team back there like doing these reading drills and it’s cool. They had a bunch of shops, like I’m in the locker room and Brian is back there taking through him all these breathing drills before the fight, before we walked down. And as he’s walking out of the cage and he’s doing all this breathing stuff and in between rounds he’s got them doing this stuff. And so it was cool Brian’s right next to Dana white and then like right in front of the Rock. And I was like, Oh, like you’re sitting in front of the Rock, like not next to the Rock you in front of the Rock. Like I think they just like, you’re coming down the cage and they didn’t have a spot for me, was like right here, stand right here. But anyways, so we got connected and the book is called unplugged, evolve from technology to upgrade your fitness, performance and consciousness. And so really it’s a guide to how to use fitness technologies, performance technologies. So think everything from heart rate monitors to HRV to dark fish or a mirror or any app, all that stuff. So it’s a guide to how to use those things, but how to also not use them and how they can screw you up the pitfalls and all that other stuff. So that just came out a few weeks ago. And it’s doing great so far. So you can check it out. The website, athleteunplugged.com or there’s honestly not much on the website though, but it’s up on Amazon which is great. Like I recommend getting the hardback over the Kindle because we spent a lot of time, it’s a very high quality pages and we put a lot of photos in there and we put a training program in the back as well and some guides and some rubrics and stuff. So it’s a very different experience getting on the Kindle. And Tim Ferriss wrote a section chapter for us and Hamilton did one. So it’s a pretty cool people come on board and it pretty awesome.

Andy Galpin [00:37:45]: Yeah, man. Thanks for the time. Again, the platform and again, keep doing this. This is exactly how we make the field better. So cheers to you for the whole website and all the products you do they’re all fantastic.

Corey Beasley [00:37:56]: Thank you so much.