Ido Portal: Movement

00:00:00.000 | We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.

00:00:05.000 | Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

00:00:09.000 | In any particular sport, with well-defined rules, mastery is achieved through specialization.

00:00:26.000 | Taking a few skills and perfecting them.

00:00:29.000 | So naturally, most experts and teachers of movement are specialists.

00:00:34.000 | Of skill sets like gymnastics, hand balancing, Olympic lifting, capoeira, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, judo, and other martial arts.

00:00:42.000 | So it's rare to come across a generalist. Someone who takes a holistic approach to movement.

00:00:48.000 | My guest today is Ido Portal.

00:00:51.000 | He is a guru of movement. A teacher with a large and quickly growing following.

00:00:57.000 | As he says, "Movement is big. Bigger than any specific discipline."

00:01:02.000 | We're all human first, movers second, and only then specialists.

00:01:08.000 | I actually just finished reading a biography of Albert Einstein by Walter Isaacson.

00:01:14.000 | And the two of you have something in common.

00:01:17.000 | A desire to arrive at a unified theory.

00:01:20.000 | In his case, it was a unified theory of physics. You know, like forces of nature.

00:01:24.000 | In your case, it's a unified theory of movement.

00:01:27.000 | Can you tell me the story of your journey to becoming a generalist?

00:01:33.000 | First, I'll just say that I'm no guru, you know.

00:01:36.000 | It's something that people use, but I have a really hard time with the word "master" or "guru."

00:01:43.000 | And I didn't arrive at the gospel truth, or I'm not sitting on any mountains.

00:01:50.000 | I'm on my way. So people who join me as students are basically following, you know, in the same journey.

00:01:59.000 | Maybe in certain circumstances I'm a bit further ahead, or sometimes I'm a bit behind.

00:02:06.000 | But it's definitely a walk along and not walk behind kind of thing.

00:02:11.000 | Yeah, my journey. I started as a mover first, and then I became a specialist.

00:02:18.000 | And then I went back to movement, basically.

00:02:21.000 | So it all started at a young age, and some Chinese martial arts developed into some physical sports and games in school, primary school and high school.

00:02:36.000 | And then I met Capoeira, and I was completely amazed, basically, by this art form.

00:02:43.000 | And I pursued that for a good 15 years.

00:02:48.000 | In the middle, somewhere, military service and other physical pursuit.

00:02:54.000 | And throughout changing and developing and moving between disciplines and exploring,

00:03:00.000 | I just kind of got the same realization again and again that there is some thread through all these disciplines,

00:03:10.000 | and there is something that is attracting me back.

00:03:13.000 | And basically it was movement, I realized.

00:03:15.000 | And the next thing was, okay, I want to learn movement, I want to get better as a mover in a general way.

00:03:23.000 | I seeked out movement teachers and went around the world and looked around and read a lot of books.

00:03:31.000 | And there were some people who mentioned the word movement.

00:03:34.000 | And I went to them and offered myself as a student, and they kept on teaching me disciplines and other isolated approach and other speciality.

00:03:46.000 | And I was very disappointed.

00:03:48.000 | So eventually I decided, okay, I'm going to become that person.

00:03:51.000 | I'm going to become the movement teacher.

00:03:53.000 | And the next realization after years and years of trying was it's impossible.

00:04:00.000 | And with that I stayed basically because I realized if that's impossible, it's a good goal to have in life.

00:04:07.000 | Something that will keep on moving myself and my students and anybody involved forward.

00:04:13.000 | That's where I'm at right now.

00:04:15.000 | I'm teaching and learning, moving around and trying to gain some more knowledge about this impossible task.

00:04:25.000 | Yes, so you're still yourself or forever a student?

00:04:28.000 | I prefer to be a student any day of the week than a teacher.

00:04:32.000 | But being a teacher is part of human culture.

00:04:37.000 | We are all teachers.

00:04:39.000 | We teach all the time.

00:04:41.000 | Whether you want it or not, somebody asks you for direction in the street, you become the teacher.

00:04:47.000 | You have a child, he looks at you, you're a teacher.

00:04:50.000 | Practicing, teaching and practicing to the student, the discipleship, both of them are extremely important for your development as a mover.

00:05:00.000 | What is the price of specialization?

00:05:03.000 | What do we lose when we specialize?

00:05:05.000 | We lose humanity first and foremost.

00:05:07.000 | As humans we evolved to become humans as generalists.

00:05:13.000 | We are the most generalist of all animals.

00:05:16.000 | We're able to imitate the ape and imitate the tiger.

00:05:21.000 | We can hold our breath underwater and we can do everything just a tiny bit.

00:05:28.000 | We can't really run very fast.

00:05:30.000 | We can't really fight very well.

00:05:33.000 | We can't climb as good as other animals.

00:05:37.000 | But we can do the most complex and generalized tasks out of all animals.

00:05:43.000 | No animal even comes close.

00:05:46.000 | Speciality, the price is humanity.

00:05:48.000 | The price is your happiness.

00:05:50.000 | The price is your fulfillment as a human being.

00:05:53.000 | It's deep, it's philosophical, but that's who we are.

00:05:57.000 | Do you think there is some beauty in fulfillment, some value in specialization, in becoming the best at a very specific movement, at a particular sport?

00:06:07.000 | Giving your body to, dedicating it to that sport?

00:06:11.000 | That's an interesting thing because as a human race, we benefited tremendously from the work of specialists.

00:06:19.000 | But those specialists suffered.

00:06:22.000 | That's a very, very important point.

00:06:24.000 | It's like without specialists we would never be here.

00:06:27.000 | We would never be Skyping right now on these computers and wearing these t-shirts and all kinds of stuff.

00:06:35.000 | But those specialists, those human beings suffered the result of their highly specialized nature.

00:06:44.000 | And we become more and more specialized.

00:06:47.000 | There is a move towards being generalist again in the last few years, maybe the last decade.

00:06:53.000 | There is a bit more talk about that.

00:06:56.000 | But definitely we are also still pursuing highly specialized fields.

00:07:03.000 | I make a joke in my workshop and I say, nowadays you go to a, if you break your hand, you go to a hand specialist, an orthopedic surgeon.

00:07:13.000 | In five or ten years, you'll go to a left hand specialist.

00:07:18.000 | And the most evident problem is also our leaders who are ex-specialists.

00:07:23.000 | But now they're required to be generalist leaders of a lot of stuff.

00:07:29.000 | And they're shitty leaders.

00:07:31.000 | We keep on having the same problems again and again because they are ex-specialists.

00:07:38.000 | Whether it's a lawyer or a military person or an economist.

00:07:43.000 | These are not specialties that allow you the full grasp of running a country.

00:07:49.000 | Yeah, I think you put it beautifully that in my specialization, my lead to innovation, but you lose the humanity.

00:07:56.000 | What do you find is the most underdeveloped range of motion in athletes?

00:08:03.000 | What movement is most restricted in high level athletes in your experience?

00:08:10.000 | Is there one that stands out? Shoulders? Any particular other joints?

00:08:16.000 | Well, it all depends on their speciality, of course, and habits.

00:08:21.000 | The shoulder, the glenohumeral joint, is the most hypermobile joint in the body.

00:08:27.000 | Even when it's restricted, it still offers tremendous range of motion compared to other areas.

00:08:33.000 | But when it's restricted, even if it's just a little bit, it can cause huge problems.

00:08:40.000 | Because we are dependent on that range of motion and mobility around the glenohumeral joint.

00:08:47.000 | And the simple reason is because with the hands, humans manipulate.

00:08:52.000 | That's what we're meant to do with our hands. And we need that complexity around the scapula.

00:08:58.000 | It's been a few years since I've said it first, that the scapula craves complexity.

00:09:04.000 | But this complexity around the scapula and range of motion is so important across the board.

00:09:10.000 | I've read of your concept of isolate, integrate and improvise.

00:09:16.000 | Can you describe the role of improvisation in movement?

00:09:20.000 | Any profession, any speciality should arrive at improvisation in the top tier, the top level.

00:09:27.000 | Whether you play the violin or you box, you're going to reach improvisation.

00:09:35.000 | Improvisation above all is the human condition. It's the human ability.

00:09:42.000 | The highest form of living is improvisation. You improvise. Basically, life is improvisation.

00:09:48.000 | You're born, you die and in between you improvise. A shitload of improvisation.

00:09:53.000 | Movement is no different.

00:09:55.000 | The thing is people started to isolate concept and some people went to the next level and integrated them.

00:10:03.000 | They present themselves as improvisation, but actually they're cheating people.

00:10:08.000 | It's just a bit more integration yet. It's just another integration.

00:10:14.000 | Improvisation, open improvisation, real improvisation as we call it, that's very rare.

00:10:20.000 | And that's the most enjoyable state. It's also called the zone. It's also called the tunnel.

00:10:28.000 | You just experience this beautiful thing to be empty, just to let things happen through you.

00:10:34.000 | As Bruce Lee said, "I don't hit, it hits." It just happens.

00:10:40.000 | And that is improv. That's what you need to do with movement if you aspire for the highest things.

00:10:48.000 | I like how a guy on Reddit described you as "Ido Porto may not be the nicest guy in the world, but he's a great coach."

00:10:57.000 | So that nicest guy part, I come from the wrestling world where the goal of a good coach and a good program

00:11:04.000 | is to basically make you quit, to break you.

00:11:07.000 | There's zero patience for people who don't want to put in the work, to work hard.

00:11:12.000 | Do you find that tough love is the best approach to coaching people, whatever their level of ability?

00:11:18.000 | No, not necessarily. I don't like the term tough love

00:11:22.000 | because it kind of assumes that its importance is itself.

00:11:29.000 | It's not enough for me. It's like, that's the best way. Why? That's the best way.

00:11:35.000 | But on the other hand, I don't think people are made of sugar.

00:11:41.000 | I really believe that we've lost a bit of sight of how resilient we are.

00:11:48.000 | And another is people don't like the truth.

00:11:54.000 | It's dishonesty is above all.

00:11:57.000 | So when people describe me as tough love, it's not because I believe in tough love.

00:12:01.000 | 100% of the people who have had issues with me on a personal level or through coaching

00:12:09.000 | are people who couldn't accept criticism, what I offered, took it personally,

00:12:17.000 | who weren't able to deal with it, etc.

00:12:19.000 | I can't even, you know, in my head find one example of a person I've been working with

00:12:26.000 | who received the criticism, worked with it and still complained.

00:12:31.000 | But it's always these complainers and who fucking cares?

00:12:35.000 | Complain first and do nothing, yes.

00:12:37.000 | Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like when you go mainstream, as we've went to a certain level,

00:12:43.000 | you deal with it because I'm not operating my elite unit, my special op unit anymore.

00:12:49.000 | Now it's an army and I need to accept the fact that I'm going to meet a lot of slackers,

00:12:54.000 | a lot of fucking poindexters and all kinds of, you know, they don't want to work,

00:13:00.000 | they want to talk about it, they want to do this, they want to do that.

00:13:03.000 | They don't want to hear the truth, they don't want to accept criticism

00:13:07.000 | or hear how much they suck.

00:13:09.000 | And I just don't do that.

00:13:10.000 | So, you know, I'll have to accept the fact that from now and again, you know,

00:13:15.000 | I'll have this issue and I'm sure it will continue.

00:13:19.000 | You've traveled all over the world.

00:13:21.000 | Do you think there's a difference in this aspect, in attitudes in the United States,

00:13:25.000 | in Israel and other countries?

00:13:27.000 | Of course, big time.

00:13:30.000 | Yeah, there are many countries where I don't have this issue or very rarely.

00:13:35.000 | We have a word in Hebrew, it actually comes from German, I think, or Yiddish.

00:13:39.000 | It says "tachles".

00:13:41.000 | It's like "down to it", you know, the heart of it.

00:13:44.000 | "Tachles" people are people who are like, "No bullshit, you know, directly,

00:13:49.000 | tell me as it is."

00:13:50.000 | And this "tachles", it exists in certain cultures.

00:13:54.000 | In other cultures, it's a lot of chit-chat and walk around and, you know,

00:13:59.000 | I didn't know how to chit-chat.

00:14:01.000 | A few days ago, one of my students told me, you know, "I can't chit-chat."

00:14:04.000 | It's exactly how I felt, you know.

00:14:06.000 | When I first came out of Israel, started to teach around, it was Russia,

00:14:11.000 | thank God, and that was so similar to where I come from in many ways,

00:14:16.000 | so no problem.

00:14:18.000 | But then when I went to the U.S. or Canada, I had a lot of issues with the chit-chat,

00:14:23.000 | with politically correct and walking around the bush and don't give it to me

00:14:28.000 | too harshly, you know, cover it with a lot of sponges around it,

00:14:33.000 | soften the heat, and yeah, it's definitely different between various countries

00:14:38.000 | and I need--nowadays, I need filters, which are my top students

00:14:45.000 | who are helping me teach, and some of them are great filters,

00:14:49.000 | and in certain countries, they'll do much better than me.

00:14:53.000 | What does perfect practice look like for you?

00:14:55.000 | So do you believe in the value--maybe this applies more to specialized sports,

00:15:00.000 | but I come from Russia, actually, and from the wrestling world

00:15:04.000 | where repetition, putting in 10, 50,000, 100,000 repetitions on a specific movement

00:15:11.000 | is how you achieve success.

00:15:14.000 | Do you believe in the value of that repetition, even for a generalist framework?

00:15:19.000 | Repetition is the mother of skill.

00:15:22.000 | There have been those that corrected and said, "Perfect repetition is the mother of skill."

00:15:28.000 | Well, those who usually say it are those who don't achieve heights, usually.

00:15:36.000 | So I'll be very frank. Again, I'll be very extremely honest.

00:15:40.000 | A lot of people talk about perfect, perfect, perfect, but life is not perfect itself.

00:15:47.000 | Our surroundings are not perfect.

00:15:49.000 | And when I practice and when I move, it's never on the perfect conditions.

00:15:55.000 | It's never with the right optimal blood sugar level and under the specific height of I don't know what

00:16:06.000 | and riding the wave of super compensation in the perfect way.

00:16:10.000 | And usually, when people try to adhere to that concept in a perfect way,

00:16:16.000 | they end up falling off the wagon.

00:16:19.000 | On the other side, don't be stupid. Don't just drill yourself into the wall and lose sight of everything.

00:16:27.000 | It's not black and white.

00:16:29.000 | The truth is somewhere in between, and it varies between people.

00:16:33.000 | For me, after 17 years teaching, 18 years now teaching, moving, seeing people,

00:16:41.000 | the hardest workers are usually the elite performers.

00:16:47.000 | Of course, some of them are carrying a certain talent or this or that,

00:16:52.000 | but it's always with very dedicated practice.

00:16:57.000 | They have built up that work capacity through that dedicated practice,

00:17:01.000 | and they can then move that ability to other disciplines.

00:17:04.000 | True.

00:17:05.000 | In the grappling world, I'm not sure how much you're aware of it,

00:17:07.000 | but Marcel Garcia is one of the greats, and he believes boldly against the status quo, I think,

00:17:14.000 | that you should only train his sport, Jiu-Jitsu, and not do anything else.

00:17:20.000 | To achieve success, train only that.

00:17:23.000 | But the majority of other athletes in the sport believe that you should do strength and conditioning programs around that,

00:17:29.000 | so they at least move slightly towards the more generalist framework.

00:17:33.000 | Do you think there's value for the generalist mindset for an elite athlete,

00:17:39.000 | or should they just focus on their sport?

00:17:42.000 | To some level, to some level.

00:17:44.000 | Speciality can reach a plateau because of lack of general base of the pyramid in some cases,

00:17:52.000 | but it's not a very high level of generalism.

00:17:58.000 | Nowadays, you're practicing against specialists,

00:18:01.000 | and they devote more and more time to this speciality when you're doing other stuff.

00:18:06.000 | So it's a complex riddle, and to each case, his own.

00:18:11.000 | I'll tell you something else.

00:18:13.000 | When you reach the top of your field, like Marcelo Garcia did in BJJ,

00:18:18.000 | you stop being inspired by your own scene.

00:18:23.000 | You can't gain inspiration, knowledge, and motivation from your own scene,

00:18:28.000 | because you are the leader.

00:18:30.000 | You're on top of the mountain.

00:18:32.000 | You have nowhere else to climb.

00:18:34.000 | So what do you do?

00:18:36.000 | You look to other scenes.

00:18:38.000 | And that's where it's really, really valuable to become a bit more generalized.

00:18:44.000 | Yes.

00:18:45.000 | You mentioned in an interview related to that a very interesting point,

00:18:49.000 | that many people in the U.S. in particular focus on learning more than doing.

00:18:54.000 | So focus too much on acquiring knowledge versus using that knowledge.

00:18:58.000 | Do you struggle with this yourself?

00:19:00.000 | How do you approach learning new things versus putting more time into old things

00:19:07.000 | that you've already mastered?

00:19:09.000 | It's a good question.

00:19:10.000 | It's not only a U.S. thing or a North American thing.

00:19:13.000 | It's generally all across the globe, although there are more practical people

00:19:17.000 | and less practical people, and each country has its own orientation, habits,

00:19:23.000 | characteristics, but it's a good question.

00:19:27.000 | It's kind of being super intelligent and oriented towards the information,

00:19:33.000 | but then have this dumbed-down practical mind.

00:19:38.000 | It's like, "Okay, now I need to work," and having a balance across that.

00:19:43.000 | And that probably means that a certain IQ, for example,

00:19:51.000 | will start to work against you in certain fields and vice versa.

00:19:56.000 | So when you become too much, as the Chinese say,

00:20:01.000 | "The man who lives inside his head," you start to have this issue.

00:20:05.000 | You have a thirst for information, great thirst, but information is toxic.

00:20:13.000 | It's exactly like water.

00:20:14.000 | Water is toxic as well.

00:20:15.000 | Almost all compounds are toxic.

00:20:18.000 | And then we drink, we drink, we drink, we kill ourselves.

00:20:21.000 | We kill the process.

00:20:23.000 | The knowledge, it turns against us, and that's a serious problem,

00:20:29.000 | and that's the problem of the age of misinformation that we live in.

00:20:34.000 | It's not only that the knowledge is toxic even when it's good knowledge.

00:20:38.000 | Now we also have bad knowledge, mostly bad knowledge, mostly shitty advice.

00:20:45.000 | The combination is lethal, and just people become paralyzed

00:20:49.000 | or just move from link to link to link with glazy eyes

00:20:55.000 | and just never actually do anything.

00:20:59.000 | Yes. I know you advocate building a huge work capacity.

00:21:02.000 | So how many hours a day do you think--this is also a debate for specialists--

00:21:08.000 | how many hours a day do you think is the most a person can train movement intelligently

00:21:14.000 | before it becomes not sustainable, before their mind becomes uninspired, maybe as you said?

00:21:21.000 | 24 hours.

00:21:23.000 | 24 hours.

00:21:24.000 | 24 hours a day.

00:21:26.000 | There is a choreographer in Israel, a very known choreographer called Dohad Naharim.

00:21:30.000 | He says when you wake up in the morning in bed between the sheets,

00:21:35.000 | you can practice movement, and he's not talking about with your partner.

00:21:41.000 | So even there you can practice breathing, moving.

00:21:45.000 | It's all the time around you, but serious practice,

00:21:50.000 | practice oriented repetition and success and building skill

00:21:56.000 | and moving from isolation to integration to improvisation.

00:22:00.000 | In most disciplines, it's around six to eight hours a day.

00:22:05.000 | Some people go more and reach even the 10-hour mark,

00:22:09.000 | and I've done that for periods of time in the military.

00:22:13.000 | You go even further than that.

00:22:15.000 | Other disciplines require less, and it's also a highly individual thing.

00:22:20.000 | So let's say even within the sports of gymnastics,

00:22:23.000 | you have a woman like Nastia who trains eight hours a day,

00:22:29.000 | and next to her in the same team, also winning gold medals,

00:22:33.000 | at the same level more or less, you have Shawn Johnson training three hours a day,

00:22:38.000 | and she reached the top of her field, gold medal in the Olympics.

00:22:45.000 | So how highly individual?

00:22:49.000 | This is very rare to see, this three-hour gold medal thing,

00:22:55.000 | but definitely it exists.

00:22:57.000 | The difference there might be mental.

00:22:59.000 | So the question I have is out of the various elements like mind, breathing,

00:23:05.000 | developing muscular strength or joints,

00:23:08.000 | which is the biggest challenge to master as a student of movement?

00:23:13.000 | Highly individual.

00:23:15.000 | It depends on the person, depends on his orientation.

00:23:18.000 | Some people never require any form of mental training, for example,

00:23:23.000 | or psychological training, especially in fields like sports and team sports.

00:23:31.000 | So that aspect is covered.

00:23:33.000 | They're winners, they're oriented, they're focused, you know,

00:23:37.000 | and other people require help in that regard.

00:23:41.000 | Some people have great difficulty developing mobility

00:23:45.000 | and just the nervous system is panicked, it holds on, it protects them too much.

00:23:51.000 | Other people are hypermobile and have a difficulty creating tonus and strength,

00:23:57.000 | and that is a great challenge for them.

00:24:00.000 | And other people are, you know, great complex learners.

00:24:06.000 | They can coordinate complex actions and learn movement very quickly,

00:24:11.000 | while others are highly limited.

00:24:14.000 | So it's very individual.

00:24:16.000 | So that process of learning, that journey is individual to everyone.

00:24:20.000 | So how does one take that journey?

00:24:23.000 | Just listen to your own body?

00:24:24.000 | No, no, you can listen to your body until tomorrow.

00:24:29.000 | But, yeah, you're not hearing anything, you know.

00:24:32.000 | You're not hearing anything.

00:24:33.000 | You need to learn, you need to create a relationship with your body,

00:24:36.000 | and you need the help of teachers.

00:24:41.000 | There is only--you know, a lot of people say, "I'll do it myself."

00:24:46.000 | Then you deny collective knowledge, the most powerful knowledge that mankind holds,

00:24:51.000 | you know, because we're the only animal that have collective knowledge.

00:24:55.000 | We've been able to move knowledge across generations,

00:24:58.000 | and that's how we have reached space, build the Internet, you know,

00:25:04.000 | do all these crazy surgeries, and, you know, solve, you know, genetic issues, et cetera.

00:25:11.000 | You're not going to do it by yourself.

00:25:14.000 | You are just one small person,

00:25:17.000 | and we have collected knowledge generations upon generations.

00:25:21.000 | So listen to your body.

00:25:23.000 | That's nice to say.

00:25:25.000 | Most people don't hear shit.

00:25:27.000 | It's completely silent,

00:25:29.000 | and you need to start to decipher the signals that the body gives you,

00:25:34.000 | and that goes through practice and learning discipleship

00:25:39.000 | and exploring a lot of different stuff, and it's a highly individual thing.

00:25:44.000 | Nowadays, we don't have so much anymore this mentor-student or teacher-disciple relationship,

00:25:53.000 | but I really believe in that.

00:25:55.000 | I wouldn't be here without my mentors and my teachers,

00:25:59.000 | the shoulders of giants that lifted me up.

00:26:02.000 | I still believe in it in a way.

00:26:05.000 | There is no other way.

00:26:07.000 | On that, do you think that training and learning movement,

00:26:11.000 | for the majority of the time, is a fundamentally solitary activity,

00:26:17.000 | or do we gain from, like, the presence of others?

00:26:22.000 | So when you think of movement when you're training,

00:26:26.000 | is most of your training, like the repetitions, done alone or with others?

00:26:31.000 | Both.

00:26:33.000 | I've trained years, you know, alone and with my students,

00:26:37.000 | and I spend large periods of time alone, just training alone,

00:26:42.000 | but I also spend a lot of time being in a community,

00:26:46.000 | and movement is the best reason for gathering around in a community.

00:26:52.000 | You know, people, for example, nowadays, they go do CrossFit or they do yoga or whatever,

00:26:57.000 | and then they have their yoga friends and they have their real friends.

00:27:01.000 | That's bullshit, you know?

00:27:03.000 | Your yoga friends can't be your real friends,

00:27:05.000 | because we've been gathering around movement since the age of time,

00:27:10.000 | creating communities around movement, around hunting, gathering, dancing around the fire.

00:27:15.000 | We've been moving together.

00:27:17.000 | Nowadays, I can recommend move with your loved ones, move with the people around you.

00:27:22.000 | You know, you join a BJJ club, it's a community.

00:27:26.000 | You know, you go there, you meet, you move around.

00:27:29.000 | You go to a capoeira club, it's a tribe.

00:27:32.000 | You go to a CrossFit gym, it's a community.

00:27:35.000 | You go to yoga, it's a community.

00:27:37.000 | You can move with your children, you can move with your dog in the park.

00:27:42.000 | I think it's important to move together, but it can also be done alone,

00:27:46.000 | and some things are better done alone, and some things are better done together.

00:27:51.000 | How do you think movement changes from solo movement,

00:27:57.000 | you know, that whole pattern of movement where you're moving alone,

00:28:00.000 | versus the pattern of movement where there's two people,

00:28:03.000 | either working together or against each other?

00:28:05.000 | So together is like dancing, partner dancing,

00:28:08.000 | and against each other is like wrestling or jiu-jitsu.

00:28:11.000 | Do you think the principles of movement are different

00:28:15.000 | for when it's two people versus one person?

00:28:18.000 | Is this a whole other world?

00:28:20.000 | First, I spend more time moving with others against others in martial arts

00:28:26.000 | because I spend most of my life in martial arts,

00:28:28.000 | and less time exploring stuff alone.

00:28:31.000 | But definitely there are some concepts that still exist,

00:28:35.000 | like the quality of movement, how you organize your body in space,

00:28:41.000 | not in relation to the partner only,

00:28:44.000 | but first a BJJ practitioner or a stand-up fighter,

00:28:49.000 | he needs to organize his body in relation to space first,

00:28:52.000 | and then in relation to the partner as well.

00:28:55.000 | So some of the concepts exist in both, while others are very different,

00:29:00.000 | and you can train alone all your life,

00:29:04.000 | when somebody else is in the equation, it's going to change the game completely.

00:29:08.000 | A major reason why we are under the fight laboratory,

00:29:13.000 | we've departed in reality from a lot of traditional martial arts,

00:29:18.000 | and the delusions of training alone and doing forms,

00:29:22.000 | and repetitive movements alone,

00:29:26.000 | and then it's a shitstorm.

00:29:29.000 | You can't apply anything, and you don't have any live practice.

00:29:34.000 | And now we see that definitely in the fight game.

00:29:38.000 | The practices that stayed very real, stayed very dirty in a way, but very real,

00:29:44.000 | they are the ones who are providing tools for the chaotic environment of a fight.

00:29:50.000 | In terms of injury, how do you treat, recover, and work around injury?

00:29:58.000 | Injuries are a certainty, they're not a probability.

00:30:06.000 | Injuries and diseases, they are also required.

00:30:12.000 | As Nassim Taleb, one of my biggest inspirations these days, a great philosopher,

00:30:18.000 | in order to anti-fragilize, to become anti-fragile, to become robust,

00:30:24.000 | to become more than resilient, you must be able to enjoy volatility.

00:30:30.000 | You must be able to grow from this stuff.

00:30:34.000 | First, I said it before and I'll say it again, I injure my students.

00:30:40.000 | This happens, and I can't do anything beneficial without it.

00:30:46.000 | Basically, we all get injured constantly,

00:30:50.000 | on a micro-level, on a macro-level, it's part of our lives.

00:30:54.000 | Of course, we don't want to push into meaningless injury,

00:30:59.000 | and we want to be able to grow from it and basically develop from it.

00:31:05.000 | How do you train around it?

00:31:07.000 | How do you train around it? It's a hard question.

00:31:11.000 | It involves a lot of stuff.

00:31:13.000 | First, I'm a big believer in movement as a therapeutic tool.

00:31:17.000 | Movement itself, if it offers you adaptation, and it does,

00:31:21.000 | it's the way out, not lack of movement.

00:31:24.000 | Rest, I don't believe in rest. I believe in moving.

00:31:28.000 | Which means, when I'm resting, I might help on the short term

00:31:34.000 | with certain aspects of the injury, but at the same time,

00:31:38.000 | I'm creating a new problem because the adaptive process is taking me somewhere else.

00:31:43.000 | I'm not recovering towards movement, I'm recovering towards no movement.

00:31:47.000 | So, we have a problem here.

00:31:50.000 | Now, in some cases, you must rest, and then deal with the consequences later.

00:31:56.000 | But in most cases, there is a better approach than just resting,

00:32:01.000 | and that requires a lot more taking responsibility,

00:32:06.000 | which doctors don't believe in your ability to take responsibility for yourself.

00:32:11.000 | To be intelligent, and to know the amounts and the levels,

00:32:16.000 | and that requires some form of knowledge and experience,

00:32:21.000 | and most people can't be trusted with it, so we offer them this advice of just rest.

00:32:26.000 | Rest, stop.

00:32:28.000 | But definitely, after years and years of working with people,

00:32:33.000 | and taking them through crazy injuries,

00:32:36.000 | my right hand, Odelia, she went through a car accident,

00:32:40.000 | she lost a kidney, she broke her back, she went through three knee surgeries,

00:32:44.000 | which my sister performed, by the way.

00:32:47.000 | Nowadays, she can move like few people I know on this planet,

00:32:51.000 | and just the answer was always movement, movement, going back into movement.

00:32:58.000 | Beautiful. Continue, move.

00:33:01.000 | Continue to move, yeah. Don't move stupidly, don't hurt yourself.

00:33:05.000 | But that's obvious, no? I guess not, because when I say these things,

00:33:09.000 | people write a fucking comment.

00:33:11.000 | The bot, the bot people, you know, "Yeah, bot, you're going to injure yourself."

00:33:15.000 | Yeah, genius.

00:33:18.000 | Don't go into the injury and again, deteriorate, escalate the situation.

00:33:25.000 | Of course not. You must move around it,

00:33:28.000 | and you must be smart in the way that you allow adaptation to take you out like a wave.

00:33:34.000 | You need to ride the wave of adaptation out of the problem.

00:33:38.000 | And that's tricky, we know, and that's something that we need to educate people on,

00:33:44.000 | and we need to believe in people's intelligence and ability to take this responsibility.

00:33:49.000 | In China, they still have in some areas, and they used to have bone setters.

00:33:55.000 | They didn't put you in a cast.

00:33:57.000 | You broke your hand or they did it through bone setting.

00:34:01.000 | And yeah, they didn't have x-ray.

00:34:03.000 | So that's a lot more complex to do and not as successful as nowadays.

00:34:09.000 | But having said that, they did achieve amazing rates of recovery

00:34:16.000 | because these reps that they use and the process allows some form of movement.

00:34:24.000 | And that creates an adaptation.

00:34:26.000 | Now take an arm, a healthy arm, your right arm, put it in a cast for six months.

00:34:33.000 | Take down the cast. What do you see?

00:34:35.000 | The opposite of that.

00:34:36.000 | The arm is basically moving towards death.

00:34:40.000 | Yes, it's gotten good at not moving.

00:34:42.000 | The arm is gray. You have weird hairs growing out of it.

00:34:47.000 | It stinks. It really smells and looks like death because movement is life.

00:34:53.000 | No movement, death.

00:34:55.000 | We know that.

00:34:57.000 | We like to just kill your arm a tiny bit so the bones can reform together

00:35:05.000 | and then we'll bring it back to life.

00:35:07.000 | That's one approach.

00:35:08.000 | But in other cases, you can maintain the life and the demands on the tissue safely enough

00:35:16.000 | at the same time allow the recovery to happen.

00:35:19.000 | Yes.

00:35:21.000 | And diet.

00:35:22.000 | What are some diet principles you follow?

00:35:25.000 | Well, diet is a very individual thing.

00:35:28.000 | I've been personally following a Paleolithic, a caveman diet for a long time,

00:35:34.000 | long before it was called the Paleo diet and since 1997 or even '96.

00:35:42.000 | I've been doing this for a long time.

00:35:45.000 | I feel great on it.

00:35:47.000 | Still growing older and older and functioning only better and being able to sustain, maintain, improve.

00:35:56.000 | But diet is very, very individual.

00:35:59.000 | There is a lot of exploration to be done there.

00:36:01.000 | What you can withstand, how resilient is your system.

00:36:06.000 | Nowadays, there is a new movement towards not improving the fuel sources,

00:36:12.000 | not improving the quality and the quantities of the food,

00:36:17.000 | but actually making the system more resilient.

00:36:21.000 | So it's able to basically withstand almost any quality and source.

00:36:28.000 | And that's where we have been lacking.

00:36:32.000 | And we've been neglecting this area.

00:36:35.000 | And that's something that I believe is the latest innovation,

00:36:40.000 | although it's still highly misunderstood.

00:36:43.000 | And a lot of folks are abusing this concept and giving really poor advice just to be different,

00:36:51.000 | just to say, "I'm not the Paleo guy."

00:36:55.000 | So that's a small addition that will get bigger and bigger, I think.

00:37:00.000 | So it's almost like how you recommend in movement to go outside of "proper alignment."

00:37:08.000 | The diet version of that is going outside of some kind of proper framework of diet.

00:37:14.000 | To some level, but that was an obvious thing, you know, always.

00:37:20.000 | The problem is it's not enough because it's more what I'm suggesting with movement,

00:37:27.000 | to go outside of "proper alignment," it creates an adaptation.

00:37:31.000 | But what if that adaptation cannot happen?

00:37:34.000 | For example, a celiac disease person, you'll expose him to gluten,

00:37:40.000 | and he'll have terrible consequences.

00:37:43.000 | Now, maybe if you can minimize enough the amounts and the dosages,

00:37:48.000 | you can actually train him out of celiac to some level.

00:37:52.000 | But that adaptation is not going to last very far down the road.

00:37:57.000 | He's going to get some gains, and then he's going to plateau.

00:38:00.000 | But what if you could take that celiac disease person, put him in the garage,

00:38:06.000 | fix his mechanisms, change his tires, change his engine, you know, oil him up, everything,

00:38:14.000 | and then put him back on the track as a new animal?

00:38:18.000 | And that is where a lot of stuff is happening nowadays.

00:38:23.000 | So the genetic part of it and the gut biome, our digestive tract that is so, so complex,

00:38:34.000 | and we discover that, you know, we live in symbiosis with all these microorganisms

00:38:40.000 | that just are all over our skin inside of us, and we live in combination with them.

00:38:46.000 | And that's how you see some dudes in Brazil and in Russia

00:38:50.000 | walking around with, you know, 5% body fat, eating one cracker for breakfast,

00:38:56.000 | one cracker for dinner, and, you know, training BJJ all day long,

00:39:01.000 | high performance, fueling with Coca-Cola.

00:39:05.000 | And then at the same time, you see people doing everything almost perfectly

00:39:09.000 | and still having poor performance and inability,

00:39:14.000 | and they gain weight with any, you know, extra calorie or macronutrient they brought in

00:39:20.000 | because their system is different.

00:39:23.000 | And it's not only about genetics.

00:39:26.000 | It's more about epigenetics, and it's more about what kind of system,

00:39:33.000 | besides your own DNA, what about these organisms that are supposed to help you

00:39:40.000 | and live in symbiosis with you, what kind of a system do you have there?

00:39:44.000 | And that's just two areas, and I think it's going to expand more and more and more,

00:39:50.000 | and we're going to realize that there is a lot to learn there.

00:39:54.000 | Do you think technology and science is ultimately a positive force for--

00:39:59.000 | you know, you look at movement as an element of our humanity.

00:40:05.000 | Do you think technology is taking humanity away or is adding to it?

00:40:12.000 | I'm not smart enough to answer you that, man.

00:40:15.000 | Yeah, it's a big question.

00:40:17.000 | You know, I have no idea.

00:40:19.000 | It's just--it's a huge question, and I think we're going to struggle with that question

00:40:25.000 | for many generations to come still.

00:40:28.000 | It's definitely created a lot of positive stuff,

00:40:31.000 | but it's also brought tremendous suffering and problems,

00:40:36.000 | and perhaps will be the end of us.

00:40:40.000 | So technology might have been the most terrible thing that ever happened to us.

00:40:46.000 | Who knows?

00:40:48.000 | Yes, on that beautiful note, how can people join the Ido Portal movement?

00:40:54.000 | Do you have a website, idoportal.com?

00:40:56.000 | Yeah, idoportal.com.

00:41:00.000 | We are on Facebook.

00:41:02.000 | You can find us on Facebook, the Ido Portal Method, Ido Portal, IDOPORTAL.

00:41:11.000 | You can join the movement culture on our website,

00:41:15.000 | and that will lead to some updates coming up soon.

00:41:19.000 | You have a beautiful website, by the way, amazing website.

00:41:22.000 | Thank you very much.

00:41:23.000 | Thank you very much.

00:41:25.000 | I've been very fortunate to have a great team around me that helped me with that.

00:41:31.000 | I saw that you posted a couple of Tom Waits songs,

00:41:34.000 | and even a Bukowski reference on your Facebook page,

00:41:38.000 | and I immediately understood something that I think only another fan

00:41:43.000 | or maybe I should say student of Waits and Bukowski can understand.

00:41:48.000 | You don't shy away from the strange and the profound, wherever you can find it.

00:41:53.000 | Maybe that's one way to put it.

00:41:55.000 | Is there a Tom Waits song that you find yourself returning to often in your life?

00:42:00.000 | So many, man, so many.

00:42:04.000 | It's just--Tom Waits, I can barely listen to anything else, frankly.

00:42:09.000 | It's been a real issue, and Tom Waits, his discography,

00:42:14.000 | it's a lifetime of discoveries.

00:42:19.000 | It's been accompanying me for years now.

00:42:21.000 | It's not something you go through very quickly.

00:42:25.000 | I've spent a lot of time on Alice, for example, and yeah,

00:42:31.000 | just so much stuff, so much stuff you always discover.

00:42:34.000 | Also, I find that this weirdness, this eccentric part of things,

00:42:42.000 | it's so important.

00:42:43.000 | It's the only thing, really, that can be you in many ways

00:42:49.000 | because as a culture, we're so bland.

00:42:52.000 | We're becoming this one thing.

00:42:55.000 | You walk around in London, it looks exactly like Hong Kong.

00:42:58.000 | It looks exactly like Tokyo.

00:43:00.000 | It looks exactly like Sydney.

00:43:03.000 | We have this huge human thing going on, which is great,

00:43:08.000 | and we communicate very easily, but then we lost a lot on our own stuff.

00:43:14.000 | There is only one Tom Waits because of his eccentric part

00:43:18.000 | and because of his weird genius, and that's why it's so beautiful to me.

00:43:24.000 | I try not to shy away from my own eccentric side.

00:43:28.000 | When I was younger, I definitely hid that part more and guarded

00:43:33.000 | and tried to fit in, but that's definitely an important thing, I think.

00:43:39.000 | So you recommend we cultivate the weird.

00:43:42.000 | Yeah, cultivating the weird is cultivating yourself

00:43:45.000 | because that's truly you.

00:43:48.000 | Everybody's weird.

00:43:50.000 | Everybody.

00:43:51.000 | There is no Homer Simpson.

00:43:54.000 | Everybody has this part.

00:43:56.000 | Everybody has this interesting stuff.

00:43:59.000 | That's what also interests me when I teach.

00:44:01.000 | I want to see that weird.

00:44:03.000 | I want to see that weird in your movement.

00:44:06.000 | I want to see that weird in you, and then I really met you,

00:44:10.000 | but most people, they hide it, and they don't allow--

00:44:13.000 | and they put this perfect picture, but it's--

00:44:17.000 | I'm not stupid.

00:44:18.000 | I know it's not perfect, you know?

00:44:20.000 | So just allow the weirdness to come out.

00:44:23.000 | I think it's a great lesson from Waits and Bukowski as well.

00:44:28.000 | So if you don't mind, I'm going to torture you with something.

00:44:31.000 | I would like to close by reading a Bukowski poem, "Roll the Dice,"

00:44:36.000 | and I'm going to force you to listen to it.

00:44:38.000 | Go ahead.

00:44:40.000 | If you're going to try, go all the way.

00:44:43.000 | Otherwise, don't even start.

00:44:45.000 | This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs, maybe your mind.

00:44:50.000 | It could mean not eating for three or four days.

00:44:53.000 | It could mean freezing on a park bench.

00:44:55.000 | It could mean jail.

00:44:56.000 | It could mean derision.

00:44:58.000 | It could mean mockery, isolation.

00:45:00.000 | Isolation is the gift.

00:45:03.000 | All the others are a test of your endurance,

00:45:05.000 | of how much you really want to do it, and you'll do it,

00:45:09.000 | despite rejection and the worst odds,

00:45:11.000 | and it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

00:45:14.000 | If you're going to try, go all the way.

00:45:17.000 | There's no other feeling like that.

00:45:19.000 | You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.

00:45:23.000 | You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.

00:45:26.000 | It's the only good fight there is.

00:45:29.000 | Amen.

00:45:30.000 | Thanks, Ido. Thanks for talking to me, man.

00:45:31.000 | Thank you so much, man.

00:45:32.000 | Appreciate it.

Ido Portal: Movement

Chapters