24. Max Shank - Part II of II: The Quantum Effect of 5 Minutes, the Social Media Roller Coaster & Delaying Gratification

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Alright guys, welcome back to part two of our conversation with Max Schenk. Before we get into the show, a quick story time. Brought to you by LocumStory.com, today we'll be reading one job, two job. One job, two jobs, red blob, no job. Elective doc, emergency doc, some in overstock, some in out of stock. This doc is too abused, this doc is underused. This doc can't get sick, say, let's try a brand new trick. For all the docs about to cry, here's an idea you can try. Locum tendons assignment, a really great option you might find it. Don't forget Locum pays much better, and you can find assignments in any type of weather. With all this new info, trapped in your thinker, go to Drpodcastnetwork.com, slash LocumStory and use your mouse to tinker. Here you'll find the unbiased answer is your actor, so you can decide if Locum tendons is your next chapter. Alright guys, we are picking up this conversation as I said before, but a quick recap of part one of our discussion. If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend you stop, go back, listen to the first part again, because there we talked a lot about Max's background, the value of being a multi-sport athlete at a young age. We learned about his philosophy and how it's evolved over the years from purely scientific and linear approach to now a more holistic and pliable approach. We also talked about the evolution of his training programs and the quantum effect of five minutes. Definitely check that out. We also learned about the suffering for success fallacy. We left off that episode with Max giving an awesome tip on how to turn on the blinders while navigating the messy world wide web. In this episode, we build upon the previous conversation, but some of the key things that we touch on are the psychology of his famous five-minute flow and overcoming inertia. We talk about the importance of proper breathing dynamics and the downstream effect it has on movement quality. Max's initial assessment that is truly global in functional in nature. We also discussed the downside of social media and what he learned from abstaining from social media for a few years, particularly Instagram. We also talked about the power of delayed gratification for positive financial outcomes. By the end of this episode, you'll get a sense that Max is a big picture guy. He is certainly someone who appreciates nuance and frowns upon being myopic in anything, but what I love is that he approaches every situation, every patient, every client from a holistic manner. It's funny because even after we stopped recording, we continued the conversation for another 45 minutes to an hour, which could have been just as powerful. And shortly after this interview, I visited him down and it insinied us at his facility and we continue talking about similar topics for several hours. I really enjoyed hanging out with him and I look forward to continuing these conversations with him and hopefully behind the mic so we can share those with you as well. Now, without further delay, please enjoy part two of our conversation with Max Shank. Yeah, I got to look into that, man. I've definitely been victim of that. What's that movie on Netflix? This is the social dilemma? Is that what it is? I've heard of it. I haven't watched it. It's interesting. It's everything that you're kind of talking about. I don't know how much more information you'd get valued. It seems like you've kind of gotten the message of it already. You know, this conversation of the why, like why are people doing what they're doing? And when somebody comes to you and they say, I want X and you try to ask why, that's something that's really fascinating to me, right? And then you keep asking and asking and as my buddy here says, then you try to keep peeling that onion and you keep going down to the seven layer and getting the core, trying to figure out what it is. I always find that fascinating. Earlier, you mentioned the psychology of five minute flow. What did you mean by that? Like what did that teach you and like what did you learn from from that program and what kind of feedback have you gotten that gave you a lot of information that you were able to add that psychological piece and build into your new program? Okay, so five minute flow was a response to the fact that people weren't doing any mobility training at all. They weren't allowing themselves the freedom to express themselves with movement. They thought that it had to be a big long thing. They had lots of aches and pains that they weren't addressing. And the most shocking thing is how many people send me a message along the lines of, you know, for years, I thought I just had bad knees and a bad back. But apparently all I had was a mobility problem. And you know, you do a couple knee circles, you do a couple of a lumbar circles and you, you know, work within your capacity and you do it in the morning, preferably so that every step you take is different. I mean, I'm sure you guys probably use a gate assessment. That's my favorite way. I mean, I'll do range of motion. But basically, you know, I don't know what's going to work for somebody. Everybody's a unique, beautiful snowflake with a different history. I don't know how the conversation is going to go. I don't know if they're going to respond well to like, you know, split squats. You know, maybe balancing on a beam will really wake their feet up or maybe they will just get like so terrified that they'll freeze. But I do a gate assessment after pretty much everything in the first session. You know, we do a little move, okay, go take a walk is better is it worth, you know, something that they can feel the difference with is also really good, like a toe touch or a shoulder mobility type of thing. So if you do five minutes in the morning, every single step you take is going to be like installing what you just downloaded with your five minute flow. So if you do a five minute flow right after you wake up and you drink a big cup of water, you're going to be walking differently. You're going to feel different. And it's going to be that first domino. I mean, I think of every day as like a probability tree where, you know, from the moment you wake up, you can very simplified a course. You can either do this or you can do this. Like you can do a decision that's kind of good for you. You can do a decision that's kind of bad for you. And from there throughout the whole day, you're going to make all these different decisions and take all these different steps. You're going to walk around and nothing is really neutral. It's either going to be somewhat good for you or somewhat bad for you. And if you start off on the right foot by doing some movement, it's going to make a huge difference for you. So that's what I mean by the quantum effect of doing some rolling and mobility and some basic strength training and part of the other thing is momentum. So people are afraid to do a 15 minute flow, but they're not afraid to do a five minute flow. However, once they have started, they'll probably go to 15 minutes anyway. So I don't make the rules. I just try to try to follow what actually happens. So the benefit of getting started is so huge, but the inertia is quite great. So that's kind of what I mean. It's way better if you do it every day versus sometimes. And if you make it small like that, it's way easier to overcome that inertia. And I think that's the key word, right? The inertia part of it. I mean, I'm one of those individuals, as you can imagine, highly analytical, highly type A as many folks in this profession are. And sometimes just kind of getting in my own head. And so what I loved about that program was there's really no rules. And sometimes for me, I would just go into what feels good, right? Going to your little thoracic bridge that you've written about, you know, going to like kind of downward dog into a cobra and then afterwards, I found like, you know what? Kind of feel good. You don't have to drop down and give quick 30 push ups or maybe I do pull up. So whatever, you know, and anybody who like will do that, find that, yeah, it's really just getting over or sometimes, you know, you get the blood flowing to different places and now you're like, oh, maybe now I'll go for a walk. The aches and pains that you started at the onset of this conversation. That's one of the reasons I diverted, right? I was kind of, you know, in a similar position or at least in the strength and conditioning world, performance world, and I saw all these individuals on the front lines who just like, man, this hurts today, this hurts, there wasn't really was somebody who didn't have some type of dysfunction, right? Or maybe even borderline pathology. And so that's a very real thing. I know we don't definitely don't have time to talk about paint science and those kinds of things. But I do think it's really important something that you've talked about at length of, you know, this proximal to distal effect, right? The importance of taking care of the thoracic spine, taking care of the core, taking care of the breathing. And that's going to pay dividends when we're talking about preventing injuries, the shoulder, right? At the elbow, at the wrist and those types of things. Maybe you could kind of give a brief overview of your kind of philosophy of why it's important in terms of how we breathe. We're talking about thoracic spine mobility because I'll tell you what, man, I work in a field where we consider a cell, musculoskeletal experts, but we don't talk about thoracic spine rotation. I mean, we appreciate that as segmental levels it exists and we appreciate the scapula thoracic joint. We appreciate the glenohumula joint for those who don't know these are just fancy words for different parts of the shoulder joint. But we're not talking about improving thoracic mobility at the excursion of the vertebrae. So talk a little bit about breathing. What's the effects into the thoracic spine and how that goes outwards? Sure, breathing is obviously very important and I can't believe I said the word obviously because it's just like a very arrogant word because it's a very individual thing. What's obvious to you may be a mystery to me. But basically a lot of stuff moves when you breathe or a lot of stuff should move when you breathe. Like your whole gut sack should move significantly when you breathe. You massage your internal organs. You are stretching and compressing all of the tissue around your ribcage and your diaphragm is this huge umbrella shaped muscle that's connected all over the place in your upper body. So just in a very layman term, it's going to have a huge effect on the amount of residual muscle tension throughout your upper body. And if you have an area that is in a state of constant contraction, it's just going to pull things out of position. They're not going to be able to glide and slide optimally. And every breath you take, I mean, I could talk about breathing for so long, but I'll try to keep it short here. Basically your shoulders will be doing a trillion, 20,000 ugly shrugs every day if you're breathing dysfunctionally, that's one option. If you are breathing through your mouth, you're going to send your nervous system essentially into fight or flight mode all day long. And if you aren't accepting your gut bag into your pelvis and letting your pelvic floor relax and kind of passing your guts back and forth through that breathing, you're not going to have very mobile hips or pliable tissue around your pelvis. So I mean, it just reeks havoc everywhere from your nervous system to your shoulders and hips. And the body is really good at compensating for things. Like if you see someone limping around, you got to go, wow, that's amazing. Like that person can still walk. Some things really messed up there, but that person can still walk. The body will find a way to do things. But I think part of the reason that most rehab is so bad is because of measurement myopia. So we get so hyper focused on what we can easily measure. So we go, oh, the Glyno Humeral joint has 45 degrees of external rotation. And that's like something that's so easy to measure. And there's even a law for it called Good Hearts Law that says when a measurement becomes a target, it's no longer a good measurement. And I think that's probably one of the best ways to describe the biggest downfall of Western medicine is we want something that is easy to measure. So if we confine ourselves like tunnel vision into things that are easy to measure and very like clear, oh, well, we did this stretch on this joint and an increase in range motion. So we, we PNF the ball and socket joint until it's, it's really mobile again. But you know, we didn't consider how the scapula glides across the rib cage. We didn't consider whether or not the thorax can flex extend rotate. We didn't consider the residual tension in the diaphragm or any of the respiratory muscles. And we didn't consider the fact that every time that person walks, their left hip doesn't really flex. They just drag their whole body along for the ride. So there's a compensation pattern that has nothing to do with whether or not the ball and socket joint in the shoulder is mobile enough or not mobile enough. So it has to do with the way things are measured. So that's a, that's a really tricky thing. I mean, a lot of, a lot of the disadvantages to Western medicine come from that exact thing, which is we want something that is so clear, clearly measurable and so clearly related, but it's, it's hard to even do a study of what's better isometrics or stretching over a two-year period, even if we did five minutes, because people just wouldn't do it. You know, and it would, it's, it's hard within the confines of measurement. That's why it's better to think about how the body responds to stimulus over time, which is something we know for sure, rather than trying to seek these arbitrary measurements, which like Goodheart's Law says, as soon as measurement is a target, it's not a good measurement anymore. So you know, one of the things that we always like to do is, and you kind of mentioned when you're looking at an individual before you're giving them something, you're assessing their gate, right? Assessment is key, right? I mean, yeah, there are so many things you can measure. I've taken so many courses and they all tell me to measure something different. Yeah. So I'm curious to learn about your assessment process. I know I've, I've previously, I think that you've talked about this is, you know, one of the things that I've seen in my practice as well is a lot of times individual will come, you know, of course we're going to check, again, I'm, I'm using sports medicine as an example because this is kind of my world is, you know, we'll see individual for range of motion, let's just take shoulder, for example, because that's after the back, the most likely injured, and we have active range of motion, right? And what that means is that the individual is just activated themselves versus passive, whereas I would take somebody's arm and bring it over their head. And what I found is, you know, the larger that delta between active and passive range of motion, the more susceptible to injury or the harder the recovery back after an injury, right? That stiffness. How or two parts, first, what's your assessment process like besides the gate that you've already talked about, right, looking at globally. And then if you also, if you agree that you find that to be an issue, how do you address it? Yeah. So the passive active gap, I'm pretty sure is a chapter in simple shoulder solution. Okay. That's where I read it. I'm selling it for you. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't invent that concept either. I like to tell people that I went to a mountain top and I came back with all these exercises I imagined. And then actually I found out later that yoga stole those exercises from me. So I still have that's how we heard it. That's how I still have some beef with yoga for stealing my inventions. It depends on the individual. I like to just get a person moving with stuff that doesn't hurt them. So like in the case that you're talking about, if someone has a specific complaint, I'll usually just use the phrase, show me what you can't do. And then I'll do a little bit more investigating with that specific area. And I mean, I got a lot of tools in my toolbox. And you'll therapy like it's funny how sometimes you you get someone to lift their shoulder and they go, they lift it halfway up and they say, ouch. And then you put your thumb on their C7 vertebra and then they lift it all the way overhead and you're like, okay, I think we might be on to something here. So sometimes even just like touching an area can lead you to glean a lot of information about what's going on. So it's all individual. I try to just, you know, pick up a sandbag, take it for a walk, show me your squat, balance on one leg. I do some visual stuff sometimes. It really depends on the person. If they have a specific complaint, I try to revisit that after every single movement though. The fact of the matter is sometimes a person's back hurts not because of anything fancy. It's just that they have never put themselves in a position under enough load where they can breathe and get their core and hips to work together. So it's funny. Like, I'll have people with a back problem carry a 40 pound sandbag for two minutes in a bear hug and then their toe touch range of motion will improve by five inches. They're like, what the heck? We didn't stretch the hamstrings. I'm like, yeah, it turns out that's not actually that important most of the time. It's just whether or not your nervous system feels comfortable with the big picture of what's going on. So, you know, people's feet are usually like really weak and they suck. And so having someone pick up a towel with their toes 20 times and pass it to their opposite hand behind their back on both sides will usually like frustrate them beyond understanding. But it might be the difference between their knee hurting and their knee not hurting. So it's kind of like, to use a Chinese medicine term, it's about surrounding the dragon and trying to figure out where the problem is really stemming from. And so when someone comes in with, I mean, like I said, I've taken so many assessment courses and a lot of them, I'm sure all of them had the best of intentions, but I think a lot of the time you actually just create more fear of movement in the person that you're coaching. So in my experience, it's way better to keep things kind of rough and simple unless it really is something more complex. I mean, I used the first thing I did for a while, someone would come in with a hurt shoulder and I would go searching for trigger points with my thumb. And then I'd be like crushing their lap or their terries and lifting their arm overhead and they'd be like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and of course, it would get a lot better maybe because they were just glad that I finally stopped hurting them or maybe because I actually released something. But it's kind of like when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So now I try to do as much as possible without touching the person and I look for, I think about Occam's razor, which is the simplest answer is usually the best and then I kind of spread out from there, but I would say one of the biggest differences is the conversation I have with them before we get started with that because I really want to understand their mentality around the way they currently feel and I want them to also understand that there's nothing wrong with them and that they're not going to hurt themselves worse. A lot of the time it's just because of a belief that they have that they're going to hurt themselves. I mean, you probably are aware that frozen shoulder is diagnosed all the time, but adhesive capsulitis where it's actually stuck, it is almost never, that almost never happens. It's usually just because their nervous system is like we are tired of you lifting your arm up and it hurting. So we're going to take away your shoulder privileges until you swage our concerns about you damaging yourself. So it's like safe, squeeze and spiral, basically. So take the area of concern, put it in a position that's safe, usually put them on the ground or something like that, get them into a position where they can squeeze isometrically and then start working the spiral. Our whole body is put together in this really amazing way. We have sticks and muscles that spiral around those sticks so we can kind of coil and uncoil things and you look at any sport and it's a coiling and uncoiling, upper cut, shot put, tennis shot, I mean it's all there, it's all this amazing torque in the transverse plane and everything spiraling around the center point and that's how DNA is, that's how the galaxy is, it's turtles all the way down, we're just spiraling everywhere. So I try to get safe, squeeze and then spiral and there's plenty else that we can do with the breathing and the vision and I mean I could literally go on all day about the different things that could be making someone feel pain and maybe we'll save that for part two and we'll just delve into pain because I think that's, I mean that's got to be one of the most interesting things, especially when you start talking about phantom limb pain where there's pain in a limb that's no longer attached to the body so go figure that one. We see a lot of that, I don't know if you know me but amputies and prosthetics or orthotics I mean that's kind of, we take care a lot of that in our field. Yes, it's a really good tool to teach a person about phantom limb pain so that they understand that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a physical problem. It's so powerful to use that and then also the statistics about sham surgeries and how much relief people feel from getting cut open, nothing done, stitched back up, feel better and then the other one is just the understanding that a lot of people have a herniated disc. A lot of people have a torn rotator cuff or a torn labrum and most of them are non-symptomatic. They feel fine, they function fine. So it's a, boys it's so interesting, right? I couldn't agree more man. So I think just getting people feeling safe and then getting strong within that circle and slowly building them out is probably the best thing you can do really and of course you have all kinds of different tools available to you now. Absolutely, Max I got so many followers so we'll definitely say that for part two. I do want to ask you just real quick though about your social media journey in essence, right? What did you learn from that from disconnecting? You know, why did you disconnect kind of from the world and then what made you come back? Yeah, I mean I think it's slowly killing people from the inside out. I think it's a strong take. It's a strong take. Yeah, it's true because it's kind of like a pacifier. You're not really getting the social satisfaction that you need to be a healthy person. So it's like tricking you into thinking that you're getting some socialization. But all you're doing is you're looking at a snapshot of the best people have to offer and then feeling bad about yours. I mean, maybe you see it as inspirational but I just, I know a lot of people don't use it that way. So what I realized with myself is I was like, what am I doing? I'm just like posting my highlight reel and showing people how alpha I am. But I'm not really with the exception of doing a few product launches a year, which I work really hard on and I think would help anybody to invest in a program and follow it through. Yeah, that was the reason I felt like I was too concerned with how people responded to what I did. And it was hard for me to use it responsibly. Honestly, like it was so easy. 45 minutes just goes like that. And so most of the time I leave my cell phone in the drawer on airplane mode. And I probably get a little bit less done because of it. But once again, I don't think I don't think being busy is a virtue. I don't think suffering is a virtue. And I think if you're constantly responding to your phone buzzing, you're probably going to be living in a state of constant semi-anxiety. So I think that I really feel sorry for what it has done to people psychologically. I think the best thing a person can do is to take a fast from food for three days and from social media for a week. And they would be shocked at what's left. You know, it would be really difficult, just like any other addiction. I mean, addiction and depression are funny words. I know, really funny, right? They're funny words because there's no clear cut except a definition for them. Like I've looked through all kinds of, they've like got studies on pub med about trying to come up with a common definition of addiction and depression. But of course, there isn't. It's just our way to interpret what's happening in another person's body. But if you don't express yourself, you will feel depressed on some level. And I mean, who isn't addicted to something? Like, how can you not be? It's just, it's about context more than anything else. So most people are hopelessly addicted to coffee, but it doesn't usually make people do outlandish things. So it's kind of okay. I feel like not taking shots at any moment. It's fine. I mean, like, look, I didn't drink coffee for the first 30 years of my life. And then within two months, I was drinking four mocha afogados every single day. So like half coffee, half vanilla ice cream, and then like cocoa powder and whipped cream. I mean, I just went full, full hog on it. And I loved every second of it. I don't regret it. Now I drink watered down coffee because I like the subtle flavor of it. But yeah, you know, it's tough to say because I've been able to really improve my situation in life financially. I mean, I've sold tens of thousands of products and I've been able to buy a house. And I'm super grateful for all my customers, most of whom I met through YouTube and social media also. But I really do think it's slowly killing people from the inside because it goes unchecked. If you're addicted to meth, there are a lot of warning signs that are easily visible. But pretty much everybody has their face buried in their tiny telephone screen. So you develop a visual and psychological myopia. And you start to like believe this little private pocket god has all the answers. And it shows you exactly what you want to see. It's not showing everybody the same thing. It's showing you just what will provoke your attention the most. Not necessarily what you will love the most, but just what will provoke your attention the most. So I think having good cell phone hygiene is important. I don't think I'm necessarily qualified or unqualified to teach that. But the simplest answers are usually the best. Like you just got to take a few days off of eating food. Take a few days off of using your cell phone. Just just turn it off. Like you don't need to constantly be stimulated. And what a person would learn in that time away is worth its weight in gold. So I think that's what I would say. You know, and the other challenging thing about this is, and I'm guilty of it myself, man, I told this guy, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago when we were talking, is sometimes I'll just find myself on Instagram. I don't even know how I got there, right? And next thing I know, I'll be scrolling it. You remember having that conversation, Dars. And the other thing that kind of breaks my heart about it, of course, there is definitely a lot of good, right? I mean, that's how we connected you and I. I mean, so there's a lot of good. There's a lot of people putting out great information out there. One of my biggest fears about this is that it keeps promoting context-free information. This word of context has come up a couple of times when we talk about it. And so infinite content and negative context. Absolutely. And some of it has to do, obviously, with the character limits that you have in Twitter, right? I mean, how much information can you put out there? A lot of people get, actually, they get all the information they're getting about a topic, whether it's a political topic they're talking about, you know, the news, the issues that are happening all across the world, or maybe even about science, you know, Brad Schoenfield published something really good, or put a post on really good today about the difference between science, versus the pseudoscience, and how different people will post just a little snippet. So this study showed this. And so now take a conservatory, because it's going to cure all your problems in your life, because this one study conclusion showed this. And if you go and actually read the paper. But the issue is, and I think it trains you, because I'm guilty of it. So I talked to, you know, some of my siblings who are a little bit younger than me, or I asked, you know, hey, like, you know, what have you learned, ask for feedback on this show? Like, because you're looking to improve. And they're like, oh, yeah, I've listened. And I'll say, okay, well, what was your favorite part? They're going, no, I only heard the 30 seconds on Instagram. Like, well, that doesn't help. But the problem is, like, nobody, the world has lost this appetite for nuance, right? And, and the more we get into this, it trains you. I'll give you another example. Recently, I was reading article about some of the issues that are going on overseas and whatnot. And I was getting a lot of information from social media about it. Which ones? I don't want to dive dr. into this, okay, a big, just a while here. So, you know, have you heard no issues? Yeah, I know, right? It's a happy place. But then I clicked on the New York Times article and I started reading it. And halfway through, I don't know how long it was. Halfway through, I was just like, oh, man, it's a long article. I don't want to keep reading this. And then I had to pause, and I was like, I'm falling into that trap. Where, you know, I just want to get the information and bite size pieces. But I got to read all the sides of this article. And this is why Dr. John Brody's podcast, the show that he recently published was so powerful when it was talking, I'm calling BS and talking about this concept of quantum thinking. I'm sure you know who he is. And if you check out his show, I am curious about you're an entrepreneur, you're a businessman, you're an author, you publish products. And at this time, I mean, you said you were putting out product launches. How did that affect your business, though? Right? I mean, because a lot of the stuff happened. Oh, I torpedoed it. I mean, I was making like probably, you know, by posting frequently, I was making way more money. So I took a huge pay cut, but to me, it was worth it. You know, if you decide how you want your life to go, you can make it that way. You know, people are often very afraid to do things differently. And I'll give two examples. One is Jeff Walker and one is Gary Vaynerchuk. And look, I guess credit to Gary Vaynerchuk for hustling and telling people how he's hustling and telling other people to hustle some more. But that's just not my style, man. Like, I don't want that. I don't want that guy's life. That seems miserable. He's like always on. Jeff Walker, on the other hand, who did a product called product launch formula, you know, he does like two product launches a year. He has like a lead into it, a pre-launch, a launch, and then a post-launch. And you know, you get to decide really like how you want to set up your life. And it might be scary, but it's probably worth it. Again, and this is one of the reasons that I started. And I really appreciate you kind of having this perspective, right? And I know you mentioned that some of it goes back to just having all these accumulating these experiences throughout your life and trying some things. One of the things that people don't appreciate is that the fitness industry and being a personal trainer or something like a performance coach, it's challenging, especially nowadays with like this whole online training and you know, the better the entry is basically nothing. Anybody can jump in. And I remember like, you know, just to give an example is, you know, sometimes people will like, if you're training, you might have a session at five in the morning. And then you got to run home. Your next session might not be till 9am. Then you come, your next session is like two and then you're working maybe three to seven. And so your whole day, right? You can't like, you can't plan for anything. There's no, sometimes there's no structure because you're all over the place. You at a young age were able to dial all these things and been very successful. I mean, what are you now? Like 30 E3? It's exactly right. Do I look exactly 33? Uh, no, I don't think I have a Wikipedia page. No, so I just, it's creepy. It's good, yes. No, I remember you mentioning you were like 30 something in different podcasts at one point. So, in research. Yeah, well, you know, we do like to read a little bit. But anyways, so we, so you've been pretty successful at an early standpoint. And I remember you talking about, you know, getting your finances in order. I think for maybe the few trainers or people who are going to the fitness industry who are kind of listening to this, who we're trying to figure out is how do you make it? What advice would you have for that? Deferred, deferred gratification. I mean, people try to make it really complicated and usually people introduce what I call simplicity so they can sell you their solution. It's really complicated, but I'll simplify it for you in this basic system. But like the reality is, finances like money is a representative of energy, right? At least the way we use it, it's just a tool to make trading easy. So, I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they spend money on luxuries long before they have invested into their cash flow, into their long-term growth or into their nest egg. I think that's probably the number one thing that people do because things aren't going to make them happy. I found it very easy to live very cheap as I was getting things going. I mean, I was saving 85% of my money, like I was spending almost nothing. And the reality is, most people just aren't willing to do that for a long period of time because they haven't matured to the point where they can defer that gratification for something bigger later. And the reality is, if someone's like 18 or 20 years old and they can focus on delivering more value, which is what's important, right? Whether or not you can deliver value and not wasting their money on idle luxuries that aren't going to satisfy them anyway, you can set yourself up really nice. I don't think it's hard to be a personal trainer right now. I think most people engage with their audience in a way that is trying to be very self-serving. And say like, hey, look at me. Look how good I am versus, hey, this is how I can help you. So I think that's a mistake that has made a lot. But I think if you're willing to defer gratification and forego some of the luxuries that people seem to think are necessities, it's really easy. When did you have that realization? Did you have a mentor or somebody early on who gave you that advice? I don't think I asked you. That's mentor for maybe financial advice, but also even for fitness for life. Who are your mentors? You know, it's funny. I think necessity, mostly. I mean, I didn't have a safety net. So it was like simple enough to me and I had a good goal in mind. And I, you know, I have Charlie Munger's book, Poor Charlie's Almanac, which I think is, I think he's a funny guy to read. He's very rational, dude. I wouldn't say that he has expanded his like conscious and subconscious mind the way like a Ram Das has. But I have, you know, Ram Das, like chilling right next to Poor Charlie's Almanac. So I try to get the best of all worlds. It's easy to have mentors in book form, but part of the reason I kept taking more certifications and more business workshops was because I didn't feel comfortable with what I was being taught. I was like, I don't see that as someone that I want to emulate basically. So that's why I kept looking for different things and sort of combining them together. You mean like, for instance, reading an inspirational story in a book or maybe like a David Goggins or okay, and say, hey, this is not necessarily what I want to emulate. What else can I do? Yeah, or a training certification. I mean, you know, CrossFit, kettlebells, Olympic lifting, functional movement, ZHealth, functional neurology, ART, gymnastics, all this different stuff. I mean, I used to be like so self-conscious. I had like 20 acronyms after my name on my business card. It was like all these different let none of them said doctors. So I still have my credibility in you. But I just felt, I just felt more authoritative once I had all of these little and I had all these certificates that I framed. It was like totally stupid. But anyway, I still wasn't like, oh yeah, that's the system for me. I'm going to follow that. I would be like, oh well, there's some good stuff in there. I mean, maybe, maybe Bruce Lee, you know, the concept of absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, add what is essentially your own, which is funny because I think that quote was said like a hundred years earlier by some German guy. Is that right? It might have been getta. Yeah. You know, you'll find like if you search most of the quotes online are misattributed. Like a huge majority, usually with like Laoza and Hippocrates. They're like not too many guys before them. But sometimes it's it was like some unknown monk long before Isaac Newton said that stuff. Yeah. Or Bruce Lee. But I think it's difficult because really you want to find someone who you would you would emulate, right? And we are mimics. You know, monkeys are really good at mimicking. So there are there are people that I like, but you know, most of the time I really don't want to like go all in because then I'm just inheriting their problems also. And I know I know myself that I can't change my mind a lot. So I try to be very zoomed out and try to see the big perspective and recognize that I am going to change my mind about things quite a lot. But everybody has a different idea of risk and reward. And in terms of how you live your life, that's probably the biggest factor is how you evaluate risk and reward and different things, scare different people. Like I read Richard Branson's autobiography and I was like immediately that's not the way I'm going to do it. Yeah. Because he's like mortgaging his house and he's like selling his record company to buy airplane engines. I'm like, dude, you already won. Like just chill out with this stuff. And so with stories like that, you have survivorship bias because he tells his story from the top of the pyramid. But a million other guys who made the same type of decisions he did are just on the street. So I like the monger idea of get rich slow and don't risk or why risk what you need for what you don't need. And it feels way better to have like a safety net than a Ferrari. And if you can have both kudos to you, but I don't know. Eventually you just don't care about stuff. You only care about time because that's the only resource that is non replenishable. And that's kind of what is ties back to the cell phone hygiene. I don't want to have something buzzing at me all day. I'm fiercely independent guy. So I don't like taking orders. So I don't like taking orders from an inanimate object either. And to me, it's worth making a little less money and losing out on some opportunities because my time is the most important thing. And I would rather have a relatively firm grip on my sanity at the expense of a little bit of a short-term cash so that I can really just be my most whole and complete self. And then I can give more to the people I care about. I respect that, man. Absolutely. I love it. I love the mindset. I love the perspective. Yeah, there's not much to add to that, man. Just, you know, causing self growth. There's a lot of good books over here. Please share. I mean, what do we got? I got some. This one is probably my favorite here. Where's that? This mythology book. Okay. You're going to have to read it title to us because I think we've gone to back to 420 Peter. Oh no, it literally is just a mythology book. It's like 500 pages, but it goes through like everywhere from Africa to China, Rome, America's, all kinds of different stuff. And it's really interesting to see how many different myths tend to repeat themselves to a certain extent. So the way that we try to explain the world is kind of fun. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's all about what it does for you individually. And I like to reread books because you can never step in the same river twice because you're not the same man. It's not the same river. And I mean, if we're being, I don't have a photographic or idetic memory and I read pretty slow actually. But can we agree that you probably only retain like 5% or 10% of a book? Absolutely. You read it? Absolutely. So what Naval Ravi Kun says, right? Like modern day flasper, you get your top 100 books and you just reread those. Screw like the 101 102. You get the top 100 reread those if you get something new every time. Love that. Yeah, you, you definitely get something new every time that you read it. And it affects you differently. Like I recently reread the Alchemist, which is awesome. It's so straightforward. I have it in English and Spanish, which is kind of fun. And then travels by Michael Craig. He did Jurassic Park use big time traveler guy and sold over 200 million books. Maybe it's more like 500 million now. I don't know. But you know, you just pick up new things every time. But like, you know, just play devil's advocate, which is what I always do. I try to look at both sides. You know, you probably don't want to live your life with your nose in a book, either. Right. Like you learn by doing an experiencing thing. So but then again, the man who doesn't read lives only one life and the man who reads can live a thousand lives. So you can, yeah, you can almost prove anything. Words are fun. That way. I love that. Awesome. Well, hey, we're approaching, you know, a couple hours here and this has been fantastic. You know, we definitely need a part two because I definitely got a lot more questions. I definitely need to pick your brain. Got a few more questions here. But before I get to those, I just want to thank you, Max, to acknowledge you for providing so much knowledge and not only knowledge, but so much wisdom to behind everything that you've done, you know, from your life lessons to where you are now. It's just been incredible to talk to you and pick your brain. And you know, for me, only a couple years younger than you too. I'm just I'm learning a lot here. So thank you for that. But my next question here is what's what's what's next for you? What's next for Max? Personal wise, also ambition athletics. Dinner. Probably, it's probably next. Love it. That's that's most of my life is just finding and finding and consuming food. It doesn't make for a good story though, but that is what I'm doing most of the time. You know, I am I'm working on a fitness invention that I made right now actually behind the scenes, which is getting pretty close to being done. Sweet. The gym just reopened up in Encinitas, which is in Southern California, which I'm stoked about. We have an amazing team. So I go in there a few days a week to take classes and it's awesome. I love the energy in there. Went to Lake Tahoe last week, which was awesome. So I'll try to get out to some mountains and river. I love jumping in a river. It's amazing. So yeah, I would say that I mean, I write all the time. That was that's probably the other thing I would kind of throw in there too is it's fine if you write something out and then you throw it away or it just is part of your journal. It doesn't have to be anything profound, but it's kind of the same thing with the momentum. Just get started writing and take three days off eating and using your phone and just get a pen and paper out and go for some walks and you'll probably make more progress than in like 10 years of therapy. You know, I think it was, I think it was my well, there's a story about Dartha right where he's going to go find a job and the guy's like, why should I hire you? You have nothing and he says, I have the ability to fast, right, from food, from people, from thoughts, from everything. And he's like, if you have the ability to fast, you have the power to do anything you want. And that's what that kind of reminds me of. So yeah, it's, it's not a negotiation unless you can walk away. So if you, if you are the one who needs, you don't have the power. And as that relates to my comment before about how I don't like taking orders from other people or at least I just don't, I don't want to or I'm not good at it. It's the same thing. You know, if you're a slave to food or you're a slave to attention, you're not really going to, you're not going to have that same level of power and control over yourself. And that's the only power and control a person can really have any way. You know, you could argue that you, I don't know, some people want to try to control their relationship or something weird like that or whatever. But no, it's, it's all about controlling yourself and getting a pen and paper out is a good way to organize your thoughts. And I use mine maps and stuff like that all the time to try to make sense of what's going on in the world. And you know, it's insane. The way people think about things. But I just try to focus on what's in my control and what's out of my control. And you know, people do what they do. Awesome. Well, Max, we're coming up on two hours there. Everyone respectfully every time. I see you getting your mobility in and I love that man. Whenever, whenever I stand, I always start like wiggling around. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. I don't want to sit in here. I've been stiff and I don't want to keep you away from dinner, man. We definitely don't want you fasting on our accord. Do it. Do it when you want to. Not because we're making you. So people listen to this and and and again, those who don't live in a rock, you know, or those who do live in a rock and and actually you're back on social so they can connect you with social media. What's your handle? Yeah, I'm not there very often. I'm I'm basically just going to be there to let them know about any new gifts I have for them. Got you. So what's the best way for people to mind you? Max shank. Max shank.com. Awesome. If you google me, that's basically the only thing for the first couple pages. And then after that is drill bits. I love that. Simple, simple. Max shank. Yeah. Thanks guys. That was super fun. I really appreciate you guys having me on. It was excellent to talk with you guys. It's nice to have some big picture perspective in the medicine. Absolutely. I'm going to let yours all ours, man. Really appreciate it. Josh got one more question for you and you can keep it as brief as you want to. How do we put the health? I don't do that well. All right, you got you got you can do this. You get you got to do this three sentences. There we go. We'll challenge you here. Three sentences. How do we put the health back in health care? Personal responsibility. All right. That's easy. Yeah. Simple. For some responsibility. I like it. No, that's that's very true. So cool. I think that's a great point right there. And Max thanks again. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. Thank you guys. Appreciate you. Thank you. All right, guys. Thank you for tuning into that two-part series, Max shank. Hopefully that was enjoyable for you as much as it was for us. Now, before we sign off, a quick message. Remember for doctors, the story has changed. Visit drapodgastnetwork.com, slash locom story to see if a locom tenon assignment is right for you. It's here you'll find the unbiased answers you're after. So you can decide if locom tenons is your next chapter. Now, for that important disclaimer, stick around to the end. Remember that everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine. No should it be construed as medical advice. No physician-patient relationship is formed. Anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician regarding any specific health-related issues. But if you enjoyed the show, please be sure to subscribe, review, and share with anyone who you think will gain value from this. And until next time, thank you for listening.