Mobility, Flexibility, and Meditation: The 3 Secrets To Longevity | Shane Dowd, Founder of GotROM | Better Man Podcast Ep. 048

Dean Pohlman: Hey, guys, it’s Dean. Welcome to The Man podcast. And today you are going to be hearing from one of the most knowledgeable experts on mobility training on the worldwide Web. Shane is the founder of GotROM. He’s a former athlete who had a life changing injury that caused him to change his approach to fitness, shifting from the athlete and short term focus of performance to a long term longevity one including a much greater emphasis on mobility work.

Dean Pohlman: So in today’s episode, you’re going to explore how mobility work can help you avoid injuries and prolong your longevity. Specifically, we’ll discuss how changing the way you look at your fitness. Looking toward the horizon instead of next week can help make your fitness more enjoyable and more sustainable. Why? It’s a good idea for everybody to stop working on strength for a while and focus on flexibility.

Dean Pohlman: How mobility work can fit into your workouts in a way that’s easy and manageable. And we even explore the power of meditation, demystifying this practice, and better understanding how powerful it can be in our everyday lives. This is a cool episode because we’ll really get into some different mobility exercises, some stuff that we don’t cover, and man, for yoga and I know that you’ll be able to benefit from that.

Dean Pohlman: Listen up. Learn something that you can implement in your fitness routine. Maybe even get inspired to do some meditation. And I hope this inspires you to be a better man. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. I’m your host, Dean Pearlman, founder of Man Flow Yoga. And here we are redefining what it means to be better as a man successful, but also true to himself, physically fit, but also mentally and emotionally healthy, improving in all areas of life, but recognizing that it means nothing without deeper, more meaningful connections.

Dean Pohlman: Join me in the Better Man podcast as we explore the practices, the beliefs and the processes that enable us to strive for our goals while also comprehensively caring for our own health and well-being. I hope this show inspires you to be the better version of yourself. Hey guys. Austin, Welcome back to the Better Man Podcast. Today I am joined by Shane Dowd of Gorham, and Shane is someone that I’ve known for a pretty long time now.

Dean Pohlman: We are both, I would like to say, experts in the mobility world. And what I like about Shane stuff is that it complements what we do with Dan for yoga really well, so I’m excited to have him on the conversation today to not only talk about got wrong, but also to delve into some other areas of wellness that Shane has explored.

Dean Pohlman: So Shane, welcome to the show.

Shane Dowd: Thank you so much for having me, brother. It’s good to be here.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. And first off, I do want to say I don’t have my normal set, so my background looks different if I’m on video. And you might also notice that my audio is slightly not as good as it normally is because they don’t have a microphone. I’m using my AirPods. So first off, apologies for that. But I hope that you can tolerate this.

Dean Pohlman: Hopefully you can tolerate this lower sound quality and make it through this whole episode with me. So, Shane, I’d love to hear more about how, you know, what got what got wrong is, you know, what’s the story there? I know that you had a pretty significant injury from weightlifting. You were doing a deadlift and then you felt something happened and that was and that kind of started the, you know, your journey into mobility.

Dean Pohlman: So do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, sure. I got Rahm is basically my life’s work and it kind of encompasses all the areas of life that I spent the most time studying. So I started out as a strength and conditioning coach. So I teach people how to, you know, get stronger, build stronger, more athletic bodies. But then, like you pointed out, there was a point in time where I was actually doing some Olympic weightlifting.

Shane Dowd: I was doing the power clean and I was in the gym and have it on video. It’s on my YouTube channel and I ended up injuring my back. And that led me to morph to kind of figure out why I hurt my back. So I spent the several years and over $26,000 and went back to school, became a massage therapist, corrective exercise specialist, flexibility and mobility teacher just spent a lot of time figuring out why I was lifting with perfect technique and still got hurt.

Shane Dowd: And what that led me to start teaching was to help people with fixing injuries and improving their flexibility and mobility. So got Rahm kind of encapsulates all of that. It’s the it’s the helping people fix pain, get flexible and then kind of build optimal, strong athletic bodies for their whole life. And so, yeah, that’s kind of the origin story of how it started and that’s what I help people with.

Dean Pohlman: Gotcha. So what was your original interest in strength training? Were you an athlete? Did you you know, what was the interest in strength training?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, I mean, my whole life I played pretty much every sport under the sun, especially soccer, and played high level soccer and high school played in a little bit in college And after college I kind of decided I thought I was going to be a nutritionist for a while. I studied nutrition and in college and also kinesiology. But then I realized that my passion wasn’t so much the nutrition side as it was just kind of like athletic development.

Shane Dowd: And so I decided I was going to be a strength and conditioning coach. And I did a mentorship with an Olympic level track and field coach. And so I got the good fortune of training side by side with his Olympic athletes and learning from him. And then did that as the early part of my career because I just I’ve always loved athletics and the human body and and building up the human body.

Shane Dowd: So that was the the origins of my interest in the strength and conditioning field.

Dean Pohlman: Gotcha. Would you say that Would you say that your in your injury? Because, you know, I think what’s fascinating is the changes that we go through when something significant happens to us and it kind of shatters like an idea of of what we are about ourselves. And, you know, did you have a did you have a kind of experience like that with your with your injury?

Dean Pohlman: Like, did it did it lead you to start thinking about yourself differently? Did you did you change your, you know, the way that you work out? You know, you talked about obviously you started doing more corrective exercises, more mobility focused exercises to, you know, kind of make sure that you’re addressing underlying causes of why that injury happened in the first place.

Dean Pohlman: But I’m curious, what were some other kind of changes that that resulted from that?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think this might be a common experience for a lot of like Jim going guys like us where in the early days it’s like you’re all into like fitness and maybe bodybuilding or powerlifting or CrossFit or athletics or training for some sport. And it’s all about performance. And then usually at some point in time, usually in the twenties and thirties, we start to get injured, our body starts to break down.

Shane Dowd: That’s why almost everyone, right when you’re about to turn 30, tells you like, oh, it all changes after 30, like, like throws, like something, something big happens there. But I think what they’re pointing to is like, we realize that our bodies are not infinitely durable and bulletproof. And so when my injury happened in my twenties, it was that when I was 26, there was two fundamental shifts that happened one outer and one inner.

Shane Dowd: The outer shift is I had to start paying attention a hell of a lot more to mobility posture alignment. My technique was already good because I’d been mentored by this like high level coach, but I needed to start paying attention to the alignment of the car, so to speak. The alignment of my body, my, my, my flexibility, my mobility.

Shane Dowd: And so I started doing a lot more what you would call mobility work instead of just getting into the gym and crushing weights every day and sprinting hard and doing plyometrics and agility and never really tuning up my body. So that’s that’s the changes that happened in the external world. And that was actually kind of difficult because I was working inside of like a hardcore environment, a CrossFit gym where everyone else is like crushing that cons and lifting as heavy as possible and snatching weights overhead as heavy as possible.

Shane Dowd: And so to be the guy going against the grain and being like, I’m going to do a whole lot more stretching and yoga and self massage and banned distracted exercises, it was hard to do in that environment because not a lot of people around me were doing it. Fortunately, I was a coach in the gym and so people kind of looked up to me as like, okay, what if that guy is doing it?

Shane Dowd: It must be pretty good. So I kind of helped to change the culture of the gym to become like not just about lifting weights and going faster, but also to do more mobility work so that everyone stays healthy longer. So that’s how my external training changed. But also the internal change that I needed to go through was accepting that the genetic deck of cards that I’d been dealt.

Shane Dowd: So what I mean is have a condition called from moral acetabular impingement, commonly called hip endangerment. And I write hip with bone cysts in a liberal tear. And I can’t I couldn’t at the time. I can much more now just hop into weightlifting without any problem. I needed to do a lot of prep work to kind of work around that problem, and I needed to let go of the image, the self-image, the identity that I had of myself as this.

Shane Dowd: Like, you know, super athlete. I can lift anything, do anything, and nothing goes wrong to kind of being like, hey, my body repeatedly is giving me the message that you can’t do that anymore. And I needed to kind of be like, okay, I’m going to stop pretending like I’m the 18 year old who could do anything that he wanted to.

Shane Dowd: And I’m going to just accept the reality as it is and say, what do I need to do now? And what I learned is I needed to do more prep work, more and mobility work. And and I also stop comparing myself to the other 18 year old CrossFit ers who were just walking into the gym cold and starting to deadlift super heavy.

Shane Dowd: I was like, Good for them. I hope that lasts for them for their whole life. That’s not me right now at age 26. So there was kind of a both an internal and outer shifts that happened after that injury.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I think it’s I’ve had a similar experience. I don’t know if I could I don’t think it was a specific time. I think it was more of a gradual shift. But, you know, the way that I when I was younger, I played I played collegiate lacrosse and I was I was a beast on the field. I was like, I was I played the longest but with the few as subs like I would, I was on the field longer than anybody else.

Dean Pohlman: I, I pushed myself so hard and I was like, I’m the strongest guy out here. I’m with the fastest guy out here. I was I mean, I wasn’t the strongest guy. I’ve never been huge. I’m only like five, ten and, you know, £170. So I’ve never been huge. But I was always able to like, go. I feel like I was able to go toe to toe with most people and I was definitely the fastest.

Dean Pohlman: But like going through this transition where, you know, my workouts aren’t anymore. The workouts now, it’s not about like, can I do this or not now. It’s like, I could do this, but how am I going to feel tomorrow? Like or like I could try this, but like, is the is the benefit like, is the risk worth the benefit?

Dean Pohlman: You know, I have something scribbled on my garage, my garage whiteboard right now, which is like the and it’s the least motivation or phrase that you could put in a gym. But I just wrote, Is it worth it? And it’s like it’s, it’s not mental Like look at it and be like, yeah, let’s crush it today. It’s meant to be like, you know, I’m, I’m someone who like and it sounds like, you know, you as an athlete before you had this this, you know, this immense event.

Dean Pohlman: We don’t have issues when it comes to like pushing ourselves for us. I think the the struggle is like, okay, can we like, can we not push ourselves and like, do the smart thing? Whereas some people do need that. Like if you’re if you’re struggling to be consistent with your with your fitness. And I think if you don’t have like a solid, consistent workout yet, you know, habit of fitness yet I think you do need to push yourself.

Dean Pohlman: You need to do it smartly. You need to make sure that you’re using proper technique and doing, you know, a proper progression in your programing. But the point is, I think, you know, there there are two different types of people and for me, it’s the it’s the I need to learn how to hold back versus, you know, needing to push myself more.

Dean Pohlman: So yeah, I think that’s a I think that’s a I think that’s a good point. Yeah. I don’t know why I said that. Where were you? What were you going to say next?

Shane Dowd: Well, now you just reminded me that there is another kind of major self-image shift that came out of all of that, which is it’s like the things that I valued change. It used to be, What is your one rep, Max? Everything. Squat, deadlift, snatch, clean. What is your fastest sprint time, your vertical leap. Everything was just, you know, one rep.

Shane Dowd: Max everything. And that’s what I valued. And I’m still interested in pursuing those things. I still lift weights and do some Olympic lifting and plyometrics and sprint at the track and things like that. I still like that stuff. It’s fun, but it’s with a much, much, much longer time horizon in mind. It’s like what I now what I now value is like I want to be the old guy doing this at the track and in the gym with impeccable technique and a nice full range of motion.

Shane Dowd: When I’m 80, 90, 100, I actually have a goal to compete in and win a gold in the Senior Olympics. And so it’s like my time horizon is now short for me. Now is like 12 years into the future when I actually qualify to start competing in the Senior Olympics. Like, that’s the time horizon. I’m thinking, So does it matter if I set a new PR this week in the gym?

Shane Dowd: Because you’re supposed to set up PR every week? No, not at all. I just want to be squatting nice and deep and health healthily, healthfully, you know, many, many years down the road. And so that really was like a deep fundamental shift of like what I valued, what I thought was cool. And now I think it’s the coolest thing in the world to like, be that old guy in the gym doing that, being that old guy competing in the Senior Olympics.

Dean Pohlman: So it’s shifting to a longevity mindset.

Shane Dowd: Totally longevity, resilience and health and feeling. It’s about how I feel in my body on a day to day basis. So if I crush myself with deadlifts and squats that are like so close to my true, true, true one rep Max and my back is kind of achy for a couple of days like that doesn’t interest me anymore.

Shane Dowd: It’s like I’ll deadlift medium heavy and call it a day and be happy with that because I’m not actually competing in anything. If you’re if you’re someone who’s competing and getting paid to like win events and stuff, like sure, you need to push the envelope a little bit, but that’s not 95% of us. Most of us are hypothetically, theoretically, training for health among gravity.

Shane Dowd: But sometimes our actions don’t reflect that, and we actually end up doing dumb stuff in the gym or in our in our sport that our bodies weren’t ready for and end up setting ourselves back.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, and I think we can talk about this. I think this would be really helpful because we do have a lot of people, guys in their forties, 50, 6070s who are, who are doing manual yoga and that’s who’s listening to this podcast. So I think we can I think we can definitely speak to shifting to a longevity mindset.

Dean Pohlman: And I’ll just say one thing, but you know, I’m 33 years old and that’s, you know, half the age of many of our members. And I’ve noticed significant changes in just, you know, in just like five years. So you can only imagine like how much, you know, since I was 28 and there was a big difference between that and 21 and and and I’ve shifted, you know, things like things like I know I need more recovery than I used to.

Dean Pohlman: I know that if I feel something is off and I feel like, ooh, that didn’t feel good. I know that this that will require X amount of days to recover, but like over the years, like that number has increased. So like, it takes longer to recover from a tough workout. It takes a longer time to recover from like a tweak or like something that didn’t feel good.

Dean Pohlman: And I’m and I’m you know, I’m kind of curious for you. What have you noticed to be some some kind of themes in shifting from a I don’t want to say a short term, short term per performance focused routine, but what were some of the changes in shifting from what you were focused on to more of a longevity long term focus?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, I think some of the key things were doing, like I said, a lot more mobility work and to me my definition of quote unquote mobility work is things that make your entire body more mobile. So that means, yes, range of motion in the joints and flexibility in the muscles, but it also means being able to control those.

Shane Dowd: I say it’s important to develop strength at every length. We’re not just trying to get loosey goosey and bendy, but we also want to have strength and control in all of those ranges of motion. So I added a lot more of that kind of stuff. And then I think that it’s for a lot of people, a lot of people need to go through a phase of actually improving their flexibility and mobility.

Shane Dowd: To be honest, the average guy is a little too stiff and tight, and that’s limiting their ability to get in good biomechanical positions in the gym in all kinds of ways. I mean, you and I could list off, you know, tons of them. You press something overhead and you lack the range of motion. So you archer back to compensate you do do a bench press and you don’t have shoulder extension and internal rotation and so your shoulder tips forward to compensate you squat and you don’t have the hip and ankle mobility and so your background to compensate on and on and on and on and on.

Shane Dowd: I would say, you know, most of my one on one clients, there’s very, very few of them that walk in with perfect mobility for all of the things that they want to be doing in the in life and in the gym. So I think that I had to and I think the average guy and sometimes gal has to spend a dedicated period of time sort of like catching up and regaining lost mobility that they didn’t even realize they were losing over the years and then maintain that mobility throughout the rest of their life with a dedicated yoga stretching, self massage, mobility type practice.

Shane Dowd: And then while they’re working on that mobility, most people start to accumulate injuries. And so they have to sort of adapt their training to train around injuries. It could be a back pain or knee pain or neck pain or shoulder pain or whatever. And so it might be for a period of time, you know, laying off the barbell back squats and going to some slower goblet squats or some, you know, front squats to a particular depth, like a pause box, front squat or something like that.

Shane Dowd: I work with a lot of people with Hip and Benjamin, so we often have to work around hip issues or trap art and this instead of straight Bada that’s or maybe sumo deadlifts, which don’t require quite as much hamstring flexibility as regular deadlift. So basically the principle is modifying your training as you’re working on your mobility to not make things worse.

Shane Dowd: Yeah, that was another big one. And then the third piece I would say is just coming at your training from more from the perspective of what am I doing here? I’m trying to build a healthy organism. Am I trying to move more weights through space or am I trying to stress my body in such a way that it then adapts and becomes stronger and more resilient?

Shane Dowd: And that might not sound so distinct, but it’s actually quite distinct. It’s like the mindset that like every squat, deadlift, push, pull, press, pull up core, everything, being comfortable in your joints versus just getting it done and grinding it out no matter what complex neck like I’m in. I’m in Michigan right now in my parent’s house and I’m going to the local YMCA and I see all the young high school boys lifting weights and you see bench presses where the bar is like super uneven and they’re just getting it up anyway, possible.

Shane Dowd: And I’m over here. It’s like this, like, you know, corrective exercise, mobility coach, rehab specialist. And I’m like, oh, geez, like just a couple more years of that kid. That’s all you got?

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Just go walk over, be like, How are you going to stop? Stop, Put it back. We’re going to fix this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s that’s interesting that you mentioned kind of the flexibility phase because it’s actually something I did a way too long flexibility phase. I actually took off weightlifting from. I think I stopped when I was like 24 and I had this weird period from like 24 until, like maybe age, I don’t know, 28, maybe 29, where I just wasn’t lifting.

Dean Pohlman: And I was I was working on my flexibility. I was working on, you know, kind of active mobility and I was really working on muscle activation. I was like, but I was spending way too long preparing like I was I was I was like, I’m going to be so strong when I get back into weightlifting. And then like three years later, I’m like, what am I what am I waiting for?

Dean Pohlman: Like, how much time do I possibly need to prep my body to do this? And I eventually did get back into weightlifting. And I say that because two things. Number one, because the the difference between like how I used to weightlifting versus how I weightlifting. Now with all of the increased mobility, flexibility, muscle awareness, and proper muscle activation is totally different.

Dean Pohlman: Deadlifts feel completely different than they did before. Squats feel totally different, even like a bent over dumbbell row. So all these and if you’re listening and you’re like, Dean, I don’t weightlifter don’t know what that is. Basically these are like essential very common, basic foundational weightlifting exercises that totally change. They feel totally different just because I basically retrain my body to have more flexibility and more active mobility, more muscle activation.

Dean Pohlman: All these things are kind of talk about in mental yoga workouts. And the second reason I bring that up is because we have a lot of people come in demand for yoga. And there’s one program in particular that I’m thinking of called the Strength Foundations Challenge, or the Strength Foundation’s Course. And it’s super intense. And people ask like, can I do this with weightlifting?

Dean Pohlman: And I’m like, Well, you could. And it’s a good you know, if you want to keep it up, you could. But I’ve had so many people abstain from weightlifting and just focus on this for like six weeks and they come back into weightlifting. They’re like, Oh, wow. Like, this feels totally different. I’m lifting way better than I did before.

Dean Pohlman: I’m not a saw the day afterwards. There used to be kind of, you know, you take the time to work on this flexibility of mobility. You plug the gaps of your fitness, so to speak, and you just have to you can do it temporarily where you kind of like you kind of plug your ego for like six weeks and.

Dean Pohlman: Right. Okay, I’m not going to lift heavy, which is hard for a lot of us. Right? We really like going into the gym and lifting weights and like getting big, a big thing strong. And like you said, when you’re looking at other people in the gym and they’re doing that and you’re doing like a pigeon and you’re like, Oh, this doesn’t feel like this doesn’t feel that badass.

Dean Pohlman: But you know, if you can put aside your ego for a few weeks or a second and actually do things that are going to help you with your, you know, your longevity and your motility, not only you’re going to be able to go back to doing those things better than you did before, but you’re asking me to do them for a much longer time.

Dean Pohlman: So I like the flexibility things that you brought up. How long you know, in your experience, how long does that flexibility phase last.

Shane Dowd: Is highly dependent on your starting point. You know, if there if there was someone like me who was dealing with, you know, this strange hip impingement stuff, and I also had super tight ankles from playing soccer my whole life and my genetics starting point was kind of stiff ten man style. Like I’m on that end of the spectrum.

Shane Dowd: It might take a little bit longer. I think I also did kind of what you did where I, I kind of just after multiple injuries, I was like, okay, I’m just setting weightlifting way, way, way on the back burner, Like I’m barely going to do it and I’m just going to go gung ho into this mobility thing. And I watched, you know, every Kelly stare at video on YouTube twice.

Shane Dowd: Yeah. And, you know, I was like literally doing hours and hours and hours of mobility a day because I would changed from like having personal training clients to having mobility clients. And so whenever they were mobilizing, I was mobilized because I’m like you. And so I literally was doing hours and hours and hours of like stretching, mobility, massage, banned distracted exercises and just being I basically morphed into several month, two year period from, you know, weightlifting sprinter guy to bendy flexible yoga guy.

Shane Dowd: And I and I and I got to the place where I could do the front splits the side, splits the pancake, splits the head to toe stretch, which is like a forward fold. But you actually touch your head to your toes with a straight leg. So it’s like I got crazy flexible. So, you know, it took me a couple of months to have a breakthrough, a couple of years to ingrain that flexibility and then like ten plus years to master it, I would say.

Shane Dowd: But after about after about 2 to 3 years of that, where I had like really gotten good at it and could do all those fancy sports things, I didn’t feel optimal. And that’s when I reintegrated the strength training because I had gotten my joints like Too Bendy and Lucy and I didn’t have enough strength and stability in them to make me feel optimal.

Shane Dowd: So it really depends on the person. Some people might, only some people can do it concurrently. I’ve had clients where, you know, they’re doing strength training with me and I just, you know, superset all of their strength, work with some mobility pieces and that gets them that 10% that they needed and they’re good Other people are like starting super stiff and we need to like have them doing a mostly yoga flexible mobility type routine with a little bit of strength training.

Shane Dowd: And then slowly it can kind of morph over time as they really regain that mobility into a more balanced, holistic routine that incorporates strength and cardio and mobility, which I think is the recipe for long term longevity to have at least all three of those things.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, So it’s something I was thinking of is, you know, you mentioned you were doing hours and hours of mobility work a day and some mobility work is longer lasting than others. So like if you do, you could do some passive stretching and don’t feel great for like a few hours, but it’ll kind of go away if you don’t add some strength to it.

Dean Pohlman: So to to, to to what extent you know, is is too much mobility work not helpful. We want it we want our mobility work to be long lasting. We don’t want to have to spend like 2 hours a day in order to maintain like our baseline level of mobility. So there are lot I guess I’m I’m leaning into.

Dean Pohlman: How long, in your experience, does it take to create those lasting changes of getting to a point where your mobility is much more functional versus, you know, just getting to a point where you can you can do a little bit of warm up, but it doesn’t take you like 30 minutes of foam rolling and then 30 minutes of like target and stretching to be able to do a squat with like proper depth.

Dean Pohlman: Mm Yeah. It wasn’t a straightforward question at all, but you can share your thoughts, share your thoughts on that. Yeah.

Shane Dowd: I’ll, I’ll paint you two pictures to contrast like how you could progress your mobility the fastest and make it the most permanent, the quickest. Like this is the rocketship path and then compare it to the other other end of the spectrum. So if you wanted your flexibility, mobility gains to be as fast as possible and as permanent as possible, to me, the average guy who’s coming from often a little bit of a weightlifting stiff guy background, you know, he’s not super flexible in mobile.

Shane Dowd: Just doing passive stretching is not going to be very fast. But if he adds in a little bit of what I call targeted tissue work, which is a little bit of deep targeted myofascial release, which foam rolling is just the starting point, it goes much, much, much deeper than that with different tools and exercises. I’m I’m looking to my left and I have this whole arsenal of, like balls and rollers and sticks and things.

Shane Dowd: And there’s like, imagine when I, when I was training with I’ll do a little bit of a digression here. So when I was training with this Olympic athlete was a two time Olympian impact or Koto track and field athlete, he would go get body work done by the best body workers around. And so they’re getting their thumbs and elbows and heels into you in a very deep and precise and sustained kind of way.

Shane Dowd: That’s what I call targeted tissue work. And you can learn how to imitate that on yourself with different tools and myofascial release tools and things like that.

Dean Pohlman: Well, graphics balls.

Shane Dowd: Lacrosse balls. I mean, there’s things like Jack Nabors. Most people never seen this tool.

Dean Pohlman: Oh, dear God.

Shane Dowd: A way of working out. It’s scary. Your performance, your lateral hip and other parts of your body. And it’s it’s more like the human thumb. And it’s going to get in there deeper than a foam roller, deeper than a than a lacrosse ball. And so my point is that if you add in deep targeted tissue work or precision massage to some stretching, but then add the strengthening component, you could call it active flex flexibility.

Shane Dowd: So it’s like imagine you’re you’re, you know, in a straddle position on the ground with your legs out to the side and you’re trying to fold forward into like a pancake splits type position. You can just rest forward into that position or you can move in and out using your own strength, maybe using a little external load, which is going to help strengthen that position.

Shane Dowd: And any time your body feels strong in a position, it’s going to more easily let you go into that position. So this combination of like the deep targeted tissue work plus this, yeah, you can use passive stretching, but you got to also support that with the kind of active, you know, using your muscles to pull you into the position.

Shane Dowd: Some people refer to this as like the shortening side and the lengthening side. Whatever. It’s like you got to release the brakes with the tissue work and the stretching, and then you got to step on the gas harder by doing kind of the active flexibility. So tissue work plus the stretching plus the strengthening, what I call the TSR kind of approach is what will have things go as fast as possible, as quickly as possible.

Shane Dowd: And of course, consistency, like a lot of people, just aren’t that consistent with their routines. And so the more consistent you are, you know, what is a temporary state of flexibility will eventually become a permanent trait of flexibility, something that’s pretty much available, you know, within 80 to 90% of your maximum flexibility. Cold, they call it cold flexibility.

Shane Dowd: It’ll become more like that if you do those three pillars plus be super consistent with it.

Dean Pohlman: That’s awesome. That’s cool. It’s interesting because I have a program that that involved a super long time ago that does the same exact thing. It starts with it starts with self myofascial release. It goes into the it goes into stretching and strength work and then it finishes with like longer holds. So it’s like so that seems to be, I guess an intuitively that was like what felt like it made sense to me.

Dean Pohlman: So that’s kind of cool to hear. But, but yeah, I guess the point is that I would like to emphasize from what you said, and maybe I don’t know if it was set or not, but the point is that you will have more permanent changes to your flexibility if you do these consistently for long enough. So, you know, everyone ask like, am I ever going to get more flexible?

Dean Pohlman: Like, is this you know, am I going to get better at this? Answer is yes, you will have a higher baseline of flexibility. You’re not going to take as much warm up to get there, but you have to, you know, put in the work consistently enough so that you can reach a new baseline of flexibility. So anyways, I think that’s all that’s all really cool to hear.

Dean Pohlman: So one thing I wanted to ask you about was, you know, there’s a lot of what we do is over. A lot of what we have is overlap, right? A lot of what mental yoga does and what that room does. And what you do is there’s overlap. You know, we’re both using body weight or we’re focusing on getting beyond passive flexibility and working into active mobility.

Dean Pohlman: And like you said, creating strength at every length. I love that, by the way, because I love when word things. I love when words rhyme. Yeah, that’s awesome. But one question that I’m curious about because is something that we don’t do in mental yoga. We don’t do a lot of band of distraction. And I’d love for you to explain what Band of Distraction is and how it helps beyond traditional self myofascial release work or mobility work.

Shane Dowd: Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s kind of like a stretching and joint mobilization technique borrowed from physical therapy. So anyone who’s been to a lot of physical therapy like me will have had the experience that, you know, the physical therapist lays you on the bat, on your back, on the table. Sometimes they’ll hook a belt around your hip if they’re working on your hip and around their waist, and then they’ll kind of like pull pull it.

Shane Dowd: So it’s kind of distracting your hip. And the intention is to kind of get the hip or whatever joint they’re working on, sort of more central traded or centered in the socket, which will usually allow it to move more. So because I have been so intense.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I want to say I want to I want to just jump in and create the I just want to jump in and help people understand that what we’re talking about right now is actually mobilizing the joint itself. This is different from stretching the muscles that connect to the joint. So you could do a hip flexor stretch all you want, but it might not fix your hip if the issue is joint related.

Dean Pohlman: So what, what what? You know, what Shane’s talking about right now is actually addressing the joint itself, not the muscles that connecting that foot, the joint itself.

Shane Dowd: Yeah. And there’s always a little bit of overlap. Like, you know, if I do a, a band hip capsule mobilization that what I’m trying to do is, like I said, centered the hip. I’m trying to mimic what the physical therapist would be doing with one of these big green like stretching bands that people use for assisted pull ups in the gym.

Shane Dowd: You hook it up to a pole, you hook it up to your hip and you go through some certain movements. I have a bunch of videos on my YouTube channel about it, and so yeah, I’m trying to put the hip in the center of the socket. I might be influencing the hip capsule itself, maybe creating just a little bit more space.

Shane Dowd: And of course, inevitably I might be stretching some of the muscles in and around the area. But the intention is to target something that you usually can’t get so well with typical stretching. And so a lot of people it has a little bit of a learning curve to kind of feel it because it feels a little different than like a typical pigeon pose or a typical kind of stretch.

Shane Dowd: It’s it’s deeper in Canada in the hip socket. But if you can do it right, it can really improve a lot of hip range of motion. And then if you support that with the tissue work and with your typical stretching and strengthening, that’s like a really potent combination for quick and sustainable mobility gains.

Dean Pohlman: So how do you know if you need joint mobility work versus flexibility work? Like does that what does that feel like?

Shane Dowd: You can if someone can evaluate you and they can kind of take you through some orthopedic tests where they’re testing your joint mobility, they can test your internal and external rotation and take you through these kind of orthopedic tests that have fancy names. You don’t have to worry about them too much. Oubre and Faber and Fader and all these different things.

Shane Dowd: Then someone can tell you if it’s if your restriction is more muscular or if it’s more coming from the joint or the capsule itself. But for the average guy who’s just kind of doing this on his own, I think it’s just worth experimenting with some of these hip capsule mobilizations. Or you can even do it for kind of for the shoulder and seeing how it makes you move and feel after compared to your typical stretching things that you’ve been doing.

Shane Dowd: For me, I always experience that they’re complementary. It’s not either or. I mean, maybe if I’m short on time, I might choose to just do the band hip capsule mobilizations before I squatter deadlift if I’m really short on time. And I just want to, you know, influence the thing closest to the joint, which will give me kind of the possibly the most range of motion gains, It really depends.

Shane Dowd: So if I’m short on time, I might choose to just do one or the other, but really a well-rounded practice is going to include some joint capsule mobilizations, some massaging for the muscles in and around the joint you’re trying to improve and some stretching and strengthening. All of those are necessary. I think.

Dean Pohlman: Okay, cool. I think that’s a that’s a great way if people just start doing it. I know I’ve had some back I’ve had some back issues for a from time to time and I’ve started doing some I started doing some band of distraction from my hips. So you basically would do a one thing that I would do. You basically do a lunge.

Dean Pohlman: I’m going to do it like, you know, a supported low lounge or an active low lunge. I’m going to tie the band around my hip right up near my groin, support all the way up my leg. And then I’ll tie that that band around a a squat rack, and then I’ll move as far away as I can from the squat rack holding tension.

Dean Pohlman: And then I’ll do a low lunge and I’ll turn every direction. So I’ll turn 90 degrees in each direction so that I’m getting that hip, pulling in different directions just to kind of create some space. So hopefully that kind of gives you like a visualization of what that what that bandwidth can be. So one question that I have for you is what’s when’s the best time to do mobility work?

Dean Pohlman: There is because there’s there’s this misconception. I said I gave away that. I gave it away. But there’s a misconception. I didn’t start by saying there is an idea, but I started by saying there’s a misconception that stretching before a workout is bad. So I’d like it if you could address like what? You know, when’s a good time to do mobility work is should you do it before or before workout?

Dean Pohlman: You know, can it negatively impact your performance and does that even matter for 99% of us working out at the gym?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, Yeah. You hit the nail on the head with that last sentence. I said something similar in a video that I made on this topic, and it’s it depends on the individual. If you’re, you know, Usain Bolt preparing for the 100 meter dash and you’re about to do something super explosive, maybe don’t sit in, you know, the the the the the splits type position or a super deep hamstring stretch for three or four or 5 minutes right before you go out and try to set a world record in the speed power event.

Shane Dowd: But if you’re not that guy, you know a minute or less of some stretching and some mobilizing so you can be in better or safer positions in the gym, the pros of that far, far, far outweigh the potential downsides of maybe a slightly decreased power or strength output. But I mean, people always take these things in isolation. They read a study that says that stretching, you know, decreases your speed or power or strength or something.

Shane Dowd: And yeah, if you just walk into the gym, sit down in the pancake split straddle position and just hang out there for a couple minutes and then go squat, that’s not you’re not going to be your strongest. And, you know, maybe you know, that new range that you created might be weak range. That’s kind of a easy way of remembering.

Shane Dowd: Like do range is weak range. So don’t don’t go in the longest, deepest, you know, static holes and then try to lift something really heavy. But if you just you can even put those long static hold static stretches, if you like that, if that works for your body amidst a thorough warm up and it’s going to erase any potential sort of like speed, power or strength decreases, that long stretching might make or have.

Shane Dowd: So for the real world, where people are usually stretching amidst a thorough warm up and getting sweaty as they’re warming up for their gym activities, I think it’s totally fine and actually a good idea for the majority of stiff, inflexible people to include a variety of stretching and mobilizing in their warmups because they’re going to feel better, they’re going to move better, and they’re going to be less likely to hurt themselves from compensating because they’ll actually be in good biomechanical positions.

Dean Pohlman: MM How long should this could this mobility session take? I think most people are like, you know, they want to get in, do their work out. And so spending like 30 minutes doesn’t really make sense. But can can 10 minutes be noticeably effective? Can 5 minutes be noticed to be effective? Do you have to do multiple exercises? Could it be just like one or two targeted ones or.

Shane Dowd: Yeah, again, it’s always a spectrum. Like if you’re someone who has tons of joint issues and injuries and tightness and inflexibility, you might want to do quite a bit of mobility and, you know, tuning up the car before you go race it. But if you’re like the average guy, that feels pretty okay. But you know, you’re a little bit stiff.

Shane Dowd: You know, you can probably get away with 10 to 15 minutes of mobility as part of your general warm up and specific warmup. I used to do a ton of mobility when I was super stiff and tight and had super asymmetrical hips and ankles and hip and pinch me on my right hip. I used to come in and do a 45 minutes to an hour of mobility prior to squatting and Olympic weightlifting.

Shane Dowd: But those are also sports that are, you know, movements that are highly demanding on your hip and ankle and body flexibility. So I needed to mobilize more. But nowadays I don’t even really mobilize before I work out. I mobilize during my workout. So I’ll come in for lower body day. I’ll do a little bit of a general warm up.

Shane Dowd: I might run or do some little bit of speed and agility and plyometrics and that, and then I get warmed up. And then as I’m squatting or deadlifting or whatever, it’s first I’m doing a couple of mobility pieces superset it so it’s like squat, mobilize my hip, deadlift, do some band distracted hamstring stretches or put a ball on my hamstring and kind of, you know, get rid of any density that I’m noticing on that, you know, the side that gets more tight on me.

Shane Dowd: So now it’s like just part of my workout. It’s not even like a separate routine. So it can be a whole spectrum depending on what your starting point is and how much experience you have.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, that’s cool. I’m glad you mentioned that because I think the the warmer your muscles tend to get, the easier it is to kind of to work into that mobility. So if you’re coming into it cold, you know, you’re not going to you’re not going to you might not get that much movement if you’re just doing especially if you’re just doing your body like if you’re just using your body and you’re not using a tool, you’re like, I’m going to do a lunge.

Dean Pohlman: Like, okay, if you’re if you’ve got a good level of mobility and you’ve done this for a long time, then that lunge might be really helpful If you’ve trained your breathing to help you with, you know, you know how to use your breath to increase flexibility. That can be helpful. But if you’re new and you’re just going into it, you’re doing a lunge expecting to have like this, you know, significant shift from before and after, then probably not going to do much.

Dean Pohlman: But if you can warm up, if you can get those muscles warm or if you can even do some like you talked about some targeted self myofascial release before you do some more stretching, then that muscle is like really warm. It’s like, you know, it’s ready to move. It’s kind of more pliable. So I like the idea of of super setting workouts with mobility work.

Shane Dowd: MM Yeah, it’s very time efficient, which is usually something that most people are looking for. Not everyone has the time or wants to be doing a three hour monster workout with all kinds of different exercises. They want something that’s a little bit more time efficient than that. So I think that’s one of the best ways of doing it is just super setting your mobility with your strength.

Shane Dowd: Work.

Dean Pohlman: So now I have it. Now I have a question about super size. So if you’re doing that, do you strength train more frequently with less intensity? So would you do like instead of doing three days of weight training in a week, which is like I think most people do like 3 to 4 a week. I think that’s a standard.

Dean Pohlman: Would you do five days per week? But would you do, you know, fewer sets and reps or less volume of strength training?

Shane Dowd: Mm hmm. You totally could. I’ve experimented with so many different styles. There’s like a three day a week full body. There’s that, you know, two days after, two days lower, upper, lower, split. I even did like six days a week. I’ve done, you know, two at a training sessions. I’ve from super high frequency to, you know, super high intensity but you know not so many days a week.

Shane Dowd: I think a good I think I think what I’ve settled on for myself and probably for the vast majority of people is like a two day a week upper lower split because then it’s like if I’m trying to like if I’m doing like three days a week, whole body, for example, mobilizing my entire body while doing my strength training feels like a lot.

Shane Dowd: But if I’m coming in and just doing lower body, it’s easy to just, you know, add one stretch or self massage in between. Almost every set of my warm ups in every set of my lifting, and it makes my hips move and feel better and my ankles move and feel better as I’m doing my lower body lifting. So I think like two days after two days lower and doing your upper body mobility on your upper body lifting day and your lower body mobility and your lower body lifting day is a pretty optimal kind of split for 80% of people.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Shane Dowd: If they want to be lifting, you know that much. Some people don’t want to be lifting that much and then they might just be fine with like a two day a week full body routine and in which case you could just, you know, do a full body mobility routine along with that. But I personally do like incorporating the strength in the mobility because I what is the purpose of mobility work?

Shane Dowd: It’s so that you move and feel better in your joints. And if you’re moving and feeling better, you’re going to lift better, you’re going to lift safer. And it also helps kind of your interior perceptive awareness. Like the more that I stretch and massage my muscles, the more that I get in tune with them, which then helps my same kind of kinesthetic body awareness as I’m lifting weights.

Shane Dowd: So they kind of go hand in hand. I like putting them together. Some people like to do like mobility in the morning and weight lifting in the evening. That’s fine if that’s what your schedule permits. But personally, I like putting them together at the same time.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve used both and I do find like combining the mobility with the lifting, it’s kind of cool because like, as the sets progressed, you’re like, Ooh, I’m getting deeper, This feels better, this feels stronger. And you definitely do feel way less stiff or like those problem areas that you that you might experience. Those tend to be not as significant the following day if you’re really integrating the two.

Shane Dowd: Yeah, and that was super important what you just said, because for the average guy who really, you know, if you’re like a fitness active guy, you like lifting weights and you like how it makes you look and feel and you know what it does for your esteem and things like that, like you like lifting weights. And so anything that is helping us see the immediate benefit to our weight lifting like you mobilize and you’re like, Oh my gosh, my squat actually feels really good right now.

Shane Dowd: It’s there’s like an instantaneous incentive to keep doing it. Whereas if you did it like the day before and then you lift weights the next day, you might not notice that it made you feel better, you might not correlate the two. Whereas if you do it right before and during your lifting, you’re going to get the immediate feedback that I am moving and feeling better.

Shane Dowd: I’m definitely going to keep doing this, and that’s one of the biggest pitfalls for a lot of guys with mobility work is they’re like, they give up on it too quick because it’s maybe not as fun or not as sexy. And when they don’t connect it with their weight lifting and they don’t see how mobilizing their hips and ankles and thoracic spine and shoulders made their, you know, their overhead squatting feel better if they don’t make that connection, then they’re going to give up on it because they’re not seeing kind of the immediate results.

Shane Dowd: So that’s another important point.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I mean, as humans want to see that what we’re doing creates results immediately. And the cool thing about this is it does like if you do some mobilization before, you know, as we’re talking to, if you do it before lifting, you’re going to notice it. So yeah, so I want to also you know this the goal of the Betterment podcast is not just to talk about physical fitness.

Dean Pohlman: I went down this rabbit hole with you because I’m like, This is cool. Let’s talk about this. And I know that a lot of people listening are combining. You know what we’re doing mobility training, mental yoga, whatever you want to call it, with lifting weights or with going to the gym, doing other workouts. So I think that was really helpful to know.

Dean Pohlman: But one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is because you’ve kind of gone down the rabbit hole with a lot of other and why I say rabbit hole, but you’ve gone into kind of these last traditional areas of exploring health and wellness and, you know, we talked about ayahuasca, we talked about a meditation retreat of a partner.

Dean Pohlman: So like, you go and you just don’t talk at all for like five days. Sounds crazy to me. My wife wouldn’t let me do that. I don’t, I don’t there’s no way I’d be able to do that. So, you know, I’m kind of curious, like for someone who’s, you know, let’s think of was think a guy in his fifties who’s who’s got to he’s got professional obligations, who has, you know, family obligations, who is, you know, struggling, not struggling, but is working on becoming healthier and getting getting set with their with a with a fitness program.

Dean Pohlman: What’s like what’s one thing that you’ve done that you think would be like, relatable to that person? And if you could just describe, like your experience with it. Hmm.

Shane Dowd: Yeah. Well, there’s so many different ways that we could take this conversation. I should clarify first that I’ve never personally done ayahuasca, but I know a lot of people that have and I know that many of them now I spend time Just to clarify. But but I have done a lot of meditation. That’s something that is probably the central part of my life right now.

Shane Dowd: So I started out maybe 11 years ago and did my first Vipassana retreat, which they start out with a ten day retreat. And then after you do the introductory ten day retreat, you can do a three day or a one day. And if you really get into it like I did, then you can do longer retreats like 20, 30, 45 days, which fortunately my wife is also into.

Shane Dowd: And so she’s totally supportive of me going away for 45 days because she’s gone with me and we’re meditating now. I don’t have kids. And some of the responsibilities of this hypothetical, you know, 40, 50 year old man that you’re talking talking to. But I would say that to me, like meditation is like one of the master skills of life to practice.

Shane Dowd: And so I guess we should start by defining it like, what do we mean when we say meditation? Like, I think in like simple terms it’s kind of like self-awareness, like being more aware of your thoughts and feelings and emotions and how they are influencing you and influencing your life in your relationships. So, you know, I think of it as like a spectrum.

Shane Dowd: So we have, you know, animals and children and teenagers and adults. And you could say that the self-awareness from animal to child to teenager to adult increases as we just get older in life, we become more aware, more able to regulate ourselves and our own emotions, more able to not act out on all of our impulses. But also, as I’ve gotten older, I’m now 38.

Shane Dowd: As I look around at the adults, there’s still a lot of people who don’t have a whole lot of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, the ability to delay gratification, not fall into bad habits. You know, there’s addictions galore everywhere. We’re always like, you know, we we fall into the things that are addictive to us. It could be phones, drugs, sex, alcohol, pornography, just even emotional kind of relational things like always having to be right, always having to win the conversation, win the argument.

Shane Dowd: Those are all things we’re addicted to. And if we can meditate and kind of become aware of when there’s an impulse arising in me that wants me to go crave and grasp and cling at something that I really shouldn’t, that’s unskillful or unhealthy, helpful for me to go after extra food alcohol when I shouldn’t drink it, pornography, whatever.

Shane Dowd: And I can just like practice letting that go and not following that instinct in me. That’s a very valuable life skill and something that not most of us have not mastered. And I can’t say that I’ve mastered it, but I can definitely say over the past 11 years of meditation, I have let go of so many addictions and things that were unhelpful for me to be sort of pursuing.

Shane Dowd: And then on the other side of the spectrum, meditation also helps us let go of the habit of aversion. Like it’s that like I don’t like it, mind that pushing away. It’s like your wife walks up to you and says something that you don’t like, and there’s this instant sort of like, push away, fight, fight reaction or your coworker or whatever, a person, a human being in your world.

Shane Dowd: And we get in fights, we get in arguments on the societal level. We get in wars and conflicts because someone that guy over there or that gal or that tribe or that country did things we don’t like. And so now it’s like fight. I think meditation also helps with that. It’s like you sit there observing your your thoughts and you know the movies in your mind and the sensations in your body that are kind of giving the power to those movies playing in your mind.

Shane Dowd: And you, you know, you let go of that habit pattern of reacting with anger, aversion, judgment, hatred, ill will. So basically, over time, you end up some people say that meditation is self purification by self observation. So what are we purifying ourselves of or purifying ourselves of negative and unskillful thoughts and emotions by observing them and relaxing and letting go, observing them relaxing and letting go, not following the craving or the aversion or hatred.

Shane Dowd: And if you do that, it’s just like lifting weights. It’s like you build the muscle by meditating more and more consistently. And not everyone needs to get so deep, deep, deep into it where they’re going away to retreats. I think it’s super valuable and I’ll be a bit extreme and say that I would actually encourage everyone to, over time, see if you can shift and change your life to actually be able to have a deep retreat experience at least one time in your life, because it can be pretty life changing.

Shane Dowd: But of course it is a habit that needs to be sustained over time. You need to continue to add some frequency, go to retreats at some frequency, meditate on a daily or near-daily basis to maintain that muscle. But, you know, even if you’re for people that are like truly at this moment in time, cannot go to a retreat, cannot commit to meditating an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, you know, you can do what I call mobility meditations, which is when you’re doing your mobility practice, which is the first thing that we talked about.

Shane Dowd: Do it in a mindful and slow and meditative kind of way, where you’re including the deep breathing that, you know, you teach in yoga and mental yoga. You do you do it with your eyes closed. You’re tuned into what’s going on versus like doing it while being distracted, watching TV. You can turn it into a mindfulness type practice and then you’re going to be getting some of those benefits of meditation.

Shane Dowd: It’s not the same as a as a full on retreat. It’s not the same as a sitting practice, but it is a very helpful practice to be doing. So As a long winded answer, I don’t know if that answers your question.

Dean Pohlman: No, that was great. I was I was wondering if you could just go into a little more like D.M. meditation. I think that people think, you know, I can’t meditate. I tried it and I had a thought and it didn’t work. Or like I, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of, like, common objections to, to, to meditation.

Dean Pohlman: I think I would assume the big one is like, I did it and I got frustrated. Right? And I, you know, I without even without even knowing what a meditation is really formally or having education, I have a meditation practice like I, you know, I, I sit and I think I sit and I think I try to get to the point where I’m b I let my mind kind of wander to the point where I’m like, okay, you good?

Dean Pohlman: Or these you guys good? Did you have fun? Cool. We’re going to like, ignore these thoughts or we’re going to be like, we’re going to distance herself from these thoughts now. And I’m wondering if you can. And that’s that’s kind of what my meditation looks like. It’s not expert, but for me, it’s it’s helpful because it’s checking in with my thoughts and and just trying to get to a point where I’m distancing myself from my thoughts and realizing that there’s a difference between myself and the person who’s observing these thoughts going on and the thoughts that are happening.

Dean Pohlman: And I’m just kind of curious if you would be able to kind of just help demystify my meditation. You know, what does it actually look like for you when you’re practicing meditation? And then if you could answer, how does that work over time? Like why does the act of meditation help to improve our mental or emotional wellness over time?

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Shane Dowd: Yeah. Yeah. It’s very important because nowadays meditation is like saying I practice sports. Well, which sport do you play? Because, like, are you are you practicing baseball or soccer or.

Dean Pohlman: I do yoga. What kind of yoga do you do exactly?

Shane Dowd: It’s so so broad to say I practice meditation so I can speak about what I practice because there’s mantra meditations where you repeat a word, you repeat a phrase, there’s visualizations, there’s, you know, more like sort of like contemplation, reflection where you’re kind of trying to think, but in a little bit of a more objective way, like a third party observer, which is sounds a little bit like what you’re what you’re talking about.

Shane Dowd: And each one has its own unique benefits and pros and cons or whatever. What I practice is vipassana meditation in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. He’s a teacher from India. He’s now deceased, but he basically spread meditation or all around the world for over 40 years teaching it for free, never got paid anything for it. And he was a former businessman.

Shane Dowd: And why I gravitated to his style of teaching is because it’s it’s very nonreligious, non dogmatic. It’s just simply the first step. Well, there’s three basic steps. It’s like one you undertake kind of like a vow or a training to during the retreat and in your life live a moral, ethical life, meaning don’t kill, don’t steal, you know, don’t have any kind of sexual misconduct, don’t take intoxicants, don’t speak lies like live like a good person, live like an ethical, moral life.

Shane Dowd: And that’s actually the foundation of traditionally how meditation has been taught. Because if you’re out there lying, stealing, killing, robbing, like doing all those things, and you sit down and meditate, your mind’s going to be so agitated thinking of all of the things you did and who’s going to find out about what you did and you broke that promise to that person.

Shane Dowd: They’re like, Yeah, the point of meditation is to calm down the mind, gain control over the mind and purify the mind. And if you’re out there breaking all these ethical norms that you know, we’re tribal species. And so the human brain will not allow you to get quiet and peaceful inside your own mind if you’re out there wreaking havoc in the world.

Shane Dowd: So it actually starts with moral and ethical sort of vows, if you want to call them that. Or I undertake the training to do my best to live with integrity, to live morally, to live ethically. And then the second step in kind of the vipassana way of teaching is to start to concentrate your mind because you’re trying to gain deep insight into your own patterns and reaction patterns.

Shane Dowd: And you can’t do that if your mind is jumping all over the place like you just can’t see closely enough your own mind and thoughts and emotions. And so, you know, you spend a couple of days in the in the ten day meditation retreats focusing on your breath, just the natural breath coming in and out of your nostrils at this kind of tip of the nose, upper lip, kind of area.

Shane Dowd: You can feel the sensation of the breath coming in and out. And every time your mind wanders away, you just bring it back to the breath. You’re not trying. It’s not pranayama and yoga where you’re trying to control the breath. If your mind is really distracted, you can use a little bit of intentional breathing where you’re consciously breathing in and out because it helps your mind stay on your meditation object.

Shane Dowd: But then you over time let go and let go of any kind of effort whatsoever and just try to remain with your meditation object, which at this step is the mindfulness of breathing. And then the third way that we meditate is by doing like a body scan where you’re just sitting still or sitting in a chair, sitting on the ground or lying in your bed or whatever, and you scan your body and so you feel what you’re actually feeling in your body.

Shane Dowd: And this is actually super important because all the times that I get overpowered by call them inner negativities or in meditation sometimes call them defilement. It’s like every time that I get overpowered by anger or lust or greed or hatred or whatever, it’s because a sensation or, a it’s like a a sensation. Storm Feelings arose in my body that overpowered me and convinced me that I should act on this impulse to give you like a concrete example.

Shane Dowd: It’s like many of us know that it’s not a good idea to drink excessive alcohol or smoke that we know bad for our health. And yet so many of us still do time and time again. Why? It’s because a thought arose along with some feelings in my body, and I was like, I know I shouldn’t drink or smoke or or do that thing.

Shane Dowd: I but I’m going to do it anyway. I just I have to it’s like the craving is too great and so by doing this body scan and developing a refined sensitivity to when those feelings are starting to arise in your body, you can catch them earlier and relax and let them go and they don’t reach a threshold of overpowering you.

Shane Dowd: It’s kind of like they start as an ember of a fire and they get stronger and stronger but the quicker you can catch them and let them go, it doesn’t build into a raging wildfire and it doesn’t explode into an argument with your wife drinking alcohol. And you shouldn’t looking at pornography when you’ve committed not to, etc., etc., etc..

Shane Dowd: There’s all kinds of ways that we get overpowered by our inner instincts and impulses in ways that harm ourselves and harm other people. And so a meditation helps us to catch those fires earlier. And it specifically the the sensations, the feelings. I think if you were practicing maybe a mantra meditation or some other meditation that’s not body focused, you wouldn’t develop quite the sensitivity to to what’s happening inside of you that ends up overpowering you and maybe not be able to catch it quite as earlier, quite as early.

Shane Dowd: So that’s that’s a brief overview.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. It sounds I mean, that sounds very approachable. I’m also like as we’re having this conversation, I’m very struck by your calmness. I’m not I don’t think I kind of run hot, so to speak. Like I’m I’m kind of always thinking about how do I improve this, how do I make this better? You know, I get out in my backyard, which I spent a ton of time improving, putting ideas into, and I get out there and I look at it and I like, think what else needs to be done?

Dean Pohlman: Like, I don’t look at it and think I’m so relaxed and calm here, and I’m kind of struck by just how calm of a presence you have and I’m kind of, you know, when did you do this? When did you start meditating and kind of how long? I don’t want to ask how long to take because you’re going to say like five years and be glad I don’t have five years to meditate.

Dean Pohlman: I’ll just keep drinking. But I am kind of curious, like, when did you start working on this? And when did you when did you notice? When did someone come up to you and say, like, you’re different? Something happened?

Shane Dowd: Mm hmm. Well, to me, that’s the really nice thing about this type of meditation is that the results that you see are here and now it’s like you don’t have to wait until after death to get the heavenly reward or whatever. It’s like I remember after my very first ten day retreat, it’s like I, I had this very vivid memory where I drove to the retreat with a friend, a female friend, and she was on the drive.

Shane Dowd: It was a several hour drive from San Diego to the to the center, as are both of us. Our first retreat and she was at the time from my for my memory, complaining about life and people and this and that and what was not that wasn’t really the problem. What I remember is my judgmental thoughts about her complaining about life because I was like, You should never complain about life.

Shane Dowd: And like, if you’re if you’re don’t be a whiner and whatever. And so I had this like, this whole experience of like negative negativity driving to the to the rich retreat center. And then after the ten day retreat, I drove back with the same friend and she was, you know, still, you know, talking about some of the similar things, maybe not in exactly the same way, but still talking in a similar kind of way.

Shane Dowd: And all of my judgmental thoughts and opinions about her had just kind of faded away into the background. And there was just this open easiness and comfort and non-judgmental ness towards her or towards myself or towards anyone. Like, I felt like a lot of the invisible barriers between me and people that I didn’t even realize there gotten melted after that retreat.

Shane Dowd: And it wasn’t like they permanently got melted and I never became closed or parted ever again in my life. But there was it was noticeably different living in my brain after ten days of meditation. So the results can be felt immediately. But then, of course, just like yoga or weightlifting to ingrain that habit, to have that temporary state become a permanent character trait requires sustained practice.

Shane Dowd: And so I’ve been practicing for about 11 years about 2 hours a day, an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, and have progressed to doing longer and longer retreats. My wife and I just got back from a 45 day retreat, and it’s weightlifting. It’s like, you know, there’s people that take weightlifting to the nth degree, power lifters going for world records, Olympic athletes trying to become the strongest in the world.

Shane Dowd: And it’s not like you have to commit to play at that level in meditation to get any of the benefits from it. Enough, meditate five or 10 minutes a day, you’re going to notice a difference. You’re going to feel a little calmer, a little more peaceful, a little more relaxed, a little more happy. And if you do more of it, you’ll get more of the benefits.

Shane Dowd: Just like if you do 5 to 10 minutes of fitness a day, exercise a day, you’ll notice a little bit of that. You feel a little bit better. But if you did up to an hour a day, you’d probably feel even better. So it’s very parallel in my mind to fitness and the fitness journey. It’s the more you do it, the more benefits you get.

Shane Dowd: But even if you do it just a little bit, you’ll see the benefits here. Now.

Dean Pohlman: Oh, man, I’d love for you to be able to sell us off a passing a program. But short of short of that, I’d love if you could share some resources, because I’m personally interested in this I think I think meditation has been on my deepening of meditation practice, like getting a more formalized meditation practice as opposed to what I do, which is really helpful.

Dean Pohlman: But I think there’s a there’s a there’s a whole you know, I think I’ve started, you know, I’ve got like one layer of meditation. I think if I were to delve deeper into it and for me personally to be able to like, experience life without, like getting so mad at people and judging people for hearing people complaining or just like other things in general, that would be sweet.

Dean Pohlman: So I’m curious like, what are some resources that you that you have that can be helpful or that you recommend?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, well, I don’t I don’t teach or sell anything about meditation, but what’s really cool is the Vipassana organization entirely a nonprofit run by volunteers. So no one in the entire organization makes any money whatsoever, except for maybe the center manager who is, you know, helping just run logistics. But the teacher doesn’t get paid. The people serving the course like I will go and volunteer regularly to serve a course and cook the food or clean the floors or whatever needs to be done.

Shane Dowd: And it’s really beautiful because, you know, you basically go to these ten day retreats. The website is Dharma Dawg, DHEA, Amma dawg, and you go to the you sign up for a course that works for your schedule. You go, they feed you for free, logged you for free, teach you the technique for free. And you know, there’s a there’s an assistant teacher there who’s a volunteer who but a highly trained volunteer who answers your questions.

Shane Dowd: If you have any questions and you just practice meditation for, you know, it ends up being like close to 100 hours of like practice over a ten day period because there’s like a ten hour day. It’s not like continuous. It’s like meditate for an hour, take a break, meditate for an hour, have some lunch. You know, it’s broken up throughout the day, but it’s a lot of like practice in a in a condensed period of time.

Shane Dowd: It’s kind of like what athletes do where they go away to a training camp where they’re just really developing physical qualities, a condensed period of time. Now you’re really developing mental qualities for a condensed period of time. So I’d recommend everyone check out Dharma Dawg, and you find out there’s centers all over the world they’re all run by volunteers donation based.

Shane Dowd: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: Are there are there are there are there versions at this is like instead of you know for me except for me for example like I’m not gonna be able to go do that like, could I is there other resources online. Could I go like, is there an online do you know if there’s an online course? Is there like, just like, are there YouTube videos that are helpful or they’re like, is this stuff out there?

Dean Pohlman: Is it relatively easy to find?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, I think I think if you search on on YouTube, you might be able if you search like something like 15 minute Ana pana and a panda and the name Goenka GOP in K like Anupama Goenka. And I think there’s some some some very simple YouTube videos which teach the introductory technique, which is the breathing meditation. But to really understand the whole technique, which is taught in a very step by step systematic way over ten days, you need to go to a full retreat.

Shane Dowd: But if you want to experience just how the the principal teacher, Mr. Goenka, teaches on a panel, you can find it on YouTube.

Dean Pohlman: Okay, cool. Yeah, that’s fair. Thanks for telling me. So that kind of that kind of leads me into my rapid fire, not so rapid fire questions. And these are always really cool. So are you ready?

Shane Dowd: I’m ready.

Dean Pohlman: Okay, cool. What do you think is the one habit, belief or mindset that has helped you the most in terms of your overall happiness?

Shane Dowd: Well, we’ve already talked about meditation. We have I think we have that. And that’s probably what I would say. But I’ll say something else. Yeah, different things come to my mind. I think the I read a book called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield in college and the very first chapter of that book is Take 100% Responsibility for Your life.

Shane Dowd: And I think that just that simple statement, if ingrained and turned into a core belief system for you and practiced as well as you can, can be pretty life changing. And if you’re really living that, taking 100% responsibility for your life, you’re not going to complain as much. You’re, you know, if something’s not working out in your life in one of your relationships, instead of pointing fingers at that guy or that situation or the government or the economy or whatever, you’re like, okay, what’s real?

Shane Dowd: Now it’s possible I’m going to take a 100% responsibility for causing something to happen here being cause in the matter of something happening, being responsible for this situation, having a happy, positive outcome for all involved. So I think the 100% responsibility for your life is an important one.

Dean Pohlman: That’s another one that we’ve had. We had a Anthony from Dr. Anthony from the Duster Anthony about Izzy from the first Father project came on and that was his that was I think it was one of his answers. And I don’t normally do this, but I want to ask a follow up question. What has been your process for turning beliefs that you want to be internalized like so learning something like coming across this idea that I should take or if I take 100% responsibility for my life, my life will be way better.

Dean Pohlman: How do you take an idea and internalize it? What has been helpful for you?

Shane Dowd: I think it all starts with remembering that phrase or that affirmation or that belief that you want to have in the moment of need. So it’s like if I get in an argument with my wife, I have to at least remember that tool. And so I think having things like affirmations is not something that I, in this moment in time practice and like, like every day I’m repeating my affirmations or something.

Shane Dowd: But all throughout my life there’s definitely been moments where I’ve either tried to memorize certain affirmations that I think are very important and they and they eventually just become like, You’re your natural belief system because you’ve repeated them in your own mind or out loud so many times that when you do get an argument with someone, you know, it pops up.

Shane Dowd: It’s like, take on your present responsibility for your life. Are you pointing the finger at her or are you saying, You know what, honey, if I could go back in time, I sure wish I would have done something different, because I can see that at that. You’re you’re hurt by what I did. And I never want to hurt you.

Shane Dowd: It breaks my heart to see you hurt. And so. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. What can I do better next time? Like that kind of that can flow out of you when you repeat that affirmation enough and then make the effort to try to put it into practice. So I also write things down, like things that I consider like I call them, like future success formulas.

Shane Dowd: You could just call them like an affirmation. But I use this planner called Living Your Best Year Ever by Darren Hardy, the author of The Compound Effect. And he’s got this on this part of every year. It’s like a weekly planner. And at the end you do a weekly review and you write down your lessons for the week.

Shane Dowd: And I’ll often often write in there like things that I want to, you know, a little short mantras or phrases or memes that are very short and memorable and powerful. And if I just write them enough and review them enough and then try to live them, they eventually become natural and automatic.

Dean Pohlman: And do you review them on a daily basis or just once a week, or how do you keep them top of mind?

Shane Dowd: There’s there’s a place in this particular planner to review. Like once every quarter I go back and look at what were your wins, what were your losses, what were your your fixes, your lessons, your what you’re grateful for. So I’ll sometimes I’ll just spontaneously look back through the journal and if I’m looking for something, but at least I have it written down like that’s that’s a big piece.

Shane Dowd: If you don’t have it written down, then it’s just often the ether somewhere and you can’t remember it at all. So writing it down in a journal or in a planner or something is helpful. And then having like a review once a month or once a quarter can be pretty helpful to kind of make it fresh and make it make it more active in your life.

Dean Pohlman: Right? That’s helpful. And now I get to buy something from Amazon. It’s exciting. What is one thing that you do for your health that you think is overlooked or undervalued by others?

Shane Dowd: We’ve talked about mobility. We’ve talked about those two are those two are huge. I mean, to me, like having some kind of like mental emotional practice, which to me is largely meditation or some other things that help help feel helpful for my mood and my emotions and my inner world. And then there’s the I would call it broadly my fitness practice, which is my cardio and my lifting of the weights and my mobility.

Shane Dowd: Those two practices are very helpful. Something else I think I’ll put in there, like relational practices, and there can be a host of them for example, if I, if I’m in a situation with someone in my life or I’m close with a family member or my wife or whatever, and we’re just at a point where we can’t really see eye to eye on, sometimes I’ll do something called the heart to heart process.

Shane Dowd: You can Google it. It’s like a structured way of communicating and having difficult conversations and having those difficult conversations turn out really well for everyone involved. So the heart to heart process or else. I did a bunch of personal development courses and seminars from a company called Landmark Education. They have the Landmark Forum and the advanced course and the communication courses and leadership programs, and I did all of them in my twenties.

Shane Dowd: I was like, just on this huge, I still am this huge personal growth kick and one of the relational tools that I took away from all of that time was a distinction tool that they call. I think I learned it in the communication courses. It’s called recreation causes disappearance. What that means is if you and I are having a disagreement, an argument, a fight, a conflict, usually we communicate to each other, but we don’t fully receive and let in and understand in my body and heart and mind what you really said.

Shane Dowd: So it’s like, you know, we’re having an argument and it’s like it’s as if, you know, you toss me a ball, you toss me your message your communication, what you’re trying to get across. And I just batted aside and then I give you my point of view and I’m like, Yeah, I understand what you’re saying, but but listen to me.

Shane Dowd: And so and then you don’t feel heard, you don’t feel seen, you don’t feel gotten. And we just end up in this death spiral of, like, conflict. And so if I can recreate your message meaning, you give me a message and I sort of say it back to you. Here’s what I’m hearing you say. It’s not it’s not just parroting back what you said.

Shane Dowd: It’s saying the words saying like it sounds like you’re saying this. Do I have it right? And what I’m what I’m what I’m feeling, what I’m getting from what you’re saying is that, you know, maybe there’s something even behind that that you probably are hurt by what I said or, you know, it sounds like I really pissed you off.

Shane Dowd: And I didn’t realize that, and I’m so frickin sorry for that. So it’s like recreating the words, the message, but also the feeling behind it. And if I do a good job, if I truly recreate what you gave me, it disappears your concern. And if I say, Is there anything else for you, Dean, about that, you’d be like, Now I understand that you get it.

Shane Dowd: So go ahead. Do you share your point of view now? And so I love that creation causes disappearance distinction.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, that’s something that that exercise is given to us in in couples counseling. And it’s something that it’s so hard to, like shelve your ego and just do it instead of like getting your point across. But if you can both commit to the process and both like, hey, I’m going to like, I’m not going to put my forward, I’m just going to try and understand what you’re saying, and then I hope you do the same for me at the end of this.

Dean Pohlman: But like, you’re not that’s not the goal. If you’re just I’m going to understand. And yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I think that’s I think that’s a great I think that’s a great practice.

Shane Dowd: And, you know, if I can say just one more thing about that, I think it was either Dale Carnegie or Stephen Covey or one of those original O.G. self-help.

Dean Pohlman: Gurus.

Shane Dowd: Who said, seek first to understand and then be understood. And when I first read that, I was like, Oh yeah, that does seem like that would be a master skill of life too. Like if I actually did that, if I actually always sought first, first to truly understand and then be understood, everything would go so much better. And I catch myself all of the time, like I have not fully understood what, what the person that I’m having the argument or the problem with is saying, and even though I know in my mind that I haven’t fully understood them, I still just can’t wait to get my message out so that they understand me.

Shane Dowd: And so, yeah, that’s a constant reminder for me. It’s like seek first to understand and then be understood. It’s another way of kind of saying something similar.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. What’s the most important activity you regularly do for your overall stress management? We already talked about all of them. Oh.

Shane Dowd: Well, we haven’t. Yeah, I mean, obviously the ones we’ve already talked about, but deep sleep, deep quality sleep can have all of the tools and have read all the personal development books and be an avid meditator. And if you’re not sleeping well, you’re still going to be a grumpy, grumpy person. And so I you know, it’s really like honestly, like if I’m really honest, like I’m at my worst when I’m underfed and under slept.

Shane Dowd: And so if I can just like, you know, be well-fed and be well slept, you know, that’s probably one of my best relational and wellness practices that.

Dean Pohlman: Makes total sense to me. What is the most stressful part of your day to day life?

Shane Dowd: Hmm. Too much screen time. I think there’s many, many advantages of having an online business and helping people with pain and injuries and flexibility. Mobility, online but it ends up being a lot of screen time. There’s kind of no way around it, you know? And I was a strength coach and mobility teacher and a massage therapist in the gym.

Shane Dowd: There was no screens. It was like human one on one interaction, very physical. And I didn’t have to do much with the screens. But now that I’m, you know, online with with people, it’s a lot more screen time. And so I think that starts to agitate the mind. There’s no way around it. Like too much phones, too much computers leads to agitated minds.

Dean Pohlman: MM What do you think is the biggest challenge facing men and their wellbeing right now?

Shane Dowd: Hmm? Hmm mm. I mean, it’s always multifactorial. It’s like I know that there’s big challenges from, you know, not being healthy, having too many injuries, the things we’ve talked about. So I’ll say something different that’s not talked about that often. It’s not like a major part of my world. But I think that a lot of men struggle with pornography addiction.

Shane Dowd: Actually, I think I mentioned it a couple of times because it’s something that I would say that I that I struggled with when I was younger. But I think like most men of my age and generation, like pornography was part of our upbringing, having high speed Internet, the rise of the Internet, as I was, you know, growing up, almost any young man who discovers that in his teenage years full of hormones becomes kind of addicted to it.

Shane Dowd: And fortunately, thanks to meditation and and, you know, everything, I kind of came out of that habit. But I think that a lot of men maybe don’t. And I think that it’s an addiction. It’s like kind of like a drug, just like many other drugs. And so it can be, I think, very detrimental to your mindset, your mood, your health, your relationship and things like that.

Shane Dowd: So, yeah, I don’t know, maybe that’s maybe that’s just to mention something that we haven’t talked about yet.

Dean Pohlman: Do you think that even for men who don’t specifically look at pornography, like are there other ways that they can behave life that mimic the what pornography would do?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, I mean, I think I think if we are.

Dean Pohlman: Like wandering eyes or like, I don’t know or like if you’re scrolling on, I mean, Instagram would be like the same exact thing, I guess. But like, yeah, yeah.

Shane Dowd: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it’s again, it’s a spectrum. It’s like pornography is like the most intense version of a very innate and natural sort of desire to. But I think, you know, we all have desire, you know, if you’re a head of heterosexual male, you have desire towards women. And so I think like at the low end of the spectrum, like watching the hot fitness girls on Instagram or Tik Tok or the, you know, the people dancing around showing their bodies, I don’t think it’s I don’t think helpful.

Shane Dowd: I have not experienced it to be helpful or healthy in my personal relationships. And so it’s something that I avoid very consciously. I just don’t want to expose my brain to a ton of that because it just leads to wanting more of that and less of an appreciation of my my wife and, you know, my actual relationship. So I would be an advocate for most people avoiding that as much as possible and appreciating real life, natural women, beauty, relationships.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I have a I have a rule about my my Instagram. If I ever if I ever see somebody post something where I’m like, oh, no, that’s not what I’m here for. And then I’m then I get off it, but I can see how it can be very tempting to get that. So what are some of the best ways for people to keep up with what you do?

Dean Pohlman: And you know, what are some of the primary things that you do to help people with, you know, with life, with fitness, with mobility?

Shane Dowd: Yeah, well my website is got rom dot com got rom ROM stands for range of motion, got romcom and there I help people fix injuries and get flexible and kind of optimize their bodies. I Also have a very specific niche website called the FAA. I fixed dot com and that’s specifically to help people with hip impingement. So those are kind of two main websites and if you just search got ROM or shamed out on Google or YouTube or social media, then I’m I’m there too.

Shane Dowd: But those are the two main websites where you can follow me and join our community tool.

Dean Pohlman: And just for my purposes, I’m kind of curious, do you talk about meditation and some of this other stuff on some of those channels?

Shane Dowd: I talk about it a little bit and I got from YouTube and stuff like that. I talk about some of the benefits. I’m not a meditation teacher and I never want to make kind of money from meditation. If I if I help people with meditation in any kind of way, it’s purely from a volunteer basis by going and volunteering on courses or just sharing like, Hey, this is one of the most helpful things I’ve found in life.

Shane Dowd: And so here’s why I like it. You might like it too, but It’s kind of I talk about it secondarily, it’s not it’s not my profession or the way I earn money.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for joining me for this conversation on the Better Man podcast. I can honestly say I’ve had a lot of conversations that go this long and, like, I’m like, I’m losing it by 20 minutes from the end. I’m just like, Oh, my God, I might fall asleep. But this one, like, I have really stayed engaged the whole time.

Dean Pohlman: I think the way that you answered questions was awesome. You kept everything very focused. You everything was really interesting to me. And I hope that everyone who listens to this episode has the same thoughts and they’re able to take a lot away from it. So thank you very much.

Shane Dowd: Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Thank you for opening up the space to go into areas that. I don’t often get to talk about, but I feel really passionate about. So it was.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, it’s it’s clear that you have a lot of passion about all these things and they’re super helpful. And this is me prodding, you. But I hope that you do find a way to have an outlet for these things and to share them. So yeah, well, thanks guys. Everybody should go follow Shane down on all the things that he does check out.

Dean Pohlman: Got rom-com. And if you’re looking for and you do with your one on one, you’re like you’re doing one on one stuff. So if you’re looking for a one on one coach to address some specific issues, it sounds like Shane would be would be great for that.

Shane Dowd: So yeah, I actually let me just say one thing about that. I have a bunch of do it yourself programs. I have like Fix Injury University, which is all my fix injury programs and Flexibility University, which is all my flexibility and mobility programs. And the one on one stuff is not something that I publish a lot about. It’s it’s kind of like private invite only.

Shane Dowd: So if you’re really interested in what I call term soup, shoot me an email. It’s something that I do maybe once or twice a year for a very small group of people. But when I work with those people, it’s like super lots and lots of hand-holding and lots and lots of one on one attention. But you have to meet certain criteria to kind of be invited into that program.

Shane Dowd: So if you’re really, really interested in my stuff and you have a little bit of experience with messed up, you’re interested in one on one coaching, then shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to share about it.

Dean Pohlman: Cool. We didn’t talk about this, but is there something that do you a three course gift, something that I can mention here that we can put in a link, maybe a promo code, something special that we can give the mental yoga audience.

Shane Dowd: We can we can put together a little man flow promo code. I’ll, I’ll create a coupon just for the the man so members will make it man flow. If you use the coupon flow will give you a discount on all of my programs. And yes, I do have free resources. If you just go to rom-com and look at the free resources section, there’s all kinds of free ebooks and obviously there’s also hundreds of free videos on my YouTube channel.

Shane Dowd: So that’s all kinds of ways of checking things out.

Dean Pohlman: Cool. All right. Well, thanks for that. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining me, for listening to the entirety of this episode. And I look forward to hearing you. See you on the next episode. Shane, thanks again for joining me.

Shane Dowd: Thank you.

Dean Pohlman: All right. Bye, guys. Have a good one. All right, guys. To learn more about Shane Dowd got Rahm and his programs to fix pain or injury, to increase mobility or flexibility. Check out gotROM.com. And if you enjoyed podcast, I want to invite you to leave a review for the Better Man podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that’s on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, or on Spotify, we’re getting really close to 100 reviews.

Dean Pohlman: I’d love to see us hit that milestone, so please help me out and leave a review there today. Lastly, one of the best ways to start the benefits and implementing these practices that we’re talking about in the Betterment podcast is by getting into a habit of consistent exercise. And one of the easiest ways to do that is through the Man for Yoga app and members area.

Dean Pohlman: We have a brand new Getting Started series that guide you through a series of programs to get you started to follow a schedule to make it easy and also get noticeable results within your first few weeks. You can learn more and sign up at M-F. Why not TVs join? Thanks guys for watching and I’ll see you on the next episode.

Dean Pohlman: I hope this inspires you to be a better man. Thanks for listening to the Better Man podcast guys. If you haven’t already, please subscribe that way. New episodes are automatically downloaded to your device as soon as they’re released. It also helps with the success of the show and I greatly appreciate your support. If you want access to the show notes, including exclusive content and links to all the resources mentioned as well as info on video recordings of the episodes, visit Manolo Yoga Dotcom.

Dean Pohlman: If you have any feedback or comments on the show, I’d love to hear from you. Just email me at Dean at Mental Yoga dot com or send me a message on social media and I’ll do my best to get back you. Lastly, if you haven’t already and you’re curious about why this podcast was started, head to man for yoga dot com slash join to learn more about the band flow yoga app and members area Fitness has the power to be a major catalyst in personal growth and transformation and man for yoga will help you work toward your fitness goals.

Dean Pohlman: All you have to do is follow a program, open the app, press play and do your best as you follow along to a workout three times or more per week. Start a free seven day trial today by visiting Mansfield yoga dot com slash join. Thanks again for listening and I’ll catch you next week for another episode of The Better Man podcast.

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