Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Builds More Muscle Using Less Weight (Nick Colosi) | Ep 235

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How Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Builds More Muscle Using Less Weight (Nick Colosi) | Ep 235 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're a lifter who's been training consistently, pushing heavy weights for your main lifts, but you're looking for ways to maximize your gains and enhance your recovery and maybe you've even heard about BFR or blood flow restriction training, but aren't sure how it fits into a serious lifting program then this episode's for you.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: My guest today, a leading expert in BFR, will show you how this technique can complement your heavy lifting and unlock new avenues for muscle growth.
• 0:27
  Philip Pape: Bfr might even accelerate recovery, help with rehab and add an extra dimension to your isolation work, without overtaxing your central nervous system or risking overuse injuries.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: We're going to show you how to intelligently incorporate BFR to enhance your training.
• 0:42
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 0:54
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm excited to get into blood flow restriction, or BFR training with Nick Colosi, founder and president of Smart Tools.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: Nick has a doctorate of chiropractic with extensive postgraduate training in sports rehab and performance.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: He founded Smart Tools in 2014 to innovate on products for soft tissue mobilization and later BFR training.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: These tools have been adopted by elite athletes across professional and collegiate sports, including LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers and I've used personally their Smart Cuffs myself for several years.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: Smart Tools is also the official BFR partner for the USA Olympic weightlifting team, now in full disclosure.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: After agreeing to have Nick on the show, smart Tools sent me a pair of the latest Smart Cuffs 4.0 to try out, and, of course, I've used their 3.0 for a long time, so that was a no-brainer.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: I tried them out and maybe we'll have a chance to talk about them during our conversation Today.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: You're going to learn from Nick how BFR can enhance muscle growth, accelerate recovery and complement your traditional lifting routine.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: Nick, welcome to the show.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: Thanks for having me.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: Philip, appreciate it All right, man.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: So let's just jump in with a scenario that many of our listeners can relate to, and this is a lifter who has solid experience already with a traditional type program.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: You know they're doing the compound lifts, squats, deadlifts.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: They might be using bench presses or barbells or machines and they want to add some more volume, maybe get some more hypertrophy, they want to get a pump, or maybe they are dealing with overtraining or recovery issues.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: Stress things like that.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: How can they use blood flow restriction to complement their lifting in the right way?
• 2:33
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean it's a common question we get from our non-rehab customers or non-athlete customers, just general fitness.
• 2:43
  Nick Colosi: How do I use this just for my general fitness?
• 2:46
  Nick Colosi: How do I program it?
• 2:47
  Nick Colosi: It usually starts with let's define BFR Like hey, bfr blood flow restriction training we're restricting blood flow to the limb and exercising under a very light load.
• 2:58
  Nick Colosi: We're trying to mimic heavier loads.
• 3:00
  Nick Colosi: So we're going to exercise that maybe 30% of your one rep max and try to mimic 70 to 80% of your one rep max.
• 3:07
  Nick Colosi: And there's a lot of research behind that.
• 3:10
  Nick Colosi: And when you show people research, they're very shocked to know that there's this much research behind this.
• 3:16
  Nick Colosi: They're like, man, there's no way that works and there is there's a lot of research behind it.
• 3:20
  Nick Colosi: So, getting that out of the way and kind of saying, hey, this is very safe, this is very effective behind it.
• 3:24
  Nick Colosi: So getting that out of the way and kind of saying, hey, this is very safe, this is very effective, they got the cuffs, they got them on.
• 3:28
  Nick Colosi: They're finding their personalized their pressure, because that's very important.
• 3:30
  Nick Colosi: Finding limb occlusion pressure, or otherwise known as personal pressure, is vitally important to all that we do, as far as all of our programming, because it allows you to scale up and scale down as far as increasing pressure, decreasing weight or increasing weight and decreasing pressure depending on where you are in your training.
• 3:49
  Nick Colosi: So a typical prescription for back-of-letter terms for training is using it three to four times a week per muscle group.
• 3:58
  Nick Colosi: You want to isolate that muscle.
• 3:59
  Nick Colosi: So say like, hey, it's your bicep day.
• 4:02
  Nick Colosi: Maybe you have two or three bicep exercises you want to pick.
• 4:05
  Nick Colosi: You have two or three bicep exercises.
• 4:06
  Nick Colosi: You want to pick one of those exercises and do a BFR session with that one exercise.
• 4:13
  Nick Colosi: And a typical BFR session would be 30 reps for your first set and take a 30 second to a minute break and then 15 reps and then another 30 second to a minute break and then do another 15.
• 4:21
  Nick Colosi: And you kind of keep doing that until you get you don't want to go to like you know full exhaustion, but you want to get to like volitional failure.
• 4:28
  Nick Colosi: Right, you want to get to about where you're like okay, I got maybe one or two reps in me, save it in the tank.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: You'll know where it is, because it's the point.
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: You don't want to continue.
• 4:37
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, exactly, Typically it's around the five minute mark.
• 4:40
  Nick Colosi: Typically, if the load and pressure is correct, and by correct meaning, you want that thing off by five or six minutes.
• 4:47
  Nick Colosi: It's not a comfortable thing, it's not a spa treatment.
• 4:51
  Nick Colosi: It's like oh, this is going to be like a Normatec or something like that.
• 4:54
  Nick Colosi: It's like flush the systems.
• 4:56
  Nick Colosi: It's not that.
• 4:57
  Nick Colosi: However, it's highly effective at what it does.
• 5:00
  Nick Colosi: So if your goal is to increase strength and increase hypertrophy and decrease the load on the joints, BFR is a great, great accessory work to augment, you know, heavier lifting days.
• 5:11
  Nick Colosi: You want to maybe take a little lighter, because I see it a lot, especially at my age.
• 5:16
  Nick Colosi: You know I'm pushing 40 and you know, and I used to do a lot of lifting when I was younger and you see, a lot of people are like, yeah, my joints aren't what they were when I was 21.
• 5:25
  Nick Colosi: I can't lift as heavy as I did and as often as I did when I was younger, and so BFR is a great plugin for that.
• 5:33
  Nick Colosi: I mean, that's just one example, but it's a great example, right?
• 5:37
  Nick Colosi: I have people up to 85 years old using these things.
• 5:40
  Nick Colosi: I mean it's crazy, because they're just like I'm getting some great results and lifting these light loads.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I feel like it's still this secret in the community.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: A lot of people don't know about it still and they're like what the heck is that?
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: I don't remember how I came across it years ago because I used to use the just cheap straps that you would just strap together and, oh man, you could screw that up easily.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: And then I came across, you guys, because I was looking into different products but I did find that I'm north of 40.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: So and I didn't get started to this until I was in my late thirties anyway.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: But even now I deal with, you know, low back fatigue or shoulder fatigue or whatever.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: I've had a couple of surgeries and even just last week I was using the cuffs because I was having some agitation with my shoulder and I said you know, I want to just go higher rep on this, really get that close to failure without the load, and it's a great use case to fit into a lot of different populations.
• 6:35
  Philip Pape: One of the questions people have is how does it truly mimic the 80 or 90% of one RM when you're not literally loading your body with that weight?
• 6:47
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean, there's been so much research over the last decade and everybody kind of says something a little bit different.
• 6:53
  Nick Colosi: For a while it was metabolic stress, right, or tricking the brain, or maybe neurological, or it's just strictly mechanical loading.
• 7:01
  Nick Colosi: You're just doing that many reps.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Yeah, effective reps, yep, yep.
• 7:04
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean, it really is about building up lactate, you know, not lactic acid.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: Most people don't care, but since we're on a various science, no, let's do it because lactic acid people think of as a byproduct of hypertrophy.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: You're talking about lactate, so yeah, let's do that.
• 7:23
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, so I mean restricting oxygen-rich blood to the muscle and you're doing a lot of reps, about 50 to 75, depending on what pressure you have the cuff at, whether it be 30%, 40%, 50%, lop or 80%, so that really depends.
• 7:38
  Nick Colosi: So that's kind of what we know now is that there's that lactate buildup in the muscle restricting oxygen to the muscle, because what BFR is doing is it's restricting oxygenate buildup in the muscle, restricting oxygen to the muscle, because what BFR is doing is it's restricting oxygen-rich blood into the muscle but it's blocking those waste products out.
• 7:52
  Nick Colosi: Basically, imagine if you're doing like a high rep set of like 30 or 40 or 50.
• 7:58
  Nick Colosi: So something ridiculous, or like a HIIT training.
• 8:00
  Nick Colosi: Basically, you're going to feel exhausted.
• 8:03
  Nick Colosi: You kind of get that feeling with BFR but you get it very quickly and at very low loads.
• 8:07
  Nick Colosi: So it's used very commonly in the rehab setting for obvious reasons low load, you get recover faster.
• 8:15
  Nick Colosi: It's used in mainly for professional reasons, like for like athletes.
• 8:19
  Nick Colosi: It's used mainly for in-season training to deload joints, to maintain strength and hypertrophy.
• 8:24
  Nick Colosi: But you're deloading the joints NFL guys pretty much that's what they're doing now because their bodies are taking beating.
• 8:30
  Nick Colosi: Or what are we on now?
• 8:31
  Nick Colosi: Week three, going into week three.
• 8:33
  Nick Colosi: They're just starting to get beat up pretty good, so they're using it that way.
• 8:37
  Nick Colosi: Our NBA guys they use it mainly for recovery after games, but that's the pro athletes and the general athletes.
• 8:45
  Nick Colosi: They use it at all three levels.
• 8:47
  Nick Colosi: They use it during their regular training, they use it for recovery, for flushing, so there's a lot of different ways to use it.
• 8:54
  Nick Colosi: It's not just for isolation.
• 8:57
  Nick Colosi: There's a lot of different ways you can do BF.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: So that's the perfect segue, right?
• 9:01
  Philip Pape: Because someone's thinking okay, let's say I'm on a four-day split very typical maybe upper-lower push-pull leg type split where they've got some compound lifts, some accessories and then some isolation.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: I mean you kind of alluded to earlier.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: You know a few days a week, a few different muscle groups, but you know you don't want to do all BFR and I'll tell you like there's value.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: And once you've done BFR you realize like sets of three to five aren't so bad sometimes and having variety in there is helpful, right?
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: Because even with normal isolation work on a cable you might be up in the 15, 20 range for some of those.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: So give it to us Like what's a typical.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: You're going to substitute this for this or add this in with BFR.
• 9:37
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean, kind of like I was saying before, you would substitute it.
• 9:40
  Nick Colosi: It's good to pick one exercise and substitute that as a BFR exercise.
• 9:44
  Nick Colosi: So, like biceps is just an easy example.
• 9:46
  Nick Colosi: You know, if you're doing bicep curls there's a thousand other bicep exercises you're doing, but you just pick one and then you do that rep and set scheme with BFR.
• 9:54
  Nick Colosi: That would probably be a good recommendation.
• 10:02
  Nick Colosi: If you're doing it for training and not for rehab and you have no other contraindications, that's also very important, making sure that you're clear to do BFR, because there are contraindications.
• 10:09
  Nick Colosi: Doing BFR like with anything I mean like with regular strength training there's contraindications.
• 10:12
  Nick Colosi: You want to be clear by a physician, but 50% LOP for the arm, 80%, 70% for the leg that is kind of where the sweet spot is now as far as LOP goes.
• 10:23
  Nick Colosi: And then you can play around with those pressures, kind of like I was saying before.
• 10:25
  Nick Colosi: You want to increase the pressure, decrease the load.
• 10:27
  Nick Colosi: So yeah, I mean that would be the typical.
• 10:30
  Nick Colosi: You know, if you're doing a push pull, I mean obviously the pulling muscles.
• 10:34
  Nick Colosi: You know bicep, you know if you're pushing muscles, tricep, you know that would be on your push days.
• 10:40
  Nick Colosi: You want to work your triceps and shoulders, you know for your push.
• 10:42
  Nick Colosi: And it's not just a distal muscle effect, it's also proximal.
• 10:47
  Nick Colosi: You're still going to get some shoulder activity.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: Yeah, let's go on that.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: So, like, does that extend further down to, like, the pec area for bench presses, or is that a little bit less?
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: Yeah?
• 10:55
  Nick Colosi: there was one research study that looked at that.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: There is.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: There is some benefit to using it for chest exercises, for pec major, pec minor.
• 11:04
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, because for those listening, we're putting these in our upper arm or our upper leg and that's it right yeah, regardless of the exercise you're doing, it's always going to go on the upper arm, between your bicep and deltoid, and on the upper leg as far up on the hip as you can because you see incorrect use of this stuff on youtube with like upper calf and some other spots.
• 11:20
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, it's all the same plumbing and that's what you know, that's what we say, that's what Dr Nicholas Rolnick in New York says it's all the same plumbing, right?
• 11:28
  Nick Colosi: So there's no reason.
• 11:29
  Nick Colosi: You're only increasing the chances of having a nerve-related issue if you have it that far down because it's more superficial.
• 11:35
  Nick Colosi: So we do recommend it to put on the upper leg because it's thicker.
• 11:39
  Nick Colosi: Nerves are not as superficial.
• 11:43
  Nick Colosi: You'll have less complications, yeah, cool.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: So you mentioned the arm.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: Definitely like biceps and tricep work for anybody listening, if you want, like a massive pump and just everything popping out.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: I mean not that that's the end goal, but it's a nice short-term reward when you do this, yeah yeah 30, 15, 15, 15.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: Like, that's like the protocol typically and start way lighter than you think with the load.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: Trust me, and start way later.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:07
  Nick Colosi: That's so you know like you need an ego check, right?
• 12:10
  Nick Colosi: Because you're like, ah, I can.
• 12:11
  Nick Colosi: You know I can do a 50 pound dumbbell curls, no problem, put the BFR cups on.
• 12:15
  Nick Colosi: Then you get about maybe five or six reps in.
• 12:18
  Nick Colosi: You're like, wow, this was a bad decision.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, it resets you for the next time You're like okay, now I get it, I get it.
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, so limit collusion pressure.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: Just for folks to know, that's the amount of pressure that you put on the limb, and there's different ways to gauge that.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: Right, like you guys, your equipment does it automatically with some advanced sensors.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: I'd be curious to know how that happens, cause I know you've evolved the technology as well.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 12:40
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean we first started we really weren't finding LLP at all and we were just kind of saying, hey, inflate it to a pressure between 100 and 200.
• 12:49
  Nick Colosi: And then once you're at maybe at a 7 out of 10, you're good to go Get out there and give it your all.
• 12:55
  Nick Colosi: And then, as things went on, it's like, okay, that's probably not the safest way to do it.
• 12:59
  Nick Colosi: It's just because that's highly, highly subjective.
• 13:02
  Nick Colosi: So when we came out with our Gen 2 model, we started using a handheld Doppler and that's great.
• 13:09
  Nick Colosi: You're finding limb occlusion pressure.
• 13:10
  Nick Colosi: You're finding that personalized pressure.
• 13:12
  Nick Colosi: For that user it's not the most easiest thing to do, especially on yourself.
• 13:17
  Nick Colosi: To this day I still can't find it on my foot from my lower extremity, can't do it.
• 13:21
  Nick Colosi: So it's great for the clinic because you need two people, but for the regular gym goer, they're never going to do that.
• 13:26
  Nick Colosi: We wanted the solutions for both.
• 13:28
  Nick Colosi: You know, ease of use in the clinic, but also ease of use for patients, athletes and general fitness.
• 13:32
  Nick Colosi: You know enthusiasts, as we like to call them, because usually you know people usually using this product are the ones that are very serious about their fitness.
• 13:39
  Nick Colosi: It's not going to be somebody that's like, yeah, I work out once a week and do some BFR.
• 13:43
  Nick Colosi: That's not the person.
• 13:44
  Nick Colosi: The person that's using BFR is really into fitness and know what they're doing.
• 13:48
  Nick Colosi: They're listening to this podcast, man, they are listening to this podcast, not pandering, I swear, but yeah.
• 13:52
  Nick Colosi: So the Gen 3 electronic pressure sensors built in both Gen 3 and Gen 4 products that we sell now they have the pressure sensor built into it with algorithms that control that sensor, and we're actually only one of two products to be validated.
• 14:05
  Nick Colosi: We're actually validated for LOP accuracy by Mayo Clinic, so we take great pride in that, because a lot of products out there say they do that, but they actually either failed their validation test or never been validated, probably because it's not accurate.
• 14:17
  Nick Colosi: So it's easy to say that, but once you have that peer-reviewed research backing you up on what you're saying, we take great pride.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and again for the listener who has never done this before, it feels like a blood pressure cuff basically, and I know in your version three so I had the three and now I have the four it was you had to plug it into a unit and then that would pump up the unit and I think it was like a multi-chamber system and now it's maybe a single chamber bladder or something like that.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you had a multi-chambered system.
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: Very briefly, Okay, I mean that was probably like the first six weeks.
• 14:49
  Nick Colosi: That was our Gen 1.
• 14:50
  Nick Colosi: You can't find LOP, oh, okay, yeah, so if it's a multi-chamber bladder system, you can't find LOP, and we moved on.
• 15:02
  Nick Colosi: We moved on to our Gen 2 units and that was a single chamber bladder system.
• 15:04
  Nick Colosi: That was like in 2018.
• 15:05
  Nick Colosi: And we've used single bladder chamber systems ever since.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, yeah, and you said the upper arm maybe 50%, I think.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: I recall in the app you can go up to 60% on the arm and you implied more than that for the leg right.
• 15:18
  Nick Colosi: Correct, yeah, so you can do for the arm anywhere between 30 and 60 and then for the leg right.
• 15:20
  Nick Colosi: Correct, yeah, so you can do for the arm anywhere between 30 and 60 and then for the leg anywhere between 40 and 90.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: Yeah, man, and I personally find the leg more uncomfortable than the arm, you know, probably just because it's just so massive, but others may have a different experience.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: For me it just feels like, wow, that's tight, even when it's not up there.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: But then when you start doing some, let's say, front squats, I mean, man, talk about a totally different experience, like what's your favorite leg movement or two with the cuffs?
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: Probably lunges, which is not a favorite without the cuffs for a lot of people.
• 15:52
  Nick Colosi: I know right, yeah, Bulgarian split squats.
• 15:54
  Nick Colosi: I mean I hate those.
• 15:56
  Nick Colosi: I do them, but I hate them with BFR.
• 15:58
  Nick Colosi: It's like a next level.
• 15:59
  Nick Colosi: Hate Like it is.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: Do you do them loaded, in that you still do them loaded, or can you do them almost body weight?
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: In that case, I haven't done BFR ball bearings because yeah, yeah, yeah, but lunges like walking lunges.
• 16:10
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, walking lunges.
• 16:10
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, yeah, walking lunges.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: Because walking lunges.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: Well, I mean you could throw a barbell on your back if you be pretty brutal, right, typically body weight.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: I'll do body weight.
• 16:17
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, nothing crazy, yeah cool, I'll also just walk with them too for like 20 minutes or 30 minutes.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: Just do some aerobic stuff, that's awesome because you know, and I'm sure you come across this misconception and you mentioned already, like oh, bfr, lighter weight Sounds so much easier until you realize squeezing your limb and doing tons of reps of something is not.
• 16:39
  Philip Pape: It's a different hard, it's a different form of hard.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: But for something like that where you're doing a leg day and you're doing accessories for hypertrophy, like quad war, split stuff, maybe step ups Some of those people don't really like as much anyway with load, and I could see this being a selling point and I'm selling myself on it Like, yeah, do the walking lunges, just throw in the cuffs and just walk.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: So it's convenient and you're still getting this nice workout.
• 17:02
  Nick Colosi: Yep, yeah, I think it's a lot of our.
• 17:08
  Nick Colosi: I mean, I do it, but anybody can do it.
• 17:09
  Nick Colosi: A lot of our older customers do it to boost their aerobic capacity.
• 17:11
  Nick Colosi: You don't want to go on a 16 mile bike ride with them or anything like that, but like a 20, 30 minute decently brisk walk with cuffs more than enough.
• 17:21
  Nick Colosi: We don't recommend doing all four cuffs at one time.
• 17:25
  Nick Colosi: That's one thing that I just absolutely detest when I see that on social media.
• 17:30
  Nick Colosi: Because you kind of need to do that.
• 17:33
  Nick Colosi: If you have a multi-chamber bladder cuff, you need that because it's not going to give you that stress to the muscle.
• 17:39
  Nick Colosi: You need to do four cuffs at one time all limbs but the single chamber bladder system like ours, not only don't need to do that, it's recommended not to do that because it's not safe at all.
• 17:49
  Nick Colosi: Got it Good to know not safe.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: Just two cuffs.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: If you need to challenge yourself, throw on a rucksack or something.
• 17:55
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, exactly Throw on a rucksack if you need to challenge yourself.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: I like that man.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I forgot about that trick, though, just walking with the cuffs.
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: I don't know, I haven't read through all the literature that comes with the new smart cuffs, but I assume there's some resources you have that kind of give people these ideas.
• 18:10
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean you can simply.
• 18:11
  Nick Colosi: I mean, if you want to make it easy, just put it on.
• 18:13
  Nick Colosi: You know, starting off, just do like 50% LLP and put it on your legs, pump it up to 50% LLP and just walk for 20 minutes and then, if you get tired, just deflate them.
• 18:25
  Nick Colosi: Just deflate them.
• 18:26
  Nick Colosi: And yeah, I mean, safety is number one.
• 18:28
  Nick Colosi: Safety is the most important thing.
• 18:31
  Nick Colosi: We just don't want people abusing it and then potentially injuring themselves.
• 18:36
  Nick Colosi: We have a lot of self protections in the app and also the product, but you only can do so much.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: Nothing in the show constitutes also the product, but you only can do so much.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Nothing in the show constitutes medical advice.
• 18:50
  Allan: Please seek consultation with your doctor before starting VFR training.
• 18:53
  Allan: Hi, my name is Alan and I just want to give a shout out to Philip, pape of Wits and Weights for being a huge part of the foundation for my continued health and well-being.
• 19:00
  Allan: Philip exemplifies a nutrition coach who demonstrates how much he cares.
• 19:05
  Allan: Philip works tirelessly and with dedication to provide coaching, support and major content for us to use.
• 19:13
  Allan: He creates a practical approach from research and Philip empowers all of us to use food as quality for our health.
• 19:21
  Allan: He is skilled in how to assess and direct nutrition.
• 19:25
  Allan: Philip creates a community full of wisdom, support and camaraderie.
• 19:29
  Allan: In summary, philip Piper is the real deal.
• 19:32
  Allan: He knows how to assess and direct nutrition and he continues to steer me in the right direction.
• 19:38
  Allan: Thank you, philip.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: Are there scenarios where BFR is actually more effective?
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: And I'm thinking of training specifically, not necessarily rehab, but I don't know how much research studies you guys have done on that, maybe even the cardio that you just mentioned but from a training perspective, would you say BFR is superior to X, for I mean we always tell people, if you can lift heavy, lift heavy, because there's a huge neurological component to that that you're just not going to get with lighter loads.
• 20:09
  Nick Colosi: And we never tell people that this is going to replace heavy lifting.
• 20:12
  Nick Colosi: That's also not true.
• 20:13
  Nick Colosi: We always tell people this is a accessory work, this is to augment your heavier lifts.
• 20:18
  Nick Colosi: You're going to improve your heavier lifts by integrating BFR into your training.
• 20:22
  Nick Colosi: So we're not saying this is going to replace it.
• 20:24
  Nick Colosi: It is a nice adjunct to it.
• 20:26
  Nick Colosi: It's a nice accessory work.
• 20:28
  Nick Colosi: It's nice to help prevent injury and recover from injury.
• 20:31
  Nick Colosi: If you got a nagging shoulder like my shoulder is always pain.
• 20:34
  Nick Colosi: So like if you got a nagging shoulder, nagging elbow, you know you tweak something, do some BFR for the week, you know, and just take it lighter and let those tendons recover.
• 20:43
  Nick Colosi: You know I also noticed my tendons don't recover as fast as they used to.
• 20:47
  Nick Colosi: You know, you know when I was 21,.
• 20:49
  Nick Colosi: Right, you can go out drinking and then you know not to worry about golfer's elbow, but it's, yeah.
• 20:55
  Nick Colosi: So that's where it really is highly effective.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: That's awesome.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, no, as an accessory, and the things we mentioned before.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: What about?
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: And then travel comes to mind.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: Actually, we're going to a family vacation next weekend.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: I would never ask my wife like to let me go to a gym while we're on a family vacation, but I could bring my little you know case of BFR cuffs and do stuff in the room.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: Gives even more options than just like bands or TRX or something no-transcript.
• 21:50
  Nick Colosi: Active lifestyle.
• 21:50
  Nick Colosi: Nowadays they're requesting for better equipment.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: Until you stay in an Airbnb.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: You see, I love bringing guests like you on, because then it's selfishly.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: I'm like, okay, here's all the ideas for this, because you could do pushups, you could do all sorts of body weight things, and now you're getting it up into the quasi or mimic of a loaded regime of that movement, which is awesome.
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: So let's just tie up on the safety thing, since you've alluded to it a couple of times.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: You mentioned the pressure which can be controlled if you have good equipment.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: You mentioned not doing four limbs at once.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: You mentioned not going too long with these.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: On Any other key things people need to be aware of and stupid things that people have done that they shouldn't.
• 22:31
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean make sure you're hydrated.
• 22:32
  Nick Colosi: Make sure you're hydrated and make sure you've eaten something that day.
• 22:37
  Nick Colosi: Don't go in, don't try doing it fast.
• 22:39
  Nick Colosi: It's probably not the greatest idea If you have any blood disorders or anything like that.
• 22:43
  Nick Colosi: There's a significant amount of contraindications Nothing major, though, like pretty much.
• 22:47
  Nick Colosi: If you're cleared to do strength training, you can do BFR.
• 22:51
  Nick Colosi: So there's really not, like you know, special contraindications for BFR that you wouldn't really have for regular strength training.
• 22:57
  Nick Colosi: I mean, maybe cancer, that's about it.
• 23:00
  Nick Colosi: Pregnancy, although that one's that's a hot topic.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: It always is, even with lifting.
• 23:05
  Nick Colosi: We always say pregnancy but we'd have.
• 23:07
  Nick Colosi: There's no research to say that it's hard with pregnancy.
• 23:08
  Nick Colosi: It's just play it safe.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: And because there's no research to say that it's effective with pregnancies.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: Right, exactly, all right, so that's good.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about recovery, then.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: What are, what are some ways people might think of using BFR for recovery?
• 23:21
  Philip Pape: You you already mentioned a couple, like one being if your joints are acting up instead of doing your normal training session, put this in there.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: What I'd be concerned about is people starting doing more volume than their body can handle and actually backfiring, you know, because they're like adding this into what they're already doing.
• 23:37
  Philip Pape: So what are some good ways to think of it that way?
• 23:40
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I mean from a recovery standpoint.
• 23:43
  Nick Colosi: I mean IPC comes to mind ischemic preconditioning.
• 23:47
  Nick Colosi: We know that's on our 3.0 Pro model.
• 23:49
  Nick Colosi: You can do it with a 4.0 model, although with new updates we're going to make it a lot more automated.
• 23:55
  Nick Colosi: So IPC stands for ischemic preconditioning, aka recovery mode.
• 24:00
  Nick Colosi: Basically what it does, it will inflate to a pressure.
• 24:04
  Nick Colosi: Usually it's about 80 to 100% LOP, so almost full occlusion.
• 24:10
  Nick Colosi: It's entirely passive, Okay.
• 24:11
  Nick Colosi: So like I remember one person was like yeah, I put IPC and I started exercising.
• 24:15
  Nick Colosi: I was like why did you do that?
• 24:17
  Nick Colosi: So like it was incredibly painful.
• 24:18
  Nick Colosi: I was like, yeah, no shit.
• 24:19
  Nick Colosi: Like it's not meant to be active, it's definitely passive.
• 24:22
  Nick Colosi: So like, like, don't do that.
• 24:27
  Nick Colosi: Like nowhere in our user manual says that.
• 24:28
  Nick Colosi: But anyways, we said entirely passive.
• 24:28
  Nick Colosi: So you just sit there.
• 24:29
  Nick Colosi: It's like a norm attack, right.
• 24:30
  Nick Colosi: So you just sit there, watch tv, do whatever.
• 24:31
  Nick Colosi: It will inflate and it will hold that for five minutes and after five minutes it will deflate.
• 24:37
  Nick Colosi: And then it will deflate and stay deflated for three minutes and then it will five minutes on again.
• 24:43
  Nick Colosi: So five minutes on, three minutes off.
• 24:44
  Nick Colosi: You can do that three times and then that's it.
• 24:46
  Nick Colosi: That's's the recovery period and the research is relatively mixed up.
• 24:50
  Nick Colosi: It's not a slam dunk, not a home run.
• 24:51
  Nick Colosi: That just does everything that some research studies says it.
• 24:55
  Nick Colosi: It increases VO2 max one to 2%.
• 24:58
  Nick Colosi: So for the average person, is that really that big of a deal?
• 25:01
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, kind of.
• 25:02
  Nick Colosi: For the pro athlete, that's everything right.
• 25:04
  Nick Colosi: One to 2%, that's huge.
• 25:05
  Nick Colosi: But it does reduce DOMS.
• 25:07
  Nick Colosi: It does improve your recovery for the next day.
• 25:10
  Nick Colosi: So if you had a hard workout, do a recovery mode for 10, 15 minutes when you get home, after you shower or whatever, and just sitting on the couch great way to just recover.
• 25:18
  Nick Colosi: You can do that on arm or legs.
• 25:20
  Nick Colosi: Arms are a little bit more painful, so you got to be a little bit more painful.
• 25:23
  Nick Colosi: So you got to be a little bit more mindful.
• 25:24
  Nick Colosi: Like, would I go 100% LLP on the arms?
• 25:26
  Nick Colosi: For LLP, Probably not.
• 25:27
  Nick Colosi: I'd probably go more like 80%.
• 25:29
  Nick Colosi: It's funny, the research is really mixed.
• 25:31
  Nick Colosi: So I keep saying 80% or 100% because there's been studies that have shown that both are effective.
• 25:36
  Nick Colosi: For IPC it's not just 100% LLP anymore, it's, you know, could be 80%.
• 25:41
  Nick Colosi: And for the arm, you know you got the neurovascular bundle 80%.
• 25:46
  Nick Colosi: And for the arm, you got the neurovascular bundle.
• 25:47
  Nick Colosi: It's pretty superficial.
• 25:48
  Nick Colosi: So you want to be mindful of that.
• 25:49
  Nick Colosi: So numbness and tingling is a lot easier to get to occur on your arm than it is on your leg.
• 25:53
  Nick Colosi: So 80% LLP for a recovery session for the arm it's usually what I do.
• 25:59
  Nick Colosi: But yeah, I mean, that's how it's really used for recovery.
• 26:02
  Nick Colosi: Besides for your active recovery days or your light lift days, Besides that kind of what we already touched on already.
• 26:08
  Nick Colosi: That's how it's usually commonly used.
• 26:10
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that's a really good one.
• 26:11
  Philip Pape: I wasn't aware of that recovery mode.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: I think that's awesome because that is super common for especially like a really heavy low back workout or a leg day, to just have that bit of DOMS.
• 26:21
  Philip Pape: And I'm going to try that out and, you know, let people know how it goes.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: You said it even slightly increases VO2 max.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: You said one or 2%.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: So it's something which I want to pull on that thread because earlier you also mentioned the walking with it and whatnot.
• 26:33
  Philip Pape: What does this science show if it's used kind of on a regular basis as a conditioning tool, what you potentially could get out of it?
• 26:41
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, you're just stressing the body.
• 26:43
  Nick Colosi: You're just stressing the body to a greater degree in a very short amount of time.
• 26:47
  Nick Colosi: So that's pretty much the theory about how it's going to increase that VO2 max Research.
• 26:51
  Nick Colosi: Again, sometimes you can make it say what you want to say, Sure.
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: I appreciate there's nuance.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: Yeah, there's.
• 26:57
  Nick Colosi: There's nuance, right, and there's a lot of there's just mixed results on it.
• 27:01
  Nick Colosi: So the theory behind it really isn't all there or, as we don't really know for sure how it's doing it, and that's kind of what we have to live with right now.
• 27:09
  Nick Colosi: We know it's safe to do.
• 27:11
  Nick Colosi: We definitely know it's safe to do because I mean, it's funny, as you talk, to like orthos, right, and they're recommending BFR for their patients and the patients would be like, oh, that sounds dangerous and the ortho is like I just had you on this.
• 27:29
  Nick Colosi: I'm in surgery in the OR, restricted fully for two hours, you're okay for five minutes.
• 27:31
  Nick Colosi: They just find it silly and comical and you're not even a full occlusion, you're at percentage.
• 27:35
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, no.
• 27:36
  Philip Pape: But some people do have that instant reaction when they don't know, and even listening to the show and the curiosity they're like let's step back.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: Are you guys talking about just completely cutting off all blood flow?
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: You know, and it's not that there is a safety element, you have to be aware and do it properly.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: There is some tolerance, like let's just admit it.
• 27:54
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, back to the safety point.
• 27:55
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, that's why we do it that way.
• 27:57
  Nick Colosi: That's why we do personalized pressure, because we're almost guaranteeing not almost, we are guaranteeing that you're not going to exercise at full solution, as opposed to you just taking a wrist strap and just wrapping it and you see that right.
• 28:11
  Nick Colosi: You see those BFR straps on Amazon the 20 bucks.
• 28:15
  Nick Colosi: It's like cool, if you want to do it, go for it.
• 28:16
  Nick Colosi: Me first, I would never do that.
• 28:18
  Nick Colosi: I feel like it's very unsafe, easy to occlude and there's just a lot of drawbacks.
• 28:29
  Nick Colosi: But yeah, that's how it started, right, arnold was doing that back in the 60s and 70s.
• 28:31
  Nick Colosi: Right, he was back, he was taking I don't even know what the hell he was using.
• 28:32
  Nick Colosi: It was like a towel or something.
• 28:33
  Nick Colosi: He was just wrapping his arms and he was chasing the pump, right, and that's Arnold works for him.
• 28:36
  Nick Colosi: But we've evolved a little bit.
• 28:38
  Nick Colosi: The tech's evolved.
• 28:39
  Nick Colosi: We're not blind to the fact that people use wrist straps or BFR straps or whatever, because some people yeah, we understand it's a higher price point for our products, the digital, electronic BFR products, we understand.
• 28:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, and I've seen the evolution over the years as well.
• 28:54
  Philip Pape: I did used to have straps like that that had the little clip, and it was like the difference from one limb to another and one session to another.
• 29:00
  Philip Pape: It was so big you were just wondering if you were getting the right.
• 29:03
  Philip Pape: You don't want to tighten it too much because you're like, oh man, turning purple, what's going on?
• 29:07
  Nick Colosi: We're not good.
• 29:08
  Nick Colosi: I mean purple.
• 29:09
  Nick Colosi: It's a yeah, that's a relatively once you're exercising, relatively normal reaction.
• 29:14
  Nick Colosi: But if you're purple before you start exercising, probably over tightened in the pit.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: Exactly, man, exactly All right.
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: So I know you've worked with athletes.
• 29:22
  Philip Pape: I know you have this partnership with the Olympic weightlifting team.
• 29:26
  Philip Pape: People want to hear some cool stories.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: I know you talked about things on other podcasts, but you work with LeBron James.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: I used to be a Miami Heat fan, by the way, and it was a big.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: It was sad when he went to the Cavs from our perspective.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: Hey, you stole from us in the beginning.
• 29:40
  Philip Pape: I mean yeah, no, I mean that's what I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, it went both ways.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: Exactly.
• 29:44
  Philip Pape: I was actually in Florida when he did the announcement and I hadn't been living there in years, but that was funny.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: So either him or you know we just had the Olympics, so maybe that's a super relevant what you guys have been doing there outfitting them with the cuffs.
• 29:56
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, actually, lebron, I live in Cleveland, by the way.
• 29:59
  Nick Colosi: Cool, I figured that.
• 30:00
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, Okay, that makes sense.
• 30:01
  Nick Colosi: Around the same time, yeah, I played LeBron's high school team, akron, in Akron.
• 30:05
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, in Akron.
• 30:06
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, yeah, he lives in Bath, right outside.
• 30:09
  Nick Colosi: But yeah, no, he uses a lot for recovery, so like on the plane after games.
• 30:17
  Nick Colosi: He uses a little bit in off-season training, but mainly for recovery purposes, like a lot of the other NBA guys do.
• 30:20
  Nick Colosi: As far as our you know, usa USA Weightlifting was interesting.
• 30:22
  Nick Colosi: They actually were using our product, unbeknownst to me, I have no idea.
• 30:25
  Nick Colosi: Sometimes it's amazing people that will email you and be like, hey, we're using your product.
• 30:31
  Nick Colosi: I'm like, I had no idea you're using our product, no clue.
• 30:34
  Nick Colosi: So, usa Weightlifting they've been using our product now for about three or four years and they're like we love the BFR product, we've used others.
• 30:45
  Nick Colosi: Our athletes love your product.
• 30:45
  Nick Colosi: Would you be able to sponsor us for the upcoming Olympics?
• 30:47
  Nick Colosi: I'm like, yeah for sure, whatever you need.
• 30:48
  Nick Colosi: So we started working closer with them about a year and a half ago as far as protocols and things like that.
• 30:53
  Nick Colosi: Hampton Morris, who won the bronze, he's been using our product now for quite a while, even before the partnership and he used a lot for recovery.
• 31:01
  Nick Colosi: He used a lot mostly exclusively for recovery, and he's just like I just love the way I feel the next day or immediately after doing the recovery modes for my lips.
• 31:10
  Nick Colosi: So, and he won bronze, so that was pretty cool.
• 31:14
  Nick Colosi: I think he was a male weightlifter to win a medal since 84.
• 31:18
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I know it's crazy.
• 31:19
  Philip Pape: We are not dominant in that sport, so that's pretty cool to be tied to that yeah.
• 31:23
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, and he's young, he's just a kid, he's like 20 years old, so that was really cool.
• 31:32
  Nick Colosi: So, yeah, I mean they've been using a lot and, being as portable as it is, it was really nice.
• 31:34
  Nick Colosi: They can take a Harris, they can have it in the village and take it everywhere they want.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: So he was using it like after every training session.
• 31:40
  Philip Pape: I'm just curious, like the protocol there.
• 31:42
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, he would take it.
• 31:43
  Nick Colosi: He wasn't using it every night, but he was using it pretty frequently.
• 31:46
  Nick Colosi: He was probably doing it maybe three or four days a week for recovery purposes.
• 31:49
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, some pretty cool stories.
• 31:55
  Nick Colosi: That was a really cool story.
• 31:56
  Nick Colosi: It's always good when you don't know that they're using it and they love it.
• 31:57
  Nick Colosi: Or you see it on social media with somebody and you're like I had no idea they got it.
• 32:00
  Nick Colosi: I don't know if I can mention his name, but he's a head of a.
• 32:01
  Nick Colosi: I don't know if I can mention his name, but he's a head of a major studio like NBC, cbs, abc, and he was using the product.
• 32:11
  Nick Colosi: I was like that's really cool.
• 32:13
  Nick Colosi: And he's like, hey, let's jump on a call and go over.
• 32:15
  Nick Colosi: I'm like don't you have anything?
• 32:16
  Nick Colosi: They're like I'm sure you have better.
• 32:18
  Nick Colosi: You know, like to waste your time on me.
• 32:20
  Nick Colosi: Like you know that was really cool, like awesome guy devoting time.
• 32:23
  Nick Colosi: You know, for this was really cool.
• 32:25
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and for his physical health too, you know so.
• 32:28
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, You'd be surprised who orders off the website that you know, because a lot of, like athletes or movie stars, they want just free products, sometimes Right, and other times they just order off the website.
• 32:38
  Nick Colosi: I was like I wonder if that's you know, so-and-so you know.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: No, that's awesome.
• 32:43
  Philip Pape: I mean so because people are always wondering, like, what does this person do?
• 32:46
  Philip Pape: Because they want to emulate it, and that's not always the right approach when it comes to training because they're elite athletes.
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: But it does lead me to ask do you guys have like training programs that you offer associated with the product or even for free online for people to check out?
• 33:02
  Nick Colosi: So right now, all of our education is more clinical sports, performance-based, for health professionals and personal trainers, strength coaches, things like that.
• 33:10
  Nick Colosi: But as BFR has now evolved, almost half of our customer base is non-health professional, so it's like patients and athletes and, just again, just general fitness enthusiasts.
• 33:19
  Nick Colosi: So we are currently transitioning to offer more options for them, for more custom programming.
• 33:28
  Nick Colosi: So we're launching a new website in about 60 days we are going to start doing 30-minute free consultations with customers to just say, hey, what are your needs, what are your goals, how do you want to apply this to your training?
• 33:43
  Nick Colosi: And then we can kind of go over that with them and then offer them, you know, online coaching, just in BFR, you know, if they want.
• 33:51
  Nick Colosi: So I'm like, yeah, that's 30 minutes enough, just I just need to get started.
• 33:54
  Nick Colosi: Others are like I need my handheld from start to finish, right, so then we're going to start doing that and offering some more specialty courses as well, you know that are non-clinical, just so people you know people are using it not only correctly but also, you know, optimally for their training, so they get the most bang for their buck.
• 34:11
  Philip Pape: Cool man.
• 34:11
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, I, without being in a walking infomercial, I'm probably going to be using them more, maybe posting some stuff for folks, so those listening to the podcast.
• 34:18
  Philip Pape: Maybe I'll do a follow-up episode or two from this on taking the information and talking about the recovery mode and walking with it, and maybe some tips for folks who want to try it, Because I do think it opens up a whole other world.
• 34:29
  Philip Pape: That again, I don't know why more people haven't heard about it.
• 34:32
  Philip Pape: I don't know if you know why that's the case or not.
• 34:35
  Nick Colosi: I think it's because it sounds dangerous.
• 34:38
  Nick Colosi: It's relatively unknown, mainly because the price point was so high for so long.
• 34:43
  Nick Colosi: But I think we're at a point now where we're getting the price point down.
• 34:47
  Nick Colosi: I think our 3.0 is 299, right.
• 34:49
  Nick Colosi: So as far as BFR goes for electronics, it's the most affordable electronic BFR device you can find.
• 34:56
  Nick Colosi: You won't find a more affordable product for that short of like straps.
• 35:00
  Nick Colosi: So making it affordable was like step one.
• 35:02
  Nick Colosi: Step two was getting it into the hands of patients from primary market was clinical, so we did that.
• 35:09
  Nick Colosi: Now it's okay.
• 35:10
  Nick Colosi: We got athletes using it.
• 35:11
  Nick Colosi: We got people that are working out four or five days a week.
• 35:14
  Nick Colosi: They're really into their fitness.
• 35:16
  Nick Colosi: They've heard about BFR.
• 35:18
  Nick Colosi: They want to kind of take it to the next level or they want to augment their training older and they want to deload the joints, you know, and it's still workout and still lift weights.
• 35:27
  Nick Colosi: So it's interesting the amount of people that it can be used for.
• 35:31
  Nick Colosi: It's really it's way more than actually I even thought when we first launched the product.
• 35:35
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that's usually what happens, right?
• 35:36
  Philip Pape: People start using it in ways that you didn't expect and then boom new market.
• 35:40
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, although I did have one person use it.
• 35:42
  Nick Colosi: They're like I have.
• 35:50
  Nick Colosi: They're like they had four cuffs on and they had like a heart rate monitor and then they had something else on their ears and then like something on their head.
• 35:53
  Nick Colosi: I was like that's a bit much.
• 35:54
  Nick Colosi: I think you're taking the wearable thing to a whole different level that I don't want to go to.
• 35:57
  Nick Colosi: So I was like tone it down a little bit.
• 36:00
  Nick Colosi: But yeah, people are using it in ways that I never thought.
• 36:02
  Nick Colosi: I'm like ah, that's a pretty good idea.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I know there's an entire podcast devoted just to BFR, right, every single episode, because I can imagine now how connected we are with all the integrations, with the rings, with the wearables.
• 36:20
  Philip Pape: There's just sky's the limit on how we study all this and connect it all together.
• 36:22
  Philip Pape: But if there's one thing that we didn't cover today that you wished I had asked, what would that be?
• 36:25
  Nick Colosi: It's a bigger question, probably like something that you regret or think you could have done differently, and that would have been.
• 36:33
  Nick Colosi: I mean, I don't regret anything as far as like the product goes, because sometimes you have to take those lumps to learn right.
• 36:40
  Nick Colosi: So, like our 3.0 was our first electronic product we ever did.
• 36:43
  Nick Colosi: We were learning.
• 36:44
  Nick Colosi: So it's like if it's everything smooth sailing, you are not ready for failure.
• 36:49
  Nick Colosi: You know like you're not pushing yourself right.
• 36:52
  Nick Colosi: You know you kind of have to take those lumps.
• 36:55
  Nick Colosi: But yeah, I mean, I guess what we have cooking, I guess you know.
• 36:58
  Nick Colosi: So we have two more products that we're working on that aren't BFR related but they're health and fitness related, so can't really mention it.
• 37:04
  Nick Colosi: But they're health and fitness related, so I can't really mention it, but it's in the fitness strength realm.
• 37:07
  Nick Colosi: So I'm really excited about that because it works well with BFR and it goes to our.
• 37:12
  Nick Colosi: You know we're making things simple and easy to use for people, making it affordable and making it affordable that that's kind of what our company's all about.
• 37:19
  Philip Pape: What a tease man.
• 37:20
  Philip Pape: What a tease.
• 37:20
  Philip Pape: All right, I guess I'll see what that is.
• 37:22
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, I'll see in the next months with the new product.
• 37:25
  Nick Colosi: That's kind of what we're looking at.
• 37:26
  Nick Colosi: So we're about a year out from it.
• 37:28
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no.
• 37:28
  Philip Pape: So just for the listener knows, I was more than excited to have Nick on here, because I use the product myself and any product that you go from one version to another and they seem to have listened to every single thing that customers wanted changed about that, even though the first product's great.
• 37:43
  Philip Pape: I think they're doing the right thing.
• 37:44
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like some of the apps that I use that they're super involved with the community and the user base, so I respect that.
• 37:50
  Philip Pape: I think you're doing great work.
• 37:51
  Philip Pape: Those listening.
• 37:53
  Philip Pape: We'll throw some links in the show notes.
• 37:54
  Philip Pape: Where would you like listeners to learn more about you and your work?
• 37:57
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, our website, smarttoolspluscom.
• 38:00
  Nick Colosi: You can just Google it.
• 38:01
  Nick Colosi: You can Google Smart Cuffs, smarttoolscom or SmartToolsPluscom.
• 38:06
  Nick Colosi: Yeah, that's probably the best way.
• 38:07
  Nick Colosi: You know, we're rehauling our blog so it's much more educational.
• 38:11
  Nick Colosi: Right now it's kind of again we're building a new website, so we're kind of just like in transition period right now.
• 38:16
  Nick Colosi: But, yeah, we want to be much more active on our blog.
• 38:20
  Nick Colosi: As far as you know, educating, you know non-health professionals as well as health professionals on how to best use our product.
• 38:26
  Nick Colosi: You know how best to use BFR Cool man.
• 38:28
  Philip Pape: What I want to do is I'm going to put together a quick little like suggested kind of program thing, maybe run it by you and let the listeners know they can download that as well and kind of connect all this together that way for our listeners.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: Awesome, man.
• 38:39
  Philip Pape: Well, thanks so much for coming on.
• 38:40
  Philip Pape: It was a pleasure.
• 38:41
  Philip Pape: Love learning about this stuff.
• 38:42
  Nick Colosi: Absolutely Thanks for having me.