The Shortcut to Upgrade Your Endurance, Strength, VO2 Max & More (Used By Top NFL Players)

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. When I first came across the topic of today’s episode, I thought, surely, this must be a scam. How can standing on a vibrating platform really change any parameters of your health or fitness or performance? To me, it seemed like another one of those 6 minute ab type infomercials where you just put something on and sit there, watch TV, and in theory, it transforms your health. Then I got the opportunity to try one of them out, and I was surprised.

Nick Urban [00:01:09]:
It was a lot more intense than I expected, especially when paired with movement. So I decided to look into the research into what exactly whole body vibration technology can do. Indeed, there is research on how it can help improve recovery, improve bone density, help with fat loss, lymphatic drainage, and therefore, detoxification, muscle power, cognitive function, hormonal optimization, and perhaps most important for me is the impact it has on different types of athleticism and overall fitness from flexibility and mobility to strength and power. We discuss everything you need to know about this technology, the benefits, use cases, drawbacks, and the things it actually can’t do. I also asked him about why some of the research showed inconclusive results. Our guest this week is Scott Hopson. Scott is an internationally recognized leader in human performance, coaching, and education with over 25 years of experience. As cofounder of Pivotal and PTA Global, he has delivered over 2,000 events, authored 30 accredited courses, and impacted more than 250,000 coaches, clients, and students in a 100 plus countries.

Nick Urban [00:02:32]:
His work spans Olympic associations, pro sports teams, universities, and top health clubs globally. So suffice to say, you’re in good hands. If you wanna see the research I’ve conducted into the this technology, the different products, the benefits, and all of this, I will put a link to my article in the description for this episode. And you can find the show notes at mindbodypeak.com / the number 192. If you wanna give the product that we discuss a shot, you can use the code urban, and that will save you 20%. And if you’d like to check out our guest’s work, you can find him on the Internet at pivotal dashcoaching.com. Now before we get started, a lot of you have asked how you can find resources. Perhaps you forgot a particular topic or you remember a guest name but didn’t know exactly what word they were saying.

Nick Urban [00:03:27]:
Perhaps you just wanna know all of the episodes related to one particular ingredient, biohack, or health optimization practice. Now you can get all of this and a whole lot more in the Mindbody Peak Performance AI chatbot. Just go to mindbodypeak.com/ai to get your answers. It’s almost like having me and my guests in your ear, and it’s totally free, open source. And if you try it, I’d love to know what you think. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode with Scott Hopson. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Scott Hopson [00:04:02]:
Hey, bud. Thanks for having me.

Nick Urban [00:04:03]:
So outlier readers will know that a long time ago, I wrote an article on vibration therapy, whole body vibration, and an aspect of health and wellness and performance that’s rarely discussed. Before we discuss that and a whole lot more today, let’s begin with the unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony.

Scott Hopson [00:04:27]:
Oh, that’s wow. Wow. Wow. Well, the start of my day is very simple. When I wake up early, I’m an early bird. If I’m at bed at 8:30 PM, I’m a happy boy. I wake up at 4:30 PM like clockwork. 4:30 AM, I should say.

Scott Hopson [00:04:40]:
So to lay there and not do anything remotely, digital, check your emails, check the fact, to lay there, breathe, and set my intention for a day. So that’s number 1. That’s a nonnegotiable. Right? Before the dogs are licking my face, before my partner wakes up, it’s it could be a minute. Ideally, it’d be 15 minutes. But before the world interrupts my agenda, did I set my intention with some deep breath? That’s number 1. Number 2, then I’ll expand that into some kind of meditation contemplation, with a cup of coffee. I love that.

Scott Hopson [00:05:11]:
Then I get on my bike I ride to the mountains I’m right near red rock national mountains and I play tennis for 2 hours and I ride back and as I ride back it’s not exercise it’s just movement look at literally taking in the trees and the colors and the mountains and the birds so that’s kind of my non negotiables every day like did I breathe did I set my intention did I meditate whatever you want to call that Many names. Did I move? Did I get in nature? That’s like my non negotiables and they could take many forms. Right? I could be hiking with the dogs. I could be in strength training but they all tick the same box. So that’s my non negotiables. And then the next one I would add is I’m a big fan of doing the one next thing, honoring your commitment. So, you know, we all have that list of to do’s where it’s up here on a piece of paper and a lot of them you don’t wanna do. It doesn’t matter because done beats perfect every time.

Scott Hopson [00:06:04]:
If you just honor your commitment and say, hey, I’m doing it. And in fact, maybe I’ll do it with a bit of gratitude. Even if it’s like paying the bills, do it. I find the world is a lot less stressful. So that’s another non negotiable is do what you said you were gonna do. And then what’s left of today is mine to do with as I choose.

Nick Urban [00:06:21]:
Yeah. I mean, I came across that concept called eating the frog a while back and there’s a lot of resistance. I feel a lot of resist resistance sometimes to doing that big and most important task. But once you knock the lead domino out of the way, then the rest of the day flows. And even if you do nothing else, after you’ve had the nice morning routine and you’ve accomplished the most important thing, then everything else is icing on the metaphorical cake.

Scott Hopson [00:06:43]:
A 100%. And for me personally, I find that, you know, doing the hardest thing first gives me motivation. However, sometimes doing the easiest thing first gives me momentum. And sometimes you just need to build momentum. And then the hard thing isn’t so hard. So it’s you know, do you need motivation, or do you need momentum? And then choose the thing that gives you that.

Nick Urban [00:07:04]:
So how do you determine which one to to choose?

Scott Hopson [00:07:07]:
Well, the low hanging fruit that I know I can do with my eyes closed is the momentum. You know, whether it’s answering the emails, paying the bills, hey, just get that little proposal to someone you said you would. Easy. It’s not a creative project. I don’t have to sit down and do a 3 year business plan. There’s no real risk associated to it. But the big stuff is like, wow, I have to create a new, education program to get globally certified. Okay.

Scott Hopson [00:07:31]:
That’s kind of significant and it’s gonna take a lot of time a lot of ingredients to the recipe But the longer I delay it the bigger the burden gets So maybe I need to start on just chat to 1 page 1 to build momentum You know Yeah, so it’s interesting. I guess my emotions lead the way Like, I the thing that I’m really resisting is the thing that’s really staring me in the face, you know, and what you resist persists. So I know, like, oh my god, it’s the 2nd week of saying I would do it and I still haven’t done it. And then you look back in your calendar, you’re like, oh, yeah. I said 3 times last week. I was gonna sit down for an hour and write that that thing and I didn’t even put pen to paper. Now it’s both important and urgent and it needs to be done.

Nick Urban [00:08:12]:
Yeah. So either way, it’s taking the time to recalibrate and review and and make sure that you’re actually eventually accomplishing those things. And if you’re not, then to adjust and try the other strategy perhaps.

Scott Hopson [00:08:23]:
Yeah. A 100% agree. And I’ve also experienced in myself and a lot of people I coach that, a lot of the anxiety and stress that comes with perfectionism, procrastination, what whatever it may be, is if I just do the one next thing that I can control, because most of life, you don’t get to control. In my experience, you don’t really get to write the script. But the few things you can control, if you don’t do those, they create overwhelming anxiety and unmanageability. So do the things that are within your control and let the rest go. And it tends to work out better than trying to fix manage and control the things that you actually have no control over anyway.

Nick Urban [00:09:02]:
Yeah. So you mentioned coaching. Tell me about your practice and what it is that you do.

Scott Hopson [00:09:08]:
Yeah. I’ve been a coach, an educator, and a consultant in health and human performance for 26 years, nearly 27. And that runs the full gamut of youth positive youth development, of which is my greatest passion, actually, especially 12 to 18 years of age, to, you know, the everyday general pop health, wellness, fitness, whatever you want to call it, to high end performance. So that’s elite performance, collegiate performance, professional soccer, International Olympic Associations, which I spend a lot of time with, Chester Folds. But I’ve also built and operated health clubs, athletic clubs, you know, recruited and managed thousands of coaches. So I do a bit of all of it. Depends on the day of the week and who’s in front of me. But my company, Pivotal, exists for one purpose, which is to empower human potential.

Scott Hopson [00:09:59]:
And we do that through coaching, educating, consulting. But really, the the vision is to empower human potential and whatever that is for the individual there is. Right?

Nick Urban [00:10:08]:
So it’s taking the Olympians up 1% and then perhaps the general population up 10%, 20%, but really helping anyone and everyone reach a higher level or their highest level.

Scott Hopson [00:10:20]:
Yeah. How do you manifest the next highest version of yourself, whatever that is for you, you know, whatever that is in whatever dimension. And it’s interesting what you say because, yeah, that 1 to 2% of the top level is a deal breaker often. But it’s like a needle in a haystack. Finding that 1% with so many variables, you think you know which one’s gonna give you the upgrade and you you really don’t a lot of the time. But I found with especially youth and everyday people we talk about raising the ceiling. I find more success if you raise the floor. If you do the fundamental things well, sleep hygiene, fueling, you know, mental emotional stress regulation, the floor rises.

Scott Hopson [00:10:59]:
So you’re more robust and resilient in the first place. You don’t always have to break through the ceiling to improve performance. Often, you need to raise your floor because it’s dropped so darn low from sleeping 4 hours a night and not eating and and stressing, you know, and hating your life. So I find raising the floor is better for most people and raising the ceiling for that 2% for the high performers. And then in between, this huge continuum, you know?

Nick Urban [00:11:25]:
Yeah. That’s great. And so I wanna go into that a little in a second. But also, when you say performance, are you referring to, like, sports or athletic performance or different facets of performance itself too?

Scott Hopson [00:11:36]:
Yes and yes. So I do a lot of sport performance, but the reality is that the key ingredients in the recipe of performance from someone wanting to be the best ceo in the c suite, someone wants to run their business and still have time for their 3 kids and 17 different sports they’re in and be home in time for dinner. That’s an overwhelming demand for performance. That’s actually more demanding than the pro athlete who gets paid to turn up and train every day. Or is it I’m 65, I’ve got sarcopenia, osteopenia. I’m worried about falling, but my kids have just had their first grandkids and now I want to be able to play with my grandkids and not hurt himself that’s performance for me I think it’s all performance yeah

Nick Urban [00:12:17]:
yeah I’m I’m with you on that so to go back to what you were saying just a second ago it’s about raising the floor for the average person, for most people, except for maybe people already at the top of their game just looking to go up a tiny bit more to be world class or above, perhaps leading the world in their chosen sport or domain. How do you go about helping people raise the floor? Because a lot of times we know, okay, I should sleep enough, I should breathe right, I should get light exposure, I should reduce stress, eat the right things.

Scott Hopson [00:12:48]:
Long list.

Nick Urban [00:12:49]:
Yeah. But then it’s one thing to know it, it’s another to do it because it’s much easier to pop a supplement and look for the longevity extending effects or the performance effects. Like, the pre workout supplements are huge because people are looking for a little bit of extra performance there, And actually making the lifestyle change is much harder. Do you have any tips on

Scott Hopson [00:13:08]:
It’s a little harder.

Nick Urban [00:13:08]:
On doing that? Because it it’s the same thing for both clients or coaches working with clients and individuals looking just to optimize their health and performance.

Scott Hopson [00:13:18]:
Yeah. And I we could talk 4 hours on that alone. Right? But I think the 2 things that consistently come up as, direct in the way, you know, when you find the way, when you find the why, you find the way. And so a lot of people say I wanna go from here to here. Or more importantly, I want to go from being this person to this person. That’s why I want to get there in the first place, whether it’s losing weight, bigger, faster, stronger, more health. It’s because this is the person you want to manifest. Okay.

Scott Hopson [00:13:43]:
But how do you want to get there? And one point why? So you’ve got to find the why behind the what. And so what that brings up for me is 2 things. Number 1, what’s the one next thing that you’re ready and willing to change? Because today health, wellness, longevity has become like algebra. It’s so complex and we’re drilling down on every facet of human physiology, mental capabilities, biohacking and now we’re going to people with a long list and saying hey this is just all the things you gotta do to sleep better. They’re like really? Oh my god. And and then here’s how you eat better and here’s how you breathe better and here’s how you move better. And they’ve got like an encyclopedia. It’s too complex.

Scott Hopson [00:14:21]:
And even if they understand it, which they do because it’s not education, there’s a picture of death on every packet of cigarette and people still smoke. It’s clearly not education. I know when I do this, I look, picture of death, but I’m not ready and willing to change yet. And so what are you ready and willing to change? That leads me as a coach into motivational interviewing and emergent listening. Without those skill sets, I don’t know you’re gonna find the answer. And then the other thing is you gotta meet people where they need to be met. It’s not about what I know is right and wrong, and right and wrong is relative anyway. It’s like, you know, how can I surround you with an environment to transform yourself? That is the art of coaching.

Scott Hopson [00:15:01]:
You know, anyone can look at a plate of food or an exercise or an ex and know what it should look like. And then you can look at someone doing it and go, that’s not what it should look like. Right? But it takes a coach to be able to say, so how do we go from a to b? I don’t think people lack information or education, and I don’t think they lack motivation or discipline. These are people as a judgment. Right? And they certainly don’t like willpower. You’re gonna tell someone who’s got 3 jobs, 4 kids, sleeps 4 hours, works 12 hours, takes them to every soccer game, does the dishes that that they’re they don’t have willpower and motivation. That that’s insane. Maybe they will deplete it.

Scott Hopson [00:15:36]:
Maybe all the gas in the tank is gone, especially up here from making a 1,000 decisions an hour. And that’s interesting when you look at glucose in the brain, oxygen in the brain, 2% of your real estate, but 20% of the engine that it takes. Wow. And this is where we are all day. Maybe you’re out of gas. And so, of course, you’ve got no energy left to decide maybe I should cook something better for myself, go to bed earlier, and move more. You don’t have any gas left in the tank to make that decision. So I think if we put down judgments, what are you ready and willing to change? And can I meet you where you need to be met? If you have those 2 at the heart of coaching, you’ve got a chance.

Nick Urban [00:16:11]:
And for the average person listening in who is not a coach, they can also just ask themselves those questions and figure out what the minimum viable change they can make is. Actually, I guess, the maximum viable change that they can maintain. So it’s like if you give yourself a hundred things, the huge list of the sleep stuff to do, and it’s taking 10 times longer to do your routine than than you have available, you’re not gonna do any of it. But if you just start small, add one thing on once you master the next or the first, then you can actually make the changes over time.

Scott Hopson [00:16:41]:
Now that’s a key word. I’m a big believer in the power of addition, not deletion. And when you look at change, no one wants you to change them. And ultimately, all change is an inside job, and we know that. As human beings, we crave autonomy, right, and mastery. So if I’m coaching you, what’s the one thing I can add into your daily lifestyle that I know is gonna give you the biggest upgrade? But right off the gate on this long algebra we’ve got, okay, if you’re not sleeping enough, we’ve got troubles. If you’re not fueling enough, nutrition, that’s a problem. If you’re not moving daily, I didn’t say exercise, moving daily, we got a problem.

Scott Hopson [00:17:18]:
And if you don’t have a way to identify and regulate your emotions and mental stresses, we have a problem. So they’re the big four. The rest of the details. Could you do with a bit more collagen and a bit more sea salt? Probably. But if you’re sleeping 3 hours a night, never exercising and you hate your life, I’m not worried about collagen right now. You know, that’s the reality. That’s what a 2% may be. So I would say to someone, what can you add into your life? Don’t take away.

Scott Hopson [00:17:43]:
Everyone’s telling to put that down. Don’t eat that. Don’t smoke that. Don’t drink that. Don’t do that. The brain just immediately, emotionally says back up because the emotional brain filters what goes into the cognitive brain. So if you’re a threat in any way, it’s giving you the finger saying that’s enough. And they’ll nod and smile, but they’re not coming back through your door.

Scott Hopson [00:18:01]:
So what can I add? Hey. Keep doing what you’re doing. Yeah. Right. I want you to drink this much more water per day and go to bed 30 minutes earlier. Because you take someone who’s sleeping 5 hours a night and say you gotta get 8 to 9 hours. That’s almost that’s ridiculous. That’s like your accountant saying, hey, I know you saved this much money this year.

Scott Hopson [00:18:20]:
I need you to double it next year. You’re like, sure. That that sounds I’ve got the same income. So how’s that gonna work?

Nick Urban [00:18:26]:
Yes.

Scott Hopson [00:18:27]:
And I think we have to flip the coin and say, if I add this to you and 2 weeks from now, you slept 30 minutes extra a day times 14 days, 7 hours of extra sleep. Woof. And you add 3 extra glasses of water a day every day. Oh, hydration’s up, sleep and recovery’s up, brain chemistry’s better, decision making is better. Right. Let’s talk about exercise. So I I really do believe in the power of addition. That’s the other thing I’d say to someone listening is, what are you ready, willing to change? What can you add that’s an upgrade? Don’t worry about a deletion.

Scott Hopson [00:19:01]:
Because if I take something away from you, it’s like the baby with the you start crying. Like, you wanna hold on to that thing. So keep your thing. What can we add?

Nick Urban [00:19:11]:
I like that model. And you’ve teed me up nicely for this one. What are the additions that you’ve seen work the most effectively or most universally across the people that you’ve worked with?

Scott Hopson [00:19:23]:
Oh, like the things that they can add into their lifestyle for the upgrades?

Nick Urban [00:19:27]:
Exactly.

Scott Hopson [00:19:27]:
Oh, well, without that sleep is just humongous. Right? I mean, we all know. Don’t need to belabor the point. It’s it’s funny now in in the the high performance biohacking where we’re gonna sleep. We’ve always talked about sleep. It’s not novel. You know, everything happens when we sleep. Learning happens.

Scott Hopson [00:19:44]:
Memory consolidation. We know this. The problem is society has created a lifestyle where we think it’s normal not to sleep to get up early and go go go go go and go bed late and go go go. So sleep is number 1 and I believe in compound interest. Give me that, you know, a $100 a month doesn’t sound like a lot, right? But in 20 years, you’ve got 1,000,000 in the bank. Can you give me half an hour? Can you just go to bed half an hour? You may not even fall asleep, but when you go to bed, no devices and just breathe. Contemplate your day, maybe a gratitude list, whatever it is we talk about. Half an hour.

Scott Hopson [00:20:18]:
That’s number 1. Number 2, hydration. Everyone’s dehydrated. Considering the body is 90% fluid because we talk about 80% blood. Right? But you got lymph and water. We’re 90% fluid. 2% is enough to, be detrimental to all cognitive and physiological performance.

Nick Urban [00:20:35]:
2% dehydration.

Scott Hopson [00:20:37]:
Yep. And 5% is, like, a big problem. Right? Everyone’s dehydrated. So the idea that you you’re gonna think feel, move better when you’re dehydrated is a is a if you just sleep a bit more and hydrate more, every cellular process in the body and the brain improves. And then number 3 is movement. And, again, it doesn’t have to be exercise or training, but we are wired for movement, every cell in the body, especially the brain, by the way. We can talk about muscles, bones, blood. Yes.

Scott Hopson [00:21:05]:
But the brain, the neurons in the brain crave play novelty challenge. So that’s the brain. Right? It says, basically, if you’re not moving, you don’t need me. And we literally become disembodied. This thinks that this is not important anymore. And the big one is 80% of communication in the body is upstream. It’s the heart. It’s the gut.

Scott Hopson [00:21:28]:
It’s the fascia telling the brain what’s going on. It’s not downstream. And so if the body’s not moving, it’s also telling the brain you don’t need me. So how do we create movement snacks? Movement on a daily basis. Have a snack here. Have a 5 minute snack there. Have a 2 minute snack there. There’s also be an hour meal at the gym all the time.

Scott Hopson [00:21:47]:
So sleep, hydration, and movement, in my opinion, are nonnegotiables. But add those in, everything would get better, and then we can get more granular and detailed about macronutrients, micronutrients, timing, quality of food, all that. Right? But if you haven’t got those 3, the battery’s dying anyway.

Nick Urban [00:22:05]:
Yeah. Well, my listeners are smart cookies, so they already know to do the basics such as those and also some of the other basics to really get the fundamentals of health and wellness performance dialed. And then other cooler, more fun and flashy stuff to add that you see as being helpful, what would those be?

Scott Hopson [00:22:25]:
On a big picture again. Right? We’re not talking about anything specifically like exercise or vibration. You just mean on big picture?

Nick Urban [00:22:32]:
Yeah. It could be big picture. I’m also thinking, like, you mentioned a lot of people are it’s not a lack of motivation, but they deplete their willpower throughout the day by having a 1,000 or more little micro decisions. And so to to me, optimizing the environments and more of the passive activities and tools and technologies we can use that allow us to not necessarily have to go out and expend a bunch of willpower to continue forward and do more things, but to be able to just have that available to us at all times.

Scott Hopson [00:23:06]:
Okay. So on that point end, ultradian rhythms, I think just look it up if you haven’t already, ultradian rhythms, they’re real, they’ve been here forever, it’s not new. Every system in the human being, not just the body, human being has natural cycles. And so we we all know the circadian cycle, right? But there’s a creativity cycle, a play cycle, a movement cycle, you know, and the point is we have waves of energy production. I’m giving it out, then we need to replenish it. And it’s typically around 80 to a 120 minutes. After that, if you don’t take 10 to 15 minutes to reboot, that system’s gonna just degrade. So are you willing to plan your work day, your creative day, your kids, whatever around cycles because linear doesn’t work.

Scott Hopson [00:23:52]:
You wanna burn out, you wanna become depressed, you wanna hate it with the thing that you actually love. I wanna go see my kids play soccer after, you know, being an Uber driver every day for free, you start to be like, oh, here we go again. Well, maybe you run out of energy earlier in the day so you don’t have enough left to enjoy your kid playing soccer. So I I think look up old trading rhythms, learn to cycle your energy and understand right now this morning for the next 2 to 3 hours is this a creative demand? Is this a production demand? Is it, say, logistic, operational, get stuff done, p and l’s? What is it? And frame your mind for that. And even within that 3 hours, right, 80, 90 minutes on, 10, 15 off, get out, breathe, go get some brain fuel. We call it super food superpower. Go choose foods that are gonna actually boost cognition and get you going, right, and help attenuate inflammation because stress, especially in the brain, creates inflammation. Okay.

Scott Hopson [00:24:46]:
Now go back to the thing you said you’re gonna do. So I think that’s a really good, tool is how am I gonna cycle my energy today? Don’t just wake up and say, here’s my 9 hour. No. How are you gonna cycle your energy? And it’s the morning is where you have energy to move and exert yourself. But you say I’m gonna work out in the evenings, it’s never gonna work. If that’s not how you’re wired, stop putting exercise at 7 pm when you just wanna sit down, have dinner with your family. Because now you’re going to the gym where you don’t wanna be, you don’t have the energy and you’re robbing your family from the joy that you wanted to share with them. So maybe you have the courage to flip it and say, you know what? The morning’s when I wanna get after it and the evening’s when I wanna shut down and connect to my family.

Scott Hopson [00:25:24]:
Then it’s your script. Write it. So I think ultradian ribbons are really cool and how to introduce superfood and superpowers that this brain and then the small brain in your gut because gut hygiene for me is another one that changes everything. Heal your gut and you heal every cell in the body.

Nick Urban [00:25:40]:
Yeah. It’s interesting. The ancient, like, medical systems like Ayurveda actually divided the day into different energy blocks and periods. So they had ways of optimizing long before we understood, before we now understand all these rhythms. There’s also like the circadian rhythm, there’s the ultradian rhythm, there’s the 7 day and I think month long rhythm for humans too and they’re less discussed and obviously, like, the seasons. So, like, there’s so many different intervals, but you can look at the research behind, like, the adverse health consequences like heart attacks and strokes.

Scott Hopson [00:26:12]:
Oh, it’s through the roof. Every disease that’s killing us today goes up if you don’t respect it.

Nick Urban [00:26:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. It goes up, but also certain days of the week are more associated with those types of events. Like, I think Monday is, like, the big one, because of the stress and because of the way the rhythms are not constructed with the way the way they go for most people and in modern society. So like having that knowledge and like being aware of what your body wants and needs at certain times and how it fluctuates can you can use that information to design a better health plan, better routine.

Scott Hopson [00:26:43]:
Yeah. So that brings you into intuition. And so I would agree wholeheartedly that following your intuition is is very powerful and important. But if you don’t ever listen to it, then you don’t know what it is. So it starts with, are you even tuning in inside to know what your quote gut, what your intuition is telling you? And most people go and go go that they’re not, they’re so tuned into the external world. They’re not even listening to what the internal world is screaming at them. And often that comes in the form of pain. And I’ve I’ve I’ve learned to love pain.

Scott Hopson [00:27:13]:
I embrace it, especially my clients because it’s a request for change. It tells you where but it doesn’t tell you why. And so that back pain could be mental, emotional, could be nutritional, could be sleep, could be structural, could be a stuck emotional trauma from the past. It could be a million things. So you coming to me with back pain is not scary. I said, wow. Your body has told us that it wants to change. Now I’ve got some questions and it’s gonna take time, but if you’re available to it, the magic can happen because that pain didn’t come overnight.

Scott Hopson [00:27:46]:
No back pain. So unless you had a a contact injury, you didn’t just suddenly hurt your back this morning. So, what’s going on? So I think intuition is really powerful, really powerful. And no system in the body works alone. So if one’s off, they’re all off.

Nick Urban [00:28:00]:
Yeah. If you have a lower back injury, you’re gonna have, like, compensation patterns and different things going on above and below. And, like, if you hurt your ankle, that’s not just gonna be a hurt ankle. It’s gonna change your entire gait pattern. You’re not gonna walk the same. You’re not gonna jog or run the same, And you can see that all the way up the spine if it continues long enough.

Scott Hopson [00:28:20]:
You’re seeing every cell in the body, actually. And and what we know about something like fascia today, which I would argue is the biggest brain in the body, it’s the biggest tissue in the body. You know, it connects everything. It’s not just skin and tendons and ligaments. It goes around your heart, it goes around your lung, it goes around your tongue. It’s everywhere. It’s like a security system. It’s constantly surveilling the external and internal environments.

Scott Hopson [00:28:43]:
What we call interoceptive awareness. Right? It’s constantly telling your brain, are we too hot? Is blood pressure too high? Is it too cold out? Is there a threat subconsciously? And so imagine someone broke into your house at 3 in the morning and they tried to crack the window, it would trigger the alarm. It wouldn’t just trigger the alarm on the window. It triggered the alarm in the whole house. All of a sudden, the police get called automatically from your security system. In fact, it activates the entire threat system. Well, cell biologists today are saying that, fascia is such a communication phenomenon. It communicates to every cell in your body including your DNA, which means pain can be passed down.

Scott Hopson [00:29:26]:
And so that pain in your lower back may not even be your lower back. But one thing’s for sure, if you’ve got pain in your lower back, it’s affecting your blood supply. It’s affecting your lymphatic system. Now it’s affecting your heart and lungs. So when I say it affects every system, it’s like, the whole house just went into we’re being attacked. Every cell to your DNA is impacted by your fascia communication. So a lot of work I do with people is tissue work, but I’m really trying to upregulate their fascia through feet, through hands, through wherever to tell the house, you’re safe. You’re safe.

Scott Hopson [00:30:03]:
Breathe. You’re safe. Because we could tell people to breathe, but if the system thinks it’s under threat, it’s really hard to breathe. Sometimes you gotta trick it into knowing it’s safe again.

Nick Urban [00:30:12]:
Yeah. And the breath is one of the great mechanisms to do that because it’s one of the automatic autonomic functions that we can control. And then we also if we don’t control it, it happens by itself.

Scott Hopson [00:30:23]:
20,000 times a day. So even if you sit down and meditate and you consciously breathe twice a day for 20 minutes, 98% is still unconscious breathing. So you have to somehow tell the system we’re good, We’re happy. We’re safe and breath and meditation visualization control all feed that But you can definitely go a bit deeper and say well, why is the system always under threat? And then you go to the next layer of What’s the thing under the thing? So yeah, I think today we’re in a really exciting phase of human longevity and and performance because we’re finally connecting dots between what we might call Eastern versus western what we might call scientific versus esoteric, but reality is they’re saying the same thing, which is we’re trillions of cells that respond to stress. And stress isn’t bad or good, it just is, You know, in fact, many many times the things we love most are the biggest stresses. So, exercise is a stress. You need it. So I think, yeah, we’re we’re in an exciting time where, hey, what are the things that I can introduce into my lifestyle that give me these really big upgrades for very minimal input? You know, there’s a big return of effort.

Nick Urban [00:31:34]:
Yes. You’re speaking my language. Let’s go into those and specifically whole body vibration. Why have you focused on that specifically?

Scott Hopson [00:31:42]:
Well, I would say focus on it, but in my in my recipes that I have, 1 on 1 group or entire organizations, it’s one of the primary ingredients that’s been in my recipe for over 20 years. I’ve been using this since, you know, early 2000, 2003 to be specific. So before we even had the hundreds of research documents that we have today, we had, like, maybe 20. But, someone from the Netherlands, from from from Holland came in and put 40s rocket ships in my health club at the time. And I was coaching youth. I was coaching, division 1 rugby, senior club rugby, and I was coaching everyday people, 65, 75, bone mineral. And three things happened. They couldn’t tell me the methodology, but they could say, here’s some science behind it.

Scott Hopson [00:32:25]:
Whoever I put on there, I documented everything back then, and they said, listen. I feel great when I come off. It was the same, I feel really good. Oh, that’s nice. I feel great. I was like, well, that’s a game changer. No. Very few people come off a treadmill and go, oh, I feel great after that.

Scott Hopson [00:32:38]:
Thanks thanks for killing me with those back squats. I feel incredible. I was like so they came off, and a lot of people are in pain, especially my rugby players and my active agent people, they were in pain, and they’re like, I’m not in pain. I was like, oh, so you feel good when you’re in pain. That’s interesting. Same thing was everyone moved better. So whatever it was their program that we led into next, they just moved more effectively efficiently, you know, better range, better rhythm, better controls, like, that’s interesting. And then third thing was performance went up.

Scott Hopson [00:33:06]:
If we were doing strength, they got stronger. If we’re doing speed, they got faster. If we’re doing endurance, they they could go further with lower heart rates. I said, this is strange. And that opened the door to, like, what don’t I know? And it’s been a 20 year journey, and now we know a lot. We know a lot. And I would honestly say, are there other technologies that do what it does? Of course. There’s strength technologies, speed technologies.

Scott Hopson [00:33:28]:
There’s mobility tech. But is there anything that does it all in one? No. I’ve never seen a piece of equipment that I can improve functional flexibility and mobility on. I can improve strength and power and endurance on. I can improve speed on bone mineral, muscle mass recovery, pain dampening in the same piece of equipment. So, you know, I love my dumbbells. I love my cables. I love my kettlebells.

Scott Hopson [00:33:49]:
Right? But they don’t do all of those things. So and the fact that it does it in so less time, that’s the game changer. Because if you look at the biggest blocks, societally to people moving regularly, accessibility is a big one. It’s it’s not, you know, open access to come and train with people, is it? Like, you’ve gotta have time and money to do it, and you gotta be able to get there and get back. So I think being able to say, here’s a device that all populations can greatly upgrade their performance on, whether it’s for 10 minutes as part of an hour program or it’s 20 minutes the whole program or my favorite, daily movement snacks? How can we use it daily to promote movement quality, upgrades in muscle, bone, whatever it is you’re training for and recovery? What can I do for 5, 6 minutes a day at the end of the day or the middle of the day to reboot the system? And I love that about whole body vibration is you can really dial up or dial down. Dial up or dial down. Sometimes it comes to me manically stressed that we might need a bit of dialing down first, and I can get that so quickly with vibration. It’s unbelievable.

Nick Urban [00:34:56]:
Yeah. Interesting. It’s also not one of those modalities that’s like, you have to really like crush yourself with, and it’s like, oh, do I really want to do this right now? Like, I don’t know if I have the energy for like a soul crushing workout. And this is I don’t know how exactly you use it. And I also want to know how you define what this is and we’ll explore that in a second.

Scott Hopson [00:35:16]:
Well, you don’t have to crush yourself. I mean, obviously you you do need progressive overload. So if you’re trying to stimulate a system to to become more robust and resilient, we know the simple super conversation. Hey. Here’s your system’s homeostasis. I need to stress you that it breaks you down, whatever that system is. And through nutrition recovery sleep, you come back more robust, resilient. We apply another stress.

Scott Hopson [00:35:36]:
That’s the generic model. Right? And everyone’s got a different capacity to handle that. But, again, the idea of raising the floor, I think a lot of people improve their health and performance when we take away some of the stress volume in their life and literally just moving in ways that feel good, promoting recovery, breath work, etcetera, people suddenly become stronger, more resilient. Did you crush them in strength training? No. I just took away some of the heavy load that was breaking them down.

Nick Urban [00:36:05]:
Yes.

Scott Hopson [00:36:07]:
You know, but some customers say, I need to gain, you know, £10 to be big enough to play in rugby team. Okay. That’s different. We got we gotta go to work. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s different. But most people aren’t in that category.

Nick Urban [00:36:18]:
Yeah. I see the same thing. I see that most people are going to the group classes where it’s a 45 to 75 minute Tabata, like, high intensity workout, and they’re really just crushing themselves with it. And they’re not getting the results, and it’s because they’re doing too much volume. Especially as they get older, they’re keeping they’re not able to recover in time because they’re doing so much that their nervous system and neurology and body cannot handle. Cortisol stays high for way longer after the workout and a lot of them would do better if they just cut back quite a bit and then added something like this at the end where it helps them either recover or it’s just less taxing on the body overall.

Scott Hopson [00:37:00]:
And a lot of that’s driven by, beliefs and values. Right? That the belief is I need to go crush myself to to improve. Another thing is, identity. That’s my tribe. That’s what we do. We turn up and we we we go to we puke together. You know, there’s a lot of reasons that drive it, but I would agree with the principle that, hey, if your battery is already empty and you go do that high intensity class for an hour, which by the way is an oxymoron, you can’t do high intensity for an hour. So BARTA, by the way, is the most people killed that study.

Scott Hopson [00:37:32]:
It was 4 minutes.

Nick Urban [00:37:33]:
It was a

Scott Hopson [00:37:34]:
4 minute study. How can you take 4 minutes and extrapolate it to 40? 4 minutes. You wouldn’t do that with medicine. You wouldn’t do that with medicine. A 10 milligrams is what you need for to dampen pain. Why don’t you just take 200? Because it will kill you. But we we do that in our industry all the time. But, yeah, I would agree.

Scott Hopson [00:37:51]:
One of the great things about whole body vibration is the science is there. I made no mistake. If you said to me, can you get stronger? A 100%. Can you get more powerful? A 100%. Can you improve metabolic demand, v o two oxygen? A 100%. Can you decrease body composition? Yes. Can you improve bone and muscle? Yes. I can give you dozens of studies on each of them over 25 years.

Scott Hopson [00:38:13]:
It’s it’s that’s not the conversation. The conversation is well then how? Well, there’s a lot of different recipes for each one. So the recipe for flexibility and mobility is different than the one for building bone mineral, right, which is different from hypertrophy, which is different from recovery. So one of the biggest misconceptions is, oh, you just stand on this thing, it does all that? No one ever says that. Would you just stand on a treadmill and expect to get faster? No. Then why would you apply that logic to it? So there’s a lot of misinformation and misconceptions. But, yeah, it it for me it’s a game changer because it often does exactly what you can do on ground based training in less time. It’s without doubt the safest way to introduce force and load into populations that can’t tolerate it right now especially overstress or people like I said that longevity 65, 75.

Scott Hopson [00:39:03]:
Right? We gotta stress you to develop muscle and bone, and I’m convinced today that muscle mass is even more important than the bone mass. If you don’t have enough muscle that’s producing enough force, you are gonna fall over. You are gonna fracture that hip. That’s the biggest problem we have and lower body power today is linked to more functional outcomes in active aging than any other parameter by far. Even cognition, lower body power links to cognition as we age. I can do that with vibration with actually no compressive load. Although I can bring on dumbbells and weight, of course, but I don’t have to. And I can do it in a fraction of the time because you might be on there for 30 seconds doing a set of squats, but it’s not 30 seconds.

Scott Hopson [00:39:43]:
It’s 30 contractions a second. So in 30 seconds, that’s 900 muscle contractions. So you might have said, oh, I did 12 reps. You might have moved up and down 12 times, but physiologically, your muscles did 900 things. So that’s a lot of work in a little bit of time. So that’s a that for me is just I don’t have any other technology that does that for me and people say oh I get it for 75 no come to the NFL a 100 percent of the teams use whole body vibration They’re all lined up by the squat racks where they’re doing their heavy mechanical loading. And you’ll see 6 foot 6, 3 20 pound linemen on on power plates doing their squats. Maybe with a little bit of extra load, but sometimes just body weight.

Scott Hopson [00:40:27]:
Because they said, well, we’ve been beating you up all week. Like, I don’t need to always beat you up. Sometimes we’ve gotta do those heavy squats and we go, but sometimes what you really need is to get this thing to do that, but without all the stress and load on you. And so it’s an incredible device that it can work for the top 2%, and it can work for our moms and dads with active agent. It can work with our kids whose bodies are hormones are dropping and they’ve suddenly gained £20 of muscle and their brain doesn’t know how to coordinate it.

Nick Urban [00:40:55]:
Yeah. Do you

Scott Hopson [00:40:56]:
know what I mean? That stands at 14, 15, 16, and that kills me that coaches look at kids that were moving great last year and now they don’t move well. And they’re like, oh, well, that’s because the brain doesn’t know how to coordinate all the extra muscle bone and ligaments they just laid down. The brain’s like, what is this stuff? So vibration is great there because the nervous system is the system that we’re most using with vibration, the nervous system. And that’s the one that’s the most important for movement is your nervous system. It’s the conductor of the orchestra. So I’ve got a neurological tool to improve movement quality, movement efficiency, ad load safely in as little as 10 to 20 minutes within the session. Why wouldn’t I use that? And so that’s why I’ve been using it for over 20 years across all those populations. It it does what it says it does.

Scott Hopson [00:41:42]:
The research is pretty abundant.

Nick Urban [00:41:45]:
Yeah. One thing that I was just thinking of, I actually don’t know the answer to this. When we get injured or I guess we lay down a bunch of new muscle, we don’t necessarily have the ability to recruit all those muscle fibers, especially after an injury. Your body’s like, it’s not safe, so I’m not I’m going to like artificially limit your ability to do this. And then some technologies and devices that I’ve come across outside of this realm can help with what’s called neuromuscular reeducation, I think that’s what it’s called. And it helps you, like, get stronger, not by necessarily doing a bunch more work like you would think you’d have to, but it helps you, your brain and your nervous system, your body, become more able to recruit muscle fibers, the ones that you already have. So therefore, the net result is that you’re able to do more of what you currently have. You’re more efficient.

Nick Urban [00:42:32]:
Can whole body vibration do that as well?

Scott Hopson [00:42:35]:
Exactly what it does. So whole body vibration is mechanical vibration. It’s not electrical or magnetic. It’s mechanical. But if you even just look at the one zero ones of of human anatomy, we’re filled with things called mechanoreceptors. They are responsible for movement. You have to stimulate your mechanoreceptors to move, which means they respond to mechanical vibration. So yeah.

Scott Hopson [00:42:54]:
And what it does is it actually subconsciously below the level of brain, it’s in your spinal cord, turn on those tissues. And in the presence of pain in particular or injury, we get inhibition. So the nervous system says, man, if if my shoulder is hurt, I’m gonna inhibit the tissues around it. The the the we call it the software. And the nervous system says, I’m gonna make sure you can’t turn that stuff on. Well, the irony is movement is the healing factor. Imagine getting your hips cut out. It’s brutal.

Scott Hopson [00:43:23]:
They’d need to cut you open, clamp you, snap it, throw the old you in the bin, put in a new a new, material that’s not human, ceramic, titanium, whatever, stitch you back up. And within 3 hours, they say you gotta go walk because if you don’t walk now, it gets harder and harder. So this is a brutal surgery that cut a piece of your body out, put something fake in, and even the surgeon is saying, you gotta move. But people come into us with shoulder pain and say, oh, don’t move it. Are you kidding me? They just cut my mom’s hips out, and she’s walking up the stairs in 3 hours. Movement is the solution. Movement is the medicine. Vibration says, listen, I know that phone call between your painful shoulder and the brain right now, they’re not picking up.

Scott Hopson [00:44:05]:
I’m gonna bypass it. I’m gonna bypass the phone call. I’m gonna turn those things on. That, through mechanoreception, allows you to move. It also dampens pain. That’s why we see a lot of vibration techniques to dampen pain and then the brain goes, oh, look at that. I’m moving. You literally reminded your brain that it’s safe to move.

Scott Hopson [00:44:25]:
Now you’ve got that phone call back. This has been going on in physical therapy for decades with all kinds of electrical magnetic vibration. We’ve just added mechanical to the equation. So it it it’s not new science. The principles have always been there. We’ve just never seen it in a commercially available way that we do now. And so we as consumers are like, well, what’s that? Every physical therapist would know what vibration is. Every orthopedic would know what vibration is.

Scott Hopson [00:44:51]:
So it’s interesting. Right? It’s always been there. It’s just new in our perceptual vision. But it does exactly what you said. It takes inhibited dormant tissues that I’m gonna turn you on, and I’m gonna remind the brain it’s safe to move. In fact, we need to move. And that’s why pain goes down and movement goes up, like, rapidly with vibration. A lot

Nick Urban [00:45:09]:
of times when the brain or the body inhibits certain things, it down regulates hormones. There’s an underlying reason for it. And if we really understood everything that’s going on behind the scenes, like, deep in the body, all the biochemical processes at a much better level than we currently do, maybe in 10 years, maybe in a 100 years, it would all make sense, and it would make sense to treat and work on may not treat, but work on the root cause of whatever is causing the hormone changes, for example. Is there a real safety reason that the body inhibits the ability to recruit those muscle fibers? And is overriding that with any of these types of technologies actually safe? Or is there a potential to, like, really mess things up just by following, like, the normal protocols?

Scott Hopson [00:45:55]:
Not really. You you guys sound like a lot of people, usually their pain is not really structural. There are people that have structural pain. Right? And it could have been coming for years. Joint degeneration, herniations, bulging. Okay. That’s built over time. You’ve got a structural problem.

Scott Hopson [00:46:09]:
But even then, 99% of the time, they don’t need surgery. They go to physical therapy or a chiropractor who uses movement based interventions to get the disc back where it should be.

Nick Urban [00:46:21]:
Yeah.

Scott Hopson [00:46:22]:
Now a chiropractor will manually introduce movement. Uh-huh. Physical therapists will have you perform the movement. Yeah. But it’s about movement. I can introduce movement into the body, or I can get the body to move. Both are wonderful, but they’re movement based interventions. Now they may use all kinds of devices to get you out of pain for a few minutes, so now you can breathe, and now we move.

Scott Hopson [00:46:46]:
But we have to move. There’s just no way around it. So unless you have some kind of structural acute damage that you’re not aware of, then movement won’t make it worse.

Nick Urban [00:46:55]:
Yeah. So if you have a broken arm or a broken leg, you wouldn’t necessarily wanna be using this.

Scott Hopson [00:47:00]:
Right. Of course not. Yeah. Of course not. But it’s interesting again that following surgery, people are like, you gotta go move straight away. You know, just look at the the the most everyday one is giving birth. That is deeply traumatic. I caught both of my kids at the end.

Scott Hopson [00:47:15]:
I was like, I don’t even know how that’s possible. Like that came out of that and it’s traumatic. And and that the damage that’s done, they don’t say go home and don’t move for a week. You go home within 24 to 48 hours if the baby’s healthy, mom’s healthy, and you’re back to picking up your groceries and you’re back to picking up your baby and feeding them. Okay. That’s weight training, isn’t it? Picking up a baby in an arm and that’s weight training. You’re walking around with a baby in your arm for hours. Okay.

Scott Hopson [00:47:40]:
Pick up a pick up a 6, 8 pound, dumbbell. Do a bicep curl in one arm only and just bounce it for hours and see how you feel. Weight training, your baby’s weight training, your laundry is weight training. So if we just take away the idea of exercise and just call it movement, I think it gets a lot clearer. Are you clear to go pick up your laundry and your baby? Yeah. Are you cleared to sit on and off the toilet? Yep. That’s a squat. We don’t call it a squat, but you can’t get on and off the toilet without squatting.

Scott Hopson [00:48:08]:
Can you get in and out of the car yet? That’s a squat in a very strange position. And you’re holding your baby or your bag when you do it. Okay. But we can’t do some basic reeducation through movement, strength, feeling. Doesn’t make sense, and there’s zero evidence it will hurt you. It hurts you when you do the wrong movement at the wrong time for the wrong person. Well, that’s bad coaching. You know? It wasn’t movement that was the problem.

Scott Hopson [00:48:31]:
That was the coach that was the problem. So, you know, vibration is a really powerful healing technology in the right hands. If you don’t know how to use it, there are ways to get educated or people to ask. But I I have found it to be phenomenal for healing.

Nick Urban [00:48:46]:
Scott, I think we should take a step back and define what whole body vibration is. It seems self explanatory to me, but it might not be as straightforward as I’m thinking. Yeah.

Scott Hopson [00:48:56]:
No. It probably isn’t. Right? You’re on these platforms, of which there’s a handful that are really good and do what they say, and there’s a lot that don’t, and you’re on it, squatting, lunging, push ups. Well, I think any movement you do on the floor, you’re doing on it. It’s not just shaking. The ones that I use, power play, are vertical vibration, which means they primarily go up and down. It leaves you. So here you are standing when you’re doing your squat.

Scott Hopson [00:49:19]:
It doesn’t just shake. It leaves you and comes back, but it’s only a few millimeters. Does it 30 to 50 times a second? That would, like, be walking down the street and the ground leaves and comes back. Well, every time that happens, 2 there’s 2 outcomes. 1, when it leaves you, there’s a moment of instability. All the proprioceptors, mechanoreceptors in the brain and the body say, wow, the ground just went missing. We need to turn on so that we don’t fall over. But the real magic, in my opinion, is when it comes back.

Scott Hopson [00:49:48]:
Because when it comes back, it applies little micro hits of force to your body. We call it ground reaction force. When you walk down the street, when you walk off the curb, when you walk down the steps, when you jump up and then you land, the ground hits your back. When you hit the ground, it hits you back whether you’re stepping, jumping, or running. In the absence of that, all bets are off, which is why in space, 0 gravity, you don’t weigh anything. You need gravity ground reaction to stimulate strength, bone, and muscle. So this is happening 30 to 50 times a second. You become unstable, false, unstable, false, unstable, false, 30 to 50 times a second.

Scott Hopson [00:50:28]:
That’s what it does, those two things. As a result of that, stimulates nervous system, musculoskeletal system to turn on and get ready for that force whilst you’re doing squat, lunge, push, pull, plank, whatever it is. But it’s not that compressive load that you’ll get with, say, free weights, which again are perfect. I use them. You know what I mean? But there’s not something compression you down to the ground. It’s actually the ground leaving you and coming back. And then what I really love about power plate, which is my product of choice, is it doesn’t just go up and down. It also goes forward and back and side to side because that’s life.

Scott Hopson [00:51:01]:
If you’re getting in your car, you’re definitely moving sideways. If you’re getting out of the chair, you’re definitely moving up and down. If you’re playing sport, you’re going all over the place. You’re chasing your grandkids, you know. So, that’s what it is. It’s just a mechanical platform that moves up and down 30 to 50 times a second and creates those two responses, instability and ground reaction force. As a result, everything in the system has to turn on, but it’s doing it so rapidly. You’re doing a lot of work in a little bit of time.

Nick Urban [00:51:28]:
Yeah. And I’m gonna assume that the parameters, the number of times per second, and the planes that it moves in are gonna vary depending on what your use case is. Are there any, like, hard and fast parameters that you recommend for people to use?

Scott Hopson [00:51:45]:
Well, yeah, there’s a couple of things that are really simple to follow. Number 1, that, you know, if you look at a meta analysis of all the research on different products, because some of them also do this, like the old teeter totter at the playground if you grew up in the seventies and eighties, right? One of those. And, so they’re the 2 main kind of, categories. 20 to 45, 50 hertz. Let’s say 20 to 50 hertz frequency, how often it does it, it’s the sweet spot. If you go lower than that, I’m not sure you’re getting the benefits you think you are. In fact, if you go too low, there could be some risks. If you go higher than that, you’re not getting any return of investment, but you’re now stressing the body a lot more.

Scott Hopson [00:52:21]:
So 20 to 50 is kind of the sweet spot. That’s number 1. Number 2, if you’re doing like flexibility, mobility, stability work, warm up work, it’s gonna be like 25 to 30 Hertz on a low amplitude. If you’re looking for strength, it’s gonna be 30 to 40 Hertz, sometimes

Nick Urban [00:52:41]:
up

Scott Hopson [00:52:41]:
to 50, but it’s a very unique case. And the methodology of that is very unique. 30 to 40 Hertz, high amplitude. Now recovery is the interesting one. If you do massage, circulation, pain damping, fascial release, you can go one of 2 ways. You can go a lower frequency high amplitude. So it’s doing it less, but it’s traveling more each time. Or I can really turn up the dials and I want 50 Hertz, but a smaller amplitude, and you’re gonna get a very different kind of release.

Scott Hopson [00:53:09]:
So if I want more circulation, lower frequency, bigger amplitude, just relax, massage, let it get in there and do its job. But if I want, say, some fascial relief, more tissue, I wanna stimulate, then I’m going higher. If I wanna just breathe and relax and not even think about life, I’m going higher.

Nick Urban [00:53:26]:
Sounds like for general health and well-being, it’s probably best to do a combination of the low frequencies and high frequencies and also to vary the amplitude.

Scott Hopson [00:53:38]:
Yeah. And just like traditional strength conditioning science, you know, there’s a progressive overload continuum. Like, where do you start? When and how do you progress? And so couple of things. Number 1, I mean, the company I I choose, PowerPlay, they have an app with all the methodology on there. What do you do for movement preparation, mobility, stability, strength? It’s all on there. The movements, the loads, the products. So just don’t guess. Just download an app because it’s based in 20 years of science.

Scott Hopson [00:54:04]:
That’s number 1. Number 2, if I’m doing strength training on it, the first thing I’m gonna improve or increase is my volume of work. So I’m gonna work for a longer duration of time at the same settings. Okay. Then I’m gonna make the movements more complex, more demanding, bilateral, 2 legs to unilateral, 1 leg, whatever it may be, single plane, multiple planes. Now frequency goes up first. That’s the first dial that you turn up is frequency. But just like on the ground, if I turned up the load on your barbell, you’re gonna do less work.

Scott Hopson [00:54:34]:
You can’t lift heavier and go longer. It doesn’t doesn’t work like that. There’s intensity and volume. So as I take up the intensity, your volume goes down. So as I as I turn up the frequency or amplitude, I have to work for less time under tension, just like I would on the ground. And I go from 30 to 35 to 40, and I keep building up my volume. And then I say right now, I’m gonna go from low to high amplitude. That’s the biggest intensity dial.

Scott Hopson [00:54:58]:
Make no mistake. When you take up the amplitude, which is how far it travels, and so in millimeters, you double the work. Double. So now let’s say I’m on 40 hertz low and I take the amplitude up, you gotta go back to 30 hertz. You you you wouldn’t double the speed on a treadmill. You wouldn’t double the the amount of load on a barbell back squat. Right? You wouldn’t double your vertical jump in in one session. So, as you take intensity up frequency or amplitude, volume goes down.

Scott Hopson [00:55:26]:
And between the 2, frequency goes first, amplitude second. Amplitude is the biggest upgrade you make in terms of of demand on the body. You’re working a lot harder when you go from low to high. A lot harder It’d be this if I said to you you’re going to run from one end of your house to the other end And I timed you and took you 5 seconds And I said right here’s what we’re gonna do now. You’re gonna run there and back in the same 5 seconds. You’d be like, that’s I can’t do that. So when your distance, your double when you change amplitude, you’re changing the distance. So if you double the distance, woof, and you’ve increased the frequency, that’s a lot of extra work.

Nick Urban [00:56:04]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Can you walk me through at a high level, like all the different things, the use cases of whole body vibration? You’ve already mentioned a bunch of them, but let’s get them all in one place.

Scott Hopson [00:56:17]:
Well, well, yeah, it’s a really long one now. You know, when we first started, here were the big three, bone mineral. That was where it all started, mate. And what’s interesting today, we think bone mineral loss, you know, osteopenia, osteoporosis, like 55 and over. No, it’s absolutely not. It’s 30 and over. It shouldn’t be, but it is. And today in America, other countries follow suit.

Scott Hopson [00:56:38]:
The average life expectancy of males is 78 years. It’s going down every year, which means that midlife is 39. So if you’re 39 or older, you’re halfway there. So that’s actually if I hate you. You’re the you’re you might, oh, I’m only 39. You should be worrying about your bone and muscle right now. So bone, a 100%. Muscle, yes.

Scott Hopson [00:56:57]:
Strength, yes. The really surprising one was power. People were like, man, how does it make you more powerful? And but if you’re doing this with your tissues, 30 times a second, that’s explosive. It just doesn’t look like what we associate with explosive, but it actually is. So your nervous system has become explosive. So that side of things we’ve known for two and a half decades or more. The things that really excite me today, there’s 3 that come up. Number 1 is neck up.

Scott Hopson [00:57:25]:
So we’re looking at what is it doing to cerebral blood flow. Wow. Improving cerebral blood flow, which means what’s it doing to inflammation? Decreasing. Wow. So you’re telling me that I’m increasing oxygen rich blood to the brain. I’m getting rid of and flushing toxin rich fluids away from the brain. I’m stimulating the lymphatic system, which is huge up here. Wow.

Scott Hopson [00:57:52]:
How many diseases and disorders are associated with inflammation of the brain today? A lot. K. That’s that’s one thing that really excites me. Okay. What about cognition? We’re seeing studies now in mild dementia, senile dementia, and how it’s improving cognitive decline, meaning the opposite. It’s slowing it down and improving, cognitive capacity. That wow. How many people would that impact? And then we’re also seeing it in terms of systemically if I think of, the fluids in the body circulating levels of hormones, what it does to cortisol.

Scott Hopson [00:58:29]:
But the one that’s really blew me around recently was BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is essentially miracle growth for the brain. This is it. Right? You want those neurons to grow and spread, BDNF are it. And, interestingly, we know similarly to play. Play is one of the biggest ways we stimulate BDNF in the human brain because neurons that fire together wire together. The brain is competitive real estate. So, you know, 50,000 thoughts a day, overwhelming. 98% are the same as yesterday.

Scott Hopson [00:59:03]:
So let’s hope yesterday was a good day. 80% are negative. So your brain is already most of the real estate is taken up by yesterday’s thought patterns, your habitual thought patterns. What can you give it that’s new, that’s a contrast that has variability and novelty because that’s what the brain loves. And vibration seems to be doing this by stimulating the nervous system rapidly in different directions bdnf is going up wow well that’s miracle grow that now means I’ve got new real estate available for purchase so now I have other decisions I can make because I have different real estate in the brain So I I just I find this side of it even more exciting to me is that we’ve got the neck down stuff. Yes. That’s important. Bone, muscle, functional power, and lower body, huge for for longevity.

Scott Hopson [00:59:57]:
But what about neck up? And so I’ve seen the last 6, 7 years of studies around cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer’s, blood pressure, hypertension, attenuation of inflammation, BDNF. Okay. Well, we’re we’re not in fitness now. That’s true health and well-being. That excites the heck out of me, and vibration is ticking a lot of those boxes. Why are we not all screaming about it? I’m not sure. You know, but I think that’s a really big deal that someone can get on there and for 20 to 30 minutes, 3 times a week, start to offset cognitive decline, start to lower blood pressure, start to improve VO 2 max. How’s that linked to longevity? Oh, yeah.

Scott Hopson [01:00:43]:
There’s studies on VO 2 max and Really? And vibration. Oh, multiple. I I got 5 on my computer right

Nick Urban [01:00:48]:
now. Wow.

Scott Hopson [01:00:48]:
It improves v o two max. So if it improves v o two max, bone, functional power and muscle mass in the lower body, cognition, decrease information, but right there are 5 of the big bio hacks and people just get on their move. Yes. There’s methodology to it. But the point is that’s that’s game changing technology. And if you can microdose it like movement snacks, you don’t have to go to the gym 3 times a week and eat. In fact, you’re not gonna. Can you use it for 10 minutes a day every day? Sometimes for recovery, sometimes for mobility, sometimes for strength, sometimes to just move in ways that feel good and stimulate the brain.

Scott Hopson [01:01:27]:
Yeah. Do that daily. You can’t overdose on movement snacks. You can over train, but you can’t over move.

Nick Urban [01:01:33]:
For people listening in VO 2 max is another one of those proxies and biomarkers, that’s highly correlated with longevity and health span too.

Scott Hopson [01:01:43]:
A 100%. So it’s basically if you look at your metabolic engine, I personally don’t call it cardio because it’s a lot more than that. It’s a lot more than just your heart. Right? It’s the ability of all the cells in your body to consume oxygen, which is kind of like our how we do it, how we stay alive. And so the bigger the engine and the more efficient the engine, the better. Makes sense. We’ve always known it in athletes. We’ve always known it and it’s not that simple.

Scott Hopson [01:02:08]:
Then there’s, you know, how do you use that engine in performance? But go figure that the bigger and more efficient your engine is, like your car, the longer you can stay in the race. It’s not surprising. But the fact is that science now has said unequivocally, grip strength is still there. Makes sense because our feet our feet are there so we can explore the world. It’s how we move around. Right? Our hands are there so we can engage the world. So it makes sense to me. Everything we do from writing to reading to playing music to picking our babies up to holding our groceries Our grip’s kind of a big deal grip strength highly correlated to longevity vo2 max engine correlated muscle mass correlated functional power functional power deeply Correlated and number 5.

Scott Hopson [01:02:57]:
They’re not in order is mental resiliency stress those 5 are the big five if you do a meta analysis that are connected to not only just living longer, but vitality, longevity. I mean living longer sicker doesn’t solve the problem, right? So for me, yes, we can get really detailed on range of motion and posture and what yeah. There’s there’s an importance to that, but If you can’t hold things for the rest of your life if you’re losing bone and muscle if your legs don’t produce power If you don’t have a metabolic engine and you don’t have tools of resiliency up here chances are bad things are coming down a train track

Nick Urban [01:03:31]:
Yeah. Those are all very promising and important. I didn’t know the VO 2 max fact about whole body vibration. And I also have read and researched this a bit, and there seems to be a bunch of other ones too that didn’t necessarily fit into either of those categories. Curious about your thoughts on those and things like natural detoxification. And I know there’s claims about weight loss, whether or not that’s true. What are your thoughts?

Scott Hopson [01:03:54]:
Weight loss is an outcome to a stress rat. So, you know, breath work and sleep can be weight loss. So so for me, I I don’t talk about weight loss because that’s an outcome, if that if that makes sense. And you could follow all the protocols, but if you don’t sleep, you don’t eat right, and don’t hydride, weight loss is irrelevant. But what I will tell you is the research around visceral fat was very exciting. So what they because that’s the one that really matters, not peripheral, but visceral. Right?

Nick Urban [01:04:19]:
Yeah. Well, you explain what it is real quick.

Scott Hopson [01:04:21]:
It’s around your organs, you know, the stuff that keeps you alive. So I can you can look at my abdominals and say, man, you you got fat around your abdominals. Yeah. But it’s not inside. It’s on the outside. I’m okay with that. You know? So if I’ve got right now 15, 16% body fat, I’m very happy. But if most of that was around my organs, that’s not good Whereas someone could have 20 25 body fat and virtually no visceral fat.

Scott Hopson [01:04:43]:
They’re in a better shape than me, you know, so visceral fat’s a whole different thing So there was a study that they did in the whole body vibration said this group you’re going to exercise traditional. This group, you’re gonna exercise with vibration, and we’re gonna do 3 times a week. Here’s your loading prowess, and we’re gonna measure your baseline visceral fat and then your end in visceral fat, and then we’re gonna stop training. Now here’s the kicker. Then 6 months later, after no training, we’re gonna see, you know, how much of it came back. Both groups trained. This group definitely dropped visceral fat. Vibration group dropped even more visceral fat.

Scott Hopson [01:05:17]:
Stopped training. 6 months later, they got their fat back. They did not. Yeah. So you can’t extrapolate that and say, oh, then that’s for life. No. You you can’t keep moving. But I think it’s really fascinating to me that after they stopped exercising, the vibration group kept their visceral fat down.

Scott Hopson [01:05:37]:
So there’s definitely something at a cellular level going on with vibration that the body loves a lot. So, yeah, I can talk to that one. And as for detoxification, well, it makes sense. That’s fluids. So, again, people just think of blood, but you gotta look at lymphatic system. And if you look at the thing that if you look at, like, especially the big six areas of the lymph nodes in the body, got up here, you got here, you got under the armpit, you got by your, your adrenal well, not your adrenals, your, your spleen, you’ve got your groin, back of your knee, and your foot. Okay? If I can stimulate those areas, not up here necessarily, but everywhere else, with mechanical vibration, mechanoreceptors, then it’s not just the muscles that it’s going to stimulate because wherever you’re touching a muscle there are blood vessels behind there, arteries and veins, but also lymphatic vessels. All systems run together, especially in those big areas.

Scott Hopson [01:06:30]:
And so we’re seeing that lymphatic flow improves with vibration, whether it’s done actively, mobility work, straight work, or passively, like massage, which, again, when I talk about recovery, attenuating, stress and inflammation, that’s primarily because of the fluids that it stimulates, of which one is the lymphatic system, which is your recycling system. It’s taking all the trash out. So, yeah, that’s how vibration is impacting, toxin removal is through stimulating your lymphatic system. And if you know where you have most of your big loads, then you can get more strategic about where you might do your massage, as an example.

Nick Urban [01:07:07]:
And perhaps the most famous of all, or at least up on that list, is the effect, on of whole body vibration on hormones, the endocrine system, and specifically human growth hormone.

Scott Hopson [01:07:20]:
Yeah. The early studies on that were almost too good to be true. Looking at, growth hormone, and IGF-one, insulin growth factor, and testosterone, and at the same time, looking at its counterpart, cortisol, but they were actively done. So these were we were these were younger populations that were doing, like, strength training on there They were doing their squats. They were doing a push up on there And they assessed very acutely Following that stimulus what happened to these hormones? Well, you know as well as I do that actually during the stress of exercise cortisol goes up. It has to go up Cortisol is not bad, but a chronic systemic increase in cortisol is bad. If you didn’t have cortisol, you couldn’t move, you couldn’t play, you couldn’t get out of bed. So cortisol is good.

Scott Hopson [01:08:03]:
So when I exercise, I expect to see those hormones go up, adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine, and then after recovery in the next 24 hours or so, I expect to see a boom, a spike in growth hormone testosterone as a response to that stress that says we gotta lay down new tissue, we gotta be bigger and more resilient, but they did it acutely. And what I found is at the end of the session, growth hormone went up, IGF 1 went up, and cortisol went down, like, acutely. So that was really exciting. So, yes, during the active use of vibration, there seems to be a tendency for the growth hormones, the anabolic hormones, to go up and the catabolic to go down. What no one’s ever done, though, is a long term longitudinal study, like, hey, a year or 2 years later, could you know, it’s research. Right? There’s too many other variables. Like, was it because they were, experienced trainers and they went really hard, or would it be the same with, you know, novices who were new to training? What would happen if it was done every day? What would it? But, yeah, there’s multiple studies that show a positive increase in anabolic hormones acutely following exposure to active whole body vibration, meaning your training, and also a decrease in cortisol. So, again, I don’t wanna just say everything’s good and everything’s bad because you see some of the city claims out there about 1,000 of percent in HDH, you’d be dead.

Scott Hopson [01:09:24]:
Your heart would implode. If you had 3,000 improved 3,000 percent increase in in HDH every day, you’d be dead. You know? And culture is not bad, but it’s bad all day, every day drinking it.

Nick Urban [01:09:35]:
So you’ve mentioned something important here and that not all the studies are showing the exact same thing. And when I looked into even that, there were some studies that showed no impact or an insignificant impact of whole body vibration on those hormones. And when I actually looked into the studies themselves, a lot of them use different systems, different

Scott Hopson [01:09:57]:
Different methodologies. With those systems.

Nick Urban [01:10:00]:
So help me understand how to go about choosing the right one because we all want these benefits.

Scott Hopson [01:10:06]:
It’s a really hard question to answer. We got and the reason is that it’s not about which product. That’s an easy one to answer. Right? It it’s really easy for me, but the methodology is different.

Nick Urban [01:10:16]:
How do you yeah. Okay. How do you choose a good product? Because I’m not sure that when I was looking at the studies, they were all using high quality products that were even capable of yielding the results they’re hoping to get.

Scott Hopson [01:10:28]:
Right. So that’s the thing. If you you gotta look at what the product is the product stimulating the system in the same way that the previous studies did? And then the big one is the protocol or the study design. The methodology is if they’ve taken a completely different methodology, then you’re gonna get a different result. Example, if in one study they said, listen, we’re gonna have a work to rest ratio of 1 to 1. So you’re gonna do squats for 45 seconds and you’re gonna rest for 45 seconds, and then we’re gonna do that 5 times. Okay? I got 1 to 1, 5 sets of 45. Done.

Scott Hopson [01:10:59]:
And they’ll give you a a frequency. Maybe it’s 40 hertz high. It’s 35 hertz high. So in my mind, I’m like, that’s pretty high vibration and high amplitude. So what it basically says is I’m gonna give you a high stress level, but then I’m gonna let you recover, And then we’re gonna go again, and we’re gonna do it for a handful of times. Okay. If I did that on the ground with a barbell or a cable, I did 40, 45 seconds of of work to failure and recovered and went again, I would expect to see a stimulus of hypertrophy. So that’s gonna give me human growth hormone.

Scott Hopson [01:11:29]:
And the study over here says, right, we did 2 minutes of squats. Okay. Stop right there. For 2 minutes of squats is endurance. If I did that on the ground, I wouldn’t get HDH. I get cortisol. So who you can’t compare an endurance methodology to a hypertrophy study or a strength study So you have to dig into like what was the product? Was it this one? Was it this one? Were they at 20 hertz? Were they at 50 hertz? Was it on off recover to fatigue, or was it just like endurance? We’re gonna keep going for 10 minutes. And so that’s what makes it difficult.

Scott Hopson [01:12:01]:
The methodology is so contrasting, but you’ve got to apply the same physiology you would on the ground. If I wanted endurance, I would do this one. Right? I wouldn’t expect growth hormones from that. You don’t get growth hormone running a marathon. You get it from doing your your high intensity work, and then you gotta say, but was it really high intensity or was it, like we said earlier, the crazy people thinking 45 minutes of continuously dying? You know, that’s not that’s not that’s you’re just killing yourself doing endurance. So you’ve got to look at that stuff, but the product is easy. Is the product you’re buying, does it have science behind its own products? So if it’s vertical vibration, it’s one of the biggest reasons I’ve used PowerPlay for 20 years is they can show me dozens of studies on the PowerPlay. But they can also say, here’s what we are, vertical vibration, and here’s the other studies in vertical vibration.

Scott Hopson [01:12:48]:
Great. You’re validating your own product as well as the category of that product. But if your product doesn’t have any research to support, you know, the type of product it is, then I I can’t listen to that. Number 2, the product quality. So has that product actually been accredited by, let’s say, medical associations or any of the standard, quality control mechanisms say that’s safe and effective? Because you can do that. I mean, power play, again, was a medically certified device for for 20 years, MDD. That’s the medical community around the world saying we we agreed that it’s safe and effective for all populations. That’s kind of a big deal.

Scott Hopson [01:13:27]:
And in the education, do you then, when you when someone buys your plate, wash your methodology? My mom wants it for bone and pain. Do you have something for them? And what about my athletes? Have you got something for them? And what about my kids? Have you got something for them? So if the company can produce all of that, they’re worth listening to. If they can’t, you know, a $500 battery powered plate on Amazon, there’s a reason you you can’t get whole body vibration for $500. You know? I’m not flying to Europe on a 10 hour flight for $60 on who knows jet.com. There’s a reason. You know? They might have just had a really good Black Friday sale, but the chances are I the chances are that’s not the the plane you wanna be on.

Nick Urban [01:14:10]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And also with the right systems, you can look around and see the testimonials from actual people that have used it. You can go to the facilities that operate or have them and figure out what people are experiencing from them because research is nice and it gives it paints a good picture. But as you just mentioned, Scott, there’s so many different variables and confounding factors and methodology issues, equipment issues, so many reasons that you might not get the same outcome that they had in the study. To actually know how people are using it and what kind of results they’re getting and that you can translate those to you or someone who is exactly or very similar to you, that to me is like a prerequisite for all these types of things because the science is still not where it will be in 10 years, 20 years.

Scott Hopson [01:15:00]:
Yeah. I agree. I don’t think science leads the charge, actually. It validates what we do. I don’t know. Let’s make no mistake about that. I mean, whether it’s in manual therapy, movement therapy, high performance, what the top coaches, therapists, you know, physical therapists have been doing for decades was based on scientific principles. And then eventually, scientists, oh, you were right about that.

Scott Hopson [01:15:20]:
Maybe you weren’t right about that. But it’s a study. It’s not gonna give you the methodology for a 1 year program So yet to your point, what are the top professional sports organizations using? What are the olympics using? What are the nfl using? What’s world cup soccer using? What are the top physical therapy Organizations using? What are the top medical institutes using to research? What are Bob? What are the the best health clubs in the world using? Why are they all using the same two brands? You know? Why are they spending top dollar on the 2 brands? Because they know that the product doesn’t fall apart, is safe, effective, and they they get supported. The coaches get educated. So I think you’re right. Science is great, but the reality is who’s using it? Whereas the world’s best at using it probably tells

Nick Urban [01:16:02]:
you. One other question I have around this, and I’m sure if people are on a very tight budget, it might yield some of the same benefits, is the comparison to rebounding or getting a trampoline or mini trampoline. Can you get some of those benefits from using a rebounder instead of whole body vibration?

Scott Hopson [01:16:23]:
It’s a completely different methodology. Right? So, you know, a rebound is going to be good for, proprioception. Balance is going to be good for introducing low impact kind of rapid response in the body, A a 100%. Or what we might call an everyday, you know, low impact version of a plyometric. We’re we’re learning to be explosive about the impact. Great. Agreed. But there’s it’s not the same as a product that applies mechanical vibration.

Scott Hopson [01:16:50]:
It doesn’t apply mechanical vibration to you. It doesn’t stimulate the nervous system 30 times a second, and it doesn’t apply ground reaction force to the body because you’re not touching the ground. So, no, it’s it’s not the same thing. It’s like people say a bosu ball. It it’s not vibrating 30 to 50 times a second. So conceptually, the idea that something that moves you or vibrates is similar. Not really because that means standing on a train would do the same thing. I’m pretty sure the train’s going up and down as well There’s there’s a there’s a very high degree of precise predictable vibration That’s been tuned into the mechanoreceptors of the human body.

Scott Hopson [01:17:31]:
Like a boy with, like, spindles and Golgi tendon organs and what these are. There are receptors in the body that respond to mechanical vibration, and they need a certain frequency and amplitude to do that. That’s why we have this technology Like it’s very specifically calibrated To to to resonate with what the body is craving But again, it’s applying force to the body So it’s not a trampoline. It’s not a vibrating belt or the fifties. It’s not a bosu ball. It’s it’s literally like the ground is leaving you and coming back and applying force to you every time, up and down with, like, with power play trying to back side to side 30 times a second, but it’s specifically using receptors in the body. It’s very specific receptors that you’re tapping into. So the other thing is I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, and there’s a there’s a place for everything.

Scott Hopson [01:18:20]:
But, no, they can’t be compared. They definitely can’t be compared.

Nick Urban [01:18:24]:
And probably even the degree of, like, bone density improvements and, like, lymphatic drainage support, all that would be less because you’re having to actually manually jump, and people usually get tired before they can bounce on a trampoline for 20, 30 minutes.

Scott Hopson [01:18:43]:
Yeah. Yes. For sure. For sure. For sure. For sure. Trampolining can be great. Rebounding can be phenomenal for certain things.

Scott Hopson [01:18:51]:
Like I said, it can be good for certain dimensions of power. It can be good for fluids in the body. It can be good for restoring proprioception and balance, 100%. But I I’ve not seen the research that says, wow. Your power goes up. Your bone mineral goes up. Your muscle mass goes up. Your pain goes down.

Scott Hopson [01:19:05]:
I’ve not seen it on trampolining. So it’s it’s really simple. Like, does the product do what it says it’s gonna do? Nothing wrong with those devices, but they’re just not the same thing. You know? They’re just really not the same thing.

Nick Urban [01:19:17]:
Well, Scott, I’m gonna have to go back and update my article now and add things like VO 2 max improvements from the right versions of this technology, and I will put a link to my article in the show notes for this episode. And I’m also partnered with PowerPlate. So if you guys use the code, I believe it’s urban, I think that’ll save you between 20 25% on all of their devices and systems depending on when you order. Scott, what else am I missing? Anything important to cover?

Scott Hopson [01:19:47]:
No. We covered a lot of ground there. Covered a lot of ground. I mean, the the technology is legit. It’s been here for decades, and the world’s best in science, medicine, and performance have been using it. So, it’s not a matter of if it works. It’s a matter of if how it works best for you. That’s really it.

Nick Urban [01:20:05]:
Well, a couple more rapid fire questions for you, and we’ll call it a day.

Scott Hopson [01:20:09]:
Okay.

Nick Urban [01:20:10]:
If there was a burning of the books and all knowledge on earth is lost, you get to save the works of 3 teachers to help people go deeper on these subjects and things that have informed your perspective on performance, what would you choose and why?

Scott Hopson [01:20:26]:
Oh my gosh. So it’s gotta be about this these these topics, right, like health, wellness, performance. Well, people that have influenced me, maybe that’s a better way to go. In my early career mark mestagan the founder of athlete’s performance and exos was the first leader in elite performance I mean from military to world cup soccer rugby to olympics at the highest level to nfl who grasped the bigger concept of recovery and he could do it at the biggest level but He was the first one over 20 years ago said hey, what’s the game we’re really playing here? You know, I mean, what are the key ingredients to upgrading that 2% and raising the floor on the 98%. Mark Sagan at Exosnathy really changed me big time. I think going a little bit off course here, I’d say a book that changed me was Power Versus Force by doctor David Hawkins. I was yeah. That was a good 22, 23 years ago, but it links everything we’ve talked about, how the nervous system is a exquisitely sensitive system, and it says, is my environment a threat? And if it is literally every cell in the body instantaneously breaks down Or is this like harmonious? And it knows and it becomes a tonic and all of a sudden everything poof So I think that was a book I put out there for everybody And then I would have to say for all around holistic well-being, I think Paul Czech really influenced me probably 25 years ago.

Scott Hopson [01:21:57]:
Big late nineties, early 2000s, I went through it. And just in this realm, he really connected, you know, the science world to the esoteric world in very tangible tools. Could definitely go rogue quite a bit and spark some controversy, but I think he loved that secretly. I think he absolutely loved it. But, a guy who came into an industry that was very much about sets and reps and posture and form, he said, hold on now. Have you thought about your feelings? Are you thought, what what are you putting in your mouth? What’s your gut like? You know, he was the one that really, I think, said, there’s a much bigger picture here. So I would put that out there as and I’ve gone back in time There’s a lot more recent ones, but they’re they’re the ones that come up from a long time ago That shifted my perception On what health longevity and human performance could be

Nick Urban [01:22:49]:
Yeah, I don’t think I told you this but I’m actually a czech practitioner and I’ve studied his work pretty deeply

Scott Hopson [01:22:56]:
No, yeah me too. I went through everything he had from exercise coach to nutrition lifestyle coach to practitioner at every level loved it. I got so much love for the guy Yeah, I just I I think he’s one of the the first and foremost people to say There’s a lot more to you know the human being inside this human body than you think Yeah. He he really changed the game, 20 you know, over 20 years ago.

Nick Urban [01:23:23]:
Yeah. When the other folks that are looking at the human body in reductionist, isolationist perspectives and paradigms, and they can’t figure it out, then they send them off to Paul, and he was able to fix them up.

Scott Hopson [01:23:38]:
Yep. Yep. Wonderful human being.

Nick Urban [01:23:39]:
Cool. Well, Scott, final question. What is one thing the Power Plate tribe does not know about you?

Scott Hopson [01:23:47]:
I have to be careful with my answer. I don’t know because I don’t know that I’ve ever considered myself part of Power Plate tribe, even though I’ve I’ve avidly connected to that brand for 20 years, you know? Avidly. I think I think, man, that’s such a tough question to answer. What I don’t know is my career started as a jeweler. They definitely don’t know that. My first ever job out of school was I was a jeweler in, the West End of London when I left school at 16. Interesting. But, yeah, there was a whole chapter of me before I became a coach in health and and and human performance, and it started with, being a journaler.

Nick Urban [01:24:26]:
I would not have guessed.

Scott Hopson [01:24:27]:
No, I would we

Nick Urban [01:24:29]:
can change that then what’s something of the pivotal Coaching tribe doesn’t know about you.

Scott Hopson [01:24:33]:
They wouldn’t have known that either. I don’t think but I I think that if I wasn’t doing what I would do right now If you only said what I nearly turned left at the same time I turned right and went all into coaching and teaching I nearly followed the path of getting my doctorate in philosophy And I mean it was this this this close which is why 90% of the books on my shelf, 10% are like, you know, physiology, anatomy, culture. I love it. I love it. I study it to a very high level, by the way. But, the thing that I wake up just wanting to explore is humanity, you know? So for me, I think philosophy is the root of everything from medicine to science to mysticism. So it’s really another word for philosophy, like, why does humanity do what humanity does? So, yeah, I if I could be anything, I would, be a philosopher.

Nick Urban [01:25:27]:
A philosophical coach.

Scott Hopson [01:25:29]:
Yeah. I think I kind of weed it in where I can where people where people already are willing to hear it. But, yeah, that’s what I probably don’t know is that, if I ever decided to just shut down and get to say, okay, that was a great chapter of 30 years, but it’s time to turn left, that would be the world of transformation is where I would go.

Nick Urban [01:25:49]:
Well, Scott, Scott, this has been a blast. I am now reinvigorating my passion for whole body vibration and to continue exploring some of the the realms we’ve discussed today.

Scott Hopson [01:25:59]:
Cheers, mate. Thanks for having me.

Nick Urban [01:26:00]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mind bodypeak.com/andthenthenumberoftheepisode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.