Biohacking: Your One-Stop Tool To Health And Fitness During Addiction Recovery With Larry Arnold

 

Have you heard about biohacking? If you haven’t, then this episode is a must for you. Listen in as Tim Westbrook chats with Larry Arnold, his friend and go-to physical coach. As you go through the addiction recovery process, one of the things that you have to be mindful about is your health and wellness. Made up of edgy and emerging techniques like red light therapy, NAD and power plates, to the older, more established ozone therapy, biohacking is a set of unconventional modalities that help the body heal itself. Curious about how each of these works? Join in and learn how you can incorporate biohacking in to your lifestyle and start building a new life beyond addiction.

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Biohacking: Your One-Stop Tool To Health And Fitness During Addiction Recovery With Larry Arnold

We started this show because there’s so much misinformation about addiction treatment, mental illness, and recovery in general. There’s so much more to recovery than just going to inpatient treatment, seeing a therapist, and going to twelve-step meetings. Those things are important and AA saved my life but there’s so much more to long-term recovery. There’s so much more to living happy, joyous, and free. More than stopping the drinking, the drugs, and any addictive behavior for that matter. To live a new life, a person needs to develop new lifestyle habits. Also taking care of the mind, body, and spirit are crucial aspects to recovery. Those are the types of things I talk about here on this show.

I’m here with Larry Arnold. He is a two-time professional Nebraska football player, a health and wellness coach, a biohacker, red light therapist, and Founder of the Larry Arnold Approach, which is a comprehensive method that he designed to create balance in understanding ability and outcome. I met Larry back in 2016. He’s my coach. He’s the guy that taught me how to run. I went to Larry, not knowing how to run or I couldn’t run more than 5 or 6 miles. I didn’t run long distances. I hadn’t run for many years.

After seeing Larry, I ended up running a four-hour marathon when I did IRONMAN, which is a decent time, especially since I didn’t run and that’s after swimming 2.4 miles and after riding 112 miles. I owe it to Larry. He’s the guy that keeps me injury-free. Anytime I get injured, I go to see Larry. He always gives me the best advice and helps me stay injury-free. We’re going to talk about biohacking, NAD, ozone therapy, red light therapy, power plates, how to lose fat and get fit without spending hours upon hours at the gym on a daily basis. Larry, welcome to the show.

 

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. It was almost as much fun helping you run as it was watching you run. Watching you run was a treat. You look like The Incredible Hulk chasing a cheeseburger. You look determined but you were so strong that we had to let some of the strengths go. That’s what we’re here to talk about. How many people are working way too hard? I understand what the goals are. I know what kind of results people want. My goal is can we find a way to get into them not only easier but in some safer manner. In some way where they’re not going to be doing more damage to the body for the results that they’re going to get from the work, that’s what biohacking is all about.

As Tim said, he came in, he was strong, muscular and determined. Anybody who knows him already knows that. Once he said what he wanted and that was the most important part. He wanted to be able to run without cramping up, pain or injury. We took a look at the run and we had to change a couple of things. He’s a willing participant and a good student, so we changed them all. We started with the breathing and eventually, we got it done. How many triathlons have you done since 2016? It’s countless.

It’s a lot. I could run. I ran a marathon without any pain and it was easy. A mile was a long run day. I did CrossFit. I did yoga. I hiked. I didn’t run. I was the guy that said I hate running. I ran in high school and I played high school sports. I remember the first thing that you told me when you saw me run was, “You’re making it too hard. It doesn’t need to be that hard. First things first, you’re not breathing. Let’s talk about your breathing. Let’s talk about breathwork.” You had me go and take Pilates for a month. We opened up my hips. We didn’t even run for the first month that we were working together.

[bctt tweet=”The key to red light therapy is consistency.” username=”@larryarnoldTV”]

The day you run, you were not allowed to run.

I remember that. Before we continue, give me a little bit of your background.

I’m born and raised in Akron, Ohio. I played every single sport in the world coming up. I wasn’t athletic. I was a nerd. I was tall, skinny and awkward. I stuttered for a long time. I began to use sports more as an escape. I was big enough that they would let me on the teams, even though I wasn’t talented or I wasn’t coordinated. Being the nerd that I was, I was always looking into it. I want to see why that guy moved that way, and why that guy got injured. That continued. I ended up getting a football scholarship. I hated football from day one. I was on the swim team. I ran track but I got a football scholarship and I went to Nebraska. At the time, it was on the early ‘90s, ‘92 was my first year there.

They had the best weight room and training facility bar none across the country and that’s what sold me. I didn’t go for football. I went because of the type of lifting and wellness firm that they had. That’s what I learned in college, to be honest. I was in the weight room nonstop. I would stare and I would study while they trained the volleyball players. It didn’t matter which team. I was fascinated with the different trainings and the different methodologies they use. That’s what got me interested. Afterwards, I think football wasn’t for me. After I left football, I got into health and wellness. Here we are now. I spent some time in physical therapy clinics. I worked in a lot of rehab stuff. That’s how we got here.

Your passion is in biohacking and helping people. I see you. You’re one of the best, if not the best coach physical therapists that I’ve ever worked with. I’ve sent you so many people because you know exactly what to do. You know what the issue is. Somebody can walk up to you. You can look at them for five seconds and they’re like, “My calf hurts.” You’re like, “It’s not your calf. It’s your IT band.” How did you get to that place where you wanted to help people?

It’s always been that way for me since I was young. Even the teams that I would get onto, I wasn’t interested in playing. I didn’t want to be in the game. That’s embarrassing. I might miss a shot. I don’t want everybody to laugh at me. I loved to practice. Every coach coaches a little bit differently but I love the way that they would teach different skills. In hearing all these different things, I found myself now trying to translate it to the other people on my teams. I ended up being almost as player-coach on every team that I was on so much so, it was hard for coaches to coach me because I didn’t want to do the play, I wanted to help everybody understand. When I got into fitness, it became the same thing. I realized what everybody’s goals were. Everybody wants to be healthier but they’re not necessarily receiving the information in a way that will work for them. My true value-add I believe is my ability to communicate.

I can take this language that seems simple and I can explain it in a million different ways depending on who the person is. It’s the same lesson but I can give it to them in a different language. Let’s be honest. We’re on this show so let’s talk about it. You came in and you explained who you were and what you do. You explained a little bit about your background. Instantly, I realized that I’m dealing with someone with an addictive personality. I now know that I can use that to my advantage because in training, I need you to have that addictive personality. I need you to want to do this, even though it might hurt sometimes, even though it might feel like it’s not the right thing sometimes. I need that stick-to-itiveness, some people will call it.

Once I began teaching you these little tricks that would help the run get a little better, I knew that your addictive nature would have you practiced them so often that it was going to be easy to teach you. I taught you one step at a time and let you be ten. Each person is different. Everybody has a different level of addictive personality. That’s what you got to find. That’s one of my approaches. I try to find that. What’s the thing that person’s addicted to or how are they addicted? If I can teach that and sway it, we can get that over into learning fitness. That’s what we’re dealing with. I’ve always been this guy. When I got into fitness and I saw people working too hard, if there was anything I could do that could make this journey easier for them, then I figured they would stick to it and be a good business model.

What’s the definition of biohacking? That’s a term that’s thrown around. I don’t think a lot of people know what biohacking means.

 

Just so I don’t get it wrong, not only will I give an actual definition but at first, I’ll explain what my definition would be and I’ll give you a technical one. We have our natural biology or the things that are designed to happen. Eating healthy food would be an idea of biohacking. You could see the average of the food that’s out there but then you know you’re going to die at the average time and get diseases. You might decide that you’re going to do some healthier options. You’re now hacking what biology has put upon you. There are a million ways we could do that, stretching, more hydration and sunlight. With the technology we have, there are so many different hi-tech things that we can do in between, the NAD+, the red light therapy, ozone therapy, power plates that we’re seeing before, cryo baths and cryo tanks. Different ways that you can control what we call telomeres or your life years, how much life you have left in years, how many years you have left in your life. That’s biohacking. It’s a way to get around what the norm is.

We’re going to go through the different modules or the different types of biohacking. Let’s start with red light therapy. Talk to me about red light therapy.

After I got into the fitness industry, I spent five years at a physical therapy clinic. I got the pleasure of being the exercise assistant, an exercise protocol designer for the therapist. It did wonderful things for me. It took all the fifteen years of personal training that I had. Now, I had to ask myself, “What about people with actual injuries or the ones with one leg shorter than the other?” What I had to do was talk my training models. One of the things that I got introduced at that time was red light therapy. People might be familiar with cold lasers or different laser treatments. Red light therapy is the same. You can use these LED lights. What happens is light is an energy much like sunlight. Sunlight will stop on the surface and it will cook your skin. That’s where the light is active.

Red light goes deeper than the skin. It gets the light out. It gets into the subcutaneous levels all the way to the fat levels. Some of the light goes as deep as your heart or your brain. What it’s mainly used for is to reduce inflammation. The red light is active on every single cells, mitochondria and substance. It will get rid of inflammation, swelling and pain. It grows hair, balances hormones, gets rid of stretch marks and builds collagen. There are over 140 published studies of what this stuff does. There was no question that it works, it’s just the information we got to get it out to people. You look at red light therapy in hair growth and hormone balance. It’s highly effective. There are zero negative side effects. It works even for fat loss and for muscle gain. It’s the newest hit thing but it’ll be popular over the next years. You can find it in any city if you look for more expensive some than others.

[bctt tweet=”Technique, work, perform. ” username=”@larryarnoldTV”]

I think a lot of people out there don’t understand the true benefits of red light therapy. For example, the street from us, they have a red lightroom. I have a red light at my house. I tell people the benefits of light therapy. It increases testosterone. It increases circulation. It decreases inflammation. However, there’s no like, “I feel amazing,” after you go through red lights therapy. What are the true benefits of red light therapy? How do you get the results? How do you see the results? How do you know you’re getting the results?

One of the big keys of red light therapy is consistency. Even though it won’t work immediately and by immediately, I mean exactly that. If you have swelling in your knee and it could be from an acute injury or overall edema, if you apply the red light correctly, it will move the blood along and improve the swelling within 5 to 10 minutes. It’s a proven science but consistency is the key. Even if you can use it now to get rid of inflammation and swelling, if you can use it consistently over the next 2 to 3 weeks, you’ll see your skin start to clear up. Scars will begin to go away. Actual stretch marks get filled in because what stretch marks are it’s almost a tear in the collagen. These things are all running in one direction and it gets pulled a little bit out.

This red light therapy will go through and activate and collagen and fill in those lines. It’s the same thing with testosterone or with hypothyroidism. The thyroid gland is so close to the surface, the red light can penetrate deep enough. It activates the cells and they will balance themselves out. I think people walk away a little bit sometimes dejected but maybe they just don’t understand some of the art that goes into it. By art, this is what I mean. Within red light therapy, there are different nanometers. The nanometers are all measurement modules much like centimeters and millimeters. Each nanometer means that light goes however deep beneath the skin. Different nanometers treat different things as do different treatment times. You want to get with somebody who knows the multiple nanometers. You want to make sure you’re using the right nanometer for what you’re trying to treat.

All of them work from 600, which does acne and scars get rid of that to 630 which burns 50% more fat when you use it, all the way to the 800 or 1200 that get all the way into the brain tissue. They’re using that already for traumatic brain injury. As soon as somebody gets a concussion, they can get the red light around their head and it will reduce the swelling immediately inside the brain. This is the stuff that they are already using in the NBA and NFL, it’s just now trickling down to the health and wellness field but it’s one of tier. If you’re consistent with it, you will feel it. You’ll know the difference.

Is there a difference between red lights? For example, I have a red light here at my house. It’s six 660 and 850. Those are the two frequencies. Those are the standard frequencies. What’s the 660 for? What’s the 850 for?

When we’re discussing nanometers of light, zero nanometers would be a white line so it reflects on the skin and we’re maintaining it to be zero nanometers. The red lights begin at 600 and work their way down. They’ll get all the way to 1500 and both become infrared lights. You’re looking for red saunas. It’s still a lot. The light is so thin, you can’t see it. With a 660 light, it’s simply telling you that the light is going to go 660 nanometers deep. Depending on your build, the light will be active. Some people might have a fat layer that’s deep and so they’re still in their fat layer with the light. For most of us in 660, we can trust that the light is going to get into the middle of our muscle bellies. It’s going to make it under our muscle tissue. That light is going to work mostly to combat fatigue and lactic acid after workouts. It will give you a better overall feeling. It will be like getting a massage with the light.

That 850 light goes much deeper than I want to use for joint pain and joint healing. The muscle on that is so thin that it will go through your bone. It will go through your skull and get active in your brain tissue. The 660 and 850 are the two most basic nanometers where they know that people will have efficacy. If you were put together lights and wanting to get them out, those two. If you’re picking one and somebody’s going to pick up on the fact that your light only does one thing. If you pick two, that’s good. There were some lights both by Joovv and I want to say the other company. I can’t remember the other company’s name but five nanometers in each light. They’re doing it for that purpose.

Their goal is somebody like me is going to come along and talk about these nanometers. They’re much more expensive but they’re much more versatile. A good one is one that has the proper nanometers for what you want to treat. A good basic light is 660 and 850. You want enough power behind that light. Generally, what they ask for is 100 joules or 100 watts per centimeter square. You want enough power behind the light. One of the basic ones that you buy online will work. You want to stay away from the little flimsy handful devices because they’re going to provide the same red light idea but there won’t be enough power to make a difference.

Is there a different frequency for fat loss versus acne?

This is where the art comes in. You want to get with somebody who’s skilled. All of the different nanometers have different studies back them. That’s why there are so many studies. For example, the 600 to the 610 nanometers are close to the skin and those will do acne scarring. At that nanometer for acne scarring or acne inflammation, you only want to do 2 to 3 minutes worth of treatment. For fat loss, because your fat cells are a little bit deeper underneath the skin, those are 635 to 645 nanometers. Those lights will burn fat. The way that they work is as long as your fat cells are exposed to 635 to 645 nanometer lights for eight minutes before cardio, you’ll release 90% of the fat for each cell into your bloodstream. As we go deeper into the nanometers, the lights will have different effects. You want to be careful. Make sure you’re using the correct lights for your goal. Don’t try to get rid of your acne in a fat-burning way because you’re going to burn and bubble the fat up. It’s going to come out of the acne and you’re going to think the light didn’t work because it made the acne worse. In fact, it did work because it burned all the fat off your face.

There’s a lot to red light therapy.

 

There is. Know that it works. My biggest thing for everybody is to get involved. Get it into your life. There are no negative side effects. The things that it does for anxiety and depression alone, even if you were to use the wrong light for your skin and muscle goals, what it’s going to do for your brain is amazing because what it does is it’s going to fully cleanse the blood, which going to get lane into the blood and help your blood become healthier. Every place your blood touches will now get better and more ample blood is the best way I can say.

Are there studies that support the use of red light therapy for mental illnesses, anxiety or depression?

That’s why this is a great field because what starts off is this vanity play versus this fat burn thing. I know that over the next couple of years, the deeper that people dig, the more they’re going to find about the anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s and all the things that have to do with the brain, the better it’s going to be. As we were talking about with concussions or traumatic brain injury, this light can go in and turn off the inflammation and that will help with the swelling which makes the whole incident a lot less effective or dramatic. The same thing happens when we talk about Alzheimer’s, depression or stroke. Some parts of your brain are getting deprived of blood. That’s what’s happening.

We can get light underneath the skin to nerve endings into blood vessels or the things that have started to shut down and then the light will do without doing anything else. It will cause it to open that up, to grow and to mature. We’re able to grow people’s brains. It sounds crazy but that’s what made those things if you can get it through. The studies are out there. I tell everybody. Any questions about red light, you can Google red light and anxiety. You will be amazed. You’re going to like, “There was no way that there’s this much stuff here that I didn’t know.” I encourage anybody, if they have questions, please call me anytime. I will send you more information you can handle.

Tell me about NAD.

NAD is another biohacking term, Nicotinamide Riboside, NAD+. It’s an amino acid. It’s a stem cell proliferator. For people who are getting stem cells in their knees, their neck, or for their shoulder, one of the things they would put into your IV bag would be this NAD+. What it does is it helps stem cells to grow and be open to connecting to other cells. One of the first ways that they used it outside of stem cell proliferation is in opiate clinics. In high-end opiate clinics, what happens is you take in so many opiates that your opioid receptors could now be worn down. It’s how you need more opioids. In ten days at 1,000 milligrams per day of this NAD+, it will go through your body and will regrow whatever receptors are worn down. That’s its only thing. It’s not trying to do anything special. It will just regrow those receptors.

What all the patients are claiming after the ten days is not only are all of the symptoms gone but they don’t have any cravings. That’s the key. There’s still playing other work that has to be done. We got to get in touch with what’s going on but as far as not having cravings, that’s huge and then that made it big. It’s big on the athletics team as well, also on vaccine because it will go through and not only do these opioid receptors but any of the receptors that you have that are worn down. Perhaps you’ve been addicted to smoking and your nicotine receptors are worn down or your caffeine receptors are worn down.

[bctt tweet=”There are a million ways to stay healthy. And they don’t have to hurt.” username=”@larryarnoldTV”]

Constantly, you’re working out and thinking all of my receptors are worn down. This NAD+ goes in. It’s not a good feeling when it goes in and you can do it through an IV bag. It takes a little bit longer. You could do a drip or you can do subcutaneous shots. You get it in your system. All of our NAD production starts to go down after the age of 30. By the time we’re 35, 40, we’re not making it anymore. If you take these shots, once your NAD levels go back up, the best way I can explain this is the limit was filled. Your brain clears off. You’re thinking well. You stop craving stuff. You got no business craving.

How does the NAD+ affect your mitochondria?

The way that it affects the mitochondria is exactly the same as the red light. The red light is going to activate the mitochondria from a light sense on the outside and encourage it to grow from normal light energy. What NAD does is it’s like an amino acid. It gets into your bloodstream and when it gets to those stem cells or whatever receptors had been worn down, it encourages them to grow. These are the growth points in your body. Stem cells are what help us to regenerate. That’s how you clone a sheep. Anything that’s dead in the body or decayed gets replenished. Instead of eating and hoping the protein gets broken down, we’re going directly to the amino acids and the chemical agent and you’re staying the right amount and replenishing it into the stem cell level. We’re talking about replenishing the growth pot for the plant instead of hoping the plant will grow.

Who should be interested in NAD?

Everyone. When I first heard about it, Ben Greenfield was talking about it with Joe Rogan. Ben mentioned that when he first got tested, he was 34, but the test that they ran said he was 36. He had done all these different biohacking things over the last couple of years and his new age is 24. He’s still talking about this NAD+. That was enough to make me look it up. Once I looked it up, this is for everybody, whether it’s the athlete who beat himself up, he’s not putting his body back together as well as he can or if it’s my father-in-law who got out of the hospital. I know that his receptors and his regenerative things are not what they should be. As he’s trying to heal, I know that there is some help we can give him that would help stem cell proliferation. That was the healing process. We’re old. We’re growing. Our bodies are not regenerating anymore but we have science and technology. We have the ability to do that so we should use it.

Tell me about ozone therapy.

Ozone therapy has been around for many years. A lot of people will know this. Penicillin replaced ozone. Before we had penicillin, we would use ozone for everything. If you had gangrene in your leg, they would put the ozone in the leg and it would kill all the gangrene and all these other things but it was a bother mixing the gas and making it right. One day, somebody created penicillin. It’s much easier to give you penicillin for any bacteria that you have. It was easier to do. That turned into amoxicillin. The point is the original form before we had this was ozone.

What is ozone?

It is the best thing in the world at killing bacteria and/or diseases. It’s the natural form of penicillin and truly what it is, it’s much like the ozone layer above us that breaks things down as it passes through. Instead of CO2, it’s CO3. You would take the CO2 or oxygen. We rode it through a converter and in that converter, we would add an additional molecule of oxygen and turn it into CO3. If we could take that CO3, your body will make use of the CO2 the normal way that it does. That extra molecule of oxygen becomes the pre-radical. It breaks off and it is loose within whichever cell it’s in. It’s a little oxygen molecule. It will latch on to whatever does fit here. It will oxidize it. What happens is much like a Lysol or a Clorox bleach, you can get CO3 into your bloodstream somehow. It will kill between 90% to 95% of all bacteria and/or diseases that it encounters.

We can never say that it cures cancer because it doesn’t. What we can say is that cancer cannot live in the presence of oxygen. If I can get you some oxygen with an extra oxygen molecule in there, then cancer won’t survive in its presence. We can’t say that it will cure COVID or get it rid of COVID because it doesn’t. We can say that COVID cannot survive in the presence of this oxygen. If we can get that oxygen in, then the COVID will not survive. These are all proven things. You can look this up. When the respirators fail and all of the medical protocols fail, they will try ozonating the blood and putting it back in. They don’t talk about it because it’s not medicine so it’s not part of a medical protocol. Every medical office carries ozone gas. When you go to your naturopath and you ask for it, you’ll be able to get ozone treatment and ozone therapy. It works well.

It does the same thing with the other two things. The gas itself goes in because that extra oxygen in your body is now able to do what your body would do more naturally with more fuel so it heals itself. It will get rid of inflammation immediately. As I said, what it will do with the diseases and the bacteria. When you see a basketball player in the NBA and he twists his ankle. He goes into halftime. You think he’s never coming back out. He comes back out. He plays the second half. They shot him with ozone. That’s what happened. That’s what they do in the locker room. When you get a root canal, nobody is cutting your tooth. They put a needle in there it burns, then they’ll go fine. There’s no infection. They’re putting ozone gas in there. It’s killing the infection.

Tell me about the Larry Arnold Approach. What’s that?

 

I think I look at it a little bit differently. I hope we can tell that. What’s important to me is people. I’m more interested in people than the process. When I’m talking to people about what it is they want and how we’re going to get them there, I need to understand who they are and what they want first. Based on their ability to do what they want, now comes to my value-add because I need to add in all the rest of the things. My approach is that what does the person want? What do they need in order to have what they want and how can I assist? Nobody ever gets to run on the first day. We got to figure what’s wrong with you, how we can make that thing right, and how we can make running easy for you to do, then I’m going to make you run.

The approach is show up either what’s asked, be open to the opportunity and then be thankful. If I can do that every single time I come to see you, then you will get where you want. That’s my approach. I’m going to show up. I’m going to honor what you ask. I’m going to give you the opportunity. I’m going to be thankful. We make sure that you get all the proper stretching and technique first before we get into the work. If you don’t have the technique, how hard we work isn’t going to help us. It’s technique first, we work, and then we perform. That’s the Larry Arnold Approach. Technique, work and perform. You’re going to perform until you break something. When you break something, I go over your technique again, I’m sending you back out your performance. Eventually, every time you come in, I’m going to go, “What do you think is wrong with the technique? Hopefully, you can tell me.” “I turned my legs too far to the left.” “Now I get it. Let’s get right to work and then we’ll get you out of here.”

That’s in line with people are working too hard. It’s working but not harder. It’s to carry yourself and not getting injured. The main thing that I wanted to talk to you about and you want to talk about is people think that they need to work out for hours to get healthy and fit. Your experience is that most people are not willing to work out for hours to get fit.

I recommend against it because this is what happens. I’ve been blessed in my experience. My time in Nebraska and in sports was wonderful but you got to realize how much damage your body takes during a workout. I understand that our goal is to get fit. When I was talking about the IRONMAN, I don’t tell you to run thousands of miles in preparation to run 26. That doesn’t make any sense. We’re going to get injured and where you use all of your moxie, if you will, during the training. I would rather spend our training time perfecting the technique. It’s the same thing with fat loss and with muscle gain. It’s not that people aren’t working hard enough. It’s that they’re not working correctly. I challenge everybody out there. I ask every runner this, how did you learn how to run? Almost every runner tells me they didn’t learn. They just started running. Even if they had a coach, the coach told me mileage. How did you learn how to run?

I would ask you if you know how to drive. I don’t care that you’re tall enough to see over the steering wheel. I don’t care that you can reach the pedals. If you don’t know the rules of driving, you’re going to ding this car up and you’re going to break a lot of laws. I want the same thing with fitness. If people can learn the technique to accomplish what they want, they could save themselves a lot of work time. When people come to see me, there are eight minutes in the red light bed. I know that would mobilize 50% more fat. Why should I warm them up forever? It’s switching the 20 minutes on the power plate. Since the power plate can multiply the efficacy of workouts between 3 to 6 times, I don’t need you in there for an hour. I get the same amount of work done in fifteen minutes. That’s my goal. If I can get yourself done in 30 to 40 minutes, then we got something. If it’s taking longer than that, your body is going to be getting some breakdown. That’s the simple facts of exercise. Don’t work so hard during the exercise that you’re damaging your body. That’s not the goal at all.

Tell me about the power plate.

The power plate has been around for quite some time. It was originally designed for Russian cosmonauts in space. It was based on bone density but they created a machine that when you see it in many gyms, it moves front to back, side-to-side, and up and down. For most people, they’ll understand that you can use it for warm-up, for stretching and things like that. Effectively what it does is between 3 to 6 times, it could increase the efficacy of a workout. To make it simple, what you would think about is because the machines will be front to back, side-to-side, and up and down, your nerves have to follow the machine. It will move as many as 3,000 times per minute. You’re getting 3,000 micro contractions inside of your body so you’re already burning calories before you do any exercise.

Your grandma could watch Jeopardy and not move the muscle. She’s going to burn between 400 and 450 calories standing there watching Jeopardy. If you can start moving around on the plate, you can multiply it. Other people all the way up to 1,700 calories in one hour. It’s brutal but it’s a physical therapy tool that’s guaranteed to give you the results that you want. Everything is perfectly measured in meter. If used correctly, it’s one of the best tools for either burning fat, building muscle, and learning. Realize that the way that we understand exercise is we would move ourselves around. After enough movements, our blood would flow. We would get hot. We would burn calories.

In this case, the machine will move the muscles for you stimulating your nervous system. Muscles follow whatever the nerves say and the heart rate is going. Even people that are injured or can’t move, we can get calories burned. We get the weight off of them on this machine and then we get their mobility back. Eventually, we get them into more and more exercise. The power plate has been around for years. They got them in a lot of different gyms. There are a lot of different settings on them. It’s an art like the red light therapy but if you learn how to use it, it will be the most effective piece of workout that you’ve ever been on.

I have a power plate at my house that I use. I get in front of my red light. I do this every morning. I do my breathwork, I pray, I meditate, I do red light therapy, and I hop on my power plate before I go over to 45. That’s my routine.

That’s what I want people to get. You could let all of this biohacking replace your workout if you want to. It’s good enough that it will get the work done for you. I like the way that you’re saying it. Somebody came, they got to red light, and all these things that would guarantee the specific result. They’re free to go and do the activities they want to do to an enjoyment level. I don’t want you to do your activity until your fatigue because that’s how the body gets beat up. I would rather you come in and we scientifically get the results we want then exercise however you want. I like it that way. The power plate has stretching settings, massage settings, and muscle tightening settings. You can use it in all those different ways.

The number one way is for lymphatic drainage. A lot of people aren’t aware of this. You’ve got these lymph nodes. Lymph only travels down. That’s why migraines are so tough. There’s no way to get any lymph in your head to get rid of your pain. Lymph only spills out of the lymph gland so when you’re bouncing up and down, it spills out. That’s why we like running. The power plate is bouncing up and down, it’s the only brand that does that. The more time you spend on the power plate, you get lymph drunk. After the first ten minutes, not only is it not hard, you start feeling good. I can kick these hard plates but you’re just drunk. Your body is numb from this lymph that is still not onto it. You have more endurance and more stamina.

That’s one of the best benefits of it. Even if you’re not able to exercise or get the movements in, you can get this lymph flowing in your body. That lymph is what keeps inflammation down. As you can tell, all these things are based on controlling inflammation. Inflammation is the beginning of the disease, cancer, and death. If we can control inflammation, we’re not having any problems. Think about it. No inflammation, I can turn my arm off and I wouldn’t feel any pain. I’m trying to manage inflammation. All these things do to that.

Let’s talk about breathwork. I remember the first things that you said to me when I first saw you and I wanted to learn how to run is you said, “You’re not breathing.” We did some kickboxing and I was seeing stars. You said, “I told you. You’re not breathing.” Let’s talk about the importance of breathing.

I’m a movement maniac. I’m all about perfect movement. If we can get this body to move the way that we want it, then the exercise will be much easier and you get the results faster. The breath or your oxygen is the fuel for the car. When we were born before we learned anything else, we were all breathing machines. That’s the one thing we’re going to do. We might understand that once we get under stress, the first thing the body does is go into fight or flight, especially in exercise, you’ll stop breathing. You will realize you’re working hard. What’s truly happening is once the work is too much for you, your body is trying to autonomically turn off your breathing. It’s the fail-safe. It’s trying to cut the gas. Too heavy, too much work, this burn stops. If you stop breathing, you will stop working.

Breathing is important in that way. Not because I’m out of breath but from the mechanical standpoint, I can’t get your diaphragm to move up into your rib cage unless you exhale. If your diaphragm doesn’t move up and out of your rib cage, you’re going to have Tommy Bahama belly and your belly is sticking out in the front. If you got that, then you’re going to run by swinging your hips in the back. I need breathing so we can pull you into the correct posture so now we can release your low back and your hips. I needed more like a mechanical thing than even an oxygen thing.

Once people realize that’s part of the mechanics, then we can teach the rest of the exercise but if you’re not doing this first thing, all these things, in the end, are going to suffer. Once we can get people to focus on breathing, there is more oxygen. The muscles don’t burn badly and you can run for a longer time, then we get into meditation. I love breathing mostly because of that. I’m going to need you to meditate at some point during the exercise. If I get you focused on breathing early than later on when everything else falls apart, just come back to your breathing. That’s why breathing is important either mechanically as well as chemically.

What about being at an acidic state versus an alkaline state?

That’s part of the chemical. If I can get you moving this oxygen freely then as these muscles are creating more and more lactic acid, that extra oxygen we’ll help that process. At some point, you will be in acidosis that your body starts producing lymph so you can rid of the acidosis. We then hit this little numb or what we would call a Zen state then breathing easy. If you hold off on the breath, you’re preventing that process from happening. Now, you’re just living at the beginning of the acidosis. It’s going to keep burning. I would rather you go ahead and let it burn until finally, “I’m numb.” That’s when we hit the zone. That’s why runners are like, “After five miles, I’m in the zone.” The lymph has kicked in because you let the acidosis happen. If you fought the acidosis, most people between 3 and 5 miles, they’re out of air.

The breathing starts kicking off at three. After enough of that, the burning is so bad because they never make it over the hump. If they would go ahead and breathe, it’s going to burn worst at first but then you’ll go numb. You can run all day. You wake up tomorrow and wonder what in the world you were thinking. That’s also why I send you to Pilates. You were so strong. Your body was so concentrically focused or reflecting focus that I needed to get your brain going the other direction first. Rather than sending you to workouts or even to run, going to Pilates, which is the lengthening of muscles as we tighten them got you thinking the other direction. Once you were learning to go that way hard, then we started going that way a little bit looser and we run. That’s the approach. We got to do it in these different stages and different steps depending on each individual. It’s about the person and not the lesson.

We’re coming to the end of the hour here. What do you want people to have taken away from?

I want people to know that there are a million ways to stay healthy. Even if physically you’re not able, there are so many steps that we can use that could bridge that gap for you where you don’t have to deal with the pain. Let us start by getting rid of some of the pain that gets your blood and gets things moving. We get your insides moving and then we get your outsides moving. There is a way to do it. I work with amputees and stroke patients, anything you can imagine. I got kids on every end of the spectrum. We all need health and wellness. Things are a mess right now. Healthcare is a mess. We find ourselves stuck in this space between fitness and healthcare. We’re all trying to stay well, so we don’t have to go and deal with healthcare because it’s a mess.

Fitness is this whole other space where you got to be an athlete. I’m operating the space in between. If you and your physical therapists, doctor and trainer are trying to figure it out, I would love to help. I give away as much information as I can for free. Please call me. Please get it all. If you’re sitting at home, whether it’s an addiction, back pain or you don’t know what you’re doing, whether you’re 500 pounds and don’t know where to get started, there are ways to get you going and they don’t have to hurt. They don’t even have to look like exercise. We got machines and computers that will do it all for you. I’ll let anybody come in and try anytime.

How can people find you, Larry? How can they get on to you?

You can always hit me up on IG. It’s @LarryArnoldTV. Online, it’s RedLightLarry.com. I’m also at VibeFitAZ.com. You can ask me anything you want. I’m an open book. I love to spin up all this knowledge that I can. The more challenging the case, the better. I like amputees, scoliosis and strokes. I like finding ways around the reasons why people can’t work out. If you can’t, won’t, or don’t work out, call me.

Thanks so much, Larry. I appreciate you. It’s always good chatting. Thanks, everyone. I hope you all have a good rest of your day.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

• RedLightLarry.com
• @LarryArnoldTV – Instagram
• VibeFitAZ.com

About Larry Arnold

2 time National Champion Nebraska Football player Health and Wellness Coach Biohacker RedLight Therapist Creator of The Larry Arnold Approach/ a comprehensive wellness method designed to create balance in understanding, ability, and outcome.