Ido Portal - Movement Is The Answer: How the Body & the Mind are Connected - London Real Journeys

Full transcript: Ido Portal on London Real

3:43 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today Welcome to London Real Journeys. I am Brian Rose and we are here at London Real world headquarters to talk about a gentleman who changed my life forever. It’s Mr. Ido Portal, and he has a fascinating way of looking at the human body, at movements, and how the mind and body are actually one and the same.

4:17 And our Journeys format is a way of me taking the content that London Real has created over the past nine years and putting it all together in a way where you can take something away from it and action it in your life. And that’s really what I want you to get today: something that you can see and then do something with. And quite honestly, Ido Portal changed my life. The truth is, one hour ago I was sliding across a gym floor, spinning on my back, spinning on my head, balancing on one hand, doing breakdancing.

4:52 And a lot of people have seen my breakdancing videos on YouTube, or you can follow me on Instagram, Instagram at the real Brian Rose, and you can see a man who’s turning 49 years old next month doing breakdancing. A lot of people are like, why are you doing this? The reason is because of Ido Portal. Ido changed the relationship I have with my body. And the truth is, I grew up in my brain.

5:16 I was a kid and early on I realized I was good at math, I was good at science, I was good at school, so I used my brain, I guess, to feel good about myself and win in the world. And that’s how I got straight A’s, that’s how I won the California State Science Fair, that’s how I got into MIT, that’s how I got to Wall Street, by using my brain. And to be honest, everything south of my neck was used as a mechanism to get my brain from one point to the next, which meant my body was always in second place and sometimes it played second fiddle.

5:52 I did not use it actively. I did some sports here and there, but I also drank a lot and abused drugs, and I never really thought that my body was a part of the equation. I have little slivers into understanding how important it was, but it wasn’t until I met Ido Portal that I started to understand that all of this is one system and the body is our best tool to actually understand the mind. And in fact, they’re both the same thing. The body is the mind in some way, and Ido showed me this.

6:23 Now, Ido is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. He could probably write a volume of books on things beside human movement. And I remember having lunch with him in Tel Aviv with my entire camera crew when we went to shoot our second documentary feature film called Just Move, about Ido and his movement practice and his movement culture, and we flew to Israel to shoot this. And I remember having lunch with him in Tel Aviv, it was a beautiful sunny day, and for four hours we listened to Ido talk about history, about diet, about cancer, about medicine, about philosophy.

7:02 At one point one of the guys slid his phone on the table and hit record, I kid you not, because he wanted to play it back later, because it was so good. And this is true. And so, most people know Ido for his paradigm shift way of looking at human movement, and it is incredible and also really hard to get your head around. I’m gonna try today, but he’s actually just one of the smartest people out there, one of the most insightful, also one of the most enigmatic.

7:28 You know, it’s very hard to understand, you know, it’s hard to actually get into his presence. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it. I can’t say enough about his classes, his ideas, his everything. So I’m gonna try to give you a small window into who Ido is, his ideas, his philosophy, and my relationship with him over the past six years. I first met Ido in July of 2014 when he came to the old studio, and I’m gonna play some clips from that shortly.

7:59 I’m also gonna play clips from something called a moving conversation, where we illegally took cameras all throughout the city of London and filmed us walking and talking and moving on the streets. Police tried to stop it, it was pretty crazy. We had another interview in the new studio, and then of course we went to Israel with a whole crew and filmed with, you know, all of his people at one of his movement studios for five or six days, and it was absolutely incredible.

8:26 Then we premiered the movie in London. I’ve been to so many of his movement workshops and it was just amazing, and I’m gonna play pieces of all of that today. But I want you to be thinking about your movement practice. How are you ignoring your body? Is it time you start engaging with this wonderful instrument?

8:43 It’s time to use it or lose it, as you know Ido would say. And hopefully you’ll be inspired by the words today. Again, Ido is a massively charismatic figure. When you’re around him, on one point he can be super inspiring, on the next point he can just completely berate his students, and you’ll see some of that today, and on the other point he’ll make the funniest, stupidest joke ever. It’s just a crazy mix, and I see this with a lot of high-performance people, and I saw it with you though as well.

9:10 So this is a tribute to the man, his methodology, and my experience with him over the last six years. A lot of people asked for Ido to come back on the show, and Ido, if you’re watching this, I’m asking you to come back, because Ido hasn’t been on the show for years. I have been asking him, but he’s, I think he’s taking his time doing his thing, and I respect that, but I’d love to have him back on and we’re trying to make that happen. So where do you start with Ido?

9:32 Well, we’re gonna try to understand his philosophy of movement and his movement culture. Ido argues that movement cannot happen without movement culture, which is the people around a movement practice and how they interact with each other. And it’s a very fundamental part and you’ll see a lot of that. It’s not just him moving or me moving, it’s a group of people moving, and it’s very, very important. And so I’m gonna share with you some things tonight and take you on a journey of my relationship with Ido Portal.

10:00 I want to start off with a piece from the movie Just Move, and of course you can watch all of our interviews and the movie for free on our website, London Real TV. And I want to play for you first a scene of me in Tel Aviv at one of his movement studios. It’s actually owned by Roy Goldsmith, which is one of his top students. Roy is a physical specimen, six foot tall, former swimmer, who is just an incredible mover, ripped to shreds and just amazing to watch.

10:29 Follow him on Instagram, it’s actually his Ido Portal studio there, and he was really generous to allow us to be there. Of course you’ll see Odelia, which is Roy’s sister and basically Ido Portal’s right-hand woman. She’s an amazing, amazing person, full of warmth, full of amazement. I love all of these people, and this is me walking into Ido Portal’s studio, and it’s almost like walking into another planet, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Watch with me right now.

12:09 Try your best. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Don’t stop, never stop, never stop. There is no reason to rest. Just keep on, keep on.

12:16 You’re frustrated, keep going. Oh, I’m f***ed, keep going. I want to kill myself, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Just chew on it. Gets used to the craftsmen.

12:24 I’m making a craft here, and you know, it’s like the first craft that you made in primary school. You brought your mother, son, look what I did. She’s a lot of beautiful, courageous, so creative. It’s like afterwards your death throws it in the garbage because it thinks it’s some, some leftover. So here we are, first we are just getting used to that.

12:49 I’m shitty, I am not yet good at it. It’s the show, she, the beginner mindset, and we go into the beginner mode and I try to sustain the ball on the wall for as long as possible by placing myself in, tightening my fists and moving my body. If I miss it, I miss it, I pick it back up, I go back into it. Let’s do it. Are you okay?

13:24 Okay. Do you think about this, amazing, this is like the big playground. That’s what it is, it is playground for adults. There is no bigger reason for a community to gather around. I loved that scene in the movie where I walk into Ido’s studio, because it’s almost like the scene from Star Wars when they go into that bar, where it’s like Dunkin Donut Done, where all the, like, aliens are, they’re doing weird things and they look really weird, because you walk in there and people are doing lizard walks and hanging and balancing on one arm and it’s just this completely different world.

14:14 But at Ido’s studio it’s just normal, and you practice all these things that you would never see in any other place. And again, it’s a mentality of why you’re doing it that you would never see in another place, and that’s what makes Ido and his methodology special. Also, you shouldn’t see things on the walls that are written on the walls. One of the things you’ll see on one of the walls is it’s written, let them dirty the walls and f*** it. And it was because in his studio you used the walls, you touch them, you balance on them, you hang on them, and he wants them to be dirty.

14:42 And again more of Ido’s philosophy, you’ll see quotes written on the wall as well about his philosophy, and you’ll say things like integration improvisation, all these types of things. Also you get an introduction into Ido. You can see how intense he is. He’s talking about the beginner’s mind, about how you’re doing something and you suck and you suck and you suck, but keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. And that’s just a small taste of how intense Ido is, but again he’s using the physical practice to get you into that beginner’s mind.

15:13 And beginner’s mind is a place where you suck at everything, but everything is new and you’re getting better at this exponential rate. And if you continue to push, there’s all of this learning. And so Ido always likes that, he likes you to always suck at something. He thinks mastery is for wankers and I think he’s got some points there. So he’s always doing all these things to try to challenge the brain and build these neuro neuro pathways.

15:36 So that’s your first introduction. You know, we’re gonna have more from the movie coming later, more pieces from Tel Aviv and from Jerusalem, and of course more pieces from the moving conversation, in our various interviews. Again, Ido always talks about, you’ll hear him say things where he’s talking about the contents versus the container, and he says that that’s what movement is, there’s the contents and then there’s the container. And he’ll speak a lot of times in these strange metaphors and it’s hard to get your head around, and that’s why it took me years to even begin to understand what his ideas were when it comes to movement.

16:11 And if you pull the string with Ido you’ll go down this rabbit hole of slowly understanding, but there is a method to his madness, and if you really look at it carefully there are things that he does and doesn’t do and it all comes down to his philosophy. So how did this journey begin? Well, a friend of mine back in 2014, he was actually an ex-colleague from the banking world, he worked at Goldman Sachs and he was actually an MMA fighter as well, Patrick.

16:37 He was actually my co-host on some of the early London Real episodes. He said, have you heard of this guy, Ido Portal? And I was like, no, you know what? And he said, yeah, he does these weird human movement stuff, and I was like, I don’t care. And he said, no really, this guy is the real deal.

16:49 I think he sent me a couple of videos, I reached out to Ido and I had him on. But the MMA guys were kind of watching him early because they were already thinking about movements, and this lays the seeds for what will become Ido’s relationship with Conor McGregor, who’s one of the biggest stars in the world, biggest stars in the UFC. But at the time Conor was really just up-and-coming, but I’ll get to that shortly. So I invited Ido and he’s coming through London to do a workshop and he shows up and I remember he had a big backpack on his back and he was travelling like to different countries to steet to teach and he came over to the studio and we had just this incredible conversation and I’m gonna play for a clip for you right now about that.

17:29 But Ido struck me as a guy with so much passion, so much determination. He’s also Israeli, which means which means that he’ll tell you the straight-up truth. There’s not a lot of niceties, there’s not a lot of formalities. If something sucks he’ll say it sucks, and that’s why I really treasure Ido’s opinion. He’s the guy that really tells me what he thinks of my movies.

17:50 What everyone else says, they’re wonderful, Ido says no, I think this could have been better. And that’s actually a beautiful thing, the honesty. And he’s really passionate. It’s Ido’s way or the f***ing highway, and he will not compromise, he will not sell out. I don’t think you’ve ever seen Ido trying to sell any of his brand stuff into merchandise, into corporations, and that’s because Ido does it his way.

18:13 It’s taught his way with his philosophy, and if you come off the path of his philosophy you are no longer doing it his way. And that’s very important to Ido, and it’s very important if you want to keep a practice pure, and that comes out in everything. You can see, so watch for it because you’ll see it in his passion. And so I want to start with a clip from that first interview back in July 2014, and this is Ido Portal telling me that I need, and we need, to destroy your dogma.

18:43 Here it is. 100%, they come to me because they think they know what I do, and actually it’s so far from what they think they know what I do, but then I changed their mind about it and then they want to do this thing, and not in a bad way, in a way that I present to them a bigger, better thing, a bigger dogma. You must choose a dogma still, you must have some some form of leading dogma in your practice, in your life, and I just show them a bigger umbrella.

19:12 So people think it’s about handstands and, you know, jumping on the rings and doing flips or whatever, and actually our work is way, way beyond that. It’s a completely different and a huge paradigm shift in the way that you think about your practice and your movement and your body. And that is sometimes hard to deal with because people, you meet your demons when you meet that, and sometimes you have this reaction, no, no, no, that’s not what I came to learn.

19:42 But mostly, interesting enough, when you’re doing a good job people accept it, and it’s a life-changing moment in many of our workshops. In the end of this weekend, just two days, people burst out crying, people change future plans, people write me letters, hand me letters in the end of the workshop, and it’s an amazing experience to see that and to be part of it, and for me it’s a huge honor, huge honor. You know, if I hadn’t experienced that myself I would think you’re crazy.

20:16 But yeah, it’s funny, a lot of guys in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, they go there to learn how to, say, beat up guys. They’re like, okay, I’m gonna come and learn how to beat up guys, and when they do it for a while they realize that they find why, that they’re actually fighting themselves, you know. And then, and it’s all about maybe not fighting yourself anymore, and you know you see these huge changes in personalities. And I’m guessing that’s a little bit of what you’re describing happens with your seminars in your students.

20:43 Yeah, definitely. Sometimes reality forces you into that corner because you came, you came to do one thing and maybe you’ve done it, and when you’ve done it it’s a bad day because then it’s over, it’s over, and then you can make the obvious choice, next challenge. But at a certain point you realize I’m gonna get all this stuff or I’m not gonna get all this stuff, but anyways there is something bigger that must lead me here, you know. Like I remember the first day I got a one-arm handstand, I was like three years focused on this skill, some time longer.

21:21 Took you? Yeah. You started from a very strong base, and actually in it I started, yeah, you can, you can say it’s a strong base compared to another person, but I’ll tell you, some of my students learned how to do a one-arm handstand under the process that I offered in three months. It took me three years and I did it myself, I taught myself. I had very little communication with people who could do it and I had to kind of create a process for myself.

21:45 The day I got it was a weird day and it was a, yeah, what now? You know, this emptiness hits you, and it’s with everything big, with with them, you know, making your first million, with anything big. And then after it happens enough times you start to realize that you have to kind of operate on a different dogma. These challenges are not enough, you know, like, and that changes what you are searching inside, what you do, or it changes what you do. And so for example BJJ might not be enough at a certain point, or you would make the transition and find within your practice in BJJ what you need and a bigger thing, a bigger dogma.

22:32 And so for example like the one-armed handstand, you get that and that’s a challenge off your list and of course now can set up the next challenge, and the one-arm pull-up in this. And then you’re realizing that, hold on a second, this is not making me happy and my life is not about overcoming the next challenge, and now I need to evolve into what am I doing, whether that’s not even teaching or learning about yourself. And it can be hard, like you said, you’re probably looking at yourself, what do I do now?

22:56 It’s a very common thing to realize, you know, as they say, the laundry after the ecstasy, and it’s a very famous book. You still have to do the laundry, you know. You got into the ecstasy, wake up the next days. So in a way you still form challenges and operate according to them, it doesn’t stop you from doing that, but you do it from a different perspective. So for example, one thing that changed in the way that I approach things was understanding that I need to decentralize my approach to movement, to practice, to life, so I can adapt better to the unraveling of reality in front of me.

23:40 For example, if you’re a hand balancer and you lose your arm it’s a bad day to be alive, it’s over, and you’re not ready because you’ve centralized all of your efforts in one area and now it’s over. But if you are working with a very big spectrum then you’re able to adapt and react better, and you’re able to form challenges and react to them much better. So in a way I still go after skills and I still go after qualities and, but I do it with also a kind of a diffused mind a bit, at times, in a good way, not in a bad way, not to be too invested in each one of these BS.

24:24 Okay, yes. And I’m sure the other side of it, not to make it look all very, you know, utopian, is you might be pursuing with less fire and with less intensity, but that’s fine because there is a war to win and not a battle to win. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s cop, it comes with age, with experience and with understanding. And I’m, I’m really, I’m a big coward, you know, I’m very afraid, and that keeps me very safe. Like I’m preparing for the future, I’m not slamming myself into the wall and realizing it too late.

25:06 I was always very careful and always very calculated, and I’m glad in that regard that I was able to prepare myself for for the road to come. And so with that first clip you get a look into Ido’s brain right away. You realize this is not a guy like anyone you’ve ever met before when it comes to movement. He’s not trying to teach you a skill or a workout or a practice, this is an entire philosophy, and it’s, in my opinion, very complex and very nuanced in that he’s known, or he was known back then, for the one-arm handstand.

25:45 He was known back then for these poses and these feats because that’s what visually would travel as, like, memes. But as Ido said, you know, and he says later to me, I’m bored of that, I’m bored of the one-hour namaste, and the point is not the skill, the point is the pursuit of the practice and also the point of continuing to enact in play and discovery and not to get nailed down to a specific dogma, like you said. And we’ve seen this happen many times before, there’s the person that goes to the Olympics and trains for the gold medal in gymnastics and gets it and never trains another day because they’ve accomplished that goal and they don’t know what to do when they got it.

26:28 And that’s what you get, what you want, and if you have the wrong paradigm set up for what you’re looking for when it comes to anything in life, let alone a movement practice. So you’re already starting to see that you can see Ido’s intensity there and you’re starting to get a taste. For me this was like, whoa, first time I met him, and I’m still trying to get my head around this. You can see I’m kind of poking around and stumbling about what’s happening.

26:53 And so next, CrossFit came up, and CrossFit was very big back then, and I wanted to get Ido’s thoughts on this new way that people were using complex movements, Olympic lifts, all these other types of burpees and kipping pull-ups, and how he thought that compared with other forms of training, gym work, etc. So this is Ido on CrossFit. On the edge of that fitness industry is CrossFit. This probably is going in the right direction as in you’re seeing functional movements, you’re seeing, you know, Olympic lifts, which I know you’re a fan of.

27:29 So how do you feel about when you see things like CrossFit? But I know in an interview you said they’ve brought a lot of good things to the industry. CrossFit is definitely a very positive phenomenon in my eyes, and everybody likes to s*** and moan on CrossFit. So, and everyone that comes on the show, everyone wants to ask me about CrossFit. They’re like the whipping boy, but yet they’re a huge movement at the same time.

27:53 Yeah, I think it’s a very largely positive force and it definitely brought in a lot of movement. So for example, just in the first few years of CrossFit you’re gonna have to learn a lot of movement, deal with a lot of patterns. Yeah, it’s limited, it’s not about movement, right, because the center of the CrossFit model didn’t place movement, it placed capacity, which is a very mechanical concept, right. That’s the workout of the day, the WOD is, it’s how much can you do, post your result for time.

28:29 Exactly, it’s taking, it’s quantifying the movement, right. It’s in a way quantifying, trying to quantify, although this is not mechanics, this is biomechanics. There is a huge difference in the way that you approach biomechanics and mechanics, and any beginner scientist would have caught on to this for a long time ago and would say there is a major issue. So in canon, in classic physics, you know, like moving an x amount of mass from point A to point B is always the same, where you look at it from a biomechanical perspective, the engine that moves that mass changes the whole perspective, and sometimes the longer path is the more efficient one, not the shortest linear line.

29:14 And you see that all the time. For example, I pull up, to pull up and down in one line is not very efficient. The behind-the-back pull-up, for example, is much harder than assuming some form of an arc, but physically you’re moving the same amount of mass from point A to point B and against gravity. I’m talking about against gravity here. So yeah, that’s it.

29:43 I think CrossFit is a good thing, I think CrossFit brought back a lot of good stuff. I think all of these people who like to criticize CrossFit, they eat the bread crumbs below CrossFit stable and they need to have a bit of respect there and they need to realize where they stand, and then you can also criticize, that’s fine. You can also say things and you can present things, and I think the CrossFit community is a very open community. There are the hardcore fans that, you know, don’t really listen to anything and just, you know, blah blah blah, but then there are a lot of intelligent people within the CrossFit industry and I think a lot of them are geared wanting to get more tools for movement.

30:23 And I have been working for years in all across the world and with CrossFitters, and I like it, they’re hard workers, they’re open-minded mostly, and some of them are moving in a movement perspective and changing their minds, and that’s because CrossFit has brought them to the point where they can make this paradigm shift, while the Globo Gym goer is so far away, you know, just can’t hear you, right. He’s not thinking, he’s coming in and doing these standard linear movements every day and writing them down on his card, and it’s, you would much rather have a CrossFitter than that guy. Yeah.

31:05 See, but what do you scoffs fit missing then? You talk about the WODs as being some kind of an attempt to quantify and then that misses the point, for example what you’re doing. No, no, it’s a huge, there are so many things missing. It’s the funny thing is they’re most CrossFitters are not humble enough to see how much is missing, but once you show it to them they accept it. But they’re not in themselves, they believe that they’re working on their weakness.

31:39 For example, there is a very large talk about, like, working on your weaknesses. Working on your weaknesses requires sometimes a completely different set of tools. It’s not about strength, it’s not about, you know, like, there is so much stuff happening in the mental game, in the development of movement patterns, coordination, the formation of habits and balance, a lot of stuff that is not addressed in CrossFit on a large scale. CrossFit operates with quantifiable patterns, that’s already problematic because you eliminated a lot of non-quantifiable patterns.

32:15 It doesn’t work with improving movement intelligence, the ability to adapt, ability, the ability to react to changing environments. So give me the guy with the biggest engine, but if he can’t manipulate the car, throw him in a BJJ match and he can’t do anything, you know, is missing the tools. Some of them are perceived as technical tools, but it’s not only that because of course he doesn’t know BJJ, so giving the techniques, but there are other set of tools, and that’s for examples a lot of stuff that I am doing with BJJ practitioners, MMA fighters.

32:50 There is a layer of hormone motifs the mover that should be addressed and it’s below, it’s somewhere between strength and conditioning and technical work, right, and this adaptability, this unknown, and the best of the best out there have this thing in common. And again, we go deeper into Ido’s mind when it comes to understanding movements. And what I love about that clip was him talking about mechanics versus biomechanics. This took me a long time to understand because in my thirties I started lifting, lifting, and so I was big into my bench press one rep maximum, I squat one rep maximum, my bicep curls.

33:29 So for me it was all about a number, it was all about a quantity or a, they like CrossFit did, and I never thought that the biomechanics change every single movement. So you know, if you bench with your back arched or you bench with it flat, or if you do a pull-up in good form or a pull-up with an arched back, these are completely different movements that engage completely different muscles and neural pathways, and so therefore they are different, whereas in mechanics and physics it’s like mass times the distance, and that’s how you can figure out exactly what’s going on in terms of capacities. So I started slowly starting to understand what Ido was talking about and how he had really looked at the human body, and Ido spent a whole history of his lifetime, first of all in capoeira, then in martial arts, improvisational dance, gymnastics.

34:16 I mean, he really went and understood all sorts of different movement forms and taught those and came up with his own practice, and you can start to see different parts of his philosophy in here as he’s asking these questions. And again, if you’re new to this, it’s hard to know what he’s talking about. Honestly, it took me probably three or four years to even start to understand his philosophy of movement. I probably still don’t even understand it to this day, because most of us just know, you go to the gym and you do some bench press or you get on a treadmill or you do some martial arts, and we never really understand this massively complex form that is human movements.

34:52 And so that’s what Ido does best, but it takes some time to really understand what he’s doing, but it’s in some ways the essence of life, so it’s worth understanding what this man is saying. And the next clip is showing a little bit of Ido’s personality, because, you know, he’s not afraid to say how he feels. Again, I don’t know if this is the Israeli in him or this is just Ido, but he’s not afraid to call people out, to call b*******t, to to call his students out on anything.

35:22 And so this is Ido and his thoughts on vegans. Check it out. Animal proteins, animal proteins, I cannot see them on a large scale, and people operating well without animal proteins. And there are many examples of people who do operate well, and I’ll give you a lot of examples of parkour kids that eat McDonald’s and smoke cigarettes, right. So I’m not gonna start to smoke cigarettes and eat McDonald’s, and you can bring me the Germany’s strongest men in the world and a million other individualized examples.

35:59 This is not a quality debate. Another thing to say about vegans is the most, they’re the most hostile community out of all of the communities concentrating around nutrition, and I’ve made it a point not to go easy on them, and I think they think their s*** doesn’t stink, and the reality around us is a lot more complex, whether in sustainability, in animal blood on your hands, etc. And yeah, I think it’s debatable, nobody has, you know, reached the gospel truth, nobody.

36:36 It’s a complex reality and we have it with a lot of stuff. Nutrition is one. Yeah, so it’s very important not to present it in that way, and I maybe made a mistake there that I should take responsibility for. My experience with veganism was pretty bad throughout the years, students walking in and my own experiments and just having to see again and again and again the same kind of problematic mindset, energy shifts and development within movement, and maybe I made it too much of a point and because I try to kind of shield myself, you know, from that issue.

37:19 But I’m sure there are very successful individuals out there operating with a vegan diet. The ones I respect the most are those who are not violent around it, don’t believe that their s*** doesn’t stink and they’re holy, and those that they also realize the need for individualization of the approach. And in your history, in your past experience, when you have worked with the vegan students in that or when you put yourself through it, there was something missing?

37:53 Yes. Yeah, mostly that was my experience, but I’m sure I could have had other experiences with different people, but I took a generalization. Of course it’s a generalization, I’m just one person and I have to make up my mind and move in this complex world around me and choose my students, part of my realities. I have to choose my students because there is too much, too many people reaching out to me, so I made it a point to kind of create some kind of a filter, and that’s Ido Portal’s filter.

38:27 What I feel sorry about is that I hurt some people’s, you know, feelings, and actually in the last, in the last few years I started to investigate more on an individual level before I made up my mind if I accept that person in or not, or before I just completely avoided it altogether. And this, of course, was before I went vegan for a year when I did my Ironman race. And it just goes to show you that Ido was not afraid to call something as it is. He’s not politically correct, he’s not worried about pandering to the audience, and I think this goes along with the way he teaches movement and his philosophy and it comes through, because he is searching for the truth and it’s only about the truth, it’s never a version of the truth, and I totally respect that about him.

39:14 You know, and I actually find it really entertaining. And so this was my initial meeting. You can watch the full interview back from 2014 on our website at London Real TV. But next we decided to do something different. I realized that I was speaking to a man about movements while he was sitting in a chair, and it just hit me one day, like weeks after one of his interviews, where I was like, this is stupid, this is my fault, I need to have the man moving and walking and then we can probably have a conversation about movement with demonstrations and all those kinds of things.

39:49 And so I convinced Ido to have a moving conversation with me, and I decided to do it in London. I decided to do it on the corner of Hyde Park and then walk through Green Park, and of course I don’t get permits, I hate that. I’m a big fan of guerrilla filmmaking. If you ever see any people in my movie, I call them unpaid extras, because that’s who they are, also known as the public. And so I’m a fan of getting the camera out and shooting it and publishing it, and that’s just what I do, and that’s the way we’ve always got our best footage, and you know, there’s other people that do that as well.

40:23 This is how the Beastie Boys make their music videos as well. And so we decided we were gonna get a crew and a sound man and hit the streets of London. We had never filmed a documentary before, so this was us kind of flexing our muscles and being creative and doing things punk and a bit guerrilla. And of course Ido agreed to do it, and he was actually in London for a couple weeks before, but I told him I didn’t want to meet him or didn’t want to talk to him until we set foot on the ground, so that way this conversation could be organic.

40:52 There was no scripting to it. I had no notes. Actually, that’s not, that’s not true, I had actually written notes on a piece of paper and had taped it on my arm. So as we’re walking along through London, every now and then I would just check my arm to make sure I hadn’t forgot anything, because we went like 90 minutes straight with a crew, again through the public and everything. And so the police tried to shut us down in Hyde Park, they said you can go on the sidewalk, so he flipped to the sidewalk, then we went to Green Park, they come and try to shut us again, then we took the Olympic rings and threw them over a tree, they totally freaked out and said squad cars over.

41:23 But you know, Ido just didn’t care and I didn’t care and we just kept found in a way to push through it. So this was the moving conversation, one of the most watched episodes ever on London Real at the time, I think our most watched episode. It’s an amazing piece. It also includes footage from one of Ido’s movement workshops that he allowed us to attend and allowed us to film, and I think even till today, in the last seven or eight years, I don’t think he’s ever let anyone film his movement practices, his workshops, or go to his studio, so for me it was just a huge honor, a huge speech of trust, and I always agree with him I would never share the footage for anything else, but we wove it together in this moving conversation, and this was an epic piece.

42:04 It’s one of the pieces I’m most proud of at London Real. It all happened on the fly, unscripted, unplanned, two guys having a conversation about movement, and here is a little glimpse of the moving conversation. This is the trailer for the moving conversation, and you can get a feel for what happened on that day. So people think it’s about handstands and, you know, jumping on the rings and doing flips or whatever, and actually our work is way, way beyond that.

42:39 It’s completely different than a huge paradigm shift in the way that you think about your practice and your movement in your body. The best reason to move is because you can. Like I can really heal your body using this stick because now your spine has to do all those things. Maybe you got an injury there and I help you. High-tech shoes, low-tech feet.

43:26 The more expensive the toys, the cheaper is the mover. How many movements did you learn last week? A contemporary dancer might learn up to 400 new movements in an audition setting, so the type of brains that gets developed there, I’m not talking about the body, I’m talking about neurological changes, is huge. I want to be the weirdos. I tell people, be the weirdo.

43:57 Conor is confident, he lives life too long, we’re having fun and that’s the way to make great ting. Meditating on your death daily to remind ourselves that it’s temporary. It’s a good day to die. And so there we are, we actually started off by the Hercules statue in Hyde Park, and it’s this massive statue of this guy with his like six-pack or eight-pack, and I was gonna start it there, we actually did start it there, then we got interrupted by the police, they started giving us a hassle, they forced us out to the sidewalk, we kept taping, there were high winds that day so you can see we got these big fluffy things on our microphones because we were worried it was gonna get shut down.

44:46 But this is what happens when you go to try to do something crazy like this, tons of problems get thrown your way, you got to have the nerve to just keep going and keep it together. And it’s just started dropping knowledge on me. Now we’re walking and we’re moving, we got literally like a whole camera crew of four cameras and a sound guy following, and you can see it points here we’re doing these 360-degree turns that we had, like, practiced on the middle of the sidewalk.

45:07 The public doesn’t know what the hell is going on. I’m worried about the police, police cars would drive by, we thought we were gonna get stopped at one point. The horse troop, the Royal Queen’s Guard horses, go by and he was just crazy. And so it was a lot of fun. Again, you can watch this whole thing free on our website, but you know, starts dropping nuggets on me and it’s just some of the best, most organic pieces.

45:27 I just love this thing, and so many people that I spoke to, because it really got them to think about their bodies. And this first clip from the moving conversation is Ido discussing the number one reason to move. So often we forget we’ve got this body, you know, we think, oh, it’s just this thing that gives us energy, we take it to the gym and run, we try to make it look good in the mirror, but we don’t realize it’s this, it’s us, it’s this function of life, it’s fun, it’s playful, it’s exciting, it can get our brain to work.

45:53 And this is Ido explaining the number one reason to move. I have to ask you about the locomotion because I found that very fascinating. It was the second day and you started talking about I think it was bipedal motion or the way that many animals move, and you know, I found that of course I’m starting to get interested in these animal movements. I know when you were at SBG gym in Ireland with Conor and Gunnar that they’re big fans of the animal movement, and I want to ask you about them later.

46:25 Why have us move as animals? Why, we are animals, we are a product of that evolution and it’s inside of us somewhere. This this system has evolved into where it is through all those stages, so a lot of possibilities to move your spine are still kind of aquatic possibilities, all the remains of that freedom that originated in the water, and then the quadrupedal movement, though, walking on all fours, and still exists inside our bodies, and so exploring those things is exploring yourself and exploring your history, exploring where you came from.

47:15 That’s one thing. Another thing is just that I love any possibility that exists, whatever possibility is in my body, I would like to explore it because it’s there, because we don’t need another reason, because we live in this body and it’s a good day that we can explore those things. And once we start to lose those functions, we, everyone realizes it, it’s like, oh, I want that back, and you would pray for all Gods in existence to get 10% of what you lost.

47:50 But why do we need to go through that route? We don’t need that, we need appreciation every day for this great sun, for this body, for this neck that can glide and move and in the pain-free existence that we have, so we can maintain it and we can sustain it. So the best reason to move is because you can. Provision. And that’s the answer, the number one reason to move is because you can.

48:53 It’s such a beautiful concept, but a simple concept. And as Ido said, you know, one day you’re gonna have some of your body limited for some reason, for some accident, and actually Odelia, which is the woman that you’ll see with Ido always, she’s like his right-hand woman, she actually had a really bad car accident many, many years ago and I think broke her neck or broke her back and she had to rehabilitate to get her movement back, and now she’s an incredible mover. But that day when it’s taken away from you, that’s when you’ll realize this precious gift you have, this body that can do so many things, that can be so fun and so playful and so complicated and so frustrating, and yet we just take it for granted, and most of the time we use it just to walk to work and walk home, and we use it to shove things in our mouths, we use it to hold our eyeballs so we can watch things and keep our brains.

49:41 And you know, it’s a way of actually expressing gratitude is what he’s saying. Be grateful for this body, use it while you have it, embrace it, and just move it and see how you can take that movement and allow it to change your brain and vice versa. So you’re starting again to see little bits of his philosophy, but it’s so nuanced and so complex that it just takes time, and again this is my education with Ido. Along the same timeline when we did the moving conversation, I went to one of Ido’s two-day events, and again I highly recommend going to Ido’s events, no matter where they are in the world, no matter who’s teaching, even if either is not there, they are just complete paradigm shifters.

50:21 They will completely change your game, change your brain, and like you said in that first clip, he gets people that write to him that changed the courses of their life based on those movement workshops. And I had been to one and I started doing weird things. I started climbing trees and doing lizard walks in the park, and I remember my personal trainer at my gym was getting angry and frustrated with me because I came back and I’m like, he’s like, let’s bench, bench press, and I was like, why, why am I bench pressing?

50:48 And he looked at me, he’s like, what are you talking about? I’m like, why are we doing this exercise? And he couldn’t give me an answer. He’s like, because we’re trying to get you bigger numbers. And I was like, why are we doing this?

50:59 And so I started doing weird things in the gym, and I remember Ido told me one thing, you said, Brian, if you haven’t been thrown out of your gym you’re doing something wrong. And that was so funny because I had the heads of the gym come to me and say, you can’t put Olympic rings up there because of liability. I was like, liability? I was doing lizard walks down behind the treadmills and someone came up to me and said that’s dangerous, and I was really shocking and offending people there because I was doing playful, fun movements.

51:26 So I had kind of, you know, drank the Kool-Aid with Ido Portal, and in this next clip I’m asking him what’s going on with me. It’s almost like I had fallen in love with my body again and I was exploring it in a way like a child does, and yet I was in my 40s at this point. So this is Ido trying to make sense of that. You’ve probably seen me, I’ve been, I’ve been climbing trees lately, I’ve been jumping on Olympic rings, I’ve been trying to walk along the ground like a lizard, I think you’ve seen me on the parallel bars.

52:01 Something really changed in the way I’ve looked at movement and I was wondering what happened to me. Yeah, I think it’s all that paradigm, that paradigm shift, the, that depends so much on terminology and conceptualizing these ideas, and that tends to open all these doors sometimes to bring under the same umbrella many things that were scattered and isolated, and sometimes to isolate and open new doors within the movement possibilities. So the idea of play, the idea of communicating with objects, with the floor, with another person, to communicate with the elements, with gravity, with centrifugal forces, all the stuff that as a kid you basically you treat all those things as one.

52:57 It’s a movement thing, but then with time the adults in your life start to kind of isolate you and tell you this is not that, this is not this, this is sports and this is studies, this is serious and this is play. Well, it’s all play. You know, at the time I actually didn’t have children and now I have two boys that are almost three and four years old, and it’s fun now to watch them with their bodies and how they just play and explore and use them in any ways and mimic everything that I do.

53:45 And that’s what I was doing back then, I was rediscovering this body and finding out that it was this fun instrument to play with. I didn’t have to just do a bench press or just run or just do these lifting things, I could use it to be creative, to challenge myself, to express myself. And you know, Ido has so many disciplines under his belt, he’s been there and done that. I mean, he’s performed in Germany and in improvisational dance and contemporary theater, he’s done capoeira with some of the best, he’s done gymnastics in America, he’s trained with the Russians, you know, he’s been everywhere, and so he puts this all together with this philosophy and you’re starting to understand his movement culture.

54:24 The next clip you get to be introduced to the broomstick. Now Ido is famous for the broomstick and we have broomsticks here at London Real studios and we use them here to incorporate our movement practice. Also he introduced to me the spinal wave, which you’ll see us doing a little bit later, which most of the team here knows. I do spinal waves a lot of times in the morning. We actually have a practice here at London Real where after our stand-up meeting every morning at 9:30 we play music and we have movement for four or five minutes and we encourage everyone to move.

54:54 We have a hanging bar in the back that Ido told me to build in our old studio and so in the new studio we put it up because of him. We have the broomsticks around and people want to use them in different ways and we move every morning. We do yoga, push-ups, I do breakdancing moves, everyone does something different. This is all because of Ido Portal. This man changed my life, your life, the future of London Real and everyone who watched him because of these things.

55:19 And so the broomstick is something to use, he likes to use, again he hates high-tech stuff, he hates commercialized things of the fitness world, he hates it, he wears 10 euro shoes and he tells you they’re 10 euros, as he says, high-tech shoes, low-tech feet. And so he hates it when someone takes Olympic rings and puts a logo on it and sells them for a hundred bucks when they should only cost $20. if there wouldn’t. And so that’s Ido’s philosophy. So a broomstick might seem silly to you, a tennis ball might seem silly to you, but to Ido that is the lady as the essence of who he is.

55:51 Let’s use these simple instruments and find out if we can challenge the brain with them. And so a stick is interesting because it’s fixed, whereas the human body is not rigid, whereas a stick is. So by using the stick in coordination with the human body, we can start to see what’s working and what’s not working. And you can now see how Ido uses this broomstick in different ways with my body, with asking me to do different limitations, and you can see what’s going on with my hips and my ankles and my knees and my back and my neck.

56:24 It’s fascinating to watch this. So here’s Ido Portal and Brian Rose with the broomstick. Like I can really heal your body using this stick because now your spine has to do all those things. Maybe you got an injury there and I help you. I trick you, right.

56:45 So people look at it more as an attack and defense, but it’s more than that. For example, lock your knees, you’re not allowed to bend your knees. Okay, so now it’s all spine. Okay, another rule, your spine must remain straight. Look, straight, there is no bending, there is no.

57:26 So now we go to the knees and we heal those knees. Okay, you understand? So I can shift the attention to certain areas, or stay down in the squat, go down to a squat, you’re not allowed to move these points of contact and you’re not allowed to come up to stand. Okay, all right, don’t overreact. Okay, so now I work on your knees.

57:57 Now I develop your knees in three minutes. I might be push, push your hips. Look, look, oh look at it, look at it, look where it’s going, and now clear the knees here in front. Look, so I’m really developing your knees. No seven extra.

58:27 Yeah, so now all your body is getting stimulated in all these different positions, right. So also if I have been in a static squat I’d be thinking about my ankles now, but since we’re doing all that stuff I’ve probably been in a static spot without. Ya, yeah, I did, I do this for like sets of three minutes down there, and your whole ligaments, your whole knees, we must restructure, you know, must condition themselves, and it’s a more realistic spot because you don’t just, you know, stopping us, what you need that reduct ability and positions.

59:01 The infamous broomstick. And so I used to carry those sticks around if you ever came to London Real studios, and I gave a talk, I’d always have the broomstick I was holding on to, and again an amazing tool, one of the simplistic tools, and you’ll see the broomstick show up again in a few clips later when he’s training with Conor McGregor, and it was crazy. I’m maybe giving up too much early, but to see Ido holding that broomstick with Conor McGregor on the stage before a UFC event was the full circle of all this stuff and it was just amazing to watch.

59:31 I was so excited, I was so happy to see the two of them hook up, and it was absolutely amazing. So just to finish out the moving conversation, there was one really serious key piece of information, and I used the stuff inside our Life Accelerator program in the London Real Academy when I get my students to move their bodies in week three, and one of the things I tell them is this concept that Ido talks about, which is zone 1, 2 and 3 of movements, and these zones are really fascinating because zone 1 is when you first learn a movement, everything’s new, you suck at it, and yet you’re getting better every second. You’re moving, every time you repeat it you’re getting better and better and better, up a learning curve.

1:00:10 Zone 3 is something you’ve repeated over and over and over and over again to where there’s no more learning, there’s no more discovery, there’s no more exciting excitement, there’s no creativity. And so when you go to a gym, what’s almost all of the movement in that gym? Zone 3. You’re on a treadmill repeating, you’re on a bench press pushing the same thing, you’re doing repetitive movements that you’ve done hundreds if not thousands of times, and that’s why gyms are the most boring place to go ever, because everyone’s like a zombie repeating movements.

1:00:39 There’s no excitement, there’s no creativity, there’s no challenge. And that’s why when I go to the gym I don’t do that. I’m breakdancing, I’m hitting a heavy bag, I’m playing around, I’m sometimes dancing, sometimes shadowboxing, sometimes you can’t tell what the hell I’m doing. I’d rather do that than just do some repetitive motion that isn’t gonna get me anywhere. And this is Ido going deeper into this concept of zone 1, 2 and 3.

1:01:02 Yeah, because now when I’m doing it, so now I will actually call it crawl along the gym floor as a lizard in a very nice pasta gym and I’m the only one there, and yet it doesn’t bother me now because I know, and I’m actually fascinated to learn and to try to get better, and I know that after crawling across, everything has worked, I’ve moved, I’m feeling things open up, and I’m actually getting a learning curve progression every time, like my walk gets better and better and better, and I don’t see this type of progression in the things I’ve been doing for 10 years. And you talked about level 1, level 2, level 3 during the movement experience, and I was wondering is that what I’m experiencing now with those animal look emotions? Yes, zone 1, zone 2, zone 3.

1:01:46 Zone 1 is when you are introduced to a new concept and you can do it yet, you can’t fulfill the physical task or you cannot say and make it happen. The zone 2 is when you already made it but it’s not smooth, it’s not perfected. Zone 3 is when it’s perfected. Zone 1 is where most of the possibilities are, zone 1 is where the best learning happens. Even if you never make it, yet you would receive the same benefits.

1:02:21 This is a point that is made by Steven Jepsen, this seventy, seventy-four-year-old man I brought to the last movement camp, and his methodology is called Never Leave the Playground. He says try to learn how to juggle, whether you made it or not. Two people devoted three months to the practice, one made it and can juggle three balls, the other one cannot. MRI studies of their brain will show the same exact results, so it actually doesn’t even matter if you make it or not.

1:02:50 Zone one is the most beneficial one, zone two still carries a lot of benefits as you’re perfecting that lizard crawl, you still gain a lot of learning and neurological and structural changes, and then zone three has the least amount to offer to you, it’s more maintenance. Where is the fitness world focused? On zone three, right. It’s all movement that evil from the first day you can perform, you’re just improving them, you’re just perfecting them. So maximum zone 2, zone 3, zone 1, people don’t learn new s*** and learning new things every day is very important.

1:03:27 How many movements did you learn last week? Most people none, some maybe two, three. A contemporary dancer might learn up to 400 new movements in an audition setting, so the type of brain that gets developed there, I’m not talking about the body, I’m talking about neurological changes, is huge. And that’s the direction that we start to steer people towards, consistent learning. Now once consistent learning is where you want to go, what does it make the teacher into?

1:04:01 First, a student himself because that teacher needs to continue to inject new information in, and second, an encyclopedia of knowledge. And that’s why I believe we should invest and reward education more than gadgets, certification courses and watered-down, you know, systems. Yeah, we should reward quality education, people who are devoting their life to research and progress, their students and themselves. So ask yourself, what’s the movement you’re doing, zone 1, 2 or 3?

1:04:37 Try to get some zone 1 in your life. Yes, it’s gonna be frustrating, yes, it’s gonna be irritating, or as you saw in the intro to the movie, you’re gonna want to kill yourself, but that’s where the fun stuff is. And that’s what Ido gave me, and that’s why I went down this crazy adventure of breakdancing. And when I tell my guests, when they come to the studio, that I just came from breakdancing, they look at me and they think I’m actually joking. I told my barber and he still thinks I’m joking, but I’m not joking.

1:05:00 And after three years or four years of doing this I’m actually getting some skills, but it’s so challenging, it’s so difficult, it’s so creative, I suck most of the time, and that’s why I love it, because it’s also a way I can express myself. I feel like I’m always in the zone one, occasionally maybe I get to a zone two when I’m practicing something I know, but I can always be better at it, and there’s just an infinite number of combinations and I love it all. So I’m swimming now, but I’m learning how to do the butterfly stroke, so that’s something as well that I’m constantly trying to perfect and get better at and get my technique right.

1:05:32 It’s really complicated, requires a lot of coordination, again, same with boxing, same with jiu-jitsu. I’m always finding ways of getting my movement and making sure I’m always sucking. I try to do that in life actually, and everything I do for my business, to all sorts of things, always be in that zone one and that learning. So that’s one of the many things I’ve learned from Ido Portal. Next I got Ido back in the leather chair, or actually in the leather chair for the first time in the new studio, and here it was great because we went deep and we first heard him talk about Conor McGregor.

1:06:05 Now he had not met Conor yet, he was not training him, they weren’t friends yet, but Conor came up, because Conor was starting to make a name for himself in the UFC and it was really interesting to get Ido’s thoughts on Conor McGregor, and he likes Conor because he’s a loudmouth, and this is exactly why. You mentioned Conor McGregor and in mixed martial arts, we talked about the UFC a bit last time, but I mentioned Conor, funny enough, and that was before he became a big star. This is like 14 months ago, but it’s been fascinating to watch him and the way he moves, like you said, he’s not afraid to give his back up, and I’ve watched him closely because along with his style comes a bravado and a way of speaking that’s just really, I mean, I don’t think Ali was even at the level Conor’s at.

1:06:53 So, but I’ve watched his movement aside from the talk, and it’s fascinating to see, especially when he goes up against, you know, career defining moments, the way he stays relaxed and stays moving and in turn gives his back up and just seems to kind of be very in the moment. And you know, we both know from there, you know, him MA and Brazilian jiu-jitsu background, said there’s these memes that you build up to where you don’t even know you’re doing them, but you are actually Richard in it in what should be a fluid environment. Do you watch him?

1:07:24 Do you get inspired by him? Yeah, I love it, I love it, and I love his stuff, I love his fights, I love his point of view, I love how he took a lot of my ideas and applied it in his field and mentioned a few times. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, what kind of things? I would love to meet him and do some work with him, and I think he’s taking this generalist movement perspective inside fighting and is definitely applying that, and there is so much you can do with it because he is not, most fighters are standing there with their English or the Russian border Portuguese, their language, and the waiting for you to ask them this question, but all of a sudden you come up with some real huh, and there is no answer for that specifically inside the techniques that you were taught, there is no specific technique to match that, and that’s where he shines, by asking those questions and by answering that is unformed, mutated, but beautiful answers.

1:08:37 It’s a true expression. He is doing the Bruce Lee thing in many ways, expressing the art of expressing the human body. He is genuine self. Yeah, you can say for good or for bad, but the style, the actions, he is bringing something very genuine. Yeah, yeah, and you see his opponents not being able to, like you said, answer the question because they don’t know what language they don’t know what, what is that, right, what even is that?

1:09:06 And he is contributing something to the collective knowledge by bringing in his unique self and building on top of the work of others, but bringing something genuine, and I appreciate it. I’ll tell you something else that I appreciate, I appreciate loud-mouthed. I appreciate them, they can directly shine a mirror in your face that reflects your own ego and of course create a lot of reactions with people, but if you get over that you understand that he’s a risk-taker, loudmouths are putting it out there and taking huge, huge risks.

1:09:46 And yeah, just like I appreciate it, he’s confident, but more than that, as confident as you are you have to either do it or do not, and he’s definitely doing it, is going for it. Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of, there is a lot of good stuff in the movement that is happening and I see that he’s taking some patterns and he’s mentioning some terms that I’ve been using regularly in interviews, and I am very honored to see that he’s getting that information. And what kind of practices did he attack from you, or what kind of, I saw some patterns of movement on the floor that I played with and they became kind of known through my work and the type of mobility work that I’m doing, which is very specific, and to how I look at things and ideas about movement and about talking about movement and general movement and move in the heart of the human body, movement, you know, what does it mean?

1:10:50 It means this language, you know, this is an arm, and if I don’t perceive this arm as punch, elbow, but I perceive it as an arm, I am much more able to respond to what this arm can produce than to then through the technical language perspective. This principle approach is like a master key, it opens any door, while the other opponent is fumbling around with a bunch of keys trying to try to find the right key for the door. It’s a principle superior to technique, principles much higher than technique, they produce techniques instantly whenever you need them.

1:11:30 What do I need right now? I just make it. It’s so much fun for me to watch that clip because this is before they met, and who would have known that Ido and Conor would go on to have this incredible journey of mentorship and friendship and all that would happen. And it’s fascinating to watch him say that Conor brings a different language. A few months ago Conor McGregor fought Cowboy Cerrone in the UFC and ended the fight within 20-some seconds.

1:12:02 One of the things he did, Cowboy, is he hit him with a shoulder strike and broke Cowboy’s nose with his shoulder. I don’t think we ever saw that happen in the history of the UFC. So again, Conor is bringing a different language. Most fighters come in and they expect you to speak Russian or English or Portuguese as in to have a very specific protocol, you jab, you kick, then I expect a hook, and we play this game where we have this conversation in this predetermined language.

1:12:30 Conor comes in and says Lou I, and you’re like, what did you say? And before you know it your nose is broken and the fight’s over. And that is fascinating to watch, and Ido predicted that like three years ago, four years ago, that Conor would continue doing things like this. And that is what a principle is, that’s different than a tactic or a technique. This is, again, a higher level of looking at movements and the way that Conor would look at it, it wasn’t fighting necessarily, it was human movement, and he would use anything in order to stop that opponent and he wouldn’t be restricted to a previously determined language like English report.

1:13:08 And we see this all the time in martial arts, boxers do this one thing, wrestlers do this one thing, kung fu guys do this one thing, and when you try to mix them they’re like, no, no, we’re, no, we don’t do that. And yet in mixed martial arts, which McGregor competes in, you have to bring these things together, and that’s where a true mixed martial artist can thrive, when they think differently than everyone else. And so it was fascinating for me to see the two of them train in the following months, and I think it was three or four months after this interview that Conor went, sorry, you know, went to Dublin to train with Conor, and for me it was just so surreal to watch them training together and to see them on the UFC open workouts and this all happened before the moving conversation with Ido.

1:13:53 And so I got to ask Ido specifically what it was like to train with Conor, and this is Ido now talking a little bit more about training with this incredible martial artist. I have to ask you, I recently saw some footage you posted of your time in Dublin with the UFC interim champion at 145 pounds, Conor McGregor. You were there with him with Gunnar Nelson at the Straight Blast Gym. I saw you, you looked like Darth Vader with the broomstick and the fights.

1:14:27 What was that like to finally train with Conor? I know you have been on each other’s radar for so many years, he’s been seeing the motions that you gave to him, but what was it like to spend time with him? Just a beautiful, beautiful experience and a great pleasure and honor too. Much fun, too much fun, too much fun. Yeah, Gunnar and and the corner are so much into movement, so much into movement.

1:15:00 I also had the pleasure of working with the Archon revolve and with The Ultimate Fighter finisher, another great guy, and we were just hanging out talking movement and eating good food and playing around and developing, and I shared with them a lot of tools and developmental pieces and got to play with them as well, and just, yeah, just the best. That’s what I wanted all my life to be about and that’s what my life is about, it’s about movement, our movement. And one of the things that you said you work with them on was softening exercises because as martial artists they’re their sparring and their hitting and Negus you’re you’re being a tough guy all the time.

1:15:44 What was it about the softening exercises and what did you do with it? Yeah, this is a very neglected concept that I did not invent but I brought from traditional martial arts that is missing in the modern fighting business, and the nature of the work that MMA fighters and boxers do is very hardening on the body. It’s a form of protection that the body develops as an adaptation to the training, getting hit, hitting heavy bags, hitting people, yeah, just protecting yourself in the face of this great danger.

1:16:24 And then what happens is if it’s neglected and it’s left to do its thing, you will harden and harden and harden, eventually crack and eventually break, and this is something that I kind of wanted to shine a light on and I have a huge amount of exercise, very unique physical tasks and drills and exercises and games that I collected over the last decade to bring the softness back into the body-mind. You know, it’s not about stretching, it’s not stretching, it’s about softening. And yeah, and those drills are a great tool and a resource for everyone and definitely for fighters, it’s a must.

1:17:11 Okay, okay, and I saw you playing with the swords and with the broomsticks, you were introducing new movement techniques. When you see at Conor and Gunnar move on just a basic level, were you surprised, impressed? What was it, what you were expecting? Through two great fighters, they are highly specialized in reacting to another body. Once there is a change in the scenario, the whole system has to repattern, which is exactly the reason why I want to do that work with highly specialized people, and all of a sudden it’s a stick and the range is different and the opportunities are different and the possibilities are different, and they have to recalibrate, stay fresh, repattern, reinvent themselves and move in different ways, new ways.

1:18:06 And that’s a great tool later on in the unpredictable nature of the fighting business. That’s exciting, that’s super exciting. You said that you love loudmouths, and when you were talking about Conor, we put that short video together. We know Conor as a showman, a loudmouth, but as a great fighter. Well, what did you find?

1:18:30 Hey, Conor is something, something special, is a very unique people. People know the showman that Conor is and they know the fighter and the competitor that he is, they do not know the person that he is and they do not know the martial artist that he is, and there are all these layers to him. He is a very, very dedicated martial artist, furious, obsessed with the development of movement and martial arts, and then very respectful and honorable student and yet disciple, then at the same time he has the showman layer, which he does extremely well.

1:19:15 He creates a huge division around him and yeah, just stirs things up, sells those tickets, brings those people in, and that’s another thing that he does very well. Then he has the layer of the person, the private person that he is, then he has the layer of the competitor and the fighter that he is. Yeah, and I think just the common, the public doesn’t, does not get to see all this complexity and they get stuck on one thing and their egos are getting reflected in that mirror that is Conor McGregor, and then they either, they get a reaction, some hate, some love, some are inspired, but nobody can ignore.

1:20:10 And it’s just so much fun watching the footage of Ido hanging out with Conor and doing that training at Straight Blast Gym in Ireland, and you can just see they’re just playing around and goofing around and having fun. Of course the broomstick comes out, and you know, these are just two guys doing what they’re passionate about, and it was just fun to see them finally hook up and to start this great relationship and see Ido get involved in martial arts and vice versa. And so yeah, it’s just fun, and fun to watch it happen in real time on London Real, and it’s just like something that it’s very special about what we do, just to see that stuff kind of happen and maybe help manifest it as well.

1:20:46 So fascinating stuff there. The next thing I want to show is a final clip from the second interview with Ido, and that’s when I asked him about Dorian Yates, because Dorian has been a fixture of London Real from the beginning, very synonymous with London Real in the very beginning, and yet they have very different movement practices. You know, Dorian Yates created a body about aesthetics and, quote unquote, reverse engineered his body based on what he wanted it to look like, which is almost the opposite practice of what Ido does.

1:21:19 Ido is more about building the functionality of the body so he can do certain things and have certain patterns. And so I had to ask, you know, what he thought of Dorian Yates, and this is what he said. We talked about Dorian Yates earlier and you know, you’ve said that aesthetics is reverse engineering the body, and when I see Dorian Yates, and he was here just a few weeks ago, he seems as like such a polar opposite athlete to you or person to you, but yet you respect what he’s done, but what he did was obviously build an aesthetic mass by doing physical practices.

1:21:59 What comes to mind when you think about bodybuilding or, you know, fitness models? Yeah, I was there, you know, I was there many years ago, I was doing the thing, you know, I was 82 kilograms, huge, like maybe, you know, seventeen kilograms more than now, very big, over 30 pounds, you know, I have all the ripped skin, you know, in the back, in the arms, to to chauffeur. I was there, I was doing it, I was following people like Dorian in the 90s and stuff, I was lifting, I was doing it, but it was leaving me very empty.

1:22:37 Eventually I realized it was motivating me, I did the whole thing, but the awareness was leaking, and I loved Dorian because of his mindset, it can be something completely opposite to what you’re doing, but his approach, the way of doing things, that I appreciate. And one last thing about it, where is all that mass nowadays? Where is it? It’s gone. So what is left?

1:23:04 Ideas, awareness that you developed in that practice and maybe didn’t develop much because it’s bodybuilding versus superior practices for developing awareness and understanding and relationship with the body, stuff that will last you a lifetime. Actually, nowadays Dorian is doing yoga and in climbing up those mountains and hiking, he is doing movement these days, he’s doing movement practice, he’s living in a smaller body because it’s more economic and sustainable, and he’s preparing himself for more awareness and is more aware. So I love his example and his fire, what he did in bodybuilding is amazing, and I appreciate him coming on and talking about other things because it might be a risk, it might be dangerous for him.

1:23:54 Maybe people don’t want to hear it, maybe people just want to hear about the good old days, you know, and babbling on about that and the stories, you know, the Arnold stories and, you know, all this, you know, Pumping Iron for the million times, and you know what, doesn’t do it for me anymore and I had to stay real with that and continue to develop myself and find the same fire I had for those things but in a more deeper level, sustainable level, into older age and still maintain certain aesthetics, which I believe were very important for our image, for the way that we move, they’re connected with who we are. We’re not just a brain, we’re not just the body, we’re also an image of the way that we look, et cetera, is part. So aesthetics aren’t unimportant, there is a place for them.

1:24:42 Yeah, I never said they were unimportant, it’s the people who want to take the black and white thing and present it as a, you know, gimmick. I never said that, I said just aspiring for aesthetics is reverse engineering. You are aspiring for those aesthetics because it hints of a movement functionality, that body can fight, can move, can climb, can push, can pull, but actually not necessarily in Dorian’s case. He was still one of the last, you know, strong bodybuilders, you know, he was deadlifting some serious weights, he was pushing around some serious iron, but even that is just a small perspective of movement, you know, it might be a certain, you know, relaxation that allows you to throw the arm in speed and hit someone more efficiently versus contraction.

1:25:36 Very unexpected take of Ido on Dorian. Ido really appreciated Dorian’s mindset, the way that he went for it and achieved those great things, but it’s interesting he observes him now and he sees Dorian as a mover, as someone maybe more in touch with his brain and something that’s more economic and even more spiritual. And it’s true, I mean Dorian now can do the splits, he does yoga, he rides his bike, I saw him doing horseback riding recently, and it’s fascinating to see Dorian switch from that old mindset of doing those repeated zone 3 movements to build the muscle into something now that really exercises the neuro pathways of his brain.

1:26:18 And as Ido said, like, where’s the muscle now? It’s gone. And what’s left? Does he have any kind of a practice or an awareness that came with it? Probably not, whereas he thinks there’s superior ways of having a practice that can have more longevity and use the brain.

1:26:35 And again you’re starting to see little slivers into Ido’s concept of movement and his concept of movement culture, and again this takes years. It took years until I really started to have an idea of what Ido was talking about, because it’s such a big idea, because our bodies and our movement and the relationship between that and our minds is so complex and yet so essential to the human experience, and that’s why it’s important to understand what he’s talking about if you want to live a fulfilling life. And I also find him just a fascinating dude.

1:27:06 And so I love this, here’s Ido’s take on Dorian and that Ido used to bodybuild as well, like a lot of young men are drawn to, and again it’s a great discipline, it’s a great practice, but it can leave you kind of empty and wandering or looking for more, and that totally made sense to me as well. Next on my journey with Ido was to make a film about him, a feature film, and we were just coming off our very first feature documentary film with Dorian Yates. We had gone down to Marbella, Spain and filmed with him, we had premiered it at BAFTA.

1:27:38 Ido gave me his opinion of the movie, which had some criticism to it as well, which I always appreciate about it, you know, he gives it to me straight. And next I was pitching Ido, I was like, Ido, I want to come to Israel, I want to film with you, I want to do all this stuff, it’s gonna be amazing, and it was like, I don’t know, I don’t know. And also I’d never been to Israel and I found that place just fascinating, you know, it was biblical and I had heard, you know, I know there was conflict there and I’d heard these things and these other things, and for me it just felt like this great adventure, and London Real was going to go on it.

1:28:11 Ido was one of our top guests back then, I mean just right up there with the Dorian Yates of the world, and so people loved him, they loved listening to him, and you know, a guy, I said, Ido opened up to us more so than anyone else, you know, we could allow to film in his movement workshops. We did the moving conversation, the two studio interviews, and now it was time, and Ido said, okay. So we got the whole crew and we went to Israel, and I still remember going to the airport and getting on El Al Airlines, which was the official, you know, state-sponsored airline in Israel, and their security is just next-level.

1:28:46 I must say, I mean, they’re good at security because their business is security because they live in this conflicted area with Palestine, but I mean, getting on that plane was an exercise in the appreciation of how well their security is. They had already researched us, they wanted to know what was going on, one of the crew members had, like, it was originally from Africa, and they knew everything and they were like, what’s going on? Even getting through customs was difficult, and I remember at customs I said, we’re here to interview one of your national heroes, Ido Portal, and they were like, who?

1:29:14 We’re talking about, I’m like, this guy is one of your treasures, he represents your country with his incredible ideas about movement. And I remember I pulled out my iPhone and I showed the trailer for the moving conversation, what I just showed you, and all the immigration people gathered around, they were like, wow, look at that, what’s he doing, what’s he doing? And there was, like, literally hundreds of people in line behind us and they’re like, wow, and I’m like, that’s the guy we’re here to see, we’re making a documentary about him.

1:29:37 And they’re like, I, you can come through. So we got to Israel and we got to film with, you know, I went to Jerusalem and went to the Wailing Wall, and it was just this crazy mix of really intense training. We were totally embraced by Ido and Roy Goldschmidt and Odelia and everyone in the movements to do that, Roy Owens, and I just had the time of my life. I loved Tel Aviv, I love the people, I love Ido’s culture, I love training with the movement, like I said, everybody was super warm.

1:30:09 It was the greatest way to see a country in the city and to hang out with Ido as well was amazing, and to try to film this documentary, which was really difficult, there’s certain things, you know, he would agree to and certain things you wouldn’t agree to, and so we had to try to tell this story on the fly, and it was just an incredible experience and we made this movie out of it. And I want to play for you the beginning of this movie, the first six minutes of this movie, so you can get a feel for what the whole film is about. Again, it’s called Just Move, you can watch it for free on our website, and this is how it begins.

1:30:38 I don’t know about you, but something just doesn’t feel quite right. Sometimes I look at the world and wonder, why am I really here? I get anxious, I feel lost and confused. I have more friends than ever, but I don’t really feel connected. I have all this information, but I can’t find the truth.

1:31:44 The more I seek pleasure, the less I find happiness. I don’t remember the last time I played, I don’t remember the last time I was scared, I don’t remember the last time I felt human. Maybe the answer is right in the mirror. Maybe it is something that I took for granted my whole life. Maybe the answer is inside my own body, the only thing that connects me with who I really am.

1:32:39 If I can understand that, maybe I can understand myself. So I’m travelling to the oldest place in the world to learn the oldest lesson known to man from the only person who can teach me. So who is Ido Portal and what does he teach? Well, where do I begin? In 2014 a man walked into my studio carrying all of his possessions on his back.

1:33:37 He was a nomad relentlessly touring the world city-by-city, teaching his message one person at a time. What I thought would be just another interview instead changed everything, because I began to think of my body in a completely new way. You see, Ido is a man obsessed with human movement who has spent his entire life in the pursuit of this knowledge. His subjects, movements. His mantra, move, move more, move better, move with more freedom, move with more understanding, move, move, move.

1:34:22 His teachings would attract a new tribe of practitioners with their own unique ideas, values and character. PETA would call this movement culture. Then in 2015 everything would change when he began training the UFC fighter Conor McGregor. Suddenly both Ido and his culture were elevated to a global stage where the world would learn of lizard walks and spinal waves from one of the most well known fighters on the planet. This was incredible for me to watch in real time.

1:35:03 It was like some kind of a strange YouTube dream. Months later, car will be crowned the UFC champion with Ido Portal right by, but for me Ido was always the same person, just a man obsessed with finding the master key of human movement. And yet the more I understood of what you know taught, I became confused. With more answers came more questions and I soon found myself lost again in this concept that was so simple. So when Ido invited me to Israel I jumped at the chance.

1:35:55 As a kid from the beaches of California, the Middle East had always fascinated me, a place with so many cultures and countries and languages and traditions, where people created religion and search of salvation, looking for answers outside of their own bodies. Like many of you I had watched the news, I had seen the violence, I had heard the politician speech, but I wanted to see what it was really like for myself. So here I am in the land of the soul. About my body, goddamn that’s good, isn’t it?

1:37:24 Whoo, man, whoo, getting flashbacks, man. That’s a great movie. What an epic experience that was to go there and film on the Wailing Wall. We took the gimbal right up to the Wailing Wall and, with respect, of course, film there. On that opening shot where the sun is rising, we got up at like 4:00 a.m. to go back just to get that shot at Magic Hour for all of you.

1:37:45 I hope you enjoyed that. And again, we just really set it, setting the the frame for what I was going to experience as a journey in this strange place with these strange people doing these strange movements, and it was a fantastic time. And immediately I went into the studio, was embraced by Ido and his group, and that’s the thing about Ido, is it’s not movements that’s independent of other people, it’s a movement culture. So one of the things we did a lot was we went out as a group to different locations and we moved as a group, and that’s where this element of culture comes in, where there’s actually a language amongst the people there, there’s weird nuances and language and traditions of how you hang out with each other and talk with each other and practice with each other, and this was something I wasn’t expecting but I really, really enjoyed.

1:38:36 And again we were really embraced, tons of hospitality, and I just loved all the people there. We got lots of testimonials behind the scenes and we had amazing stories. It was a woman with no legs that was training there, she’s an incredible woman, Pascal, and she was training really hard. There were guys that had, you know, suffered bomb attacks from terrorists that were there, they were missing body parts and ears and things like that. There were people from all over the world that had come to train there, it was just incredible.

1:39:03 And one of the first things we did was Ido took us all out to a place near the beach and he did a classic egoism, which is to take something that is a normal everyday object that you would walk by, like a tennis ball or a broomstick or a handrail in this case, and to use it as a tool not only to challenge my body but to challenge my brain. And you’ve already seen him doing this for Conor and you’re wondering, why are they walking on a handrail? Well, you’re about to understand exactly why he uses the handrail.

1:39:33 Check it out. Boom, one, two, balance, feel it, place, balance, feel it, down. Don’t drop down. Everybody sees that you’re shitty. If you spent days on the rail you would become the cat, but with we stop challenging ourselves like this and we start to feel shitty, hence we don’t like it.

1:40:15 I challenge you to not like it when you’re good. Let’s face it, I am not a member. In middle school I won the science fair, at university I got the engineering degree, now I’m surrounded by proper athletes, all of them 20 years younger than me, and what’s with the tennis balls and handrails? Why don’t we get to the good stuff? If it’s too much and I give you a traumatic experience, you’re not gonna go to it, and then we encapsulate the fear and inside the capsule it grows until it takes over your life.

1:41:20 We’re touching it in the right moments, it’s okay, here is the controlled risk. Yeah, you can probably somehow, if you’re a real idiot, catch your foot inside of you, follow the other side and crack your head open, making some serious mistake, but without it, what comes to, what will happen? Yeah, like I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Okay, I need this, I step on it, I need here, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where am I? Okay, I’m stepping here, I need oil, I’m falling down, hope I come down here, it’s nothing, but it looks much different when you wrap them.

1:41:52 Yeah, try again. And breathing now, and a small smile as well. Yeah, this smile relaxes you, it’s connected with the mindset. Yeah, just a small stretch of the lips, a fake smile, faking it until we’re making. Small smile and breath, release the leg.

1:42:26 Standing on two legs is the hardest thing, yet now you can use it for balance, the right leg, it’s a huge part of your balance, and now you place it when you’re ready. Breathe. The fear comes in, wants to make contractions, you manage it, don’t eliminate it, you’ll never eliminate it, but you play with it, you dance with the fear. Don’t overuse me. You did it.

1:42:52 Now you did it, you took that. Nice, nice, nice. Stop. Go back one step. You’re good.

1:43:07 Okay, we’re good at this end. Put the right foot, squat down slowly, squat down slowly again, you’re good, push it back, release it, good, slowly come down. Yeah, but you, this is your project, mounting, walking alone, this mounting, coming down, and if it’s maybe not today, but before you leave, captured. Okay, and then next time you try it, it’s a completely different beast, but you have to step away from it to feel the difference. Now you, okay, you broke the fear.

1:43:51 This is what the parkour kids called breaking the jump, right, it’s actually breaking the fear of the jump, or breaking the fear of the element, all of a sudden it was possible. Did you feel it? Yeah. What was impossible before, what was paralyzing, all of a sudden I dared. I know, oh, it’s not, it’s not so difficult, and it happened.

1:44:11 Yeah, but I had to trust that process and make the leap when my brain was saying don’t do it. Yeah, and I as a teacher, that’s the interesting part, I can hold your hand to the edge of that cliff, but when it’s time to jump to the other side, I cannot occupy your hand, I have to, you can only do it yourself. I can teach you a jab and a cross and do all the drills, but eventually you’re all alone. It’s the loneliest place. Now it’s the same here, I can give all the tools and instructions but you have to deal with that emotional, hormonal dump, depth focus, that feared.

1:44:47 So it’s a beautiful moment of self-discovery and evolution. You’ve just made a huge change in your neurological makeup, you’ve rewired yourself around the sphere, around the possibilities, and you’re not the same person as you were. This is beautiful, we need more of this in our lives. It’s uncomfortable, but this creates huge changes. It’s an arrow, discomfort and fear is an arrow, it’s here, it’s this is where the gold is, X marks the spot, it’s here.

1:45:23 But we go with the pleasure, that’s not where the arrow points, and that eventually is not pleasurable anymore and it kind of can destroy our lives. But where our fear resides, this is where real growth is, and discomfort and pain is part of it. Thank you. That clip is the essence of Ido Portal, seriously. Pay attention to what just happened there because he used my body to teach me a lesson about life, and that’s the beautiful thing about his practice, is that here you have this instrument and most of the time we ignore it or we use it for superficial things or we get on a treadmill when we can actually use it to change our relationship with fear, to change our relationship with the rest of the world, and that’s what Ido does.

1:46:10 Now it might not look like much when I’m on that handrail, but it feels like you’re on the tenth, tenth floor of a building. I mean it really feels hectic up there and the rail is tiny, and so the fear is real even though it’s not reasonable, because you can jump off at any time and, like you said, unless you’re a total idiot, you’re really not gonna hurt yourself. So you’re dancing with that fear, and like you said, if it’s too fearful it becomes a trauma and then you encapsulate the fear and the trauma and it grows and it can cause problems in life, we see this with PTSD.

1:46:39 So the idea is to get you to the edge and then show you that you can dance with it and play with it and overcome it, and you can use your body to do this in so many ways. And that’s this is what makes Ido different than any other movement coach on the planet. That’s, this is the essence of Ido’s philosophy and I love it that you can see it happening in real time. And again, look, he forced me to put a smile on my face, that’s the last thing I wanted to do, because the smile is interlinked to my brain which is trying to stress in that environment.

1:47:09 If I force a smile, I’m telling my brain this is okay and then it can deal with the fear. So the body becomes the mind and the mind becomes the body, and that’s in that instance, and you can train yourself to be okay in those scenarios. Imagine me using that same thing when I go into a board meeting or I get on stage for a public speech. Now you can see how Ido uses the body to teach you things about yourself. Another funny story is I was wearing some tavis sandals there that were like planks of wood.

1:47:38 I had no idea we were gonna be balancing on metal handrails that were this big, and so when I got there Ido was like, what are you wearing? And I was like, sandals, I thought we were just gonna hang out on the beach. He said, you can’t wear those. And I was like, I can take them off, and he’s like, that won’t work either. And you could see they all have these kind of Ido shoes which are, he’s like, 10 euros shoes that are just these kind of, you know, basic canvas and plastic shoes that you can just kind of do any basic movement with, other, like, kind of skateboard shoes or, like, you know, whatever, kind of All-Stars, you know, whatever, they were a Converse All-Stars-ish things.

1:48:11 So I got these planks and yet I still had to do it, so I’m up there and balancing was just even more difficult. It was like literally standing on planks of wood, so that was more stressful, of course. I got cameras everywhere and I’m trying to do it, and so, you know, let me hold his hand, but then he’s like, don’t overuse me. But right there is the essence of what he’s trying to say, and I tell my students in my Business Accelerator the same thing. It’s like, I can get you to the edge, I can teach you how to create that digital product and I can teach you how to get on that live webinar, but at some point you have to cross the divide on your own, and that’s why the ring is the loneliest place, or in my case for my students, the live webinar when they’re selling a product to strangers for the first time.

1:48:52 You have to do that on your own, that’s the growth. You have to do, a coach can’t do that for you, because if the coach does it then the coach did it and you didn’t have that growth, and that’s where you have to let someone go into the ring or let someone do that. And again it’s an amazing metaphor for life. So again, don’t get caught up in the handrails and the tennis balls and in the end the sticks, these are just tools to help you appreciate your humanity, your mind-body connection, and it’s the essence of Ido and it’s beautiful in my mind.

1:49:19 So again I continued hanging out in Tel Aviv with my crew and I trained with Ido in his studio, and this next clip is a session where Ido would walk the class through some concept he had in his mind, and he it seems like he’s got thousands of these that he can go into, tap at any point, and he gets you to do these strange movements that have paradigms and principles built into it. And so here is me in Roy Goldschmidt’s Ido Portal movement studio in Tel Aviv. Very important nowadays is to empty the arms.

1:50:06 The arms are too full, your arms are locked, people are moving around, the same thing with the spine, they’re calcified arms and then they hope the gene to try to get this, and we need to empty the arms. Add a little bit of movement just to remind yourself. Notice how I bend my knees to catch the motion a bit and I feel a rush of blood in my head. Rush of blood, rush of blood, rush of blood. He says I feel like an orangutan.

1:50:43 He finishes, I’m ready, I feel like an orangutan, and that were it all, all this stuff originated from. Yeah, the Vinnie Mac, my moonwalk was more cocky, but he added this ape arms, so getting a little bit longer. I hope you feel that now, you’re already too long. Yeah, you as well. Yeah, remember what I said, these are transmission cords, but what am I doing now?

1:51:12 I’m trying to make this the engine, not the transmission. Strong arms mean s*** because the power is not here and show you the real power now. Yeah, capture it, observe. This is the real power, how you unclog the hose. This is nothing, this is not here, it’s not here, it’s here.

1:51:53 Turn around, look at this, this is the sign of power. Look at how the low battery thickness of the low back, it’s a lot more in the extremity, the end of the chain, and the end of the chain, it’s here. That’s why we obsessed with this. Yeah, boom, this is that engine, it’s that that makes the power, but we became focused on strong arms mean s***. Azita would say it again.

1:52:41 You can see, like, he’s just such a great showman, he’s just such a great teacher, such a great charismatic personality. Again, if you can ever get to any of his events or live trainings, absolutely amazing, it’s just so much fun to be around and just as constantly challenging the assumptions that you’ve made about the body. And I do these exercises still with my arms and I do it to where I can actually see the blood come on to my hand, because if you really go hard on it your hands get all red because the blood’s been pushed down.

1:53:08 But he’s right, the arms are a transmission mechanism of the core strength in the body. You know, a boxer, the punch doesn’t come from the arm, the punch comes from the feet, to the legs, to the hips twisting, that’s what the power comes from, and yet a lot of times we just sit there doing bicep curls in the gym, again reverse engineering and the aesthetic and not thinking about the power. One of many, many, many lessons I got from Ido Portal in that studio.

1:53:31 And again the movie is filled with so much more, all sorts of, you know, strange movements, spinal waves, diving on the floor, you know, all the weird hand balancing and all the crazy stuff that he does in there, again just to challenge your assumptions, to change the paradigm, to change your thinking when it comes to movement and get you to think about movement in a different way, where it’s improvisation and assimilation and all of these different ideas. And there’s so much great IP here. Again, you can watch so many great videos of Ido, and the movie covers a lot of that stuff as well.

1:54:03 And what happened to me is when I got back to London I started putting these practices into my life. I completely changed the way I looked at my body and how I used it. I used to lift, I used to bench press for one rep maximum, I used to do bicep curls, I used to do heavy squats and deadlifts, and it was all about the numbers for me, and that all went out the window. And again my personal trainer at the time was getting really frustrated with me. I started doing reme work, I started working on breakdancing moves, I’ve been doing lizard walks, I was swinging from the bars, there’s old videos of me like literally doing, like, monkeys from bars in midair, grabbing a bar and flinging like a Tarzan move and bending over on my back and, like, all the way backwards and just doing things that caused me to have fear and move my body in different ways, and you can see it in my physical practices today.

1:54:54 And again, I move my body every single day, it’s like a non-negotiable for me, thanks to Ido. And I do it in level or zone one movement patterns where my brain is being challenged. And so now I have a hand balancing coach that I see once a week, my good friend Sammy Jeanine, he’s one of the best in London, and he teaches me hand balancing. I haven’t got to one hand yet because I’m still working on just two hands, but my hand balancing skills, it’s taken years, but they’ve gotten better and better and better, and again I love it, I just love going in there.

1:55:22 It’s hard, it’s difficult, it makes me frustrated, but it’s almost always zone one because I get so much better quickly, but it’s always there’s more challenges every single time. And I incorporate those balanced movements into my breakdancing. And a lot of people don’t understand why I was breakdancing. The truth is this, I was on the floor between lizard walks one time in the gym, and again the gym staff is looking at me, they want to give me a warning, again everyone’s like what’s going on, my personal trainer was like can we do some weights now?

1:55:50 And when I was down there I said, this seems like breakdancing, and I remember being around break dancers when I was a kid. I think I tried a couple of moves when I was like 10 years old, and I went down the rabbit hole of breakdancing. I started looking up videos, I found teachers in London, I had Break Durance, I was on the show, and now I train probably three times a week in breakdancing, which incorporates much of what he does with music and rhythm.

1:56:14 And again a whole movement culture around breakdancing, because breakdancing came from the streets, from graffiti and hip-hop, and it was a way of expression, it was a way, it was showing you’re an alpha, it was a way of performing for the group and women and a way to not be messed with and show your style, and there was a whole culture around breakdancing which is different than Ido’s movement culture. So it made me very aware of this stuff. And then when I did my Ironman race a couple years ago I realized that was really zone 3, but at the same time I also got some respect for what these people go through and how it’s a real mental game.

1:56:51 And so I took the swimming from my, and now I’m doing butterfly stroke and that kind of thing. And so here’s a short video of some of my very regular movement practices thanks to Ido Portal. And so my human movement just complained changed completely. I started doing everything different, dancing, doing mixed martial arts and jiu-jitsu, doing b-boy, doing swimming, it was just a complete paradigm shift for me. So I’m actually up for any human movement.

1:58:18 I did some rock climbing after Alex Honnold was in the movie Free Solo and Jimmy Chin, who was the director, was in here. I’m constantly excited about any type of movement, I want to play with it, usually I get frustrated but these days I know that’s all part of the process, thanks to Ido Portal. So you’re gonna see me moving until the day I die in some capacity. I think it’s an a sessional form of life, this is not exercise, this is part of life. And Ido still gives me a hard time and says, Brian, you’re not moving enough, you should be moving and squatting, you know, ten minutes of every hour, you should be hanging, you know, you should design your life around your movement practice, not your movement practice around your life.

1:58:55 And I love that concept, you know, that it’s just part of it. And there’s so many great moments of Ido, but he said, Brian, back in the day when you wanted a drink of water, these days you got a bottle of water and you drink it, back in the day it might have required you to run across a field, swing from a vine, climb a tree, jump from a rock, and then you could squat down and stick your head down and have a sip of water. You had to earn it. To have some food you might have to hunt an animal, chase it, go through movement patterns, be quiet, crawl on the ground like a lizard, throw a spear.

1:59:28 I wanted to have a bite of food, but these days, we know, and it just comes in a package. So try to think about how you can incorporate more of these movement practices in your life, and that’s my challenge to you. How can you take anything you’ve learned today and re-examine your entire movement practice from a doesn’t another lens? And if it’s frustrating at first, it’s supposed to be frustrating, you’re supposed to feel like you suck, it’s supposed to be all of that.

1:59:50 Now the beginner’s mind welcomes that suckiness at first and is in some way always looking for it. Any fool can be a master at something and repeat something they’re good at. As Ido said there on the bar, I challenge you to not like it when you’re good at it. That’s the challenge. So many of us get addicted to the dopamine of being good at something or being complimented for something.

2:00:11 What if you can actually not when you’re good at it and move on to something? That’s what this is all about. And I want to finish with one of my favorite clips of Ido Portal. This happened in one of our final training sessions in the movie and in Tel Aviv, and this was when he took a group of his students out and started putting us through random practices. I didn’t know what we were gonna do, but at some point he saw the way some of his students were practicing and he decided to give them a telling-off, a bit of a tongue lashing, in what he saw was their lack of emotional content.

2:00:42 And again, to be a student of Ido is to be inspired by him, it’s to be entertained by him, it’s to be led by him, and it’s also to be scolded by him, because that’s what a great mentor does. And this is what it’s like to be on the tail end of Ido telling you that you’re doing it wrong, and I call this clip the fear of God. All the pressures, all the cameras, or the friends, oh, the egos, all the refutations, oh-oh-oh-oh, what’s next, all unpressurized, oh, I’ve never done this in front of bla bla bla, oh, the sun, oh, the floor, the cracks in the floor, all the repetition, oh, I forgot what I want to do.

2:02:22 Excellent, thank you. She just does it, she can do it. You ask yourself, can you do it? Or what are you teaching, what are you doing? You can do a perfect tense.

2:02:31 Now it’s time to walk with end, so you can do it, is easier, but it shows you how addicted you are to the formal practice. Look at my best trick, I’m going to do it now, this is my best trick. Are you ready with the camera? You ready? It’s my best three, and now I’m when, do you do that, when?

2:03:25 Now there is a crowd, wait, they’re not looking, it never comes, there is not this moment, it’s a delusion. You never have your best performance in the right moment, so guess what, we start to perform every moment of your life. This is it, that’s the performance now. Now we’re moving, but what happens, this doesn’t seem like the real thing. When is it?

2:03:45 Is it tomorrow? When our, what are you waiting for to put you, are you you because you give 70%, hence I think for myself, so it’s not is through capacity, his potential is unfulfilled. Tomorrow it will happen, no, the next, next year, next year and we’ll be really good. These are the people who never reach the mark, they’re never good because they didn’t take the opportunity to be good inside. the toilet, taking a crap.

2:04:12 In those moments, every moment now, perform, do it with the maximal seriousness. I drop a ball and I try to catch it, I’m there, I’m not disrespecting the situation, because that’s it, that’s the performance. You don’t have to wait until you’re 70, 80, 90 to realize, oh sweetie, I missed the mark, it was all performative moments and it was a life not well lived. I didn’t go, I didn’t go with it, I didn’t use what I could anyways. Now it doesn’t matter, you know, this moment there, now it doesn’t matter.

2:04:47 I don’t want to say this, I don’t want to fall into this trap, so I give you a stage, whether the camera is here, Brian is here, that kodesh. How do you say the fear of God in you? Yeah, we say in Hebrew, do it with the fear of God. So like the stick falls not because the camera is there, because every damn with the same f***ing thing, I don’t want to drop the f***ing stick. You want to touch my shoulder, I want to your shoulder, I don’t want you to touch my shoulder, so ever I fight it, I stop it, I go with it, I go with the emotional content, I go with the breath, I go with the vocalization.

2:05:28 You hear, there is no camera but I’m there with full intent, and then someone else is. Now you mistaken the playful approach for a shitty approach. It’s a shitty playful approach, you can have a serious playful approach, you can have a shitty playful approach, but being playful doesn’t mean you don’t do it full-on serious, till you bleed. The fear of God, peridot cordesh, I think is how it goes in Hebrew. And what an amazing concept to finish out this journey.

2:06:09 I hope that makes sense to you, what Ido was saying in that. What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for in your life? Are you waiting for that moment, is that when you’re gonna give it your all, or are you giving it your all when you’re alone on the toilet? That’s his way of saying that, you know, and it’s his way of saying the time is now, give it all in this moment, this could be your last moment, do it now, the best of your ability, not because someone’s watching, because you have the capacity to do it.

2:06:38 It’s the essence of being human, it’s the essence of being grateful, it’s the essence of living in the now. And there was a point in the movie, and you can watch it, where you and I are sitting on the floor and we got some amazing candid conversations, and he said, Brian, you know, at the end of the day all of us here are only doing one thing, we’re just passing time. And it was his way of saying we’re all gonna die and we might think we’re here doing grand things with grand plans, but we’re just passing time until we go into the grave.

2:07:07 And so why not make the most of that? Why not make your movement practice count today? Why not be the best mover at this thing today, or at least aspire for it, you know, and don’t do it differently because someone’s watching or because it’s not the contest or it’s not this, be your best every day. And I remember another guest on London Real said, you can tell a lot about someone by what they do when no one’s watching. And again, this is the essence of Ido.

2:07:35 He’s got a movement practice that is really a human practice, and it’s such a philosophy that it changes all of the movement practices based on this higher philosophy. And so I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey that we’ve strung together. This is the relationship I’ve had with Ido Portal for the past six years and I hope you can take this and apply it to your life, your movement practice, your mentality, the way you look at fear, the way you go into the fear, the way you can practice dancing with that fear, the way you can use this body, because I guarantee when it’s taken away from you you’ll want it back, you’ll do anything to get it back.

2:08:11 And you know, there are times right now where we don’t know if you’ll have your health, you don’t know if you’ll have your legs, you don’t know if you’ll have these things, and I’m telling you when they’re gone you’ll do anything to get them back. So use them now to their full capacity, use this incredible body in all of its ways to challenge your brain, to challenge that body, and to have this incredible human experience. And just want to say massive thanks to Ido Portal.

2:08:36 He’s been an incredible part of London Real, very synonymous with who we are in the beginning, one of our biggest guests, and Ido, if you’re watching, I just want to say thank you for coming on the show, for having the trust in me and the team to come into your classroom and your studio and film you. There’s one thing a lot of people don’t know, is that Ido had never seen the film at the premiere, and he invited his mom and his dad and the whole crew, they all flew in from Israel to come to the premiere, and here’s a man watching a movie about himself and his entire lifetime of intellectual property, and he hadn’t seen a cut of the movie, he didn’t demand a cut, he didn’t want to see it or have anything to do with it, and that was a massive amount of trust to have for me and the team, and we’ll never forget that.

2:09:23 And so thank you so much, Ido, I appreciate you, I respect you, I love you, and it’s been great to have you as a mentor and a friend and a critic of my work, and I really value that stuff, and I stepped up my moviemaking based on your feedback. And lastly, I want to say, Ido, come back in the chair, let’s sit down or let’s go walk around and have another conversation, but let’s find out where you’re at right now and find out if you can give us some more knowledge or nuggets or perspectives on our life and our movement practice. So there you go, this has been a London Real Journey.

2:09:55 If you’ve enjoyed it, please leave us a comment, share it with a friend, tell me what else you want to see, what other types of journeys that you want to see, lessons, ideas, themes, people, and we’ll share that with you. You know, we’ve been here for nine years, we’ve taped six, 700 episodes at this point, six documentary films, so we’ve got a lot to draw on and hopefully we can string it together and give you a through-line to a piece of content that can go out there and change your life and hopefully change the lives of others. Again, we’re trying to create what we call a mass-scale transformation of humanity into a fully empowered, conscious and cooperative species.

2:10:32 That’s what we do with our content, our events and our Academy. That’s what we did today. I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see you next time on London Real Journeys.