The Cult of Ido Portal
To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about Ido Portal. Before he was in our studio, I had heard about the cult of Ido. A wave of information, videos, and interviews, the cult of Ido is about a mysterious man from Israel who’s not afraid to call out Crossfitters and vegans alike. A man who stands on one hand and preaches “self dominance”.
There are so many videos and interviews with Ido online, and so the idea of Ido hits you before you meet the man himself.
Some of his most viral videos are full of some of the movements he perfected while growing up in Haifa, Israel. In these videos, you see this man who has these incredible body weight movements, a kind of dance type move that definitely are capoeira inspired. But it’s also more than his videos. The cult of Ido is also built on the way he speaks and his ethos. This is what really draws people in. There’s so many people I have had on the show that talk about movement and fitness, but no one really commands the type of respect that adulation that Ido does.
And I was very curious to find out why. As I said before, I’m a bit of a skeptic as I get to meet a lot of people for a living and I get to see who’s the real deal or not. And then Ido Portal shows up, dressed in all black with a backpack – what seems like all his earthly possessions in one bag and an intense travel itinerary. I asked him if he wanted to write a book or spread his message through social media and he just wasn’t interested in it. And this speaks volumes about Ido and the man he is. He sees writing a book as a static snapshot of how he was in the past and that he’s prefer us all to “walk with him, not behind him.” In the age of internet marketing and self-help gurus, Ido has no interest in publishing anything like this and more importantly thinks it is a poor way of communicating his ethos of movement.
Spreading the Ido Portal Method one person at a time
Ido knows that he needs more than a book to communicate what he feels about movement and that when people come to his two day seminars they often cry because he teaches them how to reconnect with their physical selves. This is increasingly important in a day and age where we spend a ton of time on computers or watching screens, separated from physical movement.
Ido reminds us that we are essentially animals and that we need to reconnect with our animal selves through movement. He’s also just a fascinating guy to listen to.
I was really quite moved by Ido Portal. He really just wants to spread his message in the most organic and genuine way possible. And anyway we can facilitate this, I support. So with this in mind I hope you enjoy this incredible episode with Ido.
Join us as we discuss:
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Bruce Lee, and Roy Jones Jnr
- Capoeira, Haifa, and the Gulf War
- BJJ, CrossFit, and veganism
- Paleolithic diet, and the best advice he’s ever been given
- The advice he gives to younger generations, and his plans for the future
- Georges St-Pierre, Rickson Gracie, and Anthony Pettis
- Conor McGregor, Sébastien Foucan, and Timothy Shieff
