What Your Personal Trainer *Doesn’t* Know, How To Get Fit FAST & Injury-Free, Ben’s Weird Fitness Education & More With Coach Raychel Kosh

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:02]: This episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:04]: When I went through their locker room and I was already kind of tuned into things like endocrine disruptors forever, chemicals, microplastics, things like that, at the time, I was shocked at how little attention was paid to. I know this sounds silly, but you know about this, Raychel. The shaving cream, the deodorant, the cologne, the bright overhead fluorescent LED light, the unfiltered water, the. The training table, where it was a lot of just like straight up sugar, whole grains, you know, seed oils. The reason I bring that up is because if you're putting a bunch of money, which many of these clubs are, into developing essentially an elite Ferrari, why would you put all of that into an athlete and then at the same time have them surrounded by endocrine disruptors, circadian rhythm, disrupting light, poor air quality, poor water quality, poor food quality, and especially why would you do that when it's so easy these days to have cleaner versions?

Ben Greenfield [00:01:10]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:31]: I've known today's podcast guest for a while. How long have we known each other, Raychel? It's been like, what, four years?

Raychel Kosh [00:01:38]: Yeah, just about. Yep.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:40]: So Raychel Koch, who. Who's joining me on today's show is. I don't want to make you sound old, Raychel, but a real OG in strength conditioning fitness. And I met her through my company, Ben Greenfield Life, and she quickly took the helm of the coaching program with Ben Greenfield Life, and now is the head coach and managing the entire company of Triumph Coaching, our brand new coaching arm within the Life network. So Raychel herself has deep experience, got a master's degree in exercise science and nutrition. She incorporates all the stuff you hear me talking about because we kind of read from the same playbook when it comes to biohacking, nutrition, et cetera. She has a deeper working knowledge of working with women and hormone fluctuations and catering workouts to be specific to female anatomy and physiology than I do, for sure. And she's just a wealth of knowledge in the realm of coaching, strength conditioning.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:49]: So we're recording this close to the new year. It's January 2025 at the time of this recording, so I know a lot of you are retooling your fitness programs, your exercise programs, looking for direction, workouts, exercises, et cetera. So I figured what the heck? Let's talk all things fitness programming, workouts, online coaching and beyond. What do you think, Raychel?

Raychel Kosh [00:03:12]: Sounds good to me. This is going to be fun. Let's do it.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:15]: Awesome. And the show notes, by the way, are going to [email protected] triumph podcast, just like it sounds. Triumph Podcast. If you don't know how to spell triumph, I'm sorry. Normally I would say Google it, but now it's chatgpt it. We're using Chat GPT much right now, Raychel.

Raychel Kosh [00:03:33]: Oh, it comes in handy for sure. And the more I use it, the more I'm starting to like it. So we'll get into that and how it intersects with coaching a little bit later on. But yeah, lots of fun stuff there.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:45]: Actually, I plan to ask you about AI and coaching so we can talk about that. Why? Maybe asking GPT to write your workout program, which I've tried a few times just for me personally when I want to outsource thinking and I'm going to the gym and I'll do this when I'm traveling sometimes, which actually kind of works. If you know your way around the weight room, you just basically tell GPT, all right, I got this, this, this, this, this, you know, vibration platform, two sets of dumbbells, you know, a kettlebell and a treadmill. Right. 45 minute workout that is geared towards whatever hypertrophy. It does a halfway decent job.

Raychel Kosh [00:04:21]: Yeah, I agree. And I always say the output is only as good as the input. Right. Like you have to have some foundational knowledge of what you're shooting for when you're typing into ChatGPT. And if you do, then it's golden because you're going to get a much better output on the other side to follow.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:36]: Right. You don't get a lot of the accountability and things like that and tracking. But we can talk about that later. So I guess, big picture. Before we jump into some of the philosophy behind the workout programming and what you do to get the results you get, because we've been getting incredible results with triumph coaching. Tell me a little bit about how you got into this. You can skip the part where I kick your butt at pickleball, but besides that, because I know it's a painful story, how did you actually get into the exercise science scene?

Raychel Kosh [00:05:07]: Yeah, well, I will bring up pickleball later on to mess with you a little bit, Ben, but just to start off with my journey, so kind of similar to yours, like a self experimentation approach. So basketball was my Life for over 20 years and when I went through that journey as an athlete. I was just obsessed with optimizing my own performance. And. And along the way, I picked up habits, routines. Naturally, you start working with people throughout the years, they start asking you questions. And just really started my journey from a strength training standpoint, actually in eighth grade. So I always had really strong strength and conditioning coaches, like, throughout college, all throughout my career, and that really inspired me to step more into that world.

Raychel Kosh [00:05:53]: So did have the background in college as well, studying and I actually have a question for you in just a moment. But the best class I took in my master's program was actually like a counseling class. So I had to sit down with someone, have a mock conversation, coach them through some things, and that was the most value, truthfully, I got through that experience of studying it in school.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:16]: Wow. Did they pay this person extra to really freak out on you or just a standard problem?

Raychel Kosh [00:06:23]: It was less of that and more of the disengagement. So I had to really pull the conversation and tease it out of this guy, which was a good challenge for me, being an introvert and more, you know, nervous with those types of things. And I've just had to practice and get through that. But that's a little bit about me and my journey.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:44]: You know, the term strength conditioning has come up a few times. I think people may not understand unless they're really like inside baseball, fitness, fitness, business people, the difference between something like that and personal training. And they are, I think, different. It is different to work with, let's say, someone who has, let's say like a certified strength conditioning coach, you know, certification through, let's say, like the NSCA and someone who's. Who has a personal training certification through something like, you know, ACE or NASM or something like that. Can you differentiate?

Raychel Kosh [00:07:23]: Yeah. So in my experience, in my opinion, I think the CSCS is the gold standard when it comes to performance strength training. So this is an approach where not only training athletes, because I do think that we're all athletes in some way, right? Like, we want to perform in life, not just on the court, not just in the weight room. Like, we need to be able to perform in life and show up in business as professionals. So when it comes to that strength training approach, it's more of that functional standpoint. Right. Like, we're progressing you. We're keeping an eye on you.

Raychel Kosh [00:07:58]: I think that some of the strength coaches I worked with in college were just at the top tier of the industry. Right. Like, there's advancements, there's Tools, there's equipment, we're tracking data at a really high level, which I think is key, and what we actually use in our program as well to incorporate that personalization piece at a greater level. So there's definitely a differentiation when you're looking for a coach and trainer of somebody that might have taken an online course that maybe took them two or three hours, versus something like a CSCS Certified strength and conditioning specialist, where you have to have a bachelor's degree in the field, you have to pass a rigorous exam that truthfully, less than half of people actually pass. So there's some standards and barriers there that you have to have the educational background.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:46]: Yeah, it's very rigorous. I, for my first two years, I was working in the fitness industry. I had a personal trainer certification. I believe it's through the nsca. The NSCA CPT Certified Personal Trainer. And the exam and the study materials for that, they were useful, but it's generally pretty basic. You learn a little bit about joint angles, a decent amount of anatomy, some physiology, a little bit of nutrition, some special populations guidance. But then when I began to study for the cscs, which I eventually got, it is much deeper when it comes to force power, hormonal adaptations and fluctuations, strength training and power cardiovascular, all the different physiological systems applied across a variety of sports.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:45]: Sports specificity, which translates really to fitness specificity. Understanding the difference in how to train a basketball and soccer player develops the same type of knowledge that helps you understand the difference between training someone for, let's say, fat loss or muscle gain, and then a lot of special population stuff as well. How to work with people who have cardiovascular disease, people who have arthritis, senior population, high school athletes, et cetera. And I don't even know if I ever told you this, Raychel, but as I was going through and getting that certification, I interned for two years for University of Idaho football. So I had two coaches. I was in the strength room every day. I had to learn how to coach the snatch, the clean and jerk, the deadlifts, you know, all the major lifts. I was spotting football players.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:38]: You know, I'm basically like this skinny. I was maybe 175, 180 pounds at this time in college. This was before I started bodybuilding. So I'm like the skinny, lean guy in the gym who's got the nerd hat on, helping out the football players. Fun story. That's also where I met. Well, I met my wife in second grade, Sunday school, but I started hanging out with her because she ran for the track and field team. And they were working out at similar times as the football players.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:05]: So I kind of got to hang out and chat with her and get to know her. But yeah, I had a deep dive into the strength conditioning industry in college and it is remarkably different than just personal training.

Raychel Kosh [00:11:19]: Yeah, completely agree. I myself interned at St. John's University back when I was still playing basketball in college and would sleep in my car and go to my internship the next morning. And you know, it's just like being around that high level approach because athletes, you're getting paid, right? Like your body is your money maker so you better perform. So that's how you know, like there's a higher standard, a higher expectation. And I believe that iron sharpens iron approach of like if you're around the best, then it's going to rub off on you. And from there, if you're working with the regular, you know, busy day to day 40 year old mom, you can apply a lot of those principles but make bring them down to a level that's realistic for somebody who's just getting back into a routine. But you have that baseline knowledge.

Raychel Kosh [00:12:06]: Right.

Raychel Kosh [00:12:06]: And you can make the adjustments from there. And that's where the art of coaching comes in too. And that's what makes it fun.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:12]: Yeah. And when it comes to the, the, the strength conditioning piece, there, there was one other one of the thing I was going to tell you when you, when you brought up. Gosh, I'm, I'm, I'm blanking here for a second about the, oh, the internship that you did. This is another little thing I don't think I told you, I don't think I've talked about this much before on the podcast, but I did my internship. But what happened was one of the people who got me into even understanding what a freaking barbell was in the first place because I was a total skinny, homeschooled geek and I literally didn't even know what to do with a set of dumbbells. But one of my dad's friends was the Washington State powerlifting champ. His name was Rafael Escamilla. And all I knew about Rafael was he was the super strong guy who when he come over to the house, he'd lift me and my brother's over his head and do freaking snatches with us when we were 10 years old or whatever.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:13]: And I always thought he was just like an incredibly intelligent and impressive specimen physically and mentally, which he was. But when I was a junior at University of Idaho and it was time for me to go off and do an internship, I thought of Rafael, and he was managing the entire sports performance program at Duke University. So I wound up connecting with him and going down to Duke for about six months and working with him in the biomechanics and sports performance lab down there. And again, learned a ton. Got to work with, you know, NFL players who were there working off season at Duke. I spent almost like three months helping the rehab Will Rolfe, the. He was the. I think he was linebacker at Kansas City Chiefs.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:04]: And, you know, seeing the. The inside baseball of NFL, you know, like, he would have, you know, he would literally have me drive him and his homies out to. Well, basically let's come around and say strip clubs in Durham, North Carolina. I was like 17, I think. I couldn't get in. And they'd just give me cash to go have a nice meal, eat some sushi or whatever nearby, and then I'd pick them up and drive them back and get them to bed, and then they get up the next morning and show up on the turf to train. So I had my internship at Duke. But you just learn so much working with athletes that I think does translate really well to the general population once you dive into people who aren't getting paid to perform but just want to look, feel, and operate a little bit like an athlete.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:58]: Like you refer to.

Raychel Kosh [00:15:00]: Yeah. And I have a question for you, Ben. So related to that, because I know you've had the opportunity now to go back in and see some of these professional teams, Right. Like, since we're still on the athlete sports topic, just curious, like, if you had a recommendation, if they're like, all right, we're bringing Ben in. We want our athletes to perform better, recover better. Like, what would that step be for you? Like, what's the one glaring thing you see that some of these organizations are doing wrong?

Ben Greenfield [00:15:28]: Here's an illustrative story for you. Let me start with this first. I have no special secret sauce when it comes to joint angles, mechanics of training, strength training, anything related to the actual weightlifting, cardiovascular conditioning component. That's just well applied science and the ability to be able to coach and motivate. But I think the differentiating characteristic for athletes or any individual is the environmental factor piece. There are other important pieces, but. But this is something that I think is something I take into consideration a lot more than the average personal trainer or health consultant or coach. When I raced for Team Timex in triathlon.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:19]: So Team Timex was basically just a squad of elite triathletes, and we travel around the globe racing anywhere From Sprint distance to Ironman Triathlon and. And we were sponsored by Timex, so they gave us our bikes and our fancy computers and hooked us up with wetsuit sponsors and shoes. And we'd typically have training camps on an annual basis where we'd all show up at one hotspot and train. One year we did the Bollettieri Sports Academy down in Florida. And for three years when I was there, we trained at Giant Stadium so we'd use their strength conditioning facility. We were on their turf, we were in their arena, and we're in their locker room. When I went through their locker room and I was already kind of tuned into things like endocrine disruptors forever chemicals, microplastics, things like that. At the time I was shocked at how little attention was paid to.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:21]: I know this sounds silly, but you know about this, Raychel. The shaving cream, the deodorant, the cologne, the bright overhead fluorescent LED light, the unfiltered water, the training table where was a lot of just like straight up sugar, whole grains, seed oils, Gatorade, sports science institute type of stuff. And the reason I bring that up is because if you're putting a bunch of money, which many of these clubs are, into developing essentially an elite Ferrari, it kind of shocked me how much attention was given to the training, which again, like I mentioned before, was stellar and way beyond anything that I could personally program with. I think the excellence of an NFL strength condition coach. But why would you put all of that into an athlete and then at the same time have them surrounded by endocrine disruptors, circadian rhythm, disrupting light, poor air quality, poor water quality, poor food quality, and especially why would you do that when it's so easy these days to have cleaner versions? And since then I've gotten to know other teams and coaches who are taking this into consideration, like my friend Eric, the strength conditioning coach at Miami Heat. Like, you walk into their facility, not only is it pretty clean, but they've also got like infrared, pemf, oxygen, all the biohacks that you'll see. Whatever Bryan Johnson doing on Netflix, they're doing that stuff. Golden State warriors, another example.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:03]: They're taking into consideration environmental factors. Air, light, water, electricity, traditional, if you call them this, biohacking modalities for recovery and realizing that you can't just out train a crappy diet and a crappy environment in an athlete. And furthermore, if you optimize the diet and the environment, you're going to have a lot, I wouldn't say better performance from the athlete because you and I both know that there's some really good athletes who have Big Macs and a Coke and just crush the court. But better career longevity. Like if you're going to invest XYZ amount into an athlete, let's say 20 million for, I don't know, a six year contract, you want every year that contract to be optimized. You don't want that person fading away when they're 35 because they're experiencing what I think a lot of us maybe experience who are listening in to make this more relatable to the average person. When I was in college, I could drink six beers, wake up the next morning and run 10 miles. I can't do that now.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:06]: And an elite aging athlete is the same. They can no longer fuel their bodies with Mac and fries and Coke and go out and perform at the same level. So I would say long answer to your question, but what I take into consideration are the invisible variables that can make or break you that I think a lot of folks don't pay attention to. Or at least they pay way more attention to exercise and training than they do. That.

Raychel Kosh [00:20:34]: Yeah, 100% agree. And that's spot on. That's actually how our worlds ended up colliding in the first place. Because like I said, my obsession with better performance brought me across your articles and podcasts way back when. And you might not be able to tell from my pickleball performance now, but I came from a very modest athleticism ability background. So it was a lot of like doing those extra things, like caring about my circadian rhythm and like recovering better in between the days that I was training. And all those little things really do add up. And I actually don't know if I've told you the story, Ben, of how I even started working at the company.

Raychel Kosh [00:21:17]: I do get a lot of questions from people about like, hey, how'd you, how do you start working with Ben?

Ben Greenfield [00:21:21]: That's really cool, but I actually don't remember.

Raychel Kosh [00:21:24]: Yeah, yeah. So just quick synopsis. You had that coach certification course that you ran a while back and something that I hope we can get running back up again soon in some way through Triumph Coaching. So anybody out there that's interested, just keep it, keep an eye on that. But went through the course. It was a huge investment for me at the time. I think it was like 5K and I literally took out a new credit card and paid off the interest over like a year of monthly payments.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:54]: Yeah, I think, I think it was, was like 36 weeks, something like that.

Raychel Kosh [00:21:59]: Yeah, yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:00]: It was a new module each week for me and, you know, just a traditional course where I took all my knowledge put into a course and coaches who are already personal trainers would come and pay to go through it, and then when they finish, they would be, you know, they'd have a stamp of certification from me and then kind of be featured as a Ben Greenfield certified coach, that type of thing.

Raychel Kosh [00:22:17]: Exactly. Yeah. But the investment was definitely worth the roi because on the back end, we had a team now of certified coaches who went through your program. Right. And they went through that intensive. Something that I've never experienced before in other certs I've taken or other courses I've done or even in my master's degree. Right. It was an experience of educating the whole human on like how from everything, like you talked about environment and all the way down to fitness programming.

Raychel Kosh [00:22:47]: And at the end it came out with opportunity to work at your company, opportunity to coach clients. Like I said, we have a team now that came out of that. So that's really the birth of how this all started.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:00]: Yeah. And if I could refine that even more. The idea for that type of certification arose from a book that preceded Boundless. The first book that I wrote was Beyond Training. I guess the first big book, New York's Times bestselling book that wasn't just a flash in the pan title, but actually got some recognition and respect, which I was very proud of. Put a lot of work into it. But the title, Beyond Training, it is that title because I wanted to write a book about all the things that went beyond just exercise and training. And this was based on scratching my own itch.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:41]: This was close to the end of my Ironman triathlon career. I had hypothyroidism, low testosterone, joint inflammation, ton of gut issues, but super fit, like fit on the outside or healthy on the outside, unhealthy on the inside. So that was when I took a very deep dive into hormone optimization, into self quantification, blood and biomarker tracking, into what are things we can do for recovery that go beyond just sleep and putting your legs up, like compression boots and pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and red light therapy and cryotherapy. And what are the emotional and mental factors that play into looking, feeling and performing better. And oh, by the way, the food pyramid that I was trained on in college in my nutrition classes. It turns out that there's some scary truths behind that. I had been following guys like OGs in the fitness industry, like Paul Chek and Mark Sisson, and earning, oh, hey, fat actually isn't that bad. And the type of fats and whether they're damaged is an important thing to pay attention to.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:47]: And eating giant smoothies full of kale is actually potentially imbalanced and could be harmful for certain people. And, you know, I just learned a lot more than I'd actually learned in nutrition in college. And after I wrote that book, I essentially took a lot of those same materials and turned them into a course where I could train other coaches and personal trainers how to go beyond what they learned in college or from an average personal training cert and actually think about the body in a much more holistic way. And of course, that's progressed to boundless. And now what we're doing with Team Triumph. And that brings me full circle to what I wanted to ask you about, because we've alluded to it a few times. I want to learn more about the actual workout programming and your philosophy when it comes to something like the programming within Team Triumph and the ungodly amount of hours we spent shooting exercise videos at my house in Spokane. But before we do, what, what is Team Triumph exactly?

Raychel Kosh [00:25:52]: Yes. So Team Triumph is a movement, right? This is a community based movement. And that's important because if we try to set a goal. So like you said, it's New Year's time, 2025. We all have high hopes of what we're going to accomplish this year, which is great. I want us to continue capitalize on that. But we can't do it alone, right? If we try to do it in isolation, we inevitably run across life, you know, punching us in the gut and we ought to pick things back up. But if you have that community around you, it's so much easier to lean on them when times get tough and to just motivate yourself and have that accountability piece.

Raychel Kosh [00:26:31]: So what Triumph coaching really represents is getting you amongst like minded people so we can all work together towards our goals. And taking that a step further, it's the accessibility piece. Right. So we are trying to break down barriers in a world where prices are getting higher for basic things like groceries. You know, you're in the longevity field. How many like crazy gadgets. If we had an a la carte budget, we could go out and buy. Right.

Raychel Kosh [00:27:00]: In a perfect world and the FOMO.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:02]: That comes with that, oh, wait, I just bought that red light. And this one has better frequencies and wavelengths, apparently.

Raychel Kosh [00:27:08]: Exactly. Yeah. It's always a constant chase to try to get the latest and greatest shiny object. But at the core of it, we want to make it very simple, easy and accessible for people to gain access to their data and to be able to apply that to fitness, to nutrition, to lifestyle. For those that maybe haven't gotten any type of lab work or anything done before and they don't know where to start. So that's kind of what it's about. The two big pieces are community and accessibility.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:39]: Okay, so we've got community, meaning Team Triumph is not a team that you have to apply to join. Right. Like if you're, if you're part of the Life Network, essentially, you have access to all of these Team Triumph workouts and all the people who are doing them along with you.

Raychel Kosh [00:27:56]: Exactly, yes. And I want to shout out our other OGs, our Team Boundless members who we trained for several years and now we finally have our own platform. So some of our loyal members like Patrice, Hamad, Vlad, Lisa, Ann.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:13]: Oh, we gotta tell the story about that though, Raychel. So I don't wanna throw anybody under the bus, but I may inadvertently do so. So I flew down to Austin, Texas for like three days of filming for this fitness app called Ladders. And we then took all of that content. I literally exercised all day long. I swore I'd never do it again. Then I found myself four years later doing it with you at my house. But just box jumps and kettlebell swings and videographers and go, go, go.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:49]: And just literally hundreds and hundreds of exercise to create an exercise database and workout templates for folks and, and a workout team that could follow my workouts. Well, long story short is we wound up migrating away from Ladder and having basically our own internal Team Boundless. And I forget the. Do you remember the platform we were using to coach Team Boundless members in the interim between Ladders and the now Team Triumph?

Raychel Kosh [00:29:19]: Yeah, we've been using Train Heroic, it's called.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:22]: Yeah, that's right, Train Heroic. So you could go in with Train Heroic third party app and you'd be able to access all these videos and coaching from Raychel and I and a group of coaches using our style of programming. And then what happened is when we launched Life Network, and for any of you who haven't yet checked it out, it's golifenetwork.com. Within LifeNetwork, we created Team Triumph. We took all that programming, but then we beefed up the exercises. Raychel and another coach of ours, Sarah, they flew up to the house. You remember the video shoot for sure, Raychel, right?

Raychel Kosh [00:29:59]: Oh, yeah. We had fun torturing you with a bunch of pull up variations back to back to back. That was really fun.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:05]: Yeah. 104 degrees in Spokane. They had me out in the blacktop pavement for like three hours swinging kettlebells and my feet kept getting burnt and I felt like a little crying baby switching out my socks to find a sock that could actually not give me toe blisters . And Raychel had me hanging from a pull up bar doing like this is probably just poor forethought and vision, but doing like all 20 pull up exercises back after back, which we probably should have interspersed with push up exercises or squats or something. But basically over several days we created the entire database of exercise videos and coaching videos that we use in Team Triumph. But of course having a, a giant list of exercises is not necessarily sufficient to have good programming. So with the exercises you have the community, you have the Go Life Network members. But what's the programming actually look like, Raychel, in terms of the philosophy behind the workouts themselves?

Raychel Kosh [00:31:03]: Yeah. So it is all minimum effective dose style training like you preach. You practice what you preach and we're going to program it, too. So this is for busy individuals who only have 30 to maybe 45 minutes max to dedicate to their training, but still get really great results along the way. So that's the goal. We're focusing on two to three days a week of heavy strength training. So we got to get our strength training in there for sure. We're focusing on intentional recovery.

Raychel Kosh [00:31:32]: So you're going to get a recovery day. And it's not your average recovery. Like we had Ben film a gratitude, breath work walk and that was really fun to watch him do that and be on camera for that one. So things like that, that we're weaving in. Right. Our own unique style and we've taken the feedback of those who've been training with us for several years now. And what they enjoy the most about the program is really the fact that it's amplifying their life outside of the workouts. So it's more about they can lift their kids up and they feel great, like they can run outside, play with their grandkids.

Raychel Kosh [00:32:09]: You know, they like a little bit of that spiritual aspect as well. So we will weave in the breath work and the gratitude and just the motivation around like the why and purpose behind these things. So I think that's what really sets us apart from other workout programs that you can do. And the science is there, right. Like tried and true. Like Ben, you're top of the industry when it comes to the science of programming these things. But it's that extra piece where you're having the support around it. You're not doing it alone.

Raychel Kosh [00:32:41]: And it's, it's how we get really great results with those that we work with.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:45]: Some of the intensity that people crave. I have to admit, I don't think that it's entirely necessary to have lactic acid coming out your eyeballs every workout, but it does feel good to climb a little, you know, miniature Mount Everest for a workout, even just for the sake of catharsis. As long as you don't fool yourself into thinking the best way to get fit is to be like, you know, zone four for 10 minutes or whatever versus, you know, brief spurts of high intensity interval training and lots of walking. I just did a podcast with Mark Sisson about this, by the way, which is why it's fresh on my mind. But it's kind of like the occasional intensity of a CrossFit or F45 workout with a lot of the active recovery, body restoration type of philosophies that you'll hear from guys like Paul Check along with the functional longevity moves, that kind of scratch that itch of yo, I just want to be able to come back day after day and do this over and over again and be able to throw a football and beat Raychel at pickleball and bow hunter, go up and down hills or whatever, along with the smart periodization. Now I use the word periodization. What I mean by that is that a training year or a training block is split into certain periods. And so we did this all the time with Team Boundless and we're continuing with Team Triumph, where you'll have a period of time where you're training for strength, periods of time where you're training for muscle mass, recovery and mobility oriented weeks, periods of time where you're training for more aerobic intensity.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:23]: And so by focusing on specific physiological systems like that, you're able to stairstep your way to greater and greater fitness throughout the year. And I don't think we've started doing this yet with Team Triumph Raychel, because I haven't even talked with you about this. But I've started to do what I call hormesive or hormesis intensive weeks with my clients, where about every 10 to 12 weeks we'll have a two week block where it's almost purely red light, heat stress, cold stress, all the training is e-centric, meaning it's negative style training. There's a lot more hypoxic breath play. It's basically all of the things that would be considered kind of damaging to the body if you did them for long periods of time, like oxygen, light hypoxia, e-centric loading, et cetera. And we'll use that as kind of like a reboot week, which has less training, but more of a focus on hormesis. And we'll have to talk later on after this podcast because I'd love to actually start shifting some of that programming into Team Triumph as well.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:28]: But I find for myself as a coach with a lot of my private one-on-one clients, that's one of the things that they like the best, is that there's different blocks built in throughout the year, and it prevents boredom and burnout and also allows for really good, gradual improvements in fitness with low risk of injury. And then the other thing, of course, is the community or accountability for working one-on-one with the coach.

Raychel Kosh [00:35:53]: I love that. Yeah, you nailed it there. And I think even on a more micro level, we do a really good job of gamifying the experience, which is important. Right. You want to be able to have fun with your workouts and have some variety. And we do things like tracking streaks, which I think is a huge motivation for people just to see, like, you know, the patterns start to light up on the calendar. And it's having that structure in place is huge.

Raychel Kosh [00:36:18]: Like, even the best coaches need coaches. I need a coach to motivate me and just give me that structure so I don't have to think about it. You just show up, you get your workout in, you feel good about it, and you're able to go on with the rest of your day.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:30]: No. Our Life Network members have access to, of course, the clothing that does have the I'm wearing the Life Network Life shirt right now. But a lot of the clothing is super slick. Our CEO, Caleb Applegate, he's like a total fashionista and he put a lot of work into the quality of the threads. But some of them do say Triumph on them. However, some say like Trial on the left arm and Triumph on the right arm. Can you speak to that idea of why we chose Triumph for the name of the coaching squad or the community of the team and also where the trial part of that fits in?

Raychel Kosh [00:37:09]: Yeah, I think it goes back to that broader philosophy around what we really like to do with everyone we work with is take that personalized approach and set some expectations up front. So typically with our clients, like, we'll do a roadmap call up front, gather some background information on people, kind of see where those pain points, and then we talk them through, you know, identifying that deeper. Why, like, what's your purpose behind wanting to show up and get better every day. So that's something that we're taking note of so we can continue to motivate people along the way. But when it comes to setting those expectations, it's understanding that your training program is not going to go perfect. There are going to be days that you might miss your workout. There are going to be days when you don't feel like doing it, but you still do it. And I think most people go into a new program with an all or nothing mindset.

Raychel Kosh [00:38:01]: Like, I see it all the time. I have to train six days a week or I'm not going to get results. And then, you know, life tugs them back in the other direction of just sitting on the couch and doing nothing. So we try to set the expectations of, hey, let's get three solid workouts. And consistently over months and months at a time, this is what you're going to expect. The first two weeks, you're going to feel some soreness. Your body's going to adapt to this new style of training. By week three, you're going to start to see your energy levels pick back up a little bit.

Raychel Kosh [00:38:31]: So kind of painting that picture and that roadmap for people of what to expect and kind of the journey that they're going to go through. But when it comes to back to the trial and triumph, that's really what it's about, right? Like, we have to have the highs with the lows. We're going to go through tough times, we're going to go through those trials and we're going to come out victorious on the other side as a group. So back to that community once again.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:54]: Right. If life was easy all the time, it'd be boring. If you didn't have trials occurring, especially in your workouts, you wouldn't have any breakthroughs. You can even go as deep as neuroscience with guys like Dr. Andrew Huberman talking about how if you got the same workout day in, day out and there is no biomechanical challenge, no, I'm feeling a little bit scared by or perhaps wobbly from a balance standpoint or something like that with this exercise, there's actually not a huge improvement in brain development, you know, if you're looking for the neural effects of the training routine. So it's kind of this idea that you don't want to be in your comfort zone the entire time during any workout. And yeah, there's definitely going to be some that are easy. And there are certainly some days where I've Got whatever, low hrv, low sleep, came back from a lot of travel.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:49]: And I'm kind of sticking to that. Tried and true, whatever. Just do the big six super slow routine or whatever. And I almost get no neural stimulus from that. But at least I'm moving. And also taking advantage of the idea that exercise can assist with sleep deprivation. But you make a really good point, Raychel, about the all or nothing piece, because I made the mistake for years of programming my clients with a lot on their actual calendar, and it was almost overwhelming. And now most of the calendars are just the one main key workout for the day and occasionally two.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:33]: For example, if you look at one of my clients Mondays, they might have one key, let's say kettlebell, swing and lunge VO2 workout, but maybe a morning fasted fat burning with cold on top of that. So they don't have a whole list of to dos for a day. But then you really helped me out with this. There's so many little things that add up that you can do consistently throughout the week. So what we developed was a checklist for all of my clients, right? So you just check yes or no, or basically you just check the box. Did I do this or didn't I do this for every day? And I don't beat up my clients at the end of the week if they didn't achieve certain things. But it's the accountability piece and the dopamine release you get from having checked off a daily habit that basically involves the same daily habit routine that I do myself, that I expect of my clients.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:29]: And we're not talking about going out and buying $140,000 red light bed that you use every day or something like that. But the stuff that is free or easy, but that adds up, like brushing your teeth. So for example, 32 ounces of water upon waking, you just check that off or you don't. Morning and evening oral and facial care, meaning you're oil pulling, your tongue, scraping and doing your toothbrush and. And washing your face. 15 minutes of foam rolling or stretching, which I do first thing I get up, I like to start today spiritually. I put on a sermon, I listen to a sermon, and I do 15 minutes of stretching and foam rolling. And obviously most sermons aren't 15 minutes long.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:12]: But I put it on right when I get up. And by the time I've gotten up, washed my face, had my water gone out, done foam rolling and stretching, come back in, made some coffee, finally wound up at my office, I can usually get through like a 45 minute long sermon, going upside down or getting the legs up against the wall for two to five minutes a day, right? Little things like that, that kind of drain the legs and help with lymphatic circulation. Minimum of 8,000 steps a day. Just did you check that off or didn't you? Some type of cold stress, right? Have you been cold for one to three minutes today? Did you touch the earth for 15 to 20 minutes for one phone call? You have your shoes off or you're sitting outside during lunch with your butt on the concrete patio, or maybe it's the deep dark of winter, but you have one of those grounding pads and you're standing on that at your desk. 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight or red light exposure. 15 to 20 minutes of gratitude or prayer or journaling or meditation or something that lets you shut your brain off at some point during the day. For me, that's right after lunch.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:15]: And then did you log some sleep? Right. And so having that checklist really helps. And it's not as though you're expected to do all those things every day, but I like the idea of having, okay, this is the one big rock I have to lift, right? The major workout, let's say the Team Triumph routine. And then if I check all this other stuff off, these little things that really do become like brushing your teeth every day, then you get incrementally better and you're doing the things that a lot of times they don't talk about in, you know, men's fitness magazine or Women's Health or whatever. These little things that add up. Freaking like oil pulling, you know, and you don't wind up with plaque accumulation in your mouth or your heart, you know, 10 years later or 32 ounces of water when you wake up and all of a sudden, over the course of a couple of weeks, your constipation starts to subside because you're actually hydrating. And so I think that, that it's just obviously I'm going on about it, but something I'm kind of excited about, this concept of, hey, these are the little things. You lift the one big rock and then you throw all the little pebbles in there.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:19]: You know what I'm saying?

Raychel Kosh [00:44:20]: Yeah. I love it. And I think it reminds me of a book I'm reading right now called Effortless. And it talks about the more you can automate, the more you can achieve. So when we're thinking about the checklist, the trend we'll start to see with clients is some of those things are just second nature. They're just automated after you've been checking them off every single day consistently. Right. For weeks upon weeks upon weeks.

Raychel Kosh [00:44:41]: So that's when it starts to become more of just a habit routine and we're able to then achieve more from there.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:46]: Yeah. Greg McKeown, Effortless. What's his other book? He's got another one. There's Effortless and Essentialism and what's so funny you bring up his name. I texted him like a week and a half ago, Raychel, because I found out he's training for an Ironman and I'm like, well if you need any tips, minimalist fitness routine for Ironman, et cetera, let me know. And he's like, well let's just do a podcast about it on my show. So I think I'm Greg and I are going to chat about his Ironman training here in the next couple of weeks.

Raychel Kosh [00:45:15]: Oh, that's amazing. Small world.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:17]: Yeah. Ironman is not effortless. So when it comes to you personally and staying on top of the game from a knowledge standpoint, do you have obviously to maintain your personal trainer certification, your CSCS, you have to check off the box when it comes to certain CEUs, conferences, et cetera. But even from just like a self learning standpoint, do you have certain resources, journals, mags, websites, et cetera that you think really stand out that help you in the educational process?

Raychel Kosh [00:45:51]: Yeah. So I'll be honest, my word of the year is go because I've always been a break person. I need to research more, I need to dig into the books before I act and do stuff. And this year I'm actually trying to just act some more. So I actually own a small group personal training brick and mortar studio. So I'm like more hands on with those people at times throughout the day, like early mornings and just actually getting in the ring. I know you talk about this a lot Ben, with like how did you build up your experience at repertoire? Getting in the ring, getting the reps in, like it doesn't always work the way you read about in the book. Right.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:27]: The Theodore Roosevelt esque woman in the arena. It is not the critic who counts, not the, the one who points out how the doer of deeds stumbled or what. I don't have the whole thing memorized, but yeah. Being in the trenches.

Raychel Kosh [00:46:40]: Exactly. Yeah. And I've, I've learned so much from that of even just I'm really into right now like persuasive communication. Right. Because if we can't sell someone, we can't help them. If we can't get them to buy into the process and to understand why this is important and resell them every single day. Because it's so easy not to do the work. We're not going to get results of people.

Raychel Kosh [00:47:03]: So that's another thing we really focus on with Triumph Coaching is that support system of like, we're reaching out, we're keeping you accountable, you're getting a message like, we're checking in. Hey, did you do your workout today? Right. Like that piece I think is so huge because in reality a lot of, a lot of plans will work, right? Most plans out there, if you're a more sedentary person or even if you're in a training mode and you have a structured plan, it will work. You just have to follow it. And that's where I think a lot of people fall off.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:31]: Yeah, persuasive communication. I think the goat of that is somebody you and I have exchanged communications about on Slack multiple times. Alex Hormozi. I think that dude's rhetoric is through the roof when it comes to really good communication style, linguistics, use of language and also persuasion, marketing, selling, et cetera. Honestly, I'd love to to meet him someday or do a workout with him or something. So if anybody knows Alex, you're listening in connect Raychel and I, because we've learned a little bit from him. But business aside, what about any journals that you subscribe to or digest or anything like that?

Raychel Kosh [00:48:11]: Yeah, I think I am really enjoying a lot of the short form content that's coming out. So like to give you an example, I just ran across a great piece on Substack that talked about. I know another topic we were going to go into the differences of training between women and men. What does that look like? And breaking down some studies around 65 and older where they either had the women doing a high resistance progressive strength training routine or they just did light walking and stretching routine of the two groups. And as you can imagine how the results came out, they just for bone mass and osteoporosis prevention. The strength training group was just off the charts in comparison.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:01]: I was going to say, you got to tell me that the Gwyneth Paltrow group didn't win.

Raychel Kosh [00:49:07]: Yeah, good prediction there. You had a crystal ball on that one.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:11]: What else? And I think one of the better resources that came out this year was Stephen Bartlett from Diary of a CEO interviewed Stacy Sims, kind of an OG in the customization of fitness and nutrition routines to women. Guru. So that's a great resource. I'll try and put some of the resources Raychel and I are talking about in the shownotes, by the way, at bengreenfieldlife.com/triumphpodcast. But when it comes to things that women need to take into consideration that they often don't. Have you picked up any real gems?

Raychel Kosh [00:49:43]: Yeah. So I would say my biggest, you know, this is the hill that I will die on when it comes to women and training is that we're a lot stronger than we think. There's a lot of marketing out there pushing women towards the Pilates, the bar, the yoga, which I think is all great as a component of an overall fitness regimen, but it can't be the only, the only thing that we're hanging our hats on.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:09]: I did, I did, by the way, one of my friends in a WhatsApp group thread that we're part of, he's like, guys, convince your wives to do Pilates. You'll thank me later. I know where he was going with that. But yeah, there's some benefit, of course, if we look at pelvic musculature and things like that.

Raychel Kosh [00:50:28]: Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I think it comes down to we've been kind of sold the idea that we need to have this certain toned look and that there's a lot, you know, the Pilates industry does a great job of marketing that and selling that and making it seem like that's achievable only through Pilates and to avoid the strength training because of the bulking aspect. And I talk with women all the time where their husbands don't want them to strength train. It's crazy. But then there's that educational piece of getting back to like the body recomposition results that we see with our clients, that we work with, with women in particular is just amazing. From the fat loss to the muscle building and how particularly around, you know, a lot of women have the, the waistline issue when I'm talking to them, like they want to spot, reduce fat like most people, but nothing's going to outperform strength training when it comes to that. And I think just the frailty myth of women. And there's a lot of trends and messaging around cortisol spikes and wanting to avoid intense workouts because it doesn't sync up with our cycle or thought processes like that.

Raychel Kosh [00:51:33]: My approach is let's just lift heavy because we know the benefits are there. Like we have to have some type of impact, weight bearing load on our bones, on our musculature. I got moms carrying around a 40 pound kid pushing a stroller with a grocery bag on the other arm and their doctors telling them they can't lift over 25 pounds. And it's just not, it's not true. They have to train to be able to do those things that they need to operate in regular, in regular life. So when it comes to women, I think for most women, just that personalization piece for them. So I don't think it's a gender based approach necessarily. I think it's working with a coach.

Raychel Kosh [00:52:15]: I think it's tracking the data that we can track to make sure your body's responding to the program. For a lot of my women, we like to work with the RPE scale, especially with strength training. So trying to hit that sweet spot of an 8 out of 10. So maybe we're not pushing to failure 10 out of 10 every single day, but we're at an 8. So it's enough of a intensity that we're actually going to see some progression over time. So that's something we're closely tracking there.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:41]: Do you take into account, you mentioned it cycle syncing at all? I mean beyond Stacey Sims, there's like a Lisa Vitti with her book, Flow. There's Dr. Stephanie, I forget her name. Giovanni Marascu's wife, she's got a podcast. Anyway, she's the one I've run into at a few conferences giving talks about cycle syncing based on the idea that there could be more fatty acid utilization in an estrogen rich environment, which might dictate higher amounts of attention given to aerobic training and zone 2 style training during those times of the month. Looking at things like joint laxity close to ovulation and understanding that your, you know, your 1 RM might change based on, based on that surge that occurs right there. You know, focusing more on, you know, high intensity training or power training, you know, seven to 10 days out from ovulation. I believe it is.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:42]: I do. Do you look at that much at all?

Raychel Kosh [00:53:44]: Yeah. And I think it comes down to what data are we able to track? Right. Like I have my OURA ring, some of the clients have OURA rings as well. So we can use that in concert with an app like Natural Cycles, so we can start to see because every cycle is going to be different, right? Like we don't know exactly when ovulation occurs, but there's certain metrics and things we can look out for to actually track like the temperature spike. So we usually can't confirm ovulation. There's really no way until several days after it's actually happened. So it's. We're starting off in a realm of a little bit of unpredictability to begin with.

Raychel Kosh [00:54:19]: Right. So I think sometimes women are overthinking it to the point of maybe inaction. So, like, oh, I don't want to do the right thing, or I don't want to eat something wrong, or I don't want to train the wrong way. And, you know, there are maybe issues at certain points in the menstrual cycle. Right. Like if I'm experiencing heavy cramping day one or day two of my cycle, I might not feel like going to the gym. But what I tell women is just go, get moving, try it for five minutes. And we have that pain approach of like, if the body's experiencing pain, the blood flows moving to other areas of the body.

Raychel Kosh [00:54:54]: Like, the cramping might actually reduce or subside. So it's not a one size fits all approach when it comes to the cycle. And I work with a lot of women that are in perimenopause, navigating menopause, post menopausal journey. So it's. There's variations for every single woman. And that's why I think it's really important to work hand in hand with a coach so we can look at things even like an HRV score. Like, maybe you're crushing a certain point of your cycle and you feel great and it is time to train a little bit harder and your body's recovering well, maybe you are in the tank because your stress bucket's overfilling and now you're at the menstrual phase of your cycle and it's just too much going on outside of the cycle. So I think taking that holistic approach, even when it comes to something like a cycle sinking, because there's other factors outside of just the cycle itself that can affect your training and your approach to that.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:50]: Yeah, yeah. And you know, obviously when you're working with an entire team, you know, the consistency of the workouts, the accountability and the motivation from being with a team in many cases can trump the idea that this is not the perfect workout for the current day, that I'm on of my period, but. Or my cycle, but you know, I'm going to jump in and do the training anyways. It's kind of like that idea that, yeah, there's the best time of day to train technically, if you get into circadian rhythmicity, but also the best time of day to train is the time you're most likely to do it.

Raychel Kosh [00:56:24]: Exactly. Yeah. We keep it simple for sure. And that's I think why we see really great results. But the other aspect, I will say, where I do notice a little bit different trends when it comes to genders, particularly with environment, is I see women thrive in a community based wellness approach.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:43]: Not me. I like to crank up my headphones and avoid eye contact.

Raychel Kosh [00:56:47]: I know, Ben, I've been around you when you go for your workout and you're just like

Ben Greenfield [00:56:51]: Were you mad at me at the gym this morning? No, I was working out. See my best friend in the morning world and I wouldn't even say hi to you if I'm working out.

Raychel Kosh [00:56:58]: Exactly. My husband does the same thing. He throws on a podcast and he's like, don't talk to me. So that's where I see the biggest difference with men are cool, just isolating themselves and getting it done and pushing hard. And women, we love to just be able to connect in that, that workout experience, you know.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:16]: But back to that idea of CEUs. I'll just toss a few out there that I like. There's a guy named Alan Aragon. I subscribed to his research review for like a decade. He puts out really great research and content and commentaries. The folks at Stronger by Science, I like some of the research reviews that they do. For better or worse, I'll check out some of Lane Norton's stuff sometimes. He does have good comments that are steeped in science, so I like some of his stuff.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:44]: The Journal of Strength Conditioning Research I was just reading at the breakfast table this morning because I have no friends or no life and so I read strength journals at breakfast. So that's another good one. Journal of Strength Conditioning research. And then examine.com, of course, an examine.com membership to their study summary section is incredible. And honestly, I don't know if you follow any of the stuff I put out on Twitter, Raychel, but I'm usually taking all because I carve out about an hour a day for learning and reading and I will typically create two or three tweets based on my top takeaways from that day's learnings and I just kind of bleed those out throughout the week. So I guess what I'm getting at, selfishly enough, is that if you have no time for any of that stuff, just follow me on Twitter. So what about the self quantification piece? We haven't talked much about this, but I think it may also reflect the idea of simplicity, accessibility, affordability and convenience because we're using a very unique way to allow people within The Life Network and on Team Triumph to keep track of biomarkers.

Raychel Kosh [00:58:54]: Yeah, I love it. So we've actually developed something brand new. We've never done this before, but it's been in the works, actually, for quite some time now. And I'm super excited about our LifePrint offering. And really what the method is with LifePrints is to gather, empower, and sustain. So up front, we're gathering your data. So if you're somebody that you know, you've been listening to Ben's podcast forever, but you're just kind of stuck with where to get started when it comes to, like, blood work and do you want to poop in a cup and mail it back to a company? Like, there's just a lot of barriers to entry when it comes to the lab.

Ben Greenfield [00:59:35]: Usually more like a hot dog tray than a cup, but no.

Raychel Kosh [00:59:37]: Okay. You would know from plenty of experience. So thank you for sharing that they're getting easier.

Ben Greenfield [00:59:43]: Most of them now are just a swab or a little off the toilet paper. But, yeah, there's some that get a little messy.

Raychel Kosh [00:59:48]: But regardless. So the data that we're going to capture is actually through a HTMA test. And Ben, you're really the expert on this, but what it is is hair trace mineral analysis. So it's really easy. You get your kit in the mail, you're doing a little clipping of hair. So it's painless, takes five minutes or less. Super simple. And the cool part about this test is that it's not just a snapshot in time of your blood.

Raychel Kosh [01:00:15]: It's actually giving you historical data because obviously your hair is growing out of your head for months at a time. When it comes to that test, you're shipping it back. And the cool part is we could actually see your mineral status. So we're looking a lot at different ratios, and we actually have an expert on the team who's going to be analyzing all these for us. And we're also looking at heavy metal toxicity levels and things of that nature. So there's a lot of takeaways we can get from a very simple test. So that's our gather portion. From there, you're going to get back a report which is very easy to understand.

Raychel Kosh [01:00:50]: So we have synthesized this down to the biggest needle movers and making. Making it very actionable, very tangible takeaways from fitness, nutrition, lifestyle, based on your results. So this is for anybody to be able to understand. Like, you don't have to be a doctor or have some crazy certification to understand what to do with your results. So we're really big on that, breaking it down so you can understand and then act on it. From there we're putting you into a community so you're going to be in a micro community with other like minded individuals and that's the sustained portion of it. So let's actually implement these results together. Let's get you on coaching calls as a group with our expert coaches so we can break this down for you and make it very, very sustainable.

Ben Greenfield [01:01:37]: Yeah. And the, the HTMA, the hair tissue mineral analysis, which there's kind of two ways it's described hair, trace hair tissue. But the idea that was first introduced to me by the way by Dr. Leland Stillman and you're looking at around, I think it's, it's around 100 bucks I think for an HTMA on average you send in a little bit of hair and like Raychel described, you're looking at mineral ratios, you can see toxins, you see metals and you can learn a lot from it. I actually went through Leland's entire HTMA interpretation course. I'm like, holy cow. I could spend like four years just learning what you can derive from hair. With an example being weather based on ratios.

Ben Greenfield [01:02:21]: You're a slow oxidizer or a fast oxidizer. If you're a fast oxidizer, you burn carbohydrates quickly, you might have energy dips. If you don't have a couple of snacks in between lunch and dinner, you'll tend to have higher adrenal activity, high thyroid activity, lower calcium levels because of that, which necessitates a more steady fuel source. Slow oxidizers, they're the complete opposite. These are the people who thrive on a ketogenic diet, can go a long period of time without eating, tend to oxidize fat really efficiently, tend to sometimes air as the name implies, slow oxidizer towards lower metabolisms. And it's actually really incredible that you can get all of this again back to the idea of accessibility without necessarily doing what I call often the gold standard list of tests because I won't lie, if an elite athlete or a VIP exec comes to me or they want one on one coaching with Team Triumph. You know, their blood test, stool test, you know, the hot dog tray, urinary hormone test, genetic panel, micronutrient panel, often a food allergy panel, and sometimes depending on their health history, a couple of others. But at the same time you're looking at north of $2,500 and more easily with all of the tests and you know, then it's also a lot of interpretation on my end to go through all of that.

Ben Greenfield [01:03:45]: But the HTMA, what we were looking for was a really good shotgun approach to give you a whole bunch of data at a really good price. And I know you and I have talked about this, Raychel. We eventually want to build in some tiers where you could tack on a blood test, your HTMA or genetic test, your HTMA. But within Team Triumph itself, we want this to be accessible, affordable, and something that you can literally just like snip, snip down there or up here and send it off in a little envelope. And it's easy and it's repeatable and it gives good data. And for those of you who are wondering, we'll link in the show notes to some of Dr. Stillman, who's one of our life network experts, some of his videos about the HTMA. And it is incredible.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:31]: As a matter of fact, if you're a personal trainer or coach going through a certification like his to learn how to interpret that test suddenly allows you to take the clients that can only afford 100 bucks on a lab test and give them a lot of value out of the results of that one test.

Raychel Kosh [01:04:45]: Yeah, I love it. And it's a data driven approach. Right. I think something that's unique about what we do also on the back end is I've researched a lot of other programs out there because you connect me to people all the time, Ben. But I haven't seen people take lab data and transform that into a 12 week fitness program based on what the data says. You know, a 12 week nutrition plan to follow. Like on the nutrition side, I think a lot of coaches and experts out there are doing a good job of obviously bio individualizing the data based on lab results. But on the fitness side, I haven't seen that done as much.

Raychel Kosh [01:05:21]: So we weave both of those in as well as lifestyle stuff. Right. So all the things we talked about earlier when it comes to the environment, all of those factors. So it's really that all in one approach.

Ben Greenfield [01:05:33]: Yeah, yeah. And I swear GPT still can't do it. Like, I, I, even when like it's okay for one workout, like, like I was describing earlier, but I'll sometimes try having it do. Like I did this for my sons and I, a few weeks ago, I was like, yeah, I'm lazy. I'm, I'm, I'm feeling like outsourcing this. I'm just gonna have GPT design our next kettlebell routine and it totally sucked. It was hitting the same muscle groups like three days in a row. It was having you do like kettlebell swings right after like a 5 rep max deadlift.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:10]: So you had no grip. It would do things like, like max pushups as a finisher, but then the next workout, the next day would have like a hundred pushups in it. It's just like it kind of thinks it's being smart and creative but it doesn't take still it doesn't take into account joint biomechanics, recovery, much less like you know, if you have three people working out and one pull up bar GPT, can't figure that out. It'll just be like do 10 pull ups and one person just stands there watching. I'm like why don't you just give three options for a poll like pull down, pull up or standing upright kettlebell row so all three people can be on the same round of the circuit at the same time. And it just things like that, like it just can't figure things out like a human coach can.

Raychel Kosh [01:06:57]: Yeah, it's the same on the meal plan side too for nutrition. Right. Because a lot of what we're doing is so high level and then I can't even tell you some of the nutrition, nutrition plans you've sent me with clients and like just the odd, you know, approaches and.

Ben Greenfield [01:07:11]: Yeah, I'll give you an example. Like we'll have a client. I'm like, well after going through health history just inside baseball, what happens is I'll get for VIP client, I'll get all their labs. I'm typically spending about eight to 10 hours going through everything with a fine tooth comb, looking at genetics, food allergies, micronutrient deficiencies, everything, how much activity that client is going to be doing because I'm the one writing out their exercise programming, their health risks, their goals. Maybe they're supposed to be low carb keto, but they also really, really like to do high intensity workouts and have asked to do those four days a week. So I can't keep them like super low carb, spell all that out and then I'll pass it on to the team to start programming let's say like a gluten free, green bean free, you know, high fat soluble vitamin version of a mediterranean diet with fasting on all of these different days and activity factor of XYZ based on their amount of time spent training and yeah, I mean it's a curveball. And I won't lie, we're not stupid. We look for ways to automate and we look for ways to use AI.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:30]: And we really can't automate meal plans that effectively either.

Raychel Kosh [01:08:34]: No. And I'll remember that the next time you email me and say, hey, can we speed this process up with AI? And I'm like, not really.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:41]: Yeah, we've tried, like, about every month or so. I'll look, I'll be like, is there anything new out there that could do this, this, and this for me? And I could write out more nutrition plans faster and, like, nope. Just. Yeah, but, you know, it's getting better, I think, you know, you know, 10 years from now, you and I are going to have to just start farming or something, Raychel. Because, you know, AI will do everything, but in the meantime, we're here to help.

Raychel Kosh [01:09:02]: We can just play pickleball all day at that point.

Ben Greenfield [01:09:05]: I'm in. I'm in. Well, Raychel, this has been fascinating, and my last question for you is. Let's say someone's listening right now. They're like, all right, dope. How many dollars a month? I want to join Team Triumph. Sounds affordable. Sounds accessible.

Ben Greenfield [01:09:20]: How do they onboard?

Raychel Kosh [01:09:21]: Yeah. So we can start off as low as 17 bucks a month if you join the Life Network, and then you instantly get access to not only everything that the Life Network platform provides, right? Like exclusive content, podcasts, the whole, like, community forum thread with hot topics coming in, and your RAW podcast is on there that you can't get anywhere else. So not only that, but you're getting those daily ad free, which a lot of people request. I see the requests come in, so.

Ben Greenfield [01:09:50]: I can confirm as much as they want to hear me talking about the seven kinds of magnesium again. Yeah.

Raychel Kosh [01:09:56]: Yep, that's it. So that's the special sauce. But not only that, you're getting literally a daily workout program programmed by us. Like all the experts on Ben's team, Ben is reviewing a lot of this stuff, overseeing it, and it's everything we talked about, right? Like, it's the minimum effective dose style training, getting great results, having access to the community. And then from there, we really have, like, a ladder of success you can climb. So you can start at that entry level for the 17 bucks a month and just ride with us and work out with us on a daily basis. Or if you want to take the next steps to that data gathering with the HTMA test, we do have LifePrints, which are really under 500 and below and as low as around 200 price point. So for lab data, like Ben mentioned, we literally can't even offer a discount on it because we've priced it as low as we possibly can because our mission is truly to provide accessibility to this level of coaching.

Ben Greenfield [01:10:57]: We try our best. And again, not to throw people under the bus, but most of the lab testing services that you hear advertised on most of the popular health podcasts, yes, it's convenient because you're going through one source, but the markup on those things is no secret. Behind the scenes in the health industry, lab tests are like a cash cow and you put them together and you offer them and you mark them up and there's some people that don't do that. But we don't want to make an arm and a leg off of the lab tests or the coaching or anything else. We want to have literally millions of people able to just log in and work out and follow the things I know, the things Raychel knows, the things all the coaches who have studied under us know, and to have it all in one place with all your experts, your ad free podcasts, your challenges, your accountability, your marketplace with discounts, everything and your and your Team Triumph hoodie, which is pretty dope. So there you go. Well Raychel, this is awesome. And I think this is the first time that I've really opened the kimono on Triumph coaching and kind of done done a big reveal on everything that's going on inside there.

Ben Greenfield [01:12:08]: So again, all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/triumphpodcast with a ph non nut Triumph Podcast Raychel, thanks so much.

Raychel Kosh [01:12:17]: Thanks for having me.

Ben Greenfield [01:12:19]: All right folks, have an incredible week.

Ben Greenfield [01:12:21]: To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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