Kyle Zagrodsky Of OsteoStrong On How Athletes Optimize Their Mind & Body For Peak Performance
An Interview With Maria Angelova
The most powerful life-lessons come from failure, and you will never fail unless you do the things that challenge your limits.
As a part of our series about “How Athletes Optimize Their Mind & Body For Peak Performance”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kyle Zagrodzky.
Kyle Zagrodzky is Founder and CEO of OsteoStrong, the health and wellness system that provides musculoskeletal strength conditioning in less than 10 minutes per week using patented and scientifically proven osteogenic loading robotic devices. OsteoStrong introduced new possibilities in modern fitness and aging prevention in 2012. It has since helped thousands of clients between ages 8 and 92 improve strength, balance, endurance and bone density.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to learn more about your personal background. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I was born and raised in Houston, Texas and I am the fourth of four boys. I earned my undergraduate degree from the University of Houston. I am very much the black sheep of my family. While my parents and brothers pursued advanced degrees in academia, I was born to be an entrepreneur. During and after college, I started my own businesses. Today, my companies have generated over 200 MM in revenue and have employed thousands of people around the world. I have always been drawn to concepts that contribute to society and the human condition.
What or who inspired you to pursue your career working with high level professional athletes? We’d love to hear the story.
Athletes represent a unique challenge for anyone wanting to support them in whatever athletic discipline they pursue. There are a lot of specialists across a wide range of expertise who can serve the athletic community. When it comes to athletic performance, there are generally 3 topics of interest to all athletes: Performance, recovery, and injury prevention. Finding a unique way to serve athletes in one or all of these areas excites me. Becoming a world-class athlete requires a massive amount of discipline, and athletes today far exceed the capabilities seen just a few decades ago. For this reason, I think we haven’t seen the limits of what human beings can achieve. Additionally, high-performance athletes are leaders in provoking the rest of society to integrate better nutrition and physical performance. I endeavor to serve the athlete because it will serve the world.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
Tony Robbins changed my life in ways that are hard to express. I have the fortunate and unique position of calling him both a friend and business partner. Aside from my proximity to Tony, most of what I have learned from him came from attending his seminars. He is easily the most fascinating, wise person I have ever met and has greatly influenced my ability to master my mindset, emotions, relationships, and business. There are not words that I can use to fully communicate my desire that everyone attend each of his three events: Unleash the Power Within, Business Mastery, and Date with Destiny.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your sports career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
My life is completely littered with mistakes and screw-ups, but from each of them, I can unequivocally point to specific lessons I needed to learn. One critical lesson I learned early on when I was about 20 years old, came from one of Tony Robbins’ audio tapes I was listening to. The wisdom he shared was, “If something scares you, you must. Fear is your compass pointing you where to go.” Everything of substance I have accomplished was usually preceded by some level of fear, and in the back of my mind I could hear Tony saying, “You must!” I ended up starting OsteoStrong because I was afraid. The responsibility of taking this technology to the world and the dream of what it could be was much bigger than me. However, “You must,” was the very trigger that caused me to start taking massive action, and ultimately lead me to meet the very man who I am so grateful for catalyzing many of the successes in my life, Tony Robbins.
What advice would you give to a young person who aspires to follow in your footsteps and emulate your career?
Years ago, I was reading “Tools of Titians,” by Tim Ferris. It is a compilation of many interviews he has had with an array of amazing people. When I thought about the totality of the successes that each person achieved, one theme became crystal clear to me. None of these people found success until they came to terms with who they are at their core, what they were truly passionate about, and what they would no longer tolerate. My advice to young people is to be patient with yourself, pursue many interests, quickly drop the ones that do not align with you and go deep on the ones that interest you. Once you discover who you are, your script will write itself; your passion and drive toward excellence will be easy. Chasing after someone else’s dream for your life will lead to a lack of motivation, continual frustration, and future disappointments.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
I have read studies that show that peak bone mass, which is the highest amount of bone density that humans typically achieve throughout their life cycle, has been declining since 1900. Additionally, a 2004 study showed that women in their mid-50’s even have lower bone mineral density than their mothers had 30 years before. Declining bone density across the globe is a very serious problem for several reasons. Certainly, lower bone density reduces athletic performance, but is also linked to a host of other conditions such as type 2 diabetes, dementia, and lower immunity. In addition to serving the athletic community by helping them surpass training plateau’s and helping the elderly increase bone density, I am working on a plan to make OsteoStrong part of the standard of base physical fitness in high schools across the United States. I am of the belief that by doing this, we will effectively raise peak bone mass to the point that there will be a precipitous drop in osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, and dementia even if people just use our devices weekly for the four years they spend in high school.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. As you know, athletes often face high stakes situations that involve a lot of pressure. Most of us tend to wither in the face of such pressure and stress. Can you share with our readers 3 or 4 strategies that you teach to optimize your mind for peak performance before high pressure, high stress situations?
1. The world will reward you for what and how you practice in private. The harder you train, the more prepared you are for delivering when it matters most.
2. The most powerful life-lessons come from failure, and you will never fail unless you do the things that challenge your limits.
3. Love yourself and be patient with yourself in times of failure or defeat.
4. Recognize that everyone is going through a challenge you know nothing about. Just love people no matter what. Life is hard, don’t make it harder for someone else.
Do you teach any special or particular breathing techniques to help optimize yourself?
1. For relaxation, I use the 4–7–8 method. Four being the inhale, holding it for seven seconds, and slowly exhaling for eight seconds. I will continue this pattern until I feel relaxed. Usually, 1 to 5 minutes.
2. For an energy boost, I’ll use Box Breathing, 4–4–4–4. Start by exhaling and holding for four seconds, inhaling for 4 seconds, holding for 4 seconds and exhaling for 4 seconds.
3. Dragon Breathing or Fire Breathing. This one is easily my favorite and produces an almost instantaneous calming state of Zen for me. Breathe in, quickly filling your lungs to capacity, followed by immediately exhaling rapidly and completely. I will repeat this between 15 to 30 times, and it always delivers the desired result! I will often add a little something to the end that I learned from Wim Hoff and after the last exhale, I will hold it for as long as I can. It’s fantastic.
Do you have a special technique to develop a strong focus, and clear away distractions?
I meditate. By mediating and getting my brain into an alpha pattern state, I can then easily set my mind on an intention or outcome I want. Once that is clear in my mind, I draw on it whenever I’m doing a task that serves that desired outcome. Having a clear vision of what I want manifests a type of “pull energy” that drives me when I’m feeling distracted.
How about your body? Can you share a few strategies that you use to optimize your body for peak performance?
1. OsteoStrong weekly sessions
2. Heavy resistance training with latex bands utilizing the X3Bar
3. Redlight therapy
4. Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy from my PEMF mat and the BioCharger
5. Compression boots from Hyperice
6. Intermittent fasting, one meal a day, carnivore
7. Meditation
8. 30 minutes of sunlight a day
9. An extensive health supplement stack
10. Cold plunges or cold showers
These ideas are excellent, but for most of us in order for them to become integrated into our lives and really put them to use, we have to turn them into habits and make them become ‘second nature’. Has this been true in your life? How have habits played a role in your success?
Yes and no. I’m not a fan of having to change mine or anyone else’s lifestyle. Rather, I like to find ways of getting what they want with minimal, easy changes that are more sustainable. I am in tune to one of the fundamental natures of the human body, which is that we are calorie consumers and calorie conservers, as are all biological organisms. Willfully burning calories through intensive training or restricting calories goes against our very nature. I believe this is why most people avoid a regular fitness regiment and healthy eating habits despite all the research that states the contrary. Having said that, the techniques people use to stay fit and healthy need to be respectful of our innate human nature, otherwise failure for most is imminent.
Step one is to know your outcome. Once you are clear on what you want, using the easiest, nondisruptive techniques are the ones you’ll likely stick with. For instance, intermittent fasting, while providing many health benefits, falls into the bucket of restricting calories, and our lizard brain doesn’t like that. Simple techniques help take the edge off restricting calories throughout the day. For me, I drink a cup of coffee in the mornings with a teaspoon of medium chain triglycerides (MCT oil) and a tablespoon of butter from grass fed cows, a drink often referred to as Bulletproof Coffee. Doing this will really help with morning and lunchtime cravings. Also adding sparkling water or mineral water throughout the day will help with cravings in the middle of the day. Finally, I went carnivore for several reasons, but one was that I was very hungry at the end of a 24 hour fast, and I wanted to avoid all carbohydrates, so I would eat two or three ribeye steaks to completely wipe-out any nonhealthy cravings I may experience. Now the reason I went into this explanation was that some of strategies you’ll want to implement will go against your human nature, choosing techniques that help your body cope with the stress of willfully burning calories through exercise or restricting calories is an important key to success.
Can you share some of the strategies you have used to turn the ideas above into habits? What is the best way to develop great habits for optimal performance? How can one stop bad habits?
a. OsteoStrong weekly sessions. This is probably the easiest, as it only takes about 60 seconds of sweat-free effort a week, so no particular strategy needed here.
b. Heavy resistance training with latex bands utilizing the X3Bar. While heavy resistance training is one of hardest ones to integrate in a routine, maximum outcome with maximum efficiency is the key. Focusing on or five major muscle groups a day and doing one heavy set to utter failure delivers the outcome of both definition and cardiovascular load I need. It only takes about 10 minutes, and because the time commitment is nominal, I simply set the standard that I will not leave my office at the end of the day without investing the ten minutes to this activity. This way, I always end my day on a high note.
c. Redlight therapy. Given the benefits of redlight therapy, and the fact that it only takes about 10 minutes to complete a session and that no physical effort is required, I’ll use this time to meditate, listen to a podcast or audiobook. When adding one of those activities causes me to anticipate doing redlight.
d. Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy from my PEMF mat and the BioCharger. Just like the red light session, I listen to something or meditate.
e. Compression boots from Hyperice. You can do 15 minutes with these, but I like to use them for the a 30 minute session because it feels great. Listening something or meditating is a nice pairing, but if you really want to save time, lie down on the PEMF mat when you use the Hyperice compression boots.
f. Intermittent fasting, one meal a day, carnivore. As stated above, having a bulletproof coffee in the morning, followed by carbonated/fizzy water throughout the day really helps control cravings.
g. Meditation. Best for me to meditate in the morning before anyone else wakes up.
h. 30 minutes of sunlight a day. I work from home most days, so walking around barefoot and shirtless in my yard while handling calls makes this one easy to do on nice sunny days.
i. An extensive health supplement stack. Preparing two days of morning and evening health supplements and separating them into small dishes or custard cups make them easy to remember as part of my morning routine of preparing my coffee.
j. Cold Plunges or cold showers. While adding these to your routine can be difficult and intimidating for the first week, they not only get easier, but I actually enjoy doing them. In winter months, the shower water is very cold where I live, so just turning the water to cold for a few minutes is easy to do, and I always feel amazing afterwards. I will repeat the intentions and outcomes I manifested during my meditations while doing these as I just seems to super charge them. For a little extra motivation, the amount of calories you burn off while being cold is substantial. If you are fasting and in ketosis, getting cold will accelerate your body fat loss, while reducing inflammation and improve immune system.
High performance athletes often experience times when things are in a state of Flow. Flow has been described as a pleasurable mental state that occurs when you do something that you are skilled at, that is challenging, and that is meaningful. Can you share some ideas from your experience about how we can achieve a mind state of Flow more often in our lives?
Trigging flow is the magic dust of performance in every area of one’s life. Simple techniques that help me to get into flow are energizing music + movement + focusing on the future positive emotion once my desired outcome will be achieved. Doing these three things together always helps to put me in flow. I often use these techniques before speaking to audiences. I want to deliver a meaningful message with energy. That’s what my audiences expect, and I always deliver.
Do you have any meditation practices that you use to help you in your life? We’d love to hear about it.
The first time I had a fantastic meditation was at a Tony Robbins event. He taught a simple, 15-minute technique that he calls Priming. From that day, I was hooked, and I love doing it. You can find a few good recordings of this on his website and on YouTube. This type of meditation is called transcendental or guided meditation.
I now do a few different types of meditation, but my favorites are the walking meditations that you can buy off of Joe Dispenza’s website. They are excellent, but take about an hour to complete, and I don’t always have the time to do these as much as I would like.
What do you do to prevent injuries during your workouts or during your competitions?
There are two things I do to prevent injuries that have really worked for me. First, is OsteoStrong. Aside from it being my company and seemingly self-serving to say so, I simply haven’t found anything that strengthens my bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles the way that OsteoStrong does. Having all of these systems at optimal levels goes a long way to preventing injuries. The second thing is that I avoid using free-weights. I used to have a chronic shoulder injury from lifting, and it really held me back for many years. I can lift really heavy with resistance bands, and I have never been injured by them.
What type of workout regime has helped you to rehabilitate from injury?
I have never seen anything work better than OsteoStrong but have also used resistant bands with the X3Bar. Both of these methods protect the joints and strengthen the tissue around the injured area, which is usually the joints or back.
Ok, we are nearly done. You are by all accounts a very successful person. How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I am a Christian, and I believe that faith without works is dead. Beyond the ministry of how my company serves, I dedicate my time, money and talents to bring light wherever it is needed.
Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?
Favorite quote: “Nothing has any meaning, but we assign meaning to everything.”
Whenever I am experiencing a negative emotion, I ask myself what meaning am I assigning, and what else could it mean? I keep asking that question until I find the most powerfully positive meaning, then I choose that meaning, disregarding the disempowering meaning, and my emotional state changes for the better.
I use this quote when I am dealing with a difficult person or situation. Upon changing my emotional state, the path forward usually presents itself quickly.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
I am attracted to people that smash paradigms, take massive action, and successfully make a positive impact. There are hundreds, but here are a few that come to mind: Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Tim Ferris, and Tim Ballard.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
