Fit 7 HOURS of Fitness into Two 21-Minute Sessions 🎙️ with PJ Glassey by @jeroseland on 3Speak
Is centuries-old dogma holding back your fitness and personal growth? Might "working harder" (in the gym and in life) be self-sabotaging you while you could instead "time-hack" smarter? Might you a...
Tags: #interview #podcast #fitness #health
There's a dichotomous old dogma, I'm sure you reject, that you can develop your mind or your body. The mind-body split, that the dwebiest of philosophers and academics once espoused. But there's another dichotomy that might be limiting you. The belief that fast equals rushed, and that quantity has a quality all its own when it comes to your time commitment, to your health, fitness, and personal growth. Rome wasn't built in a day, right? That's a saying as old as, well, Rome, I'm sure. But might it now be... Wrong. Might you actually have all the time you need to elevate your mind to the divine frequency it's intended to receive and chisel your body so that every mere refracts greatness? That's a question I'm going to get really pragmatic on today with PJ Glassie. PJ is an author, serial entrepreneur, and the creator of the revolutionary high-intensity protocol behind X Jim in Kirkland, Washington, which boasts an almost perfect 4.9 star rating on Google Maps, by the way. He's going to tell us here today how to fit seven hours of traditional fitness into two 21-minute sessions a week, along with the neuroscience of neurocentric movement, brain typing, and how high-efficiency biohacking can rebuild your physique without... taxing your already busy schedule. By the way, PJ's X Gym is the exclusive sponsor of this episode. Thanks to them, there are no annoying ads interrupting this conversation. Listen till the end, where I explain why this kind of exclusive sponsorship is the highest integrity business model for doing what we do here. I'm Jonathan Rosland, PJ, welcome to Limitless. Thanks, thanks for having me. First question, when we first talked, you described yourself as a time hacker, which sounds cool. I'm pretty sure that was the title of like a 90s B movie. And you're a family man and a grandfather, a successful entrepreneur, and you manage to stay in pretty awesome shape. So can you explain time hacking? And can you explain that on kind of like a mindset level and then give us some practical time hacks? And then I've got a few to share myself. Right on. Well, most of my time hacking has to do with health and fitness. And, of course, the 21 minutes twice a week, equaling seven hours of traditional training, which we can get into that more later, because it is an unbelievable statement. But there's also things like exercise snacks, where you're doing one to two minutes of exertion during your day, and you can do that just even at your office. There's posts on my... website that describe how to do that, including one that I just recently posted about just using the stairs in your building and just taking little tiny breaks or even air squats or an exercise on the X-Gim exercise app. But most importantly, some form of exertion every hour will transform metabolism and make you a fat burner instead of a fat storer like most people are. And like I said, it only takes one or two minutes. And if you put on a recurring timer and do it every hour, you are transforming your metabolism. And it's just a really easy, quick way to do it that doesn't take much time at all. And then another one is exerting yourself in the morning. So when you do something hard in the morning, it helps you get the big rocks done, the hard things. because you've already done something hard. And when you're doing that, you can clear out your day, get the hard stuff over with. So you're not pouring the... You've probably seen the analogy of the sand and the pebbles and the rocks and the big rocks in a jar, where if you put the sand in first and then the pebbles and then the big rocks, they don't fit. But if you have the big rocks in first, and then the pebbles and then the sand, it all fits. So doing something hard physically helps you do something, helps you do things hard mentally. So that saves a ton of time. And then the last thing is exercise, especially extreme exercise with lots of exertion, high exertion rates, clears brain frog. So you get more done. And you're more efficient mentally throughout the day and physically. And the ROI... on a short workout, especially with exertion and the right kind of exertion, is amazing, because you get that time back in spades, and you're getting a lot more done during the day, as opposed to walking around in brain fog with low energy, not able to efficiently do a lot of things during the day. Okay, so you were talking about, like, taking on a, like, a mini workout in the morning. just to, like, signal to your psychology that you've got what it takes to conquer the day. So is that, like, for me, I do 40 pushups pretty early in the day. Is that, that's a pretty good example of that? Yes. And the key would be to get to the point where it's really hard. So what I would recommend in your case is to slow those down. So it takes... 5 to 10 seconds to go up in a pushup, and 5 to 10 seconds to come back down. So it's going to cut the time down for pushups, because you're going to get to fatigue faster. It's also going to raise the intensity, and that's going to be really hard to do. Somebody that can do 40 push-ups, if they're doing it 10 seconds each wrap, is going to be able to do 10 or 11 instead. and a really super high level of exertion. And so then, now they've done something physically hard. Anything that we do that's physically hard is also a mental exercise, because you have to be mentally strong in order to do something physically hard. And so now you've signaled your nervous system that you can do hard stuff. And today, I can do hard stuff because I just did something hard. I just started the day with something hard. So now... I can take on those big rocks, the things that I really need to get done today, as opposed to scrolling and surfing the web, which is the sand, the little stuff, and filling up your day with the little stuff, and then about the end of the day, you don't have room for the big stuff, and you've put it off again, you've procrastinated it again. Okay. I like that. And I got another little hack to add to your exercise snacks. And so people are like, well, how am I going to remember to do little exercise snacks throughout the day? Well, you can probably have like a smartwatch that reminds you to do that, but sometimes we ignore our smart watches. So the way that I remember to do these kinds of things is you do them. when you go to the bathroom because I drink a lot of really great beverages. And so, got to go to the bathroom? About every once every 90 minutes. And so that's like a natural little punctuation mark that shows up in the day. So you can just, yeah, exercise, snack, pre or post doing business in the bathroom. That's a great one. Also, bathrooms, don't take your phone to the bathroom. That's our rule here in the Roseland household. We don't take our phones to the bathroom, and we have a meditative moment of gratitude in the bathroom. Because really, what else better do you have to do while you're in there doing your business on the can? Yeah, that's called habit stacking, and it's brilliant. because it reminds you to do your important thing, whatever that is, because you've stacked it with another thing that you do every day. So it could also be brushing your teeth, it could be grabbing your keys, it could be something that you do every day, and at first, you'll want to put a post -it there. So, like, if you're trying to do the bathroom technique that you're talking about, you would have a post-it note on the toilet to remind you... until you don't need the Post-it note anymore, because then it's natural, and it's just like the other routine, and then your habit stacking. Okay, so I've got some time hacks to share. Actually, I've got kind of a bunch of them, so feel free to interrupt me with that body language sign. If, yeah, if you got something to add to one of these. Okay, so in... My first year of parenthood with a new baby, I managed to run my business, write a book, work out 61 times, do date night with my wife, and I also managed to stay in touch with family abroad. And I think this is because I tried to avoid as much as possible using the too busy excuse. Any time I... found myself telling myself if I was too busy, I would instead say, okay, what is my priority? And, yeah, sometimes there's, like, things that just aren't a priority. And so, I would, yeah, I would, like, reframe busy into, this is a priority, this isn't a priority. And the, I think the philosophy, the philosophy of the time hacker is something I picked up from Tim Ferriss a long time ago, which is let bad, small things happen. When we're, when we're focused on, like, our grand goals in life, and the really meaningful things in life, we accept that there's going to be some mundane... things, and there's going to be some things that maybe even kind of seem important in a given day, but that they just don't happen, and that there might be, like, a little disaster, or there might be a little disappointment because of some little thing that doesn't get done, because we focus on, we focus on bigger things. Okay, I'm a big fan of, like, the mundaneities of life, the chores of life. I try to do these things as fast enough that I make little mistakes. And this is something I picked up from, there was a study on typing, on people learning to type faster, and they found that if people would push, what you do, if you want to learn to type faster, which we all need to type a whole lot, is you push yourself to type as fast. as to where you start making mistakes. And then, over time, your competence will increase, and you'll increase your words per minute without making those mistakes. So, and I think that is something that kind of generalizes to. There's things in life that we should, that we shouldn't rush. Like, Like, like, making love, like spending time with family, spiritual practices. We shouldn't rush those things, but all those mundane things in life, I say, I say, like, rush them until you make little mistakes so that you can focus on the meaningful things. Okay, let me get a little bit. So I mentioned that I managed 621 workouts, first year of parenthood, and here's how I did that, was a lot of them were rather short. I would do workouts at home, or I had one of those playground gyms nearby where I live. So, workouts at home, squats, holding the baby. And like, I think the majority of our listeners, I'm a knowledge worker. My professional life depends deeply on whatever knowledge and wisdom I need to acquire. So for me, any workout time is also professional development time. And there's always some topic I need to research. It could be, like, a guest book, or how I can keep my unvaccinated child safe from the mumps. Okay, that's the kind of thing that you start thinking about pretty seriously, if you're a guy like me. So I would listen to audiobooks podcast. Or what you can do now, this is actually a pretty sweet hack. If there's a topic you need to learn more about, find, like, four to five sources on it, like, web pages, books, etc. And you load those into a Google Gemini AI notebook. and then you prompt Gemini to create a podcast about the topic, but in the prompt, be very specific about your specific situation and goal. And it will do a scary, good job of pinpointing what you need to know from those sources. And listen to that while doing a home workout. Okay, another time hack. is as personal growth people, we read a lot of books, and the books that we read really have an outsized impact on our lives. PJ, I bet you can name one for me. Yeah, gosh. So my favorite book is a worldwide bestseller for over 2,000 years. It can probably guess what it is. most people have one in their house, whether they read it or not. And it's also a form of meditation, so which we can get into if we want, but all meditation is, is just focusing on one thing. And it's really good for the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex. So my favorite book is the Bible. And I read it every day, and I focus very intensively on it. Because even if I read the same verse over and over, like, for instance, this month I'm reading 2nd Timothy every day. the whole thing, it's a short book, but every day for a month, and I get something different out of it every single time, which is unlike any other book, because it's written unlike any other book, but also I'm focusing on it. And when we focus on something, whether it's just our breath or whatever, we're meditating. And we are increasing our attention span, which is a big problem nowadays, because most people have it super short attention span, you know, with all the social media and the swiping. But what you're talking about is increasing brain strength, capacity, even intelligence, because you're increasing your ability to focus. Okay, right on. My favorite Bible verse is Romans 12. Two, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you will know God's will. Bingo. Yeah. Okay, so, but here's my, okay, here's my hack for book knowledge, is we spend a lot of time reading these books, and they impact our lives, but... Reading nonfiction books or reading books for edification is kind of inefficient because you spend 5, 10, 20 hours reading a book, and then a year later, maybe remember, like, two things from the book. And so the way that I hack this is via an app called Super Memo. and I'll read, when I read nonfiction books, I will highlight passages in orange, because that's like the logo color of Super Memo, and then I copy-paste that passage into this flashcard app that has this clever algorithm where it figures, it's called the spaced retention model of memory retention, something like that, and it... prompts you to remember facttoids or passages from books or foreign language vocabulary at the time when you're about to forget it because it builds algorithm based upon you. And so I'll put all of these, if I read a good book, I'll grab sometimes a factoid from every single chapter. And then I spend maybe 40 to 50 minutes a week doing memory. practice of that. So all of this great information that I spend quite a bit of time absorbing, it sticks with me a whole lot more than just reading the book and then saying, oh, that was a good book. Here's kind of a vague lesson that I got from it. Okay, and then I just have two more time hacks that I'm going to power through. Okay, is one is having the right spouse. That makes a big difference with time management. And actually, this is almost kind of a, this almost kind of connects to, like, dating and courtship that early on, if you're a single person, this is really golden advice. If you're not a single person, maybe not so much. But if you're a single person, set expectations around like your time boundaries early on in the relationship, because that's what I did. And now, like, my wife knows that Jonathan will not wait in a line to buy something. Like, if I need to give someone money, a line cannot be a part of that process. And my wife just takes care of... Those sorts of things. And that saves me a whole lot of time, which is why, yeah, so right, yeah, the right kind of spouse that will work with you and that, like, understands those dynamics. Huge time saver. And then final thing is, you might be able to see this behind me kind of sort of. When I became a father, I bought this ornate hourglass. And it's just a physical... reminder of the preciousness of time. Because when you become a father, time just becomes more scarce and so much more precious. So those are my time hacks. Yeah, it's great. And it's important to have time hacks because it is not a renewable resource. Money is, we can always make more money, but we can't make more time. So because it's unrenewable, we have to treat it very preciously. Yeah, perhaps the only more scarce resource is attention. Okay, so moving forward, busyness is an excuse that a lot of us use when we say, hey, I'd like to get into a little bit better shape, but I'm busy, and you've ran X-GEM for... 20 years, and I bet that a lot of your customers are very busy people. What have you seen that, like, busy high performance people do to manage to fit in fitness in their week? Well, I mentioned a couple already, exercise snacks, but that's who we attract at XGM. through, you know, whether they're training with us in Kirkland at the gym or online worldwide or the app, they are, they come to us because we are the time hack gym, and we can get a lot of things done in 21 minutes twice a week. So that's why we attract the busy people. Business is an issue because it's sad that, you know, a lot of people... will say, oh, how are you doing? Oh, busy, busy, busy. Like, that's a good thing. It's not a good thing. And I always feel sorry for people that are constantly busy because they're probably not getting much done. But if they're doing the things that you just talked about so much and tips and a lot more things, then they can get a lot of time back and they're not going to feel busy because they're doing everything in the right way. Okay. Let's drill down on seven hours of fitness in two 21-minute sessions. What does that look like? I've experienced it a bit myself here, but for the audience, how does that break down? Well, it's time under tension, so you're staying in contraction the entire time, and there's no rest, not even a micro-rest. for about three minutes on average is how long it takes to get one of the exercises done. And you're working a chain of muscles instead of isolating just one muscle or two muscles together, like machines. So it's functional training, body weight training, carpet sliders, elastic resistance, you name it, lightweights, because when you're doing time under tension, where you're doing a muscle contraction, continuous muscle contraction for three minutes, you can't use heavy weight. and it's a very controlled motion. And so we're getting that chain of muscles, all the fibers within that chain, to complete muscle fatigue at the very end. And so we're recruiting lots and lots of fibers, way more than traditional training, in a very safe way. And the magic about complete muscle fatigue is muscles won't change unless they can't do it, unless they fail at the end. So when a muscle fails and it runs out of fuel, that's why it fails, then it sees in need for change. But if at the end of the exercise, the muscle can do it, and it's successful with the last rep, then it says, well, I can do that. So I'm good. I'm good as is. Why change? I won't, because change is hard. And so... The goal with the time and retention is to give people endurance on the way to strength training at the end, which is the complete muscle fatigue, as opposed to sets and reps like traditional training, where you're literally resting, offloading, between every rep, because of the momentum you're building up at the apex of the rep. And then you do that for a set, and then you take... You know, minutes rest in between, and then you do it again, minutes rests in between, you do it again, five times or whatever, how many sets. And that takes a ton of time, and then you just got basically one or two muscles done, as opposed to how we do it with the chain of muscles, a lot more muscles, time under tension for just three minutes total to complete muscle fatigue for the change. And the session, the 21-minute sessions cover upper body and lower. body. It's not like you have a leg stay. Yeah, right. It's full body every time. So we're literally getting every muscle in the body in 21 minutes. Because, again, it's because we're working a chain of muscles. We don't have exercise machines. We don't have a bicep curl machine with a weight stack because it's too isolating. We're getting biceps as we're doing back. And we're also getting forearms. We're also getting core. We're getting the rear shoulder, middle shoulder, we're getting tons of different muscles all at the same…