 You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship Welcome to the barbell logic podcast as a principles series edition. I'm here with my brother Chris Reynolds and he has been a tough day for us at the Reynolds household Chris. Yes we we we lost our I lost my pup and Of 14 years Bentley my boxer beautiful black and white boxer I've had for 14 years and Got up this morning. Yeah, he's he's old 14 years old and The good news is is that he didn't appear to suffer at all Let him out last night to go the bathroom before I went to bed put him in his kennel along with our other other dog our boss interior and he was completely fine and Pedidum told him good night close the kennel put a little blanket over the kennel to make it nice and dark in there for him and Got up this morning to let him out to go the bathroom. I opened both kennels and I didn't think anything was wrong. He was like he was still sleeping You know, sometimes we're still sleepy when I get I get up so early like let the boss interior out and then I was like why isn't the boxer moving and So he passed in the night and it's been tough at the Reynolds household And so it was hard to say goodbye it for for People who have pets first of all people would know me know that I'm not a big pet guy I'm not a huge animal guy and it's been very difficult. We actually lost a cat a kitty cat About ten days ago as well So we've lost two animals in a span of a week and a half and the kitty cat was only two and was my Youngest daughters and it it had just it just got some something wrong We took it to the vet a bunch of times It stopped eating wouldn't eat and kind of just waste it away. We had to watch the kitty cat suffer which sucked But my my dog Bentley the boxer he didn't seem to suffer at all He was just old and it appears that probably his heart just stopped him over the night still made for a hard day and You know and sort of having a little like kind of family memorial And we buried him in the backyard and stuff and it's all just super emotional So it's been a tough tough day. He was great a great dog I think the thing that is maybe the most emotional for me is that 14 years to think about how much my life has changed in 14 years No, yeah, and that and that he saw all of it and It's we lost two in the last over the last several years and In the first one when we lost our first dog I mean these are our dogs that we had before we had kids Yeah, so they were our babies before we had babies and they're the only thing your kids ever knew Yeah, and we just walked around crying for a week. That's what we did That's we crossed each other in the hallway Jenny and I would we just cried and And you know, it's man, it's freaking hard. It's you get really really attached to a dog and and this way it should be and I Do I in some ways I envy both of our dogs We we got to the point where they had to be put down Because they were in pain. They were in so much pain But Bentley went out like a champ man. I mean that's that's that's the way to go if there is a way to go Yeah, I agree like in and he I you know again I didn't even know and he didn't bark in the night We're fairly light sleepers, especially my wife like if he had had any pain or anything in the night He would have barked Amazingly enough. I don't think that Bella Are Boston who literally sleeps right next to him and a separate kennel But the kennels are literally touching each other and they're and they're open so they can see each other I don't think she knew it was bizarre I don't think she knew that because when I let her out this morning She went running out to go to the bathroom and then he didn't come and then she came back to the door like where's Bentley and looked in and then she saw that I was I was messing with him, you know And she started barking like what the hell's going on? But yeah, so it's it's been tough lots of tears around the house and But good memories and a wonderful a wonderful dog and so we'll miss you Bentley for sure So we want to talk about something again, you and I had kind of a long conversation before this and and I want to be sensitive and recognize that that again the world is crazy in the world's hurting and man, I want to stay as Apolitical as we possibly can right now on the show. I want to be I want to be a source of Encouragement and entertainment and I recognize that some people think maybe that it is We are called to maybe speak our minds a little bit more I'm trying to run a company that wants to get people strong and I want to be able to provide Some relief from the stress that's going on in the world right now And so that's what we're gonna do today We're gonna talk about some of the things that actually one of the things that I've really enjoyed over the last few weeks that in the midst of COVID in the midst of of all the stuff that's going on in our country politically and culturally that I can still find brings Me value and actually gives me a tremendous amount of stress relief and for me. That's actually good old-fashioned hard work like actual manual labor hard work and I just love it. I love what it gets me So I wanted to spend a few minutes and talk about the actual value that I get from hard work There's there's nothing like it. It's so crazy how Your it's like your body's made for it. You know what I mean and your brain is made for it. You get this rush of endorphins When you're out doing your physical labor, we our family cleared some area in the backwoods of our house last week, I think or the week before and You know, you get done and you can you can look over it and you can see what you did You made an impact and it's cool, you know And also when you get done with it, you're done. That's right You're done as far as that goes and that you know, it especially for a knowledge worker That is such a rare occurrence that this is a great feeling to be able to do some work You get the endorphins you're out there kind of sweating getting your getting yourself done you you turn around and look at the work you did and It's right there to be seen and there's something just incredibly satisfying about that Yeah, well first off, I haven't always liked it, right as you know, and you've made fun of me some on the show in the past that I Used to absolutely hate manual labor and I would I would do anything I could to get out of it growing up I hated even doing stuff like I could you know, even like mowing the lawn Certainly weed eating we lived on a big for most of our high school life. We lived on like five acres and mom and dad Demanded that we mowed and weed eat all of it five acres is a lot to weed eat and trim around like the fence The fence posts and all that stuff. I hated that stuff or to shirk Carrying the groceries in you know from a grocery trip or whatever those things were and I went through this period even when I back when I was a teacher Because even as a teacher your work is really never done, right? Like you just and it's very hard to tangibly see what you were what I was doing as it as a teacher Like you you know You hoped you were helping the kids and you hoped you're making an impact But it's hard to really know and we've talked about this on the show as well that I would I would spend some time like renovating your house Renovating our cousin Phil's house and I got a lot of value out of that for those very reasons. It was a great I could go do it It didn't take a tremendous amount of thought mental thought so there's actually it opened up Mental capacity to think about Important things because a lot of the stuff you're just doing this good hard manual labor And so your brain gets to think about stuff and like you said There's there's this wonderful amount of closure that occurs when the stuff's done you can look back even every single day You can look back and say oh look what I did today It didn't look like this at the beginning of the day and now it does and so and that's come with me in my In my life here now We did a we've done a pretty nice garden this year Raised bed garden and built it with the family and kind of did that for in the midst of the quarantine and I've really gotten into my yard lately. I'm that guy I'm neat dad, you know from the neat dad account on Instagram Instagram where my white new balance shoes and Not really the white new balance shoes But yeah, just you know like I like working in my yard and I like I like trimming the trees I like trimming my garden and I like you know putting the posts in and and planting flowers and doing like doing that stuff Working in the garage or you know, we bought the bought the rural land And going out and clearing land clearing land is that's some of the hardest work you ever do chainsaw brush cutters But gosh you're talking about what a what a satisfying piece of work a job to do when we're out there we when I was Think I was 14 When our uncle Steve who's our our dad's brother had a job for me to go basically clear land mo that kind of thing over a summer in a place close to Branson and That job was so hard you got $4.25 an hour remember right it is under minimum wage and we were below the age limit So we were younger than 16. So like they had my legality is questionable. Yes. So for sure all the child labor But I was excited to earn, you know earn a buck and But what was really shocking to me is we could get up so early and go out and do this work And when I got done at the end of long days, I mean we did 10 12-hour days of that type of work you got done. You're drenched in sweat. You stink I mean you smell like you know you kind of stinks fresh cut grass kind of smells nice, right? But the combination of fresh fresh cut grass at BO and BO in a sweaty and gas 11-year-old It always is always some gasoline smell in there. That's right But you get done and man to look over a vast quantity of land and see that you had done this work That now looks nice like you've cut trails and you've done all this stuff and it just it's such an incredible feeling and I remember being young and Recognizing how great that feeling was and I think to some degree that is that can be especially if any of you have Kids who are sort of entering their teen years. That's one of the great things you can give them They may not feel that way Sorry, but it's like the first domino that knocks over other dominoes later That you can you can be someone who does this hard work And you actually get this incredible feeling out of it and physical hard labor has even the extra value of the endorphins and all those things Yeah, I it's funny as we both talk about our memories of doing hard work growing up. I Think we did the job for the money But looking back now as adults We don't remember the money and we don't remember what we bought with the money But we remember the way we felt at the end of the day when we did the work And so I'm often trying to explain especially to my oldest daughter, but to both my kids The value of hard work and when I and I've told them like I'm talking about the value Beyond what the work gets us ie money. It's not about the money like yes We making money for working is important because at some point you have to support yourself and do the thing, right? And they also watch me specifically work really hard at my job here at Barbell logic as the CEO of a company which looks nothing like planting the garden, right and And also doesn't ever have closure and also does, you know, it's gonna give you the same endorphins I don't get any that stuff. So it's a well, I love my job here But I like to do the hard work outside or the manual labor because it gets me something that my normal job doesn't It gets me those things like the value of the work itself There's value in that hard work and and I love it It's it's I think it's just it's an extreme sense of satisfaction for me To be able to experience that and so yes Even it is very nice to be able to look back and see like I did this thing and like, you know I trim the trees or I cleared the brush or I planted the garden and all those things are good But there's actually something about the internal Satisfaction you get from the work itself That nothing else can give you it's the only thing that'll do that for you. Yeah, I've read a couple of accounts of Where apparently there is this effect is a little stronger in men than it is in women Almost like that Hard physical labor that you're doing X there are extra endorphins that you get from doing that type of work and so it's a There's definitely there's a scientific background to this that helps part of it is I mean, I think all of us could agree that If it's evolutionary design or whatever you however you think we got to this point as humans we it's a very new phenomena for us to sit in front of computers for 10 hours a day and There's there's a lot going on You know, we we know that our brain is affected by the things that we do with our body We know that exercise for example helps with depression and anxiety and all these other things Well, it turns out that a lot of that stuff is because For an enormous amount of time we had to go out and physically work We had to go out and labor to find food and we had to go go do all these things And if it wasn't rewarding in and of itself, then it probably would have been a real struggle Yeah, you would be to survive. That's right Yeah, for all of human history We were hunter-gatherers farmers Those things right like that's like even the technological advance from hunter-gatherer to agriculture Was it was that was a big that was a big step in in in human Humans moving forward and yet they were they're both still super super Manual labor work intensive and so yeah, I think that we were made to be that way And we live a life, especially the past 50 years or so Where most of us now sit in front of a computer or at an office in a chair And it's not really what we were we were called to something better And I don't I don't mean that even in a religious sense although certainly can be taken that way as well But I mean we're just like there's that's not what we were made to do. It's like it's like taking It's not the same thing as a domesticated cat. It's like taking a tiger It's like taking a lion and trying to put them in zoo But they're not made to be in a zoo They're made they're made to be wild and free and so I think For us there's there is some of that deep rooted in our instinct Say this is what I'm I'm wired to do this stuff I there's something about being out in the heat and sweating and doing the work and seeing the fruits of your labor That is extremely satisfying and and I can't get that when I'm on zoom calls all day I don't get down to be like, you know what crush seven zoom calls today only did five yesterday I never have any satisfaction matter of fact every additional zoom call brings me a little less satisfaction As opposed to more satisfaction But doing the work outside brings me more. I like it. I think there's there's value and you can overreach here But there is value. I think in looking towards What an ideal circumstance is for our Mines and bodies, right? So essentially you could you could say what what we've been designing And for you could say what we've evolved to you can say whatever I'm not supposed to be Not trying to chain you to an ideology. I'm just saying one way or the other and I remember Reading a while ago like everybody got pretty excited about like paleo diet and then a few years later There were a bunch of articles that were like, yeah, a paleolithic man did not eat this diet All right, sure There's been variations on these things, but there is value in figuring out what things are just drastically Departed from the way that we should function as human beings and One other great thing about manual labor when you can get it and and this would be my recommendation to people who who do this Um, or have the ability to do it is to take your phone and set it in your house And be nowhere near it when you're doing it because if there's anything that we are that our minds are totally Unprepared for and I am convinced we will find a huge body of scientific evidence in the long run about this It is that smartphones Uh are are totally outside of what we are capable of dealing with sure the constant pains the constant You know, everybody's had the phantom buzz. That's the other thing the phantom buzz in your pocket What the hell is that? Yeah, like that it's such a wide phenomena that we all Can have a cell phone In our pocket and feel the buzz pull it out and there was no buzz right because there is a buzz so often So frequently any feeling basically that rubs slightly against your leg. You're like, that's a buzz. What's going on? And so, uh, you know, whenever you if you do get the opportunity to get out do some yard work or You know, uh work on the garage paint the house whatever you're doing I highly recommend taking your phone putting it somewhere that's nowhere near you. So what I do is, um For me right now, this is this is really my my manual labor manifests itself in every day I go out and do some work in the yard every day right now and and I've got I've got a nice lawn and I You know, I use the irrigation system and I'm trimming up the Trimming up the the hedges and and working out in the garden and pulling the weeds and stuff But I like I like listening to an audiobook or podcast out there So what I do is I just take my phone and put it out on the deck and do not stir face down So it's not in my pocket and I have my earbuds in so that your buds will still pick up the bluetooth from it But the phone's not going off and I've actually started doing it early in the morning So what I've been doing my my daily routine has changed a little bit. So first off I I've not trained four days a week Every week. This is my fifth week I pulled 555 a little while ago, by the way, not too bad, right? So Yeah, um, yeah pretty pretty pretty and pretty easy 555 deadlift Didn't feel like it came off the ground easy, but then I watched the video and I was like, oh, that was fast It was fine. Yeah, and so the video sometimes tells you that things were much easier than you thought they were in your head Yeah, that's also weird for me because I watched so many videos of people lifting So I know what hard looks like but it's been a long time since I've been strong and and you know Grinding through a 700 pound deadlift or something like I just don't have it in me right now to grind through something like that And it's not I'm just not used to it just that you know So I'm having those same talks with myself that I have to have with my clients right now about about Having to like learn the grind again like learn when it's okay And what felt really heavy and felt like a grind watch the video It really wasn't and so all those things are there So one of the things I've done is I get up early in the morning still and by the way I want to do I want to do a podcast at some point about kind of getting up early and and the value I get in that and and I don't want to Give stuff away. I just that that comes natural to me Like I don't get up early because like if I hated it I wouldn't do it I've got a point where I don't even set my alarm anymore and I never sleep past six I mean six is like I really slept in most of the time. It's like 4 15 but And I get up and I do my basic online coaching urgent stuff first very first thing It's dark outside typically like 4 30. It's still pitch black Do that and when the when the sun starts to come up I go outside and I work in the yard working the garden pull weeds You know little things like that trim a few things a lot of times listen to a podcast or an audiobook And I come in and I make some food and then I've been training every morning by 8 30 every morning So by the time I train I've already done all the urgent work at work And I've done the work around the yard which it's in the middle of the summer now And so it's really hot so a great time to do that's at 6 30 in the morning 7 in the morning and not at Not at 1 30 in the afternoon And I'll train and then I'll get to come back and do The big stuff the important stuff for my job and it's actually worked really really well And then we get to you know about this time during the day Get to kind of early to mid-afternoon and and after we get done recording the podcast I'll shut this thing down and I'll I'll can I'll switch over to To husband Matt daddy Matt and we'll we'll go out and we'll hang out at the pool for a while and maybe nap and You know dinner and netflix and and that's kind of life right now And so that that hard work really brings me some value and then we'll go out About once or twice a week right now Down to the rural land and work the rural land and that's That's real hard work. That's not for 45 minutes or an hour in the mornings that is Five hours six hours where you are like we're a Ice-cold bottle of water is never tasted so good Sort of stuff and it's also rough out there and there's ticks And so here's the middle of the summer, but you always have to wear jeans and boots Because if you wear shorts, you're gonna come up and you're gonna have all the ticks in your buoyhole Like that one time you and I had We got all the ticks What is it about all those weird crevices that the ticks love so much I don't know man. They like heat. I guess and the moist. Yeah, that's what makes the bottle a perfect place So, yeah, I get the same. I don't know if you get this. Do you get the same effect from a little bit of adventurous? um Hiking or or something. Oh for sure. Yeah, you know, I went out and tried to sleep on my land a few weeks ago I'll tell you this I don't I know I haven't told on story I really don't want to even tell it because everybody's gonna make fun of me But I went out to basically with nothing but a bug out bag And I was like, I'm gonna stay the night in on my land, right? And uh, I went home at 11 30 that night. Yeah, because I was like, well, this is not I'm decided against this But yeah, it was fun for it was fun for and I got there at like two in the afternoon So I spent you know, I spent a good long pretty much, you know all day most of the day made a fire had dinner You know had made food had water or stuff like that but at some point I was like, uh But yeah, exactly like those kind of hikes are like when we go out to colorado and we hike out in the middle of nowhere Especially if you get a little lost. Yeah, where you like I think I think that's important We we drove we we took our bikes from the house out into the Needham forest, which is uh, just a few blocks away And there's a little bike path that gets you on an old railway So we took the old railway out as far as we could take it. It's a bike trail now On the way back jenny says, hey I think maybe the railway takes you all the way back to the street. Let's do that So we get you know that general direction and there's just like this hard stop like this All right And this little trail kind of goes off and I was like well somebody's charted a little trail that gets us back to the road So we're like holding bikes and I'm a family of five with three little kids Right trying to hold their bikes. We start going through this thing man. It is high There are high You know rocks mountains little things in there or whatever and we're trying to haul bikes up of it At some point everyone is a little bit afraid that we're never getting out of the Needham forest Which by the way is very small and if you walk very long you're gonna hit something and you're fine Like the street Yeah, but that little bit of danger that's in there and like sort of getting through it We got done everybody was just super happy Like you're just like everybody's just loaded on endorphins. You've done the exercise And you've gone through the work and I get a lot of that same feeling and I did when I did long runs too We I know we talked about that Last week or the week four that my wife would drive me out to several towns away And then I'd have to come back that little feeling of danger. Yeah throughout the process of the physical exertion Uh, it really has always amplified that effect for me and I I still love it. Yeah, that's good So The takeaway is if you haven't got out and done some of this for a while Get out and do some manual labor like do some do some work around your yard I'm not saying to mow your lawn now here is clearly neither one of us neither one of us would tell you go mow your lawn That's a terrible idea, but no find some good manual labor Planted garden, uh, you know Taken on I love taking on like a little mini construction project in your house Like redoing a room doing some like a built some built-in shelves or a desk That's another great thing to do. So it doesn't always have to be outside Uh, you'll find that there's value in the work itself And you'll know that because if you're doing it for yourself, you're not getting paid. So And by the way, I still think paint like I pay my kids to do that stuff because I want to motivate them in the beginning To want to do the work. So when we when we built the garden I paid the girls and they worked their butts off not just my daughters But our our nieces my our sister's kids they came out work their butts off like digging we we put a big giant six by six Uh timber lawn timbers Around the garden and they had to they had to clear out the the trench for the six by sixes And they were super heavy, you know, they weighed they waited a ton and they were treated wood and all that stuff And so they uh, so I was like look I'll pay you I'll pay you well And they got paid for it. But I I still think now they would have the same memory of that from Three four months ago when they did it Then the money they got paid the money they got paid they probably would I don't they don't know what they did They went and bought something at the mall or they bought some earphones or something But they'll remember the work they did and so you're start you're starting to try to instill that idea of There's value in the work itself. Not just what the work gets you Via the money So money is the one thing the completion of a task well done is another thing and is very valuable But I actually think that there's value even in not completing the task Right even in just doing the work right just Chopping wood just like you know bailing hay like the kind of stuff that really is never you're never done chopping wood You're never done bailing hay like there's work that sometimes There's still value in that and you'll still find a lot of satisfaction in doing it And so especially if you have a job like Chris and I have had like I have Where you're you're stuck in an office all day Staring at a screen get out and do something that makes you sweat and you'll find tremendous value from that Totally agree. Awesome. It's been another principles episode on the barba logic podcast You guys will notice a slight schedule change So we are moving the principles episodes to Thursdays and we'll continue that for a while And then I'll just tease out. We got some series coming which I'm pretty excited about We're gonna bring back some of the old series and kind of digitally remaster them and do some cool stuff with them and and narrate them a little bit and start to put out series kind of netflix style so Be on the lookout for those coming up soon And we'll punch out like a eight-part series all at the same day So people can get the entire series at once and pretty excited about where that's going So thank you for listening and we will see you since this is thursday We will not do our podcast on sunday. We'll see you on monday morning. See you then