Four big learnings on health (Part Three: OsteoStrong)
In the past year, I’ve been asked about health more than any other topic outside of tech and data. I’ve decided to consolidate my responses to those questions in a series of four Lucky7 posts.
Specifically, I’ll cover:
1. Nutrition (and my vegan power breakfast smoothie recipe)
2. The Cooper Clinic
3. OsteoStrong
4. Exercise and X3
For Part Three, I decided to do something different as I cover the health benefits of OsteoStrong. The Austin franchisee, Deepak Suthar, is a good friend and used to work with me at Bazaarvoice. He agreed to be interviewed for this post, and I’ve had him speak about OsteoStrong and X3 at our data.world office.
For me personally, OsteoStrong has been a real game-changer. In April of 2018, I had the biggest workout injury I’ve ever experienced — I was at the TED conference with Debra and we were working out the day before the event started. I was doing a heavy bench press and it was my last set right before we went to eat breakfast. My body was tired but I needed to press on and make this last set count. On the third rep, I felt a massive rubber-band snap inside my chest and body and 911-level pain. Fortunately I had a spotter pull the bar off of me as I went to the floor, writhing around in pain. I knew something inside of me was really broken.
To make a long story short, after the help of many friends, including my brother-in-law Brad and my data.world co-founder and our COO Matt, we determined that I had literally ripped the left pec tendon off of my bone. This was a fairly common bench press injury, experienced primarily by powerlifters and bodybuilders. The remedy was to either get it reattached via surgery or to allow the body to heal and the tendon to basically be “dead” for life, meaning that my left pec tendon and muscle would never fire again but the muscles around it, including the bicep and shoulder, would compensate a bit. Exercise had been a big part of my life ever since age 14 (I went from around 140 pounds at age 14 to a peak weight of 225 pounds by age 21). So, I opt’ed for the surgery. There was a lot of internal bleeding — my left pec and bicep were swollen and completely black and blue. It simply looked terrible. But Debra and I were at TED and it is a favorite annual event for me, and so I got a sling from a doctor and we decided to go ahead and attend the entire event. There was nothing I could do anyway — the surgery was optimally completed around 10 days after injury.
After recovering from the surgery and building my body back up through physical therapy at Texas Physical Therapy Specialists (thanks again to JD Whittemore at their Westlake location), I reconnected with Deepak and saw he was running OsteoStrong Austin. I was intrigued and decided to try it out. Thirty-nine sessions later, the results have been pretty remarkable. Here are my results as of today’s session:
As you can see, my biggest improvement has been on Upper GT, which is the chest press machine at OsteoStrong. To explain these results, I started out pressing 242 pounds on 9/7/18 and today I pressed 1,215 pounds (note that I reached a high a few pounds higher than this on 12/30). OsteoStrong gets you to do these exercises in your strong range only, which explains the large numbers. You would expect my chest to recover quite a bit post injury, but to be clear this was towards the end of my physical therapy where I had already mostly recovered. Even more telling are my legs, where on Lower GT I’ve gone from leg-pressing 1,015 pounds on 9/7/18 to 2,903 pounds today (and a high of 3,011 on 11/9/19). To be clear, I didn’t injure my legs at all while working out at TED.
OsteoStrong gives you a level of bone density, strength, and balance that I haven’t experienced before. I feel much stronger than I did even before my injury. And, as a major bonus, Deepak turned me onto the X3 exercise system, which I’ll cover in Part Four (another game-changer for me).
All in all, my functional bone performance has improved 268% since attending my first session at OsteoStrong! I’m living a better life, and I have Deepak and OsteoStrong to thank. As a recent example, we went skiing as a family over the winter break in Telluride and I felt better on skis than I’ve ever felt — much stronger and more confident. Debra and I even tried Nordic skiing for the first time, where we worked our way up to green, blue, and even black runs. By the way, if you find yourself in Telluride, definitely visit the Telluride Nordic Association and tell Iver, the co-founder (he’s 75 and in incredible shape), that Brett sent you.
So those are my results, and what follows is my interview of Deepak so you can hear it directly from him.
1. BRETT: Let me ask you the most important question first. What is your one-paragraph pitch on why people should join OsteoStrong as members and commit to this new behavior for their New Year’s resolution?
DEEPAK: No matter how old you are, your body is aging and we all feel it. Joints and backs start to hurt, muscles get weaker and most of us just accept it and say — it sucks getting old. What if you didn’t have to accept it? What if you I could show you how to scientifically reverse the age of your body? What does that unlock for you? Having energy to play with your (grand)kids? Playing sports you once loved? Avoiding knee/hip surgery? Better posture? Better balance? This is what OsteoStrong does. We are literally the skeleton key to unlock and reverse the aging process. OsteoStrong sessions are unique, they take about 10 minutes and are done once a week, and the bonus is that you don’t sweat or get sore. Sounds unreal, I know. Our results are backed by data, and we’ve done over 8,000 sessions — the results are very real. Try it out, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
2. Ok, let’s start at the beginning. Why did you transition from tech to start this business and become an entrepreneur?
This is a long answer, but it’s worth reading for budding entrepreneurs to find clarity. While I was at the University of Texas here in Austin, I needed some spending cash to have a little fun. I did what others did, and I got a temp job as a helpdesk tech at a company called Child Support Enforcement (later renamed SupportKids.com). This startup was created to work with the Attorney General’s office to help process a backlog of child support payments, they literally had stacks of unprocessed payments, some over 20 years old. I absolutely loved this job, but at the time I didn’t know why. I grew and jumped from startup to startup, I ended up working at seven different startup companies(two that I started and failed) and was chasing the money — the companies mission didn’t really matter. At the end of my tech career, I was making more money than I had ever made before but I just wasn’t happy. To be honest, I was in a rut in all aspects of my life and didn’t know what was wrong because by all accounts, I should have been happy. Two kids that I adore, an amazing wife, surrounded by amazing family and friends, but it still wasn’t enough. I knew I needed to do something, that’s when I went to my first Tony Robbins event. He had helped me understand that I was missing two critical pieces in my life — Growth and Contribution. I started to think about the different places where I worked and where was I the happiest? It turned out, that it was as a temp at SupportKids.com, but why? Was it because I was making $10/hr? LOL, no. It’s because I was doing something that was having a massive impact someone else’s life. We had received tons of heartfelt letters full of gratitude from mothers that had never seen a dime in over a decade — they were beautiful. At the time, I was just a kid and I didn’t know why that made me so happy, but after learning about Growth and Contribution, it became clear. I knew I needed to stop chasing the money, and to start chasing impact — that was my destiny. Ok, now what? I knew what I needed to do, but how? Later, I would go on to meet Dr. John Jaquish at another Robbins event and he was describing to me how he invented robotic machinery to help reverse the age of the human skeletal system and the reason why he invented it was to reverse his mother’s osteoporosis, a disease that affects millions of folks around the world. He also described the other benefits of his technology: Helping folks with Type 2 Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Joint and Back Pain and could do it all in just 10 minutes, once a week. It sounded amazing, and that’s when I asked if there was a center in Austin. There wasn’t, and that’s when it all came together. I decided to “burn the boats” and walk away from all the money and to launch OsteoStrong Austin to once again, have a massive impact on people’s lives. It’s funny when you shift your focus, things somehow manifest into reality.
3. What are you three favorite memories so far at OsteoStrong?
This is tough one, as I hear new stories from our members daily:
Sandy recently came in dancing through our front doors saying, “Check this out!! I’m not limping and my knee feels amazing!!” After only a few months, she doesn’t need to have surgery anymore for her bone on bone knee pain.
Ann, one of our amazing members with a huge heart. When she first came in, she had major issues with her posture. We took a few pictures when she started with us and retook those pictures a few months later. When I showed her the comparison, she started crying, she didn’t even realize her posture used to be so bad…she was so grateful.
Brett, when you first started, you were really hesitant on using your arm and really took it easy. Fast forward to today, and you’ve not only fully healed from the pectoral tear but you are now stronger than ever, and improvements continue to come. I’m especially happy you went skiing, and put that last injury behind you — this is a big step and now you have even more confidence.
Jo Ann came in super excited that she fell! I was in shock, what happened?? She tells her story about how she was walking down the stairs of her dock, slipped and caught herself with one hand dangling in the air and was able to safely lower herself back down. She was so excited, she kept saying — there is no way that I would have been able to save myself if I hadn’t been coming to OsteoStrong.
4. Is OsteoStrong appropriate for all ages or is it best for older people?
We work with kids that are 10-years old, to professional athletes, all the way to folks that are 90 with degenerative disc disorder. Folks that are aging have the biggest need, as they are really feeling the effects of weak joints and muscle. Our athletes are coming in to help break through strength plateaus and to thicken their tendons and ligaments for prevention — if an athlete tears an ACL, that could be a career ending injury. Basically, as long as you can walk and have a skeletal system — we can help guide you to your goals — and if we can’t, we’ll tell you up front. We take excellent care of our members, it’s one of the reasons why we’ve got such good reviews.
5. Tell us more about the other bio hacks available at OsteoStrong. My next post is going to be about my X3 workouts, so feel free to comment on that, but let’s focus more on what is available at your location and available for members.
Outside of our core machines for improving your skeletal system, my next favorite device at OsteoStrong is our BioCharger. This device is flipping healthcare on its head by helping your body heal at the cellular level. Science tells us that our bodies run on electricity, and science also tells us that each of our cells vibrate at a specific frequency. When we have issues with our bodies, for example a shoulder injury, the cells in that area aren’t functioning optimally. The BioCharger can raise the cellular voltage and help your cells vibrate so they can uptake nutrients and process toxicity more efficiently. We’ve got over 700 different recipes than can target nearly every part of your body, from allergies, to digestive issues, muscle recovery, immune system and more.
Other modalities include an amazing HydroMassage bed to relax the muscles, Leg Compression for muscle recovery, and a Chi Machine to oxygenate the cells in your body. We are always looking for the latest technology to help improve our member’s lives and continue to add new things.
6. How fast is the OsteoStrong franchise growing?
OsteoStrong is already in six countries worldwide, and rapidly growing at a rate of about one new center every seven days somewhere in the world. In Austin, we’ll have three locations in the next 12–16 months.
7. Anything else you would like to add?
For your audience of entrepreneurs, I think it’s important to really figure out what’s really important in life as soon as possible. I can tell you from experience that money and fancy stuff isn’t the priority. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to have nice things, but it isn’t a necessity. I know that when you are younger, it’s hard to digest because you are so busy trying to “Keep up with the Joneses”. Your life will radically shift for the better when you get out of that scarcity mindset, and shift into an abundance mindset. How do you get there? I consider Tony Robbins to be “Bruce Lee of Life Mastery”, because he takes the best of all the teachings available and crafts his own art.
Ok, that’s the end of my interview of Deepak. Now do yourself a favor and go visit OsteoStrong Austin, or look for an OsteoStrong location wherever you live. And if you want to learn more about Dr. Jaquish and OsteoStrong, here is a cool interview of him by Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof guy:
