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For over a decade, David Tian, Ph.D. — a uniquely qualified therapist, life coach, and former university professor — has coached tens of thousands of people from over 87 countries to achieve happiness and success in their relationships, dating, psychology, and lifestyle.
Dr. Tian has been featured in international media, as well as co-hosting a radio show on national radio and a weekly dating advice column in a national newspaper in Singapore.
The show, “Man Up: Masculinity for the Intelligent Man” (https://www.davidtianphd.com/blog/), is David’s way of helping as many people as possible enjoy empowering and fulfilling lives, while contributing to the global understanding of masculinity in modern times. In the show, he takes your questions posed in the Man Up private Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/manupcommunity/) and answers based on his experience coaching tens of thousands of students around the world for over a decade.
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How To Follow Through On Fitness And Self Development – with Ted Ryce
- David Tian Ph.D. together with Ted Ryce share there perspective on why it’s difficult for some people to follow through with their commitments.
- Establishing habits are needed to follow through with self development, David Tian Ph.D. explains its importance.
- In this Man Up episode, David Tian Ph.D. and Ted Ryce discuss why you need to understand your purpose of pursuing fitness.
David Tian: Boom! Stop. In Episode 137 of Man Up, our special guest Ted Ryce and I answer the question of: how to follow through on fitness and self-development.
[MUSIC]
Masculinity for the intelligent man. I’m David Tian, Ph.D. and this is Man Up!
Hey, guys! This is David Tian, Ph.D. and for over the past ten years, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people in over 87 countries attain success in life and love, through the application of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research. And welcome to Episode 137 of Man Up, and I’m very honored and excited to have Ted Ryce on this episode.
Before Ted gets to introduce himself, so hey, Ted.
Ted Ryce: What’s going on, David? Happy to be here as well.
David Tian: Yeah. So, you’re in Miami.
Ted Ryce: Miami Beach.
David Tian: Miami Beach, man. And what time is it for you over there?
Ted Ryce: It is 9:18AM on Sunday morning.
David Tian: Oh, it’s Sunday morning. Wow, cool. I really appreciate you taking the Sunday morning out for us. I’m 8:18PM Sunday in Bangkok. And so, I met Ted at the recent Under 21 Convention in Orlando a couple of months ago. And it was kind of funny, because I had actually read – I think it was on Anthony Johnson’s Facebook that come up on my home feed, that there’s this story in Miami – or in Florida – of your family, it turns out. But I didn’t know it was you. Like, I read the story in a news thing, and I was thinking, “Man, this is tough and crazy. This is horrible.”
And then I didn’t notice – he probably posted saying, “Ted Ryce will be coming to speak at the Convention.” But I didn’t read that part. So, I just read that as news, and then I just put it away in my mind. And then you came up on stage and started to introduce yourself, tell your story, and I’m like, “Holy shit! This is the guy from the news thing I was reading!” And it was relatively recent. I think it was reporting about your sister, and then it reported about you and where you had gone since then and how much you had done.
And I was so excited that you were here. I was so excited to meet you after having read that, and I didn’t know you were going to be at the event. So, that was pretty exciting. And you have a very empowering message so I thought we’d start off with that. But the question that we’re answering today is a question I got from a fan, “Why is it so difficult to follow through on self-development?”
So, the context of the question was, “There are all these I know I need to do including watching your courses, watching your free videos, and then going out and trying them out and implementing them, but I end up staying at home all day watching more videos on YouTube or whatever, and I don’t go out there except that when I played Pokémon Go.” You know, I was like…
Ted Ryce: Oh, yeah.
David Tian: So, that’s the context of the question and I thought you’d be a great guy to ask about that. I’m also- because I’ve tried a part of month two of one of your fitness programs, and that was a lot of fun. I want to share about that. But I wanted to start with your journey and the things that you’ve gone through. And you’ve been public speaking and giving this story around the world for years already. So, there’s a long version of it which guys can go and find. I don’t want to rush you through it because I really want to respect the experience you went through. But man, I’m based out here and a lot of my work with live clients is in Singapore, which is like a utopia. Like it literally is a government-engineered perfection.
And their biggest news is that the subway broke down for half an hour or something.
Ted Ryce: Yeah, or someone got their cellphone stolen, yeah.
David Tian: But all these guys are crying because it’s relative; the pain is always relative. So, they’re crying over extremely first world problems. And it’s one thing to say, “Look, our grandparents and my parents went through world wars in Asia, through the Pacific Wars. Even in Singapore, there was war through the 50’s, and then communism was all over the place in that region of the world. But that’s so far removed from their reality. And when they’re meeting somebody who is in their generation, who didn’t go through some exceptional war or something, but somebody you can look at and talk to, I think it’s important that they realize just – it puts things in perspective.
So I’m like, “Toughen up, man. You got nothing to cry over.” So, I don’t want it to become a sad thing, but it’s a story that’s quite empowering. So, there you go Ted, to just get you going on the story, but I will let you introduce yourself.
Ted Ryce: Sure. Well, what I say now is I always talk about where I am now. And that is, I’ve been a health and fitness professional for the past 17 years in Miami Beach, Florida. I’ve worked with celebrities like Richard Branson, Robert Downey Jr., Ricky Morton. Most of my current clients are CEOs of multi-million dollar companies. Very successful people. Very lucky and blessed to have the type of life that I have now. You said that I’m working on my speaking career. I’ve started this great thing online called Legendary Life where I sit down and interview people like you do. In fact, we got to get you on this show, because you have a fascinating background and story as well.
But it didn’t start out that way for me. In fact, it’s a long list of terrible events that got me to the point where I’m at now. When I was 14, my mother died in a car accident. She was very mentally ill, so it wasn’t just, “Oh, there was a car accident.” And it was terrible, but it was – “These things happen. Car accidents happen all the time.” She ran a police roadblock, ran straight into a tree. Died instantly. It was more like a suicide than a regular car accident. Although, I’ll never know what was going through her mind at the time. That set the stage for me in high school. While most people were focusing on getting good grades, they get into a good college and so on, I was just full-on rage mode.
I got in trouble with the law, abused drugs and alcohol; just was angry, was sad. And I don’t talk about it a lot, but I had other things going on at home. Alcoholism with my father and my stepmom. So, it wasn’t like something bad happened and I had a supportive environment. It was something bad happened, my mom died, and I was already living in this really bad environment. I don’t want to overblow it either, because my parents were both attorneys, and they had advanced degrees, and they helped me progress in some ways. Reading; they made me spell antidisestablishmentarianism when I was ten years old.
But it wasn’t a supportive environment. And so, I was just lost, no way to turn to, except my friends in high school and I got into a lot of trouble. But I did get through high school. When I got into college, things started to look up. I was on my own, because my parents said, “Listen, we’re not going to kick you out on the street, but we couldn’t live together.” They put me up in an apartment. Again, I come from – that’s pretty privileged, and I was grateful for that experience.
So, I would live on my own and went to college. And I started to come out of that darkness of my mother’s death and the bad situation I had at home. I could pick my classes, because you got a ton of school underneath your belt, David, with your PhD. You can choose what you want to study, you can choose – you meet all these interesting people. And I started getting good grades for the first time in my life. I started getting straight A’s. I started doing well on math and I became a math tutor, even.
And I wanted to study neuroscience because I was so fascinated with my mother’s mental illness, with my sadness and depression, which goes back to what we’re going to talk about today. We sometimes know what we need to do, but we’re not in control of ourselves. We feel like, “Well, I’m this autonomous human being with free will!” And you know, we can’t get ourselves to do what we know we need to do to improve our lives. I was fascinated by it and I learned more about the brain. And I thought, “Man, there’s gold in here”, right?
Unfortunately, the winning streak didn’t last long. When I was 19, my nine year old brother disappeared. And it became big news in my community in Miami. It made it to the national news level. Some of your listeners outside the United States aren’t really going to understand, but it was on Oprah. My parents went on Oprah and there was searches for him. He was nowhere to be found, and it was hell: that hell of not knowing what happened. Sleepless nights. The FBI got involved, interrogated me, my friend who was babysitting my brother at the time because my parents were on vacation, and the rest of my family as well – and no sight of him, right?
And after what seemed more like three years, although it was in only three months we finally found out what had happened. I got a call from an FBI agent in the middle of the night, at 4:00AM, and he told me what had happened. And my brother had been kidnapped that day. He went missing and was taken to a trailer, sexually assaulted and ended up murdered. So, when I found that out, it just sent me in a tailspin in my life. And like you said, I don’t want to make this into a downer, but these are the things.
David Tian: Well, these are the facts.
Ted Ryce: These are the facts, and the whole message is that you can get through whatever it is that you’re going through in your life. So, if you’re listening and you’re like, “Man, that’s a crazy story.” It goes on. My sister ended up committing suicide as you referenced earlier. You were reading a story about that. But my message is that you can get through anything. And one of the things that got me through was health and fitness, and the other part was personal development, the things that we’re going to be talking about today.
And you know – what I tell people when they hear that story, because they’re like, “Man, I feel so bad for you. I feel sorry for you.” I’m like, “Don’t.” Because here’s people, like you said earlier David, who don’t have any big war, big tragedy in their life, and they’re upset about it. And I don’t want to say that I don’t have my moments, but I’m on the path to live the life that I really want to live. And it comes down to what we do, not our external circumstances.
David Tian: Wow, that is such a powerful story. I’ve heard it live in Orlando. I’m hearing it now. And just to prep this, I heard it a couple other places on the internet, and every time, man, it’s just wow. So much respect for what you’ve gone through. And the depth that you must have now emotionally, you know, we were talking about method acting, and that’s one of those things that… You know, I led a pretty sheltered life until I went out and looked for trouble, really. I had to create obstacles.
But actually, even a sheltered life in itself is a problem, right? But one of the reasons I went into method acting was to enter these other lives and these alternative roads or life roads to get me that depth. Because otherwise, life is a really amazing roller coaster when you embrace it. And as long as you come out the other end, you know, it’s only up, right?
Ted Ryce: Yeah.
David Tian: So, let’s get to the question, because I could go on for hours with you here discussing all of the things that you – like, the personal development and the fitness. And that’s always the danger, is going on forever. So, I’m trying to stay focused, and answering the question of, “What is it that keeps people from following through and how can they follow through? How can they stay with their commitments?” Do you have a quick answer to that? Because I know basically it’s all of self-development, but do you have…?
Ted Ryce: Sure. I was a perspective that I want to share. And what I said when I introduced myself is that I work with these celebrities and CEOs of multi-million dollar companies, entrepreneurs. Some of them are worth hundreds of millions. And I want to tell you that everybody has the same issue. My clients, I can think of all my clients right now, there’s only one of them… Now, these are guys who are very successful, hard-working, made a lot of money, heads of their companies, started their companies. They won’t exercise if I’m not there, or if they don’t get a trainer. They have the same thing, why? Because we all make the same excuses.
“I’m too busy, I can’t do it. I don’t have time. I need to spend the time working.” And we all face resistance. And I say that, because I think we put some people up on pedestals and think that, “Well, they have it all together, not me. I’m this loser with all these problems, but they have it all together.” It’s like, no, they got part of their life together. Other parts? They don’t. So, this is something that everyone faces. And with all the people I’ve met, and I’m sure all the people you’ve met, you’ve never met anyone who’s just, “Wow, that person just has everything handled. We’re all humans in progress.”
David Tian: Yeah. I found that it is important to have a role model there, or role models, that pull you forward so that you think, “At least that guy’s getting it done.” And that’s one of those things. The other thing, like having you there, is an accountability, right? That forces him to show up. Because it’s so easy to just say, “Alright, I’ll put it off until tomorrow.”
And what I found is, the biggest thing I can do for a guy is to teach him how to establish a habit. And I think this is true for fitness, right? I’d rather a guy do one pushup a day. Like, if he can’t do anything, just remember you do one pull-up a day. That’s all you can do. You can definitely do that. It’s like two seconds, right? And getting him on that consistency of every day or almost every day, just doing a little bit. Because then after a week of one pull-up a day, maybe two pull-ups. Or one push-up, maybe two push-ups. And maybe he’ll get bored, because now he’s two – he’s on the ground already – might as well do a few more. He’s on the ground.
And then that builds. And over time, you establish this habit where you don’t think about it, but it just happens.
Ted Ryce: I’m on board 100% with that, yeah.
David Tian: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about – because I’ve been dying to tell you, talk about the experience I had trying out your CEO Strength. One thing I’ve been actually meaning to ask you was, “What’s it like training? What was the program for Robert Downey Jr.?” Because he does some action movies, right? Did he do something like CEO Strength?
Ted Ryce: I actually met Robert through a real estate developer, very well-known real estate developer here in Miami Beach.
And I trained him for a while. He said, “Hey, do you want to train Robert?” And I was like, “Yeah.” “You know, Robert Downey Jr.” I was like, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.” And I grew up with his movie. “Yeah, let me see if I can fit him in the schedule. Yeah, it seems like I can [INAUDIBLE] couple.”
And I grew up watching him on the big screen. And this was after all the debacle, all the craziness that had happened, and it’s like waking up in his neighbor’s bed and all that. He was on his way.
David Tian: I’ve already forgotten about all that because it’s been so much since then, but yeah I remember now.
Ted Ryce: Yeah, and this was after he started doing Wing Chun, which I know you know is a martial art, the one that Bruce Lee started out with. And he hadn’t done Iron Man 1 yet. He was getting in shape for the role. And I was training him just when he was in Miami. And we did functional movement. Not quite – I think I’m a better trainer, so this was maybe ten years ago from the first movie, because I kind of got away from training for a while – which is a whole another subject: training celebrities doesn’t lead to automatic success, right?
Story for another podcast. But what had happened – I took him through some workouts and using a lot of body weight exercise, but also traditional exercise. I think I’m way better now, but we’re using balls, he’s doing pipe push-ups and all types of abs exercises and a lot of body weight exercise. But more functional stuff, because he was into the martial arts. But I’ll tell you, I was a purple belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu at the time and I was like, “Man, Wing Chun, it’s cool, you know, but you got to try this Brazilian jiu jitsu.”
And he started messing around, you know, the Wing Chun stuff. And I ankle picked him. I put him down on his butt, nicely, gently. He was like, “Oh, yeah. I see that, yeah. I see that.” He’s like, “Yeah, that’s a different perspective.” But yeah, it was cool training him. It was a very, very cool guy. And just a side story, is he said – we hit it off, he said, “Hey man, if you ever make it out to LA, I would be glad to show you around, introduce you to some people. Like once in a lifetime opportunity.” And as soon as he said that, because I had such bad social anxiety in those days, as soon as he said it I’m like, “I’m never doing that. No way.”
You know? And passed up on that opportunity because like what we’re talking about, I didn’t follow through on it, and I could’ve very easily done that.
David Tian: Yeah, right. Wow, that’s a nice segue back into the question. One of the things I really liked about your program, especially the body weight one, which I don’t think you knew because we switched to the weights workout, was how…
Ted Ryce: You’re too strong, that’s why, David. You’re too strong, man.
David Tian: Well, I realized after doing that – the second month of that program – that I was like, “Hey, you know, I’ve been working out with pro-level fighters who are world champions.” So, they have an open workout, so you can join the workout. So, I’ll buy a fight week – it was like a vacation week, so it’s for a week I can take all the classes. So, I double up and take two or three a day and kill myself. But one of them’s like the conditioning one. And I matched them pull-up for pull-up, push-up for push-up, sprawl with them. And I was like, “Wow, this is so awesome.”
I was so excited to be working out around them. But of course, then they go off and do three hours of sparring or something. And I go out and get my protein shake.
Ted Ryce: Yeah. No kidding, right?
David Tian: Yeah. I definitely realized I’m not the typical client for… One of the problems with dating too, or giving dating advice, is that if you’re really far – if you’re a veteran, you’re really far away from what it was like to be a beginner. It’s hard for you to connect. And even visually, they look at you, you’re like, “You’re different from them.” And that’s been an issue for me, learning about how to connect with the guys that I’m reaching at the white belt level of dating and socializing.
But now with fitness too, I can understand where you’re coming from. What I really liked about the body weight workout was, it was so convenient. Like, I could do it almost anywhere. Like, I just needed a bar to pull-up, like a pull-up bar. I’d like to have a lat machine, but in Singapore there are public housing units. Like, that’s the majority of how people live in Singapore. And in every one of the public housing units, they have a playground and they have those… They basically have pull-up bars and dip bars.
Ted Ryce: Pretty cool.
David Tian: And they have some for old people, they can step on and do this sort of thing. I don’t know what those are called. And I remember when I was babysitting a friend’s child for a while, and I would be too busy to run to the gym. So, at 11:00PM, I’d go down and just try to knock out 50 pull-ups, 50 dips, and try to alternate. The first time I did that, I remember I got like 20 pull-ups, and then I was doing sets of one pull-up. You know? Like just to finish the damn 50. I’m like, “Why did I set 50 as a goal?” But that was way back.
And the fact that there were pull-up bars, and then there are the low bars for latting rows, you basically can do a whole workout with that and variations of push-ups, right? So, you have this body weight routine that doesn’t require a guy to actually have a gym membership, and it doesn’t require him to go all the way to the gym. And that removes a barrier for a lot of guys, for a lot of people, for why they don’t work out. Because the farther away your gym is from where you’re sleeping, the less chance you’re going to actually work out, right?
And the best way to workout is to have a home gym or just downstairs. So, one thing – a lot of Singaporean guys, I want to get them to work out, but they have this whole mentality about gyming. I asked him, “What do you do at the gym?” Oh, I work out. “What do you do?” I work out. And I see them, they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know intensity, they don’t know timing and all this. So, following a proper exercise regimen that’s not like…
I used to recommend P90X, but that’s too involved. It’s 70, sometimes between… Or if you do the Ab Ripper after the weight stays, and then every day you’re looking at 60 to 75 minutes of actual workout time, right? This is not including changing the DVD and setting it up, right? So, that actually is a lot of time for a lot of people. So, it’s an easy thing to put off.
Like, I remember one day I tried to test myself how fast I could do the body weight workout, because I had to rush to breakfast which was ending soon.
And I knocked it out in like 22 minutes. And then before that, I was doing it in like 45 minutes, taking longer rest between sets, and trying to go max weight on those things. And then I was, “Man, what if I just go for it?” And you know what I loved was, I was used to working out for 75 minutes. And to get that feeling of the endorphins and all that in 22. And when you do pull-ups in like lateral rows, it’s a full body workout because your core is always engaged.
And it was a great feeling. I felt like I earned the breakfast.
Ted Ryce: [LAUGHS] Yeah. Well, you know, I’ll tell you, P90X, I think it’s a better program than what a lot of people are on. But I have people who did the P90X, and they didn’t know where to go. Or they did the body B’s, they didn’t know where to go afterward. And what I would say about what you’re talking about, I think you’re a special individual as well. For you and your goals, I would’ve had to write…
David Tian: [LAUGHS]
Ted Ryce: You’re special, David.
David Tian: [LAUGHS] I always need people affirming me. That’s always good.
Ted Ryce: Special guy.
David Tian: [LAUGHS]
Ted Ryce: [LAUGHS] But with a guy like you, who is a bit freakish with your fitness and strength level for your size, I would’ve had to write an advanced workout that isn’t appropriate for anyone else in the group. This group is for people who can’t even do a pull-up to maybe five pull-ups. But once you get up to your level, it gets very difficult to change the routines, to challenge you with the routines, because we know it works. And then you said something great like the P90X’s 60 to 70 minutes.
You’re going to get – some of the body building programs you shared with me, that you were following me beforehand, you get better results if you’re spending 45 minutes in the gym, 50 minutes in the gym. You don’t have to do that, but we know with exercise there is kind of a more is better thing. That’s why P90X is six days a week, right? More is kind of better.
So, with you, it would’ve been better to maybe do some pull-up drop sets, or to even add a weighted vest. But you travel so much with the weighted vest thing, and it’s getting that through security. “No, it’s not a suicide vest! I promise. It only looks like one”, you know?
David Tian: Yeah, I’ll pay extra for it. [LAUGHS] But you know, when I started getting serious about fitness, I couldn’t even do five pull-ups, and that was 2007. And then even 2007 to – I remember 2009, I was working out with guys who had done military training. Like, they just had come out a couple years from hardcore military training, not just national service but career military. We’d do sprints, so we do suicide sprints, and then we do 100 meters and back until we were dead. And then we started doing weights.
And then they get up and they do three sets of 15, and I’m like – I can do one set of 10, and then one set of 3, and then I’m just hanging in the third set. And then that’s where I was starting with pull-ups and I was like, “How did these guys do it?” And it was over years, man. Years of just on back day, twice a week or something like that, I would just do as many as I could. And sometimes I’d use some help. Like, there’s some ways that you can do – you’re one foot up on a bench or something, you just kick up. But I would do stick with the bars and not go to the lat pull-down machine.
Because on the lat pull-down machine, I feel like I’m really strong. But like, a lot of it is like, you lean back enough and there’s lots of ways to cheat on the pull-down machine. But on the pull-ups, it’s harder to cheat, so it kept me honest. And that’s another thing. If it’s just once a day, you just do it, stick with it, do a little bit… I’d rather a guy like… One of the problems is, when people get into fitness they go, “I’m going to get my six pack!” or “I’m going to lose all this weight!” Then they go and they kill themselves, right?
Like, three workouts where they’re absolutely dead, and then now they can’t get out of bed. And then they’re like, “Oh, fuck. I’m not going to be able to follow through”, so they give up. So, I like how you meet them at their level. And I wish I had something like what you were – back in ’07, ’08, ’09, what you’re presenting in the CEO Strength. That would’ve given me more structure, probably would’ve gotten me there faster.
I feel like some guys, they just want to look good. And you start them with that. But I tell them – because there’s a lot of science on the V. Two V’s. There’s the V at the shoulder-to-waist ratio which has been – there are quite a few studies that show that women just visually find that shape attractive. And then there’s that V down there which is low body fat V, right?
And there’s some guys who just want to work shoulders. They just do lat flies all day long, like that’s not how you get there. It’s the overall body. But at a certain point, when you get developed enough, you can go for isolation, and grow certain parts bigger, and put more attention on those. But you have to have the foundation, especially the core.
Ted Ryce: Absolutely. I mean, if you can’t do pull-ups, what are you doing? And you mentioned something great. Part of it’s the look, but I would also argue that – and I don’t know if there is science behind it. You would know that better than me David, but part of it is just that confidence that you feel, “Oh, I’m confident with my body and how to use my body. And I’m strong with my body. And if I need to pull myself up, I can.”
Some of the most insecure people I’ve ever met are some of the biggest bodybuilder type of guys. And I’m talking about the really big guys, and it’s like – I think there’s something that comes from martial arts. And something that comes from mastering your body weight, and knowing that you can move and you have the strength to pull up, to dip, to do a muscle up; that gives you a level of confidence in yourself that you can’t get from a 500 pound leg press, locked in, all safe on your back.
And part of it, I think, is what I just said: the safety. There’s no fear, there’s no challenge, right? If you do a handstand, man, you can fall over and hurt yourself if you’re doing it [INAUDIBLE], you know, stuff like that. I think that it’s got a more athletic quality and does something different to your brain. Again, I never got my PhD in Neuroscience, so I don’t know, but I have a suspicion that there’s something a little bit different about mastering the movements as opposed to locking yourself into a position in a machine and just lifting there.
David Tian: Yeah. And you probably will get a lot more injuries if you just do heavy machines and you’re just doing this sort of thing. Do you have handstands in any of the programs? Because that’s awesome if you do, that’s quite advanced.
Ted Ryce: I want to create something that’s more advanced, where we’re doing planches, handstands, front levers, back levers. My own take on gymnastics strength training. And I say gymnastics strength training because it’s not gymnastics or body weight training for a particular – like, to do a backflip. It’s really to build your body, to build your strength, to build that foundational strength. So, I haven’t written that yet. That’s what I do for my own workout. That’s what I’m working on now, so not yet.
David Tian: And then movement training. We’ve been doing quite a few handstands, where I start off on the ground – you know, like basically parallel with my feet up on the wall. And then I walk myself up and then I bring my hands. I move back as far as I can to the wall and then try to just go there. So, I’m working my way there, and it freaked me out the first time. Like, being upside down, just supported by your hands, and you could just suddenly… It was just a mental thing, but it was a great overall workout. It just activated everything down to my knees, I suppose. And yeah, I’ve been really loving that whole…
I know that when I go back to – Like, I don’t like bicep curls anymore. I don’t like the little movements. It just doesn’t excite me. I think the blood’s not flowing through the whole body the way it does when you do compound and activating the core kind of movements, the bigger movements. And there is research – there’s a lot of research, in fact, this is pretty well-known now, among the scientific community – that hormonally, we pick up each other’s hormones through our olfactory nerves.
So, that’s why dogs have the most… I think they have 30 or 300 times more sensory perception in their noses than we do, and they can smell things like whether somebody has cancer. And that’s pretty well-documented, and they can smell when a woman is menstruating. Like, they can smell hormones and hormonal changes. And there’s been a lot of research that shows that women unconsciously smell men who have high testosterone and low testosterone. They distinguish between that, and then they perceive it as visually that person’s good looking or not.
But actually, what they’re responding to is the smell because they just do blind tests. And they vary the sample based on… You know, whether the man is low or high testosterone. And they ask the woman to rate how attractive he is, and the high attractiveness always correlates very closely with high testosterone. So, if you’re just sitting there doing wrist curls, you’re not going to jack your testosterone, you know? And women are picking that up. And that’s actually the only scientific evidence that’s been proven.
The amount of literature on the testosterone through the olfactory nerves is far greater than the V shape.
Ted Ryce: Oh, really?
David Tian: Yeah. There’s only really one scientific consensus around what is attractive to women universally, and that’s high testosterone, like sexually attractive. So, all the other stuff is through surveys, you just write it down. And we know women don’t really know what they want, just like some men don’t. You know, they think they want something.
Ted Ryce: The guy who’s nice, but I go for bad boy or his money.
David Tian: [LAUGHS] Yeah. So actually, we’ve gone on overtime. I’m really glad we did. How can guys get to know you? Get a hold of you and take CEO Strength, who are watching this?
Ted Ryce: If you want to listen to my health and fitness podcast, I go into health and fitness, have really insanely interesting guests on – go to LegendaryLifePodcast.com. If you want to take your fitness to the next level, I suggest that you go to LegendaryLifePodcast.com/challenge. That’s our 30-day challenge that we just started. If you’re a complete beginner, you’ve been out of the gym for months. If you’re a few months behind your workouts or a few years, or if you’ve never been on a structured program before, that’s where I would start.
Or if you want to get into the coaching program, go to LegendaryLifePodcast.com/coaching. But you can find it all there. We promote it. And I’ll tell you, like you said David, there’s nothing like following a structured program. Where it’s not 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, there’s 12 months of workouts where you will never get a plateau unless you’re freakishly strong like David, who needs a special workout.
But there’s 12 months of workouts. Just think about how much stronger and better feeling, better looking you would be after 12 months of making progress in your strength, in your physique. It’s not everything as you know David, but it’s a great place to start getting your health and fitness handled. It’s so important for every aspect of our life.
David Tian: Yeah. Awesome. Great stuff. We’ll have the links below this video. And if you join the private Man Up group, we’re thinking about doing another webcast to promote any further programs. So, you can always reach me there. And I can put you in touch with Ted. And join the private Facebook group as well. Click that link below this video. Join the group. We approve requests every day. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Ted. Great story. Just seeing you here is just a great testament to growth through adversity. And you know, you talked about, I think in other ways of getting through pain, how pain is something that is required to get to the next level. Just great perspectives on everything.
I can go on forever with you, but we have to end it here. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you guys.
Ted Ryce: Thanks, David.
David Tian: In the private Facebook group. Oh, until then, Man Up!