Podcast Transcription: The Power of Isometric Training: Your Secret Weapon For A Pain-Free, Long And Healthy Life with Brad Thorpe

Ted Ryce: Brad Thorpe, thanks so much for coming back on, man. Great to see you. 

Brad Thorpe: It's always great to see you, man. I hope you're enjoying Brazil. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, it's an interesting time here. Interesting time. They are not into isometric exercise, though. There's a saying that, there's a story about a shoe salesman, and I think it was, you know, some, any developing country, and one comes back and says, "Oh no, it's a terrible market. Nobody wears shoes there. And then the other salesman says, "It's an incredible market. Nobody is wearing shoes.”  

So anyway, today we got into contact, we're friends, but you really wanted to come back on this show. Talk about why. 

Brad Thorpe: Well, over the last couple of days, there's been a huge push into the world of isometrics. 

There was a recent study just put out by the British Journal of Sports Medicine that basically concluded that isometric-based exercise was better than cardiovascular training, resistance training, and high-intensity interval training for lowering blood pressure in a hypertensive population.  

And as you know, there's over a billion people currently globally suffering from hypertension and after years and years and years of me butting my head up against a brick wall, it kind of feels really nice to hear those words through national news medias.  

Because it was published publicly, promoted on the B.B.C as well as C.N.N, and they basically put this front and center, front page of both their websites and journals and magazines, just sort of elevating this type of exercise that, as you know, I've been doing this for about, solidly, since 2006 is when I jumped down my rabbit hole. 

So, this is a long time to finally get some validation that stems from research back, basically going back until 1969 by a guy named Ronald Wiley. And he was a US Air Force scientist who was commissioned, and we're basically, as you sort of said about the Brazilians. So, he was commissioned to elevate blood pressure in fighter pilots.  

And they figured like, here's a way that we can elevate it. And then sadly, it actually worked the opposite. It actually lowered blood pressure. So for fighter pilots, they sort of said, well, this isn't good. We want them to have higher blood pressure so they don't pass out under G-force. 

And then all of a sudden he stumbled onto this sort of way that you can actually lower blood pressure through isometric-based contractions and there's actually far exceeds that what you could then see cardiovascularly as well as through resistance training. And back then resistance training really wasn't a thing. 

So, he was really kind of competing against this guy, Dr. Kenneth Cooper, who just coined the term aerobics because he added an "s" to aerobic. And that was in 1968, and Dr. Kenneth Cooper was a partner in the first commercial treadmill company. So they started to really promote, basically you need to do cardio training to improve cardiovascular health. 

The problem is since we've been going down that road, it's only gotten worse and worse and worse. So, it's nice to finally see some validation for Dr. Ronald Wiley's original research as well as, you know, I'm not going to lie, I sell and manufacture isometric exercise products and it's nice to have that sort of out there where people are like, "Oh, isometrics is actually good for blood pressure."  

As opposed to the last 30 years, people thought it was what was deemed contraindicated. Meaning if you have high blood pressure, you shouldn't be doing isometrics because it would only make it worse. Now the irony, and this blows my mind, and this is something that's completely overlooked. Let's say you had high blood pressure, then suffered a stroke, you know, you had the misfortune of suffering a stroke. 

The first thing they do post-stroke is give you isometric exercise. In order to help with neuromuscular reeducation because it's safer, it's more effective, and it's more efficient. So, pre-stroke, really bad, deemed bad, but post-stroke, this is what we're going to start with. You know, logically it makes no sense because their blood pressure wasn't resolved because they had a stroke. 

It's still usually elevated, now you just obviously have a brain injury that's going to take months, if not years to recover from. 

Ted Ryce: The medical industry is super confused about exercise in general. And if you work with doctors like I have, and I'm sure you've had your share of physician clients, I remember a plastic surgeon, which, you know, the amount of schooling they go through, they have to become doctors. Then general surgeons then specialize in plastic surgeons. 

Super smart guy, also super big ego. And he was trying to tell me something, he was totally ignorant about it. And I mean, he was friendly, you know, he was just, he was just being him. But I said, "I'll leave the surgery up to you, but you leave the exercise up to me." 

So, the study came out and you talked about the history of isometrics and, man, it's just, you know, I'll even say this, Brad, and, and I think we've had this conversation on, I mean, you've been on the show three times. I know you were on episode 420, I know you were on episode number 10, and then one other episode. 

I can't even find it when, when I googled the episodes. But if you're listening right now and you want a little bit more of the background, go to episode 10, if you can go back that far in the archives or episode 420 as well.  

But Brad, even when I first met you, and I think it's good to bring this up again, I was training, I believe he was 12 years old. He suffered an in vitro stroke because the umbilical cord got wrapped around him. Something like that. I don't remember all the details. Really good kid. Great parents.  

And I asked in a group we were both in for advice about what to do because he can't just have him bench pressed bro, is not, that's not his, his hand, the whole side of his body didn't work how a normal body works. 

And you helped and you helped a lot. And he got great results as far as he could with my knowledge, what you were able to coach me on. But it was game-changing and it took years for me. Even now, like I feel good about what you're saying and I feel like I have a better understanding, nowhere near yours, of course, about isometrics. 

But I think it's so hard to bridge the gap between what we think about as exercise versus isometric exercise. I think there's a couple of reasons, but what do you, what do you have to say? 

Brad Thorpe: Well, we try to make things complicated, right? We, like dynamic movement, is beyond complicated. It's, from an orchestration perspective to actually participate in it  

Ted Ryce: When you say dynamic movement, just you're talking about squats, push-ups, bench press, anything you can think of?  

Brad Thorpe: Yeah. All the way over to the cardio side, like the orchestration of running, elliptical, StairMaster, just that sequencing of events. And we basically, we overlook it from a what is actually going on perspective. 

Like, we get hot, we get sweaty, we, you know, you listen to music, you watch TV. If you're doing cardio, we do everything we can to basically avoid paying attention to what we're actually doing, which in theory should be about creating health, longevity, and wellness. 

The problem is a lot of this stuff, because it's high repetition, it's limited range of movement or motion, it tends to lead to wear and tear injuries, inflammation, joint stress, tendinopathies, and you know, more importantly, it leads to a general, dislike of exercise for most people and what they end up doing after a stint of well I didn't really know what to do at the gym, so my result was crap. 

So, then I basically said, well, it didn't work for me so I did give up on it. And as you know, exercise when done appropriately is the most vital thing we can do as humans. But if you do it wrong, if you don't know what to do, it will actually accelerate degenerative change. Why do I say that? Because you can look at it statistically, and you can see it across the board because what happens is people get injured by it, and they stop participating. 

And that is the root of many diseases, just because you end up being, for lack of a better word, injured, unmotivated, and you get frustrated. So, with the isometric component, because there's virtually zero skill involved in performing an isometric, and for the audience that is unfamiliar with what an isometric is, it's about learning how to create muscle tension within your body with limited to no joint movement. 

So, it's about basically just squeezing your muscles and getting them tight. And there are two different versions of which you can do. You can do what's called a holding isometric muscle action, which is historically known as yielding. And then you have what's called PIMA, which is pushing isometric muscle action, which is historically known as overcoming. 

And that would be when you're pushing into an object that doesn't move versus the HIMA, which would be just holding something in space. So that could be a body limb associated with yoga. It could be like you're doing a paused repetition in the dynamic exercise world where you're just holding a weight in space, but both have risks. 

One has more risks. So, if you're looking at the HIMA side of the equation it has more risk, because your body, if holding a mass in space as you fatigue, that load will actually go up higher. So, putting you at risk of injury where in a PIMA scenario where you're pushing into something that doesn't move, it's actually going to drop that resistance when you fatigue because you can't overcome your fatigue state. And push greater workloads. So, it tends to be a lot safer. 

Ted Ryce: Let's jump in just for a second, just so people can visualize, because I think what the acronyms are helpful, but the HIMA would be something like a wall squat, which we can talk about that was, II saw the research, or a front plank or a side plank. Those are examples.  

Or if you bicep curled and held it halfway up, or if you held a pushup at the bottom versus if you tried to deadlift a bar, it went to the Smith machine, loaded up a bar and just tried to pull up against it, but it was loaded with a weight you couldn't move.  

Or if you tried to lift a car, if you've ever tried to lift a car. I was just thinking about when I was a kid trying to do that, wondering how long it would take for me to get strong enough to actually lift a car. But so, what you're saying is the ones where we're trying to lift a car or trying to move the deadlift, the immovable weight or press against something immovable, those are the safer ones. Even though they're better for muscle action and getting stronger. 

Brad Thorpe: They better for muscle action. You'll be able to work on muscle endurance. So, the research between HIMA and PIMA, so the HIMA one will actually lead to greater levels of muscle fatigue faster. they're still trying to figure that out, but I just explained why, because that load is actually increasing relative to their fatigue state. 

That's not in the research, just, that's just how you have to understand how physics work. So hopefully they go prove that for me so I can then hang my hat off that statement. As well as most statements I've said from episode 10 to now, the research has come out validating my comments. So go back and listen to it. 

I mean, I, I'm going to, because there's been a ton of research come out since then, but you look at that in the HIMA or the PIMA environment. So, if I'm pushing on something, like we got to think about what's really at play, you know, that's going on in the body, like things like your tendon, right? 

The bone structure, the nerve signals, the actual muscle structure itself. So, if I'm lifting a, or if I'm pushing into an immovable object, because I have that ability to sustain the contraction longer, I'm going to actually increase the tendon stiffness, I'm going to increase the bone stiffness. So, you think about tendinopathies or you think about things like osteoporosis or osteopenia, which is basically the thinning of that bone structure. 

So, the, the PIMA scenario is really good for resolving those issues, right? But, you know, to stay on point with the, the circulation issue, right? And blood pressure and why that, you know, isometrics are so good for actually resolving blood pressure. We have to jump over to not, so quick little lesson about sort of the circulatory system.  

So, you have the atrial side, which consists of your heart, your, like your arteries, your capillary networks and stuff like that. And then you have your veins or the venous system, which is your vein. Now, when looking at the two sides in the arterial side, you have 35% of your blood volume in your venous side, you have 65% of your blood volume.  

And we know the one thing that's consistent across the board that everyone in the fitness industry knows, and the medical industry knows. How does the blood get back to the heart? And consistently, everyone will always say, well, it's a muscle pump. 

Cool. Absolutely a hundred percent. Now the question has to be asked, well, how do we make that system more efficient? Well, the research will show that when you compare dynamic muscle activity, be it concentric and eccentric to an isometric, the activation rate of a dynamic contraction is 88 or 89%. 

When you're contracting a muscle isometrically, you have the ability to contract near a hundred percent. So, if you're looking at that just at face value and go, okay, well if I can get about 12, 11, or 12% greater activation out of a muscle, how much do you think from a circulation perspective, do you think that's going to improve upon? 

And the answer is significantly greater. And we see that in the research associated with comparing cardiovascular training, be it resistance training, or hit or high-intensity interval training to an isometric. I mean, the isometric outperforms all of them, for blood pressure.  

Which is the important thing because that's actually restoring the health of the circulatory system. Like we get caught up with like heart rate and blood, all of that side of things. But we actually really have to think about, well, how do we influence the return phase? And when you think of creating better levels of muscle tension throughout your entire body. 

So, if you think about how your shoulder hangs or your arm hangs from your shoulder, if you increase muscle tension in your deltoid and pac and lat muscles that would pull upward and drive that humerus, be it that upper arm bone into what's called your glenoid fossa, which is on your shoulder blade, right? 

Collectively it's the glenohumeral joint. So, if I can cause better levels of compression there, I instantly create a wider diameter to my artery and my vein, right? So, I'm going to reduce the narrowness or the, narrow side of that because by better levels of compression, it increases the diameter of the structure, be it the artery or the vein. 

And we all know if I can reduce or increase the diameter of that artery because we've all heard narrowing of arteries is bad. Like we've all heard that, right? Right. We look and it's like, okay, well how do we, we can look at it from two ways. We can actually remove plaque buildup internally, or we can just make the diameter wider. And you can do that through better levels of muscle contract.  

Ted Ryce: I think you're doing a great job of explaining it. I think it's a little tough to understand exactly what you're saying, but... So, if I had to put that into words, it's like your arm's hanging, if you would stretch any tube, it narrows it. But what you're saying here is that through isometric training, things get a bit tighter so it's not as loose and it maintains a bigger diameter. 

So, I have a question for you. I know that makes sense in terms of physics. Is that what the research says is the change as well? 

Brad Thorpe: Yes. And what they'll see it’s a near instantaneous change. So, you will see after one workout, as you increase that contractility of that activation rate of muscle structure, the artery actually, tissue of the artery wall thickens and the diameter increases. 

And that's after one workout. So, if you now can string several workouts together, you'll start to see a significant difference within a week. And the research that they look at with an isometric is based off and the protocols that they sort of promoted in the articles, and also the research with four times, two-minute intervals, right? 

Four repetitions times, two minutes, two minutes is a long time, and I wouldn't recommend people start there, just because it puts people at a little bit more risk. But if we think about that for a second, and they're saying three minute or three times a week, right? So that's 24 minutes of committed time per week is what they're recommending. 

What I would recommend is like daily isometrics. So that way what you can do is get ahead of the curve and you can increase that activation rate of those muscles. So, you know, within a couple weeks you're now sort of seeing significant reductions in blood pressure.  

Ted Ryce: So, let me jump in here for a second, because I have this study or, or various aspects of this study, pulled up. So, this study, or it was actually a meta-analysis, so it looked at 270 exercise studies with over 15,000 participants. And they looked at aerobic exercise weightlifting. They looked at combined, weightlifting and aerobic exercise.  

They looked at high-intensity interval training, and they looked at isometric exercise training and the effects on blood pressure, resting blood pressure. So, the aerobic did well. Resistance training was not as good as aerobic. The high-intensity interval training didn't do as good as aerobic.  

Brad Thorpe: Yeah, it was the worst. It did the worst. 

Ted Ryce: The worst performed the worst. And you look at isometric training and it's like, whoa, that really outperformed. And they used three different exercises, or at least I can see different, three different exercises. The hand grip. So, they were squeezing something for two min, what was the protocol? Four times of two minutes on, yeah.  

Brad Thorpe: Four times, two minutes. And intensities were... 

Ted Ryce: What was the rest period on that? 

Brad Thorpe: It's usually about a minute in between. 

Ted Ryce: So, two minutes on, one minute off, times four for hand grip. They did a leg extension exercise and they did wall squats. So, two minutes on, one minute off. Oh, that's, that sucks even thinking about it 

Brad Thorpe: Well, exactly. And you know, I had a like a little rebut to what they put it out there and, you know, the two different news agencies, be it CNN and BBC, they threw in the plank, which wasn't studied at all. And to be honest, I don't think I've ever, in all my research reading, ever read a study on a plank for isometrics for blood pressure, like not one. And I read about 10 studies a day, you know, well, between four and 10. 

Ted Ryce: What is your point in mentioning that? 

Brad Thorpe: So, my point is, I don't want people out there who have blood pressure issues who may be of poor health to all of a sudden go out and try a two-minute plank because they saw it on a news report saying this is what I have to do. 

Because what will happen is you will end up injured. And it, it's a wall squatter, wall sit is as bad as a two-minute interval is. It's a lot safer than a plank. A plank. I mean, if you're looking at it going, okay, I don't have, you know, I'm not strong enough to maintain my shoulder integrity.  

I can't sort of deal with the sheer force going against all my spine structures. You know, so all of a sudden, you're going to have these people who have high blood pressure. And you know what happens when people exert force and they have to struggle. They hold their breath. So, you know, there's two reasons why I think it's gross negligence on the media. 

One, that's the media. It's shocking. I know. It's, yeah, that's what they do. It's like, but it's what they, what I think, like if I look at it positively, they just wanted to put something out. Their people knew what it was. Sure. Where it's like, hey, I have a personal relationship to an isometric. I never thought about it, but everyone knows what a plank is as opposed to many just like push into something that doesn't move. 

The difference is, it's just such a high-risk exercise for anybody new, let alone doing it for eight minutes on. 

Ted Ryce: Right. Your first time, like I wouldn't, well, I might be able to get through. I don't even think I could get through eight minutes of planking, two minutes on, one and off. 

Brad Thorpe: And you're in shape.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. I mean, I'm in pretty good shape, so if you're out of shape, so what Brad's saying, by the way, especially, I'm thinking all the way, like let's you're trying to do that plank and you know how you're in a good position, but your shoulders start to, you start to get tired. 

So, you start to hang off your joints, and then your abs and hip flexors, you're getting tired. So, your back is starting to sag towards the ground. That's bad for your joints, right? Your muscles are getting the action. It's almost this like a separate conversation we need to have about the effects on the joints, which we shouldn't open up that can of worms too. 

We shouldn't go down, get too crazy with that. But just understand what Brad is saying. You can hurt yourself with isometrics. Especially, he already differentiated the HIMA versus the PIMA. So, the ones where you're just holding a position like a plank or a wall squat versus, doing a squat into something immovable, like getting under the Smith machine bar, full of weight in kind of a half squat, quarter squat position and just pushing against it.  

Brad Thorpe: Yeah. Or even better still would be like a leg press. 

Ted Ryce: Oh, a leg press. 

Brad Thorpe: Leg press is fantastic. I mean, if you were, for the gym goers. 

Ted Ryce: Talk about how you would do that.  

Brad Thorpe: So, if you're thinking about like a traditional horizontal leg press, you know where it's like Cybex or one of those name brands, the select equipment. 

So, they're usually about 250 to 300 pounds. Let's say you're of poor health, not the strongest person. Basically, just bottom out the pin, pick an area what's about basically like, almost like a seated position, so like a 90-degree hip and knee angle. And then basically just push your legs out, knowing that the goal is not to move the weight, the goal is to push relatively hard. 

So, let's say about 80% and you can just guess as to what 80% is. It'll be pretty close to, you know, a measured with data monitoring stuff versus you just guessed because your brain ... 

Ted Ryce: That's what you do in your gym is you put things on clients and measure all that, but you don't have to do that. You can still get the results. You don't have to do that. 

Brad Thorpe: And to be honest, the times that, the only times we've ever really seen people get injured is actually when we're measuring force outputs. And it's always been males. but they tend to try a lot harder. and they're ego-driven. They're like, how strong am I? 

And you can generate so much more force in an isometric scenario than you can in a dynamic scenario. So, it, you know, isometrics, you do have to be mindful. and that's why I'm a big fan of not measuring because what it does, it checks the ego right out, because it's like, oh, I'm going to push as hard as I can. Well monitoring, so why bother? Want. 

Like most people, when they're doing testing, it's a three to five-second contraction length at a maximum. It's not, hey, let's do something for 45 seconds and measure all that data points. Or in this case, let's measure it for two minutes, like, you know, there's no real force measurements on two-minute sustained isometrics that I've been, to be honest, I've never seen that in a study.  

Ted Ryce: So yeah, they just, they just came up or, well, I guess they didn't come up with it. They looked at studies that did that. 

Brad Thorpe: Well, well, so this research was based off Dr. Ronald Wiley. So, when he came out with it, he just, you know, not speaking to the man, he hacked around to figure out what was the best protocol and did basically all his research then. 

And he, like, he researched this for well over 25 years before they actually came out with a tangible product, and it's not a product plug, but they came out with a thing called Zona, which is basically... And we've, we've discussed it before, and you know, I know you know about it.  

And basically, a dynamometer, that basically gives you a reading, and what you're doing is you're squeezing it and you hold that for two minutes, and it'll give you a perceived, like a, an output reading.  

But you can use a tennis ball for that. Like, you know, at the end of the day, just squeeze the tennis ball. And what they recommended historically with, with your non-dominant hand, so if you're right-handed, do it with your left side, versus your right side. And what they found is your non-dominant hand was actually a better side to actually lower your blood pressure. 

You know, you could think of it, your whole muscular system as a tourniquet, right? So, if you have asymmetries and joint move or asymmetries and force production, it's like twisting a tea towel. Well, how do you fix that? Well, you just untwist it. And it's a simple way to look at it, but as I said from the beginning, we've complicated this whole thing called exercise so much where it's, let's just get back to the basics. 

Like, and the reason that isometrics are so effective, an isometric contraction governs all dynamic movement. So, when you go to move, you actually have to have an upregulation of isometric muscle tension. So, what does that mean? You have to tighten the tendon structure. You have to tighten the muscle before you move. 

And now this happens at a rate you visually can't see. It's within the first 25 milliseconds, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen because you can't see. And we'd look at, well, muscles when generate force, they transmit that force, the tendon structure, and that tendon structure then creates movement, right? 

So, it really is really getting on a granular level, right, to the base of how do muscles work. And so, they work isometrically first, dynamically second. So, if you don't have that isometric strength or that base level isometric strength, that means your power output's going to be lessened. Your ability to tolerate force is going to be lessened. 

Your stability is going to be lessened, right? So, it puts you at more risk of injury, right? And also, then you look at that and you go, okay, well sure muscles. Yeah, they transmit forced tendons and we poo pooh that statement so much. But there's over 4,000 tendons in our body, right? There's not, and there's about 640 muscles, right? 

So, it's kind of like, it's not two for, you know, it's not one muscle and two tendons. It's one muscle in multiple tendons and tendons. Now, the cool thing, because we mentioned this a little bit earlier ago and that about osteoporosis and osteopenia, that tendon structure actually forms the outer surface of the bone structure, right? 

The only place that tendon doesn't attach to the bone is the end where you have that hyaline cartilage, where you have joint on, joint co contact. Outside of that, the entire bone structure in cu human tissue or in human, sorry, is actually covered with tendon structure, which is like eye-blowing, where it's like, okay, here's a way that we can basically help humans resolve blood pressure issues because we're helping transmit force from the muscle to the bone more efficiently. 

And it's kind of like, okay, well if that happens systemically throughout your entire structure, venous return gets better. Your arteries everywhere within your body, increase in diameter. So peripheral resistance, like the amount of pressure that your heart has to encounter goes down and it goes down near instant. 

Right? And it's kind of like, wow, that's pretty cool. And it doesn't require any movement, but it does require contraction. Right? And that's a thing that we overlook. It's like we got caught up with "We need to move. We need to move. We need to move." We actually need to change that phrase to "We need to contract."  

Ted Ryce: Brad, let me jump in for a second because I know it took me a long time. I was fairly knowledgeable when I first met you and started learning from you. And, it was even hard for me to grasp this because it was just so different of a conversation. Part of it. It wasn't that like, "Oh, that's really hard to understand." It's like so different of a conversation.  

But what Brad is saying, if you're following, is Brad is saying isometrics - you're already doing them. For example, we're maintaining our posture right now. And then when you're doing dynamic exercise where if you're doing a squatted, deadlift, a bench, press, two, you have to brace yourself on the bench if you're bench pressing correctly. At least if you're, so you're already doing isometric exercise all the time.  

It's more fundamental because as soon as you start to move, there's other isometric force needs to happen in other areas of your body to maintain your posture, joint control. So, it's really foundational.  

And then you went a level further, Brad, and talked about how this is affecting the tendons and the tendons are more extensive than what even medical professionals - well, maybe if they've cut open a cadaver - but like so many professionals, they're not even aware, especially exercise professionals. They're not aware of this stuff. And culturally speaking, we're fascinated by movement. We're starting, I think, to change that a tiny bit.  

You'll see people looking at handstands, although that's one of the HIMA, the holding isometric. If you see someone doing a handstand or one arm handstand or, a plan or some of those gymnastics' strength training, gymnastics moves where, or iron crosses or whatever, those are, the types of isometrics Brad was talking about, saying that they have more potential for injury, versus the ones that are overcoming or PIMA.  

And, Brad, I would love to get into, I know you, I've learned so much from you over the years. I incorporate isometric exercise every single day. What would you say for a person?  

So, they just maybe caught with, of this study, maybe have some blood pressure issues or maybe they just don't want blood pressure issues and when they want to improve their health, first of all, do you have a resource that we could send people to? I know you used to have a 30 and 30 or something like that. Do you have a resource? 

Brad Thorpe: Yeah, we, we have, yeah. We basically, we have the ISOPHIT YouTube channel. There is over 15 hours of content where I explain things like for, well, in this case, isometrics for hypertension.  

So, there's a 45-minute talk on that, which explores the science. It explores what you should be doing, to improve upon it. It's obviously a much more blown-up conversation than what we've just had. But then we look at things like diastasis recti and like, you know, postpartum like for women and the how do isometrics help with that, all the way through to sports performance. 

So, it's an incredible resource and if you take the time to watch and listen, you'll learn a ton. And then we also have about 200 different isometric exercises. That you can look to learn about and copy.  

And we also have obviously our 30 and 30 protocol, which is a 30-minute exercise protocol dedicated to isometrics, which basically takes all the benefit of yoga, weightlifting, and high intensity interval training, and puts it into sort of an action packed 30-minute isometric exercise routine.  

So, we focus on 10 exercises for your core, 10 exercises for your upper body, and 10 exercises for your lower body. And many of these exercises, like if you don't have an ISOPHIT, you can use a towel, you can use, you know, you can look around your surroundings because all an ISOPHIT is, there's a fancy wall that obstructs movement. 

So that's really what it was and what it is. So, there's, there's different ways you can use a yoga strap. You can, like, there's a ton of ways you can recreate isometrics. We just made it super convenient and easy. But yeah, from a resource perspective, if you just go to, you know, Google, on YouTube or go to YouTube and search ISOPHIT... 

Ted Ryce: I just want to share that because it's spelled ISOPHIT, it's spelled with a “ph”. And just a ton of information on there. And I want to say this to you, if you're the type of person who also, I want to say this because I think it's important. We, we had this discussion before we pressed record.  

We're really in a state of things where marketing reigns supreme, marketing reigns supreme. And even as a fitness professional, I've struggled with this, Brad, over the years. I used to say things and do things on social media or write things on my blog that I knew would get attention, but weren't necessarily in the best interest of my clients. 

Not that I put out anything too crazy, but I would try to find interesting angles or so I didn't put out anything dangerous, but it was just waste of time stuff. But I thought it would get people interested and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. So more importantly, there's some people who are master marketers. 

So, I started as a personal trainer 24 years ago in Miami Beach before the internet was a thing, and before there was social media at all. And so that's, that's where I come from.  

And Brad, you've been in this longer than me, but the people now who are the most successful, who make the most money, but provide questionable information and certainly get questionable results, are marketers. 

They're marketers, they're masters of marketing. And I want to say this because I'll air out a bit. I can sense your frustration, at least earlier when we first started talking about something, I'm frustrated with people love the marketing. I've been accused of being too salesy a couple times. 

Not much, but it happens every once in a while, and I'm like, I suck at sales. That's why you think that I'm salesy. because the people who are masters at it, let me tell you, this is so simple. I spend what I spend my time on, well now I'm learning about business, which actually doesn't include that much marketing, but at the same time, if you're listening right now, it's also on you to stop going for the quick fixes. 

Stop getting so enamored by the new thing and start to focus on the basics. And, hey, listen, I'm not even telling you, I'm not telling you must do it. I'm saying if your results suck, then it's probably because the people you are learning from suck, but they're good at marketing. 

So, change up what you're doing, if you want better results. All right, I'll step off the preacher pulpit there. Do you have anything to say about that?  

Brad Thorpe: Well, it's so true. I spend more hours per day reading research than I do marketing. You know, I think that's important to the end result of the client, you know, whether it's glamorous and sexy, and the interesting thing is, a lot of those people who are those, you know, stars and the well-known people, within the fitness industry, well, shockingly behind the scenes, a lot of them now have ISOPHIT which is getting kind of cool.  

Like we were just labeled Hollywood's Newest Celebrity Workout by Shape Magazine.  

Ted Ryce: Alright, we'll talk about that a little bit. I saw that, but, name some names and, and share the story. 

Brad Thorpe: So, Jason Walsh is a client of mine; he introduced Head Coach Cleveland Cavaliers. So, Derek introduced Jason to ISOPHIT. So, I wasn't even present. 

So, this is how I market. I take the world's elite trainers, and sports coaches, and I make them advocates. Not because they're paid, they're not paid at all, because they believe that we can help more people with what we're doing. So, Derek fell in love with ISOPHIT instantly and within a couple of weeks, we helped Derek overcome some patellar tendon issues that he was having for over a decade.  

And here you have a person, and Derek's brilliant, and I absolutely love this man, but what he was doing didn't help him resolve his issue. Introduced ISOPHIT, weeks later it's resolved. 

Ted Ryce: Who was he working with before? 

Brad Thorpe: Well, himself and basically just doing dynamic exercise.  

Ted Ryce: But he wasn't working with anyone in particular? Like some famous trainer?  

Brad Thorpe: Oh, no, sorry. He is the famous trainer. Derek was with the Cleveland Cavaliers, a world champion. So, he's been their head, head SS and C coach for 13 years. And he's super crazy smart, but what he was missing was isometrics.  

He did it haphazardly here and there, but until you have it, where it's like, okay, I need to actually focus on this. So, Derek introduced us to Jason. He's like, man, you got to try this product. This is amazing. It's like transformative. So, I get a call basically day of, after he introduced, and Jason's like, I need one of these at my studio out in LA. 

So, he is in West Hollywood. And Jason, you know, I'll talk about the clients that I'm able to use their name because they put it out there publicly.  

So, Zoe Saldana, we all know her from Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy. Then you have Tracy Ellis Ross, Diana Ross's daughter. I watched all the Black-ish series and I have like this mad crush for this woman because like fanboying, for lack of a better word, she's beautiful, she is what? She put that out to 14 million people that she was using ISOPHIT. 

And it's like, oh my God. Like, so it's like that level of marketing I can't pay for and I have no interest in paying for, but it is when people sort of all of a sudden experience it. So those are two of the more well-known stars that use it. There's several more that, you know, the names you've seen in the movies, I just can't use their names. 

But if you, if you Google Jason, you see his clients, it's embedded in their programming. So those are using. But at the end of the day, 20% of the NBA is using ISOPHIT now, that's growing. We're now breaking into the English Premier Soccer League. We had an America's Cup team reach out to us, to help train for their, the 37th America's Cup, which is next year in Barcelona. 

So, like, this is where it's like, okay, you're the elite of the elite are calling us. The reason is because it works. Everybody who uses ISOPHIT, when they actually use it, not just purchases, gets better. And that better is across the board. Like we helped a lady who had double lung transplant, kidney transplant, we helped her get off blood pressure medication. 

We helped her basically reduce her insulin dependency by half. So, the insulin was within a week. She noticed such a massive difference. And the blood pressure medicine took about a year, and that was medically recommended she get off it, right? So here you have somebody who is so, I guess, put back together. 

I don't want to say for health, but I mean, she had cystic fibrosis and she had to double lung transplant, so she'd monitored her basically since her transplant, she'd monitor her insulin, her blood pressure like daily. And so, she basically noticed a huge increase in her physicality within the first little while. 

So, we have many stories of this. We had one lady, she lost three dress sizes in 21 days without diet modification, weightlifting, or cardio training. Now she did have a little bit of weight to lose, but when you start to explore the science of isometrics, what you'll see is on a per muscle basis, 30 seconds of isometrics burns the equivalent as 30 seconds of maximum sprinting.  

If you look at that time period, the rationale is because the muscle in an isometric is working the whole time and, in a sprint, it's only working a proportionate period of time. Right. So, you know, for 30 seconds. 

Ted Ryce: Let’s about that a little bit, because I don't think people, like when you talked about the woman who got off her insulin, so she was diabetic and to get her to go, okay, we'll go to the gym, do some squats, bro, and, and do some bench press, you had her do isometric training and what you just said is so important. I think it's hard to understand because people, we, everyone's exercises, unless they've been taught differently, like an athlete. 

In other words, do things fast because oh, 1 2, 3, 20, okay, I did my 20 reps. But what we're really after is the muscle activation. And if you're going too quick, the muscle doesn't work that hard. It feels like it works hard, and it does in a way, but the amount of time the muscles under tension is so different. 

It's a hundred percent. When you're doing an isometric exercise versus the intermittent, like you said, a sprint as an example, I'll probably never run. We'll see, I'm going to get some stem cell injections in my knees later this year, but I'll probably never run a sprint again unless I'm late for a flight. 

And there's no reason to, unless you love it and you might, like, life isn't worth living without sprints, but you can totally do it.  

Brad Thorpe: There's health benefits, but don't start there, build up to it. Like, I mean, you have to have the muscle strength and stiffness to actually tolerate the forces which are high in sprinting, right? 

So that's why when you look at a sprinter, like a hundred meter, like a world class, a hundred-meter sprinter, those dudes are jacked, you know, and you look and go, wow, you want that body? They exert so much force in, you know, sub 10 seconds, right? They cover a hundred meters in 10 seconds. Like that's just a crazy amount of force. 

But on the flip side, they don't like, that's all they do. Like, I mean, they do lift weights, they do training and stuff like, but it, it's about just looking at it going okay long term. Like these are rare human beings. Like these are not your everyday human, right? Like if you put, you know, Joe athlete and said, hey, go run ten one-hundred-meter sprints and that is going to be your training for today. High probability on, three-quarters of the hundred he is already hurt. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, the hamstringing pull, right? 

Brad Thorpe: The Achilles tendon goes as soon as he starts, you know... So, there's, there's many things. So even though it's like it's healthy and it produces like great results, but you have to look at the, the force outputs. And especially if you're dealing with somebody who's obese and if you're going to say, hey, how do I maximize caloric expenditure? 

Oh wow. I could go sprint. For an obese person that might not. And I wouldn't even joke around and say, go do it and go try it. It's just going to lead to injury. And you look at it and go, okay, well if here's a way that we can actually get similar results, calorically, well why don't we just implement this? 

It's safer. And that's, basically a hundred percent contraction, right? So, it's a maximum contraction, isometrically, maximum sprint rate. just to, just to give you an idea versus, hey, I'm just holding my arms out to the side and now burning the same as sprinting. No, it's high-effort isometrics in a PIMA format, right? 

Ted Ryce: Where you're pushing into something that doesn't move and pushing it what, like that 80% that you said, 

Brad Thorpe: Oh God, a hundred percent. But now recognize, now recognize your hundred is going to dissipate. Right? 

Ted Ryce: Probably pretty quickly, right? Based on the energy system. Just a few seconds.  

Brad Thorpe: Yeah. Fatigue and all that sort of stuff. So, it gets interesting. So, they actually had, they put out a study, and they looked at five minutes of intermittent isometric contractions, right? So basically, two seconds on, one second off for five minutes. In theory, kind of operating almost like a dynamic workout. 

But so, what they would do, so they'd push, so let's say they, in the study, they reached a maximum like effort of, let's say it was a hundred pounds just for easy math. So they're generating a hundred pounds, you know, the first couple of repetitions. By the time they're finishing that five minute, they're at about 32 pounds of effort, right? 

But they're dying at 32, where a hundred they were fine, right? So first you got to understand what's a hundred percent, when a hundred percent effort, when you're fully energized, or 32 pounds of effort when you're fully depleted, righted effort actually higher at 30. 

Ted Ryce: It's a really tricky thing to understand, I think for people, because people think what they feel is real. If you have someone stay up all night doing shots of tequila and then go into the gym and do their workout, it's going to feel super hard, because they're dehydrated, sleep-deprived. Poisoned with alcohol. But it's not going to lead to better results. 

Brad Thorpe: It's going to lead to worse results actually. Well, it may help a little bit, but you're not going to hit any prs.  

And nor should you be trying, nor should you be trying. So, what, what they noticed in the study, so even though there was a 62% or 68% drop-off in workload, The caloric expenditure was the same at a hundred and at 32 after this five. 

Yeah. So basically, when you're looking at effort and how we get into almost like a fear response, right? Like you, you know how like a, you, well you talked about lifting a car earlier, right? So, it's like when a mom goes over and she sees that her child's stuck under her car and she goes over and lifts a car, but she's a, you know, a 42-year-old, you know, somewhat frail woman and, you know, somehow her body and effort and adrenaline mustered enough force and strength to lift it. 

Like, cool. So, when you add in an element of eventually fear fatigue, well, your body is now in a different mental and physical state. Maybe your caloric expenditure actually goes up because, you know, obviously 32 pounds to equal the same caloric expenditure as a hundred pounds, it had to go up. 

So, this is stuff where they just look at and go, why is that happening? And because they haven't figured that out, I'm not going to say that I know either. I'm just going to say that they reported this outcome, and to me that's really wicked cool. And, but it is going to get into a fear response. It's going to get into that adrenaline response to basically just really that is a hundred percent lifting a high weight once, twice, three times that you, you got so much left in the tank. 

Ted Ryce: I have to jump in because there's, so one of the things that I do when I get guys who want to train, who join my coaching program, I got a client right now, I take them, and they're doing like five by five as an example, StrongLifts. So, five reps, five sets of five reps. I put them on 10 to 20 reps. I make sure that they do. I know for you, you would prefer all ISOPHIT exercises, but I don't want to get off too much on this tangent, but I incorporate isometrics with all clients, but we have to sell people on the idea of doing it. And that's the difficult part. 

So, I won't say, oh yeah, you know what, you're doing that, that's a bunch of bullshit. So, we're going to do all these things that you've never done before that only some dude on YouTube with only 300 subscribers recommends, even though he's training some of the best people in the business and pro sports teams. 

But again, the perception of a person looking in, that's what they think. Like, why isn't he more famous? Or, and that's just, I don't want to go get off on the tangent of social media and the facade of it, but like, so anyway, one of the things that I do is I move them away from those heavier lifts because they burn so little energy, and you have to rest so long in between. 

It's just not a good use if you're lacking cardiovascular conditioning or lacking conditioning in general. It's just, it's not good to lift that way. No, exactly. When you're doing the isometric, though, you're, you're burning, you're just, you're. You're doing nothing but working the muscle and working it until that fatigue point. Yeah. 

Brad Thorpe: Well, and that's, that's why we rolled out the, that's why we rolled out the 30 and 30 program, right? Because it's all exercises. You as a gym-goer,  

Ted Ryce: where can someone get that?  

Brad Thorpe: Basically, it's on YouTube.  

Ted Ryce: Oh, it's on YouTube. So just go to that ISOPHIT YouTube channel and find the 30 and 30.  

Brad Thorpe: Yeah. Personally, I hate subscription models, so it's like, okay, well we videotaped all this content over COVID. Like we shot over 700 videos over COVID.  

Ted Ryce: Incredible. All 700 videos are on the YouTube? 

Brad Thorpe: Not all 700. And people will look at it and go, okay, well it's not the world's greatest marketed shot video. 

Like the videos are great. We had a three-camera sort of situation with all your little different switchers and four, four employees. So, it's pretty cool. But, you know, we still don't have the audience to justify the continuance of that sort of, the media sort of company of what we started.  

You know, that's not to say that we won't revisit that later, but at the end of the day, it, it just comes back to, you know, getting the people, the knowledge and the confidence to actually try isometrics. 

Because once you start to try it and you start to go, oh, I don't have that shoulder pain, that back pain, I've lost the weight. I've wanted to, they start going ... 

Ted Ryce: and your body doesn't hurt and you're getting in better shape. You feel younger.  

Brad Thorpe: Yeah. Like all of those things 

Ted Ryce: You got to call it. You have to start calling it like age reversal something or another, you know, reverse it. That's what's hot right now in the marketing. You got to say this will reverse your age. Because it's one of the few forms of exercise that actually makes you feel strong and fit but helps your joints at the same time. It's incredible. That's why I use it with myself and all my clients. 

Brad Thorpe: Oh, I. And we have to overcome so many beliefs and most of the people, their belief about exercise, well, they never even studied it. So, it literally is this, I heard from my grade one, like physical education teacher or gym teacher, that stretching was good for me.  

It's like, okay, you know, you wouldn't listen to that grade one teacher and it's not an awkward grade one teacher, but I'm not going to take my health advice from that woman anymore. 

But when I'm in grade one, maybe I'll listen to her because she is my teacher. But then you find out, oh, she was actually, you know, the math teacher that just covered the class and didn't know anything about exercise.  

So, and you know, you mentioned your doctor client or your surgeon client earlier. You know, you get a lot of people who think they know what they're doing trying to. Be sort of these experts in this field and you know, what comes out of my mouth, which shocks everyone. It's like, well, how do you know this? It's like, well, I just read every day. I'm continually reading stuff, so I'm always upskilling my knowledge base. 

And you know, it's like, well, how does isometrics influence, my post today was, well, how does isometrics influence something like suicide, depression, anxiety? Well, they're now seeing research that sort of ties for isometric strength in adolescents to increase mental health issues later in life. 

Ted Ryce: Right. Then it's like, what do you think that has to do with, I mean, obviously kids are out of shape, but why isometric strength do you think? 

Brad Thorpe: I think blood flow to the brain. 

Ted Ryce: So, the research doesn't know the mechanism right now. 

Brad Thorpe: They don't know the mechanism now. Yes. However, there, ... 

Ted Ryce: But that makes so much sense what you said. 

Brad Thorpe: They're now linking it to Alzheimer's disease. Right. So, if you think about, if you have a suboptimal circulatory system, there's going to be a level of inflammation within your structure, right? 

And you think about what happens with inflammation. You have all these sort of white blood cells, you have everything attacking everything else, right. And it's circulating and that's getting caught up in your brain structure. So, what is that going to happen? And you think about sort of, when you're looking at things like the lymphatic system, right? 

So, get away from the blood flow circulation, right? Lymphatic system. It doesn't have the, the benefit of having a heart, right? It's a hundred percent controlled by muscle function, right?  

So, if you have a suboptimal muscular system because you're, you know, you don't exercise, let's say you're a 13-year-old kid, you happen to be carrying 50 pounds too much. 

You're not out there anymore playing around, right? So not only do you have the poor isometric strength, you're going to have the compounding factors, less muscle tension on structure. So that means your bones aren't healed, like they aren't growing properly. you're not going to have the same digestion, you're not going to same, have the same hormonal balance that you should, right? 

And one of the things that you're thinking about when you're looking at like little kids who are obese or anyone who's obese: They have a blood flow issue to adipose tissue, right? It gets suppressed. And one thing that isometrics does, that dynamic exercise does not, it increases blood flow to adipose tissue, right? 

Ted Ryce: Well, now why, why is that happening? Do you know? 

Brad Thorpe: So, during a concentric and eccentric contraction, so the dynamic side, the muscle is contracting and relaxing, right? So, you have the blood flow going into the actual desired tissue, which is the muscle, right? You're trying to supply the blood flow to the muscle, bring oxygen to that tissue. 

If you're looking at more of a cardio-based training protocol, you know, fatigue walking around generally all day. So what they have sort of seen during an isometric, it actually occludes blood flow to the muscle, right? Which is, you know, not good for the muscle. But what happens is they see there's almost about a 700% increase in blood flow to the adipose tissue, and it's on a localized area. 

So, which is really, really, really good for enhancing the metabolic activity, getting those hormones, getting those basically, lipids out of that structure, right? And it's like, oh, cool. And I stumbled onto that in a heart failure research paper where it's like, oh, okay, I wasn't looking for, something to do with weight loss. 

Fat loss more specifically. Where it's like, oh, okay, well they're noticing this. And once again, this is a negative for individual heart failures in the sense that we don't want blood flow to be going to adipose tissue. We want blood flow to be going into the muscle. So, it's like, okay, cool. Well maybe if we're going to look at it from that perspective, well maybe isometrics for that guy with heart failure specifically, maybe we need to approach it slightly different. 

For the person who has obesity issues or the metabolic condition, maybe this is the best thing for them, as opposed to telling, you know, somebody with a circumference issue, right? They have a larger circumference telling to them to gyrate down a treadmill when they have no interest in being there in the first place, right? 

And, you know, you look, you look at it and go, well, how do we, how do we, how do we circle back and make exercise more accessible to the larger audience, right? And pun intended, where, where you're looking at it and go, okay, well if exercise is done safer, it's more effective and it, it's going to, produce a better result for a, somebody who is obese, right? 

You look at that. Obesity is linked to depression. Obesity is linked to anxiety, obesity is linked to heart disease, premature death, all these other things. It's like, okay, well none of those things are good. And then you tell a person who's obese and they've heard this message for 40 years and it hasn't worked, it hasn't resolved anything. 

Hey, you need to get up and move. Okay, well, no, I don't want to. Versus, hey, here's a way that you can kind of sit there and potentially lose 14 pounds in a month. What? Yeah. All you have to do is actually contract muscles. Why do I say 14 pounds? Because we had a gentleman in Connecticut who lost 14 pounds during one minute of isometric contractions a day, one minute a day, one minute a day. 

He picked four directions and it literally was a trunk flexion, lateral flexion, spinal extension, and lateral flexion to the opposite side, 15 second contraction. 

Ted Ryce: I want to jump in and plus we're kind of, we're getting a bit long for me. I love talking to you Brad, and I want to talk to you. 

Actually, I want to end this and also chat with you after, because I have a few things I want to ask you about, that wouldn't be relevant to share here, but just think about what Brad just said, one minute a day. How accessible is that for everyone? And it's like you can get great results with low risk and actually feel better and stronger, fast, and improve your blood. 

Pressure and overall circulation just by doing one minute a day of a different isometric exercise. Brad, so here's what I want to finish off with.  

What's the number one video that someone who's just hearing this for the first time, they haven't heard the other interviews on my show and, or maybe they did and it's been a while. Right? What's the number one video that you would recommend on there? 

Brad Thorpe: Oh, I would tell them to go to my YouTube channel. Go to my playlist. Zero Velocity podcast. So, we did a video, so as a video vlog we did, basically we shot 18 episodes. Start with episode one. Because that's going to give you the foundational understanding of how isometrics is good for a broad spectrum of issues ranging from sport performance health and wellness to how you sort of implement, isometrics into your daily strategy. 

Ted Ryce: Cool. And, that's on the first episode. So, it'll talk about, hey, do this during the day. 

Brad Thorpe:  Yeah. Kind of like, and you know, as with anything, start with page one.  

Actually, more importantly, read the cover. And what you end up doing is when you go to like the second video of the series, it's a little bit more specific and it might be a little bit less relevant for, you know, the masses.  

But I implore people, hey, if you want to learn about this subject area, whether you're a professional or you are just a, a general interest person wanting to live a better quality of life, watch the entire series. 

Maybe not ex episode 18, because that's about golf. 

Ted Ryce: Oh, wait a minute. A ton of people are into, if you are a golfer. Do you have one on tennis as well? 

Brad Thorpe: No, but your client, who you sent me, won his tennis tournament, won basically a day after I spoke with him, and he wasn't even scheduled to play that day. 

So, he signed up and he went and he won his tournament.  

Ted Ryce:  Yeah, sure. You can use his name Ellie, I don't even remember his last name. Not that I would use it necessarily, but yeah. Ellie, I got him to invest in ISOPHIT, then I referred him to you to work with him on some things.  

Brad Thorpe: And it was funny. So, I will tell the story quickly. So I just did the general reach out to Ellie sort of said, hey, you know, how's it going with iso you, you know, you've been a client for a couple months now and all this. 

He's like, ah, you know, I'm really not using it. I got back pain and all this. I'm like, dude, what? You got back pain? And you, you have an ISOPHIT? Let me spend five minutes with you.  So, he had a tennis tournament that weekend and he wasn't sure if he was going to play because of his back. 

So, he went from not being sure if he was going to play. I spent 10 minutes with him, showed him a couple exercises, he won the tournament. Played pain-free from back pain, going to skip the tournament to 10 minutes, showed him a couple exercises. He did them that day, the next day, which was his tournament, and he won the tournament. 

And, you know, then we started talking about golf and I'm like, yeah, I can help you with golf. That's easy too. And so he goes, really? Come on. So, I spent a couple more couple days with him, just like, you know, a half an hour, half an hour type thing over like a, a three-day period. And he went out, came back, he's like, man, I crushed that ball. 

Like this is crazy. Like, what is with this? You know? And then he bought a secondary unit for, you know, his cottage or whatever you call that thing, you know, and introduced his family to it. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, that's kind of cool, that, you know, you take somebody who has, you know, bought a product, but you know, at any point in time you can, you can buy anything, but if you don't know how to use it properly because you don't have the knowledge or the confidence. And that's why we just sort of said, everyone just, here's the information. 

It's free. Just go ahead and watch it. So now the onus is on you because the stuff works. There's no question about it. The results we see defy logic and people like, you're just trying to sell me. I'm not a marketer. You can attest to this. the reason that we're in 33 countries and have 380 the coolest clients on the planet is because the results, this stuff works. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, it works. Yeah. And listen, if you're waiting for this to become really popular and more people talking about it, you're going to be waiting another 10 or 20 years. So don't be that person. This is, well, actually, the media, I'm not completely correct there because the media's talking about isometrics. 

They're starting to.  But yeah, there's all that nuance. So, listen, Brad, I want to wrap things up because I want to ask you a couple questions, and we're at like an hour 12 at the moment here. But, where else would you like someone to go if they're listening? So, you got your YouTube channel, is there anyone anywhere else you'd like someone to, to go? 

Brad Thorpe:  I'm always on Instagram. So if you send me a message on Instagram, so it's, my Instagram handle is, @isophit_inventor. So that's my personal handle. And the website is isophit.com. You can send us a message through there.  

You can see what sort of products we're selling. You know, some of our clients, as I said, were in the MBA. So we supplied the Philadelphia 76 ERs. So maybe they had the M V P, this year that wasn't, he's never been the MVP before, James Harden. So, he won the league in assists. So, you just look at some of that stuff and you go, well, can I use their names? 

The answer's no. Do I assume they're using my product? Maybe because the, the team's got multiple units, you know, and we see, we see that across the board with the teams that we're using a lot of their athletes or, basically doing a hell of a lot better than they did previously. And in, the older guy's case, they're returning to a younger, more youthful playing style and they're less injured.  

It's really, at the end of the day, it, it, what I say, it sounds too good to be true, but if it's too good to be true, it must be an ISOPHIT.  

Ted Ryce: I like it. It's not too good to be true. It's just not popular and a lot of things aren't popular, so anyway. My coaching that people think that the results I get with my clients, oh, nobody says, oh, it's too good to be true, especially since I show like a six-month or 12-month transformation, but they think it's more crazy than it actually is. 

Anyway, that's for another conversation. Brad, love today. Glad we got to connect. Glad we got you back on the show, and I'll have all those resources on the show notes page on the podcast for this episode. All that will be there, but you can go right now. Go check out the ISOPHIT YouTube channel and check out Brad's Social Media as well as his website. Brad, thanks so much. Always a pleasure, my friend. 

Brad Thorpe: Thanks, buddy.