NBS #127: He Went From 300 lbs to Training Athletes — What He Learned About Health

Why do so many people feel tired, inflamed, and disconnected from their health… even when they’re trying to do everything right?

In this episode of the Never Been Sicker, Michael Rubino sits down with longevity coach and personal trainer Ruben to break down the real reasons behind declining health in modern society.

From spending too much time indoors under artificial light to losing connection with movement, nature, and recovery, this conversation uncovers how our environment and lifestyle are quietly working against us.

Ruben shares his personal story of going from 300 pounds and struggling with addiction to becoming a high-performance coach helping others reclaim their energy, strength, and purpose.

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
01:10 Ruben’s transformation (300 lbs to athlete)
03:00 Why we’ve never been sicker
04:30 Modern lifestyle vs human biology
06:00 Biggest fitness myth
08:30 Injury, fear, and setbacks
11:00 The “knees over toes” breakthrough
14:00 Why pain keeps getting worse
17:00 How movement replaces bad habits
19:00 Dopamine, addiction, and lifestyle
21:30 Sedentary work reality
23:30 How to start moving again
25:00 Diet vs movement debate
26:30 Sunlight, metabolism, and hunger
28:30 The truth about abs
31:00 Strength vs body fat
32:00 Why “no pain, no gain” is wrong
33:30 Where to find Ruben

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🔵 Follow Ruben:
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@physicalfreedomguy
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physicalfreedomguy 

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Learn More:
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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I hate Brock Pum. I'm with 300 Penins. I'm Mr. Premise. Um is escaping reality through alcohol home on different devices. My name is Michael Rubino.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

I'm on a personal mission to make sure you don't get sick inside your own home.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I knew there was something wrong. I just don't believe there's something that you can do about it.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Never Been Sicker. I'm your host, indoor air quality expert, Michael Rubino. And today's very special guest is Ruben. Ruben, thank you for taking time out of your busy day to be here with us.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

So can you share a little bit about who you are and what you do, first off?

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Sure. So primarily I'm a personal trainer, but I like to think of myself as an athletic longevity coach. I help my clients gain the greatest um resource that we have, is which is more time, right? More quality time in our lives. And my purpose is to help families um reconnect with their bodies, reconnect with nature, and really just have better quality of life overall.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

That's amazing. Yeah, and I did get a chance to uh experience your program today. And I can certainly feel more life after that.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

Really? That's awesome, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Totally. Happy to hear that. Yeah, everything was flowing really good. I felt the circulation improve like almost instantly. And uh definitely I'll be checking your stuff out for more uh for more of that. Beautiful. Excited. So tell us how you got into this. I mean, you did you just wake up one day and you know, say you wanted to be a longevity coach, or did you what tell me about your story?

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Yeah, I got the fitness bug and just got right into it. No, um I hit rock bottom, right? I was 300 pounds, I was depressed. Um, I was escaping reality through alcohol and uh different vices. And I got to the point where I was like, okay, enough was enough. Um so I started with small things, you know, like the first thing that I started doing was cooking, um, started feeling better, then got back into the gym and training. And I had a lot of errors. Uh, I made a ton of mistakes. I was injured a lot, and that led me to figuring out how to avoid injuries, how to um start improving my health. And I'm really thankful that I've gone through the journey that I did because I learned a lot on the way. Um, just a lot of experimenting, a lot of mentorship uh has led me to the point where I feel confident now helping people to improve their health. Because I lost a hundred pounds. I um started training to the point where I was uh competing in martial arts competitions. I completely, you know, losing the hundred pounds completely changed my life because I felt so much better that I was able to then start questioning other things and that led me down many rabbit holes um to find out more truth about health. Um, because a lot of what we've learned from health and fitness is somewhat um incentivized by commercial interests, and that has led people to in in institutions even to the point where we're um kind of lost because we've never been sicker, as the name of the podcast says. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Yeah. Well, I mean, you you brought up really two amazing points that I definitely want to touch on. You know, first off, the podcast is called Never Been Sicker, as you just mentioned. You know, and why do you think that is? Why do you think we've never been sicker than we are today?

SPEAKER_03 3:13

It's harder where to start, but I think, you know, we were we evolved as hunter-gatherers, uh, depending on what you believe about history. But we're for the most part, from what I understand, we're evolved as hunter-gatherers. So we spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun, moving, gathering our food and things like that from nature, is being directly connected to the things that um gave us substance, right? Now we're completely the opposite. We're always indoors as you know, you're you're an indoor uh air specialist, which is very important. Um, and we can definitely touch on that later because I think there's a lot of connection between what we do. But we spent a lot of time indoors under fluorescent LED lights as we are right now. And a lot of the signals that we evolved with, we're no longer being exposed to it as much unless you go out of your way to do so. And that is leading to a big decline in our health because uh it's throwing off our circadian rhythm. It is throwing off our hormonal health because that depends on the circadian rhythm. Um, it is just leading us down making decisions, like spiritually, even is leading us towards making decisions where um we're taking the easy route way more often because we're trying to we're doing a lot of instant gratification because we're trying, we're desperate to find uh more dopamine, more feel-good neurotransmitters that we generally get when we're out in nature, getting sunlight. And our body is not getting those inputs, so we're constantly looking for things that are going to sustain us, like clicks on the screen and fast food, things like that. And not only does the lack of nature and sunlight and all these other aspects that we're gonna get into, not only does that change the way that we're um choosing to get these feel-good chemicals, it also destroys like your body's mechanism for uh digesting the energy that you're taking in, right? So your blood insulin spikes, whenever you're constantly under these LED blue lights, you are going to then store fat because you're not getting your energy from lights, you're not getting your energy from the from the earth. And that leads to you having to take in more energy through calories. And so all of that compounding is causing a spike in obesity. Um, and all this in total is misaligning us to the point where we are finding a lot more chronic illness and disease in today's world, today's society. And it's not just in the United States, it's really worldwide, um, especially as Western culture expands, which is um, you know, it is a thing of like beauty that we're we have so much convenience in today's world and we're able to do so much work because of it. And technology is amazing, but at the same time, there's some things that we're now realizing are greatly affecting our health and our ability to connect with each other because it affects our emotional state, right? Anything that's affects the physical also affects the mind and the and the spirit. So because this is our vessel, this is the way we interface with physical reality, it not only affects the physical, it affects everything else.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

You also mentioned, obviously, that there's a lot of you know, BS essentially that you had to sift through uh in the overall wellness category, especially in the physical training and things of that nature. What is the biggest lie that you've really uncovered as you've done your own research and have developed your process and program?

SPEAKER_03 6:29

So the biggest lie that affected me, honestly, was don't train your lower back. Um, and when I went into the martial arts arts world, I grew up uh doing Taekwondo in high school. I did cross country, I did many different sports. When I got to college, um, I injured my lower back. I had a herniated disc in my L1S5, and it, I mean, I basically like felt like I couldn't move. I walked around crooked for like four weeks until I decided that I was gonna get it looked at. And when I did, the doctor told me that I wasn't gonna be able to lift weights again. And it kind of put a fear in me, instilled a feeling, a fear in me of like movement. So I stopped working out and stopped getting as much movement. And so then that led to not going outside as often. And obviously it was my choice because you ultimately have the power to do whatever you want in life, regardless of the situations. But the mindset I was in, I just kept spiraling down and I started going down the route of partying and um you know, sleeping around and doing all these things that in college uh just kind of led to me gaining a ton of weight. So I got to the point where the scale hit 305, and that was part of hitting rock bottom. But when I tried to get back into sports, I just kept getting injured because I was completely avoiding training my lower back. So things weren't getting better, you know? And I as I kept trying to go back to doing the things I was doing in high school and the way I lifted in high school, uh, it just made things worse because I was getting tighter, I was getting weaker in my back, and that just led to more pain, right? So I understand now that pain is a signal from your body. It's telling you that there could be potentially something wrong here, um, and that the demand that you're exceeding from your body exceeds the level of ability that you currently have. And my ability was only getting less and less, and I was increasing the demand. So I was getting into more and more pain. Eventually, that solution led me to going down the rabbit hole of mobility. And I all I did was like stretching. Um, I got back into martial arts and just kept, you know, pushing through pain, going through things, but I somehow still lost the weight because I started cooking. I started changing a few different habits. I started really prioritizing my sleep. I researched as much as I possibly could doing podcasts. Actually, Joe Rogan's podcast was one of the first ones that really enticed me to like, okay, take ownership over everything. Jocko Willink, um, all these stereotypical motivational speakers actually helped me a lot because I would listen to these podcasts constantly and I would take in this information and be like, okay, let me do my own research on that. And then I uh eventually hired a coach who guided me a little bit better, lost the weights, started getting into martial arts. And at one point I had lost um, I went from 300 to 200. And my crew, which is um Thai instructor, Muay Thai instructor, I was doing Muay Thai at the time. He wanted me to lose another 20 pounds so that I would um be able to compete in a Muay Thai competition for my height. He's he thought 180 was a good weight. So I had to lose another 20 pounds, and I was just running and trying to figure out a way to lose weight, and that led to knee pain. And this knee pain solutions online at the time were like just rest, ice, elevate. Um, I couldn't rest. I just did a ton of icing and elevating, and it wasn't going anywhere. So I kept looking to find a way out of it, and that led me to finding knees over toes guy on YouTube, uh, Ben Patrick, who has an amazing story. And I would venture, you should totally have him on your podcast because he's a prominent member of the Clearwater community. Um, and he's a part of the reason why I moved down here, and we can get into that as well. But he had his story of um running into knee pain at the age of 12, even, because he was wanted to be a pro basketball player. He worked so hard, but he didn't have the knowledge that he does now. He worked so hard that he rubbed his knees, were the those of like a 70-year-old man by the time he was 19, and he had to have three knee surgeries on his left uh knee, completely reconstructed as ACL. He was trying to find a solution so desperately that he found Charles Pollaquin's work. Charles Pollaquin is the one of the is known as one of the greatest personal trainers of all time. He is the most meddled U.S. Olympic coach of all time, and he has inspired many different generations of trainers, of strength and conditioning coaches. So Ben started learning from Charles Pollaquin some of the things that he would use to help his Olympic athletes stay in the game and improve performance. And through learning his methods, Ben was able to um improve his ability to where he was now being sought out by tons of colleges. And he was uh doing this very controversial thing, this putting your knees over your toes, which is another thing that they tell you not to do in fitness. He figured out a way to scale the movements with the knees over the toes to the point where he is now freaky strong knees, but he had to start from the point where he was very frail and weak. And that led him to develop a system of a gradient scale for these movements that allows him to train people in the 70s, 80s and get amazing results in restoring their range of motion, strength, and ability. Then he started, he had a gym here in Clearwater. He was training athletes from all over the country and lots of um local people. Uh, I still talk to people that are like, oh, I remember when the ATG gym was here. And then 2020 came around, it shut down his um facility, and the government shut down his facility, and he actually ended up selling it and going online. When he went online, he pretty much immediately went viral. And he he's very hard worker, makes awesome content, and is very educational on it with a positive attitude. And he uh started making stuff, um, started going viral, started uh seeing him everywhere. And I ran on to his content on YouTube and I was like, this guy is like doing like a uh sissy squat into a reverse snordic and getting back up and dunking. And I'm like, dude, I want to learn how to do that. I was like, this is cool stuff. He's telling his story about how he had three knee surgeries and all that. So I'm like, okay, let me try this stuff out. So I would go every day early to Y Thai class beforehand, and I would do this routine, it's called knee ability zero, where you do the movements without any equipment, and he shows you how to scale those in progression. And I started getting results almost immediately. Like three weeks in, I was my knee pain was gone, and I was uh getting more flexible like I've never done before. Uh, even though I was doing mobility for so long, I was like exponentially getting more flexible, which I thought was crazy. And um, my teammates started noticing, and so I started kind of showing them some of this, and I ended up winning the tournament that I was um the first tournament that I ever did, and I was like immediately hooked. I was like, okay, this stuff works. Like, how do I learn more? I realized he had a coaching certification. And because I was helping people already, I was like, maybe I should try out, you know, doing the personal trainer thing. At the time, I was working in an office, I was um one name the company, but I was a claims insurance agency, I was uh working for a claims insurance agency that outs where hospitals outsource hard to work claims to them. And I was just bored in a cubicle all day. And I was like, man, this personal training thing sounds sounds like fun. I mean, I already do it for fun. Uh, let me give it a shot. So I quit that job and I became a sign hanger. I was hanging billboards, and I did that because I didn't want to touch a computer after being at a desk all day. Went out while I was doing that. I did that for four years, I lost 100 pounds. So I learned how you can work in an office and what you have to do in order to lose the weight while still doing all that. So that proved helpful later in the future. But uh, so anyway, so I was sign hanging while getting my certifications, while getting some experience in and training people out of my backyard. And uh eventually I got enough experience to where I could work at a gym. And from there, I just kind of went personal trainer full-time. So I've been personal trainer full time for about four and a half years now. Um, I've been training clients for about six and a half total. And what I've what I've found is there are many things in fitness that are, I wouldn't say myths, but just you know, misconceptions. And it's totally understandable. For example, the knees over toes thing originated in the 70s. There was a Duke University study that said that when you put your knees over your toes, you're putting more pressure on the knee and the patellar tendon. And that's true, but there were never any studies that said that it was necessarily bad for your knees. When people saw that information, the approach was actually avoiding putting your knee over your toe. And what that led to was a loss of ability with the knees over the toes. Now, try going down the stairs without putting your knees over your toes. It's probably pretty hard, right? Like you kind of have to do it. So you you this is a position that you encounter in everyday life. And because we still encounter it, but we avoided training it. Um, the ability over the generations has just been lost. And what that's led to is an epidemic of ACL tears, of knee pain surgeries, and a very profitable business for you know the orthopedic world. And it's it's just been misguided. It's not, it was just a misunderstanding. Uh, Ben has been has done an amazing job at popularizing the system that he has that allows people to progressively scale that ability. Because if you just take somebody, you know, random off the street with knee pain and you tell them, like, oh, all you need to do is squat down, they might try to do that with weights, they might not have the guidance or the knowledge to start doing it progressively. So his system has actually helped tons of people regain that ability to sit in a deep squat, for example, or to uh kneel down to play with their kids. And um, it's been, he's found it very rewarding. I found it very rewarding as one of his um coaches. He's actually has a network of coaches globally that's that has learned the system and is now getting great results with clients. So there's tons of anecdotal stories and it's kind of helped to change the narrative for that. There are other areas such as rounding the back that are still somewhat controversial. But he's also shown with his system, because it has movements that do that, that um as you increase your level of ability, your body can actually, because you're gonna do this, like let's say martial arts, for example, in wrestling, you're gonna end up rounding your back. Um, so when you do that at a level that your body can handle and recover from, you're able to then um greatly increase your ability to do that without getting hurt. So these are examples. Another one would be not letting your shoulders go like on push-ups or dips, like not letting your shoulders go below parallel. That's another big one that I that I have trouble with because again, you can if you start light, you might have to lower the weight. You can actually ink you can actually improve your ability there. And training through that full range of motion not only strengthens the muscles, but also the tendons and and connective tissue there. Um, because it places the load that the when you go below parallel, it places the load on those tissues so they adapt. So your your tendons, your connective tissues can also make gains. And that is not necessarily something that's controversial, it's something that's well known, but somehow it still gets a lot of hate.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Tell me about how exercise has really helped you in terms of ditching the vices, right? You mentioned earlier how you know you kind of um developed some vices along the way, hit that rock bottom, gained all this weight. And obviously, since you've had this massive positive mindset shift, um, you know, uh tell tell me about how that was able to help you kind of shed your vices and become who you really truly are.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Well, looking back, I I understand why. Back then I had no clue. I was kind of giving those things power over me, right? Alcohol. Uh, I was like, oh, I'm I'm an alcoholic. That you all start identifying with the thing, right? Or I have bad knees. You start identifying with these things that are that are going on. Um you're you're giving them power over you. I realized that I was just trying to fill a hole, which at the time I didn't know was my purpose, or finding something that I enjoyed doing, a profession that I enjoyed doing. That that's one aspect of it. The other one is at a neurological level, as I mentioned, the sun helps gives you endorphins, gives you dopamine. Um, it provides you with these things that your body needs because you're giving it what it needs. Movement is another one of those, right? We're emotional beings, energy and in motion, right? So you we release energy through that, through movement, whether it's dancing, any type of activity. We see that in animals as well, right? They're emotional beings. You see dogs when they get happy, they start running around, or even cows, for example. So when I started getting the things that my body needed, I realized I didn't have to fill it with the other devices that I was doing, right? Fried foods, um, porn, alcohol, all these things that it's like easy dopamine hits. So that was a big part of it neurologically. Um, spiritually, I think finding my purpose definitely helped because it's like now I have a reason to get up in the morning that I want to do this, as opposed to like, oh, I gotta go to school, I gotta go to work, I gotta get in my little cubicle and sit there all day and work these claims and teach older people how to use the XL, you know, like things like that. It's like it wasn't my calling, and I had to really just connect with what I was passionate about and reconnect with it really, because I did it as a kid and I was healthy then, and then I stopped doing it um because of pain, but also because I made the choice to do so to avoid what um was causing the pain. And a lot of times I read this book called The Obstacle is the way, and in this book he explains how the Stoics thought, you know, Marcus, Aurelius, the the Greeks, the Romans thought that um doing whatever problem you have, actually solving it is what's gonna get you through to the next stage of like finding who you are. And I did that. And I think that's a big part of it, you know, why I went from living in escapism and not being able to face reality, having to find something that allowed me to escape it, to living in the present moment and um finding what I love and actually being being able to be of service to people. I think that's a really big thing, is we're here to be of service, and when you don't have something that you enjoy doing, that can lead to wanting to escape the reality that you live in.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Sure. I totally get that. What do you say for people who have a purpose, but their purpose is very sedentary? How do how do you encourage people to get out of this sedentary lifestyle and move?

SPEAKER_03 21:07

I honestly think my own purpose is very sedentary. I don't I spend a lot of the time programming, I spend a lot of time training clients. I have to make time to take care of my own body. And I think that you're gonna be better at your purpose, even if it's a sedentary one, if you take the time to exercise to take care of your vessel, because everything stems from your health, your mental health, your emotional health, your spiritual health, a lot of that is affected by the physical as well. So if you take care of the physical, everything else will align because you're you're loving yourself, right? Um discipline is something that people have created as a concept and they're actually scared of that word, you know, because it's like, oh, I have to be disciplined. It's like, no, you you get to be disciplined, you get to you. If you think about it as like discipline is love for yourself, and you reframe that, it's like you get to be disciplined because you love yourself, and because you want what's best for you, you need to take care of these needs to move, to get into nature of these needs to be a little uncomfortable sometimes, because that that really is what it takes. Um, is being being okay with being uncomfortable and allowing that to expand um your tolerance for things. Because the hardest things that you do in the day is your baseline, right? If something bad happens to you and um that's the worst thing that happened to you all day, you're gonna be like, you know, you're gonna be really emotional about it. But if you put yourself through voluntary self-sacrifice of a workout or a long hike or whatever you enjoy doing that you might not want to do in the moment, but then afterwards it makes you feel good, that's gonna create a higher baseline for you. So your nervous system is gonna be calmer. You're training your body, your mind to override your body's uh wants because you know what it needs.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Yeah. I mean, I I told you earlier today that, you know, I got to do a better job myself, kind of getting the body moving because I do live a very century lifestyle. I mean, I am pretty much in an office 12 hours a day, running teams, you know, educating, teaching people, um, showing people how to do things properly. And that's obviously very much so in front of screens, getting a ton of blue light in front of meetings with, you know, with people, but we're all sitting and we're kind of going over things. And you get the occasional I'm standing up and writing on a white whiteboard, but other than that, I mean, it's very sedentary. So I think it's really important, you know, what what you shared and really just making sure that you take the time, I think is so important because um I think part of the problem is we don't none of us move quite enough as we should.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Right. Yeah, it's definitely part of the problem. And as I shared with you earlier, I think a little bit goes a long way. You know, like even if you just do, I mean, there's certain recommendations, right? Like it's something like at least three days a week, like all this other stuff. I think even if you just start with 15 minutes a day of walking and that's your gradient, that's great. You're gonna get wins if you start where you're at, right? So if you start walking 15 minutes a day, you might be like, okay, I'm I'm liking the way this is making me feel. You know, you start counting that as a win, then that's gonna motivate you to do a little bit more, right? You might start doing 15 minutes of walking and 15 minutes of strength training. And it doesn't necessarily even have to be every day, but whatever you can negotiate with your mind, you have to conquer that inner voice that's telling you, like, I don't want, I don't want to do this. You know, you have to acknowledge that part of yourself and give that part of yourself love as well so that you can negotiate with it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Now, I've often heard this term, and you have to tell me if this is, you know, uh part of the lie category or not. But, you know, abs are made in the kitchen, right? That's what that's that's the term I've heard before. It's like one of those sayings, right? I don't know if it's true or not, you can tell me, but the reality of the situation, that is that is a saying that gets passed around and it talks about diet. And obviously, diet's uh it's gotta be a part of the equation, right? I mean, you I'm assuming working out, but just consuming nothing but sugar probably wouldn't be the most ideal thing for for somebody to do. So could you explain a little bit about the importance of diet? How do you how how much do you rank diet as as moving higher than diet, as diet higher than moving? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

That's a great question. Probably like that's that's where the truth actually hides, is these type of questions, right? Because yeah, abs are, I would say abs are made in the recovery, right? Not just how you move, but actually how well you recover, like how much you regulate your nervous system. Um, because that has a lot to do with how you process sugars and things like this. What you eat does matter because you are what you eat, and food is in a way condensed sunlight, right? We animals eat plants, plants take in sunlight. So when we eat animals and plants, and sugar comes from a plant, for example. So it's really it's really the quality of that sunlight that matters the most because when your body takes in energy, um, the more energy your body has, the less fat it generally stores, right? But if you if you take in so much energy excess energy, so the calories in, calories out thing really does matter. And it's not necessarily just sugar. There's actually a bad misconception about sugar. But I would venture to say that metabolic health is actually more important even than what you eat, right? And that that goes down to your mitochondria, you know, the powerhouse of the cell and how well your body um absorbs energy again from the sun. If you're getting if you're getting sunlight, you're more satiated than somebody who's not because your body releases GLP1. GLP1 is semi-glutide or azempic, the peptide that people are taking. And when you're getting it naturally, you're gonna feel more satiated. You're gonna tend to eat less of these um foods that are high like that we all crave, right? Like because processed foods that are like generally scientists, like they have literally scientists and food designers that create these foods to be addictive. So when you're more say when your body is more satiated and you have less, you have less of a need for these um quick dopamine foods as well. So yeah, abs are made in the kitchen, but your whole lifestyle affects it as well. And for me personally, I love to eat. And I right now I'm sitting about 15-17% body fat. So I don't have abs right now, and I train the heck out of them and I get them strong, right? But I don't necessarily want abs to show it off, or I don't necessarily train abs to show them off because I know that I could just like lean out if I fasted or like did a caloric restriction diet. I trained abs so that I'm more functional because your your abs, your core uh creates your bracing, right? So this um all this muscle here is like very functional. You need it for balance, you need it for like your lower abs, you need it for picking up your legs so that whenever you get older, you don't shuffle your feet. Um, it's you want to think of it as like most people nowadays are not necessarily overweight, they're under muscled because where muscle is that organ of longevity that you're going to lose as you age. So the more muscle you have, focus on that and your metabolism is going to improve because muscle increases metabolic demand. Um, if you train, if you train your abs, you're gonna have more muscle in your body. So it's like not yeah, abs are made in the kitchen, but you should still train them for functionality. And ultimately, as you build more muscle, you're going to be able to eat more calories without gaining weight. So if you look at it long term, the kitchen matters a lot because it is what you are, what you eat, and you want to have quality foods for that. But if you want to have abs, caloric restriction is the way you would do it. And there are many ways to go about that. Um, I've I've been 6% body fat before. I could send you a picture of that. And what I was doing was just like starving myself, basically. I was fasting. Um, I was trying to make that the weight at 180, right? And I got to the point where I was six percent body fat. And when I got there, I was like, man, I look shredded, amazing. Everybody was like, How are you so lean? Like, can you teach me? I'm like, I'm like, bro, you don't want this. Like, this is difficult. And yeah, I was fit, I was looking good, I was aesthetically pleasing and all that stuff, but I wasn't uh super high energy. I was actually low energy, my libido was low. Uh, it wasn't the healthiest I've ever been. I feel like I'm healthier now than I was when I was 6% body fat. Um, so because I focused so much on abs uh and I was so obsessed with ads, I it actually took a toll on my health. And and I was under muscled. Like I like you can see the pictures, I was not nearly as muscular as I am now. And I felt like for longevity, that was not the case. And a lot, and a lot of anecdotal evidence shows that. Now that's that's my take on it. However, I think you can absolutely be shredded and healthy. Uh, it just takes a lot more effort, right? Generally, men, as long as you're under 20% body fat, like you are already in the top like 5, 10% of men, right? That's not to say that it's a bad thing to have the abs, because I think it's a great goal. I'm I'm actually working towards that as well right now. I'm actually um on a cut. I want to lean out because I got to the point where I was 230 and I'm like, you know, it would be nice to be a little lighter because I want to be more athletic. And when it comes to longevity, you want to optimize your strength to body weight ratio because that makes you more athletic, right? The leaner you are, and uh based on your body weight percentage, like your strength numbers, like for example, you want to squat twice your body weight for like peak athleticism. Of course, this is all optimization stuff. Everybody has different goals, but it makes it a lot easier when you're leaner to squat two percent uh two hundred or excuse me, two times your body weight versus if you are like 20, 30% body fat, um, then it becomes a lot harder because you have that means you have less muscle, you have more dead weight that you're carrying around, and then uh you're less athletic because you move less quickly, right? Your strength to body weight ratio um in certain areas, right? Like your hamstrings, your lower back, your glutes determines how fast you're going to move when you're sprinting and things like that. And it's just a math equation. It's not the only thing because your your fascia, your tendons, uh, your movement quality also matter, but that is what you want to optimize your strength to body weight ratio. And if you focus on that, focus on getting stronger, gaining muscle, you're gonna you're gonna get leaner. But as you said, there is some truth to absorbing the kitchen. The other fitness lie that I want to focus on in this podcast today is no pain, no gain. No pain, no gain is bullshit. Okay. In the sense that if you push through pain, you actually get less gains because your body does not want to allow you to do movements that bring you pain, and then it shuts down that mind and muscle connection because it's trying to protect you. And that leads to loss of strength, loss of muscle. And when people push through like knee pain, lower back pain, shoulder pain, all these things is actually not good for you. So being pain-free actually sets your gains free. So you're able to get stronger, you build more muscle. Uh, and that's why when I tell you, like meeting your body where it's at is where you're gonna get the most, the quickest progress. Because when you push through pain, it just shuts everything down. Your body, uh, you're not communicating with your body, you're trying to almost ignore the pain. And ignorance and avoidance is to hate as what freedom is to love, right? Like the if when you communicate with your body, when you give it that love, when you um take care of it, it gives you more freedom, more ability to do things, more permission to move how you want. Movement is also like one of the most healing things for your body. But if you give a pain, it's like the opposite. Right. If that makes sense, yeah. It's restrictive.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Yeah. So, Ruben, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to be here with us today. Can you share with everybody, you know, where they can find you and uh all the amazing things you're up to?

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Yeah, absolutely, man. So my name on social media is physical freedom guy. I uh you can find me on that way on TikTok, on YouTube, Facebook. Um I am working on creating a school community so I can give more value to the audience. And I have a few different programs for working one-on-one with clients as well as group training. So if you're interested in getting some guidance from me, I'd love to help you out. Uh, I've been through a lot of this stuff myself and I know that it's much easier to get to your goals quicker with a mentor. Yeah, I'm just working on creating more content now. I want to focus on families because I have a newborn son. And I think that helping families to create generational wealth is probably one of the most important things we can do for society. Right now, we're getting sicker and sicker.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

And I think we can turn that curve around with the knowledge that we have because there's so much information out there that when it's harnessed into a positive um purpose, it can greatly help many people. So, and Ben Patrick's doing that. I want to do that as well. I've realized that's my purpose. And social media is one of the greatest opportunities to help people ever, not just make money, right? Like as people create generational wealth, you should also focus on creating generational health because health is wealth and they're sure uniquely linked, and strength is directly married to health. So if we can get stronger, get healthier, we'll get healthier and we'll get wealthier.

unknown 34:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

Couldn't agree more. Well, thank you again for taking time out of your busy day to be here with us. Yeah, my pleasure. Everyone, go follow Ruben. Love everything he's doing. And thank you for joining us for another episode of Never Been Sicker. I'm your host, indoor air quality expert, Michael Rubino, and we'll see you soon.