00:00:00: Yo gorillas, welcome to the second episode of the Athlete Insider Podcast

00:00:04: by GORNATION. My name is Phil and today we have again a really really special

00:00:09: guest. One of my favorite athletes from a person and also

00:00:15: yeah like really really successful as an influencer, as a calisthenics

00:00:20: teacher, I would say, like mentor whatever you want to call it, you will say

00:00:26: what you do, how you call it, but Eric with over three hundred thousand

00:00:30: followers across social medias, extremely successful for me yeah really a role

00:00:36: model but not only for me but for a lot of people in the french-speaking

00:00:40: community. You're doing your videos mostly or only in French so yeah I'm

00:00:46: really really happy to have you here today and to be able to interview you.

00:00:51: Well thank you, thanks a lot Phil. Hi and thanks a lot for this kind introduction

00:00:58: I feel honored to be able to to speak with you which I always like since we've

00:01:04: been we've known each other for for a few years now so yeah very very pleased

00:01:08: to have this conversation with you today, thanks. Awesome, so you're on a birthday

00:01:14: party and somebody approaches you and you don't know this person and that

00:01:17: person doesn't know calisthenics how do you explain what you do and who you are?

00:01:22: What I do and who I am. Well generally I try not to say all of this to people I

00:01:29: don't know but if I had to I guess I'd say that I what I say generally is I'm

00:01:34: doing videos on YouTube because that's an easy way to understand it and then

00:01:40: they ask me well what about them and I say yeah it's you know bodyweight

00:01:45: training videos, how to use tutorials as well as videos on nutrition and personal

00:01:53: development in the global sense of it that's generally the three main topics

00:01:58: that I would think of when I have to describe my content, which is generally

00:02:05: on YouTube. I also have Instagram and all of this but that's what I am mostly

00:02:11: doing. A YouTuber, as someone would like to call it

00:02:17: and yeah that's that's about it: Bodyweight training, Calisthenics.

00:02:21: But Calisthenics is not really a word we use in French we say Street Workout.

00:02:26: That's the French way to say, so I generally say Street Workout and when

00:02:31: they start telling me about CrossFit I stop them, I stop them and I explain, you

00:02:37: know the differences and it's more about general bodyweight training, yeah. That's

00:02:43: like a weird thing because in most Spanish countries, it's called Calistenia.

00:02:47: Without H and with "a" written at the end. And most of the world I

00:02:54: would say like it's Calisthenics and French speaking countries it's mostly

00:02:58: Street Workout, yeah. It's a too bad because I like

00:03:03: Calisthenics better to describe what I like to do. Because for me Calisthenics

00:03:07: is more about everything you can do with your body moving it into space, whereas

00:03:13: Street Workout is more like a sport with regulations, Federation's with rules when

00:03:20: you want to compete in Street Workout. For me there are Street Workout competitions

00:03:25: and the World Champions but there are no Calisthenics competitions

00:03:30: per se well that's how I see it though but it's difficult I'd rather use this

00:03:37: word in French but it's not understood very well generally. Okay, you're quite

00:03:45: inspiring person not only like for me like I said but for a lot of people and

00:03:51: you're living the dream of a lot of adolescents, a lot of young

00:03:56: people being a YouTuber, making a living from it and being able to make your

00:04:03: passion to your job like, how do you see this? How do you, what is your

00:04:08: life like right now? What is my life like right now? I'm not sure, it's very

00:04:14: it's - well - good sides and worst sides, I guess, my life is

00:04:22: pretty boring actually, it's very boring, you know.

00:04:26: Depends how you see it, I can do what I want whenever I want, I guess because I

00:04:31: don't have a boss, I'm working from home which is pretty, you know, doesn't change

00:04:35: too much for me regarding the current situation, I'm always working at home

00:04:40: anyways and I spend most of my time between working, my private life with my

00:04:49: girlfriend and working out and basically that's everything I do besides eating

00:04:54: and sleeping. So it's a lot of work, it's a lot of time spent in front

00:05:03: of a computer. That's basically my day, so it's pretty similar to some other

00:05:07: jobs where you spend most of your time sitting in front of a computer. I'm not

00:05:12: spending all my days filming videos and talking to people, it's mostly

00:05:18: you know, administrative stuff from what I see. I spend maybe, I don't know,

00:05:24: five percent of my job filming things so YouTuber is not exactly, from my

00:05:33: point of view at least, the dream job but it can look like. But it's very nice and

00:05:39: I'm doing it because I like it obviously but it's a lot of work

00:05:44: and work includes a lot of things you don't really like or you don't really

00:05:48: want to do but that you still have to have done even by yourself which is

00:05:53: always yourself doing them at the beginning maybe then you can have someone

00:05:58: else helps you with that but yeah that's what I do, yes.

00:06:03: Okay but let's pretend there's somebody a young person coming towards you

00:06:09: on an event during training or something and asking you Eric how can I become

00:06:16: also like an influencer or how can I go this journey that you went and yeah.

00:06:22: mm-hmm Well if you want to be an influencer I

00:06:26: guess I hope well being an influencer for the sake of it is not something I

00:06:34: know because I kind of started with sharing things I liked with my friends

00:06:40: and then it grew to something like - alright I like sharing things to my

00:06:45: friends but I saw I actually like sharing things to people, so that's how

00:06:49: it kind of blew. I didn't start from the idea of becoming an influencer

00:06:55: or becoming a celebrity or being famous or something like that. The better way I

00:07:01: think if you want to be an influencer still, I think the better way is to

00:07:05: actually create around and share things around what you as a person really like.

00:07:13: Not things that you think people will like or that you think would be, you know,

00:07:19: funny or will get views, you know, to say as it is, if you really like something and

00:07:26: especially if you really like something that you believe nobody else really likes,

00:07:31: so nobody else is interested in - that's actually the best place to start because

00:07:36: if you start videos about, you know, humor or comedy, everybody likes comedy

00:07:44: comedy, everybody does comedy, so it's very very hard to find someone which is

00:07:50: gonna like what you do, but if you start with something that you really like it's

00:07:56: gonna show in what you do and then it's gonna be contagious and people who think

00:08:01: and believe the way you do or are interested in the same things as you are

00:08:06: then they will connect with you in a better way and you yes you will start

00:08:13: slow and small and you will not have - well you should not, you should not be an

00:08:19: overnight success. I think it's probably unhealthy when it really happens and

00:08:24: it very rarely do happen. I mean it's like winning the lottery. Nobody really,

00:08:29: somebody wins but nobody ever wins, you know, so yeah that's how I see it. You

00:08:36: really start very, start very slow, focus on what you like, just do what you

00:08:42: like and try to connect with people who like the same things and eventually they

00:08:48: will tell a friend and then you will influence all of them in the end I guess.

00:08:54: Okay that's like an a really interesting point because when somebody asks

00:09:00: me "Who is Eric Flag?" I often respond with "He is like - of

00:09:04: course a really good-looking guy, like a really strong athlete, it's everything

00:09:08: that you would wish for but like something that's really really special

00:09:13: about you in my opinion is that you have a really

00:09:15: deep relation to your followers and they are not followers but you really mastered

00:09:20: the principle of making them to fans or as you said like they feel

00:09:25: they feel like friends of you I guess because that's how you started it and

00:09:29: that's something that you feel, I think. Now that's actually a good point, I

00:09:33: didn't think of it this way it's actually telling you that I

00:09:37: I actually really started sharing content only with my close friends. I was

00:09:41: doing it on snapchat and I remember that was the first thing because it's very easy.

00:09:45: You put out your phone, you take 12 seconds videos and you share them and

00:09:49: you can make them better. I was trying to make my stories entertaining and I was a

00:09:54: you know, I liked when friends told me oh yeah I liked the story, it was nice things

00:10:01: like that but yeah I guess people see me more as a friend than

00:10:12: yeah well I don't know, I don't know what to say yes, it's very

00:10:18: important for me, my relationship with people I like to consider it and to

00:10:23: maintain it as horizontal as I believe it was always, I mean you're not

00:10:33: superior to anyone just because you're doing videos or anything anything like

00:10:37: that and people know that and you should definitely treat everyone just like

00:10:42: everyone is which is just someone like you who likes watching videos and and

00:10:47: and then you know that's that's how I see it I guess. Okay and you justify it.

00:10:56: I'll just, I'll just bounce on something you said because you said it twice so

00:11:01: now I have to, you know, I have to say it

00:11:04: you said twice that I am an athlete and it's funny because I definitely do

00:11:09: not consider myself as an athlete because for me an athlete is more

00:11:15: like someone who competes. So you never competed? Actually not really, I'm not

00:11:23: There are YouTube videos I guess. What? There are YouTube videos of you

00:11:28: competing though. Well yeah yeah friendly matches let's call them, I don't know yeah

00:11:37: I'd like to think of myself more as somebody who likes sports than an

00:11:43: athlete who is really all more about performance because for me creating

00:11:48: content is well above getting better in my sports that's why I believe I'm not

00:11:54: really an athlete which for me an athlete is maybe, sounds a little bit too

00:12:00: professional to me but I guess it all depends how you see it but I

00:12:05: like sports and I like sharing content about it and I guess saying this is

00:12:11: also a way for me to protect myself against people who are way better than me

00:12:17: at all of this and who would like to point this out like oh this guy is

00:12:24: successful but I'm way better than him at the sports he does, so why is he more

00:12:30: successful than me and it's this away because I am not competing against those

00:12:35: people. I am creating content, I am NOT trying to be world champion or something

00:12:41: like that so for me that's a an important distinction in my mind

00:12:46: at least. Okay but I still like, I still have some questions how you achieved the one arm

00:12:52: handstand, the planche, the hefesto. That's stuff that yeah that seems for me that you're

00:12:59: an athlete but yeah we will come towards this topic afterwards. Yeah I still

00:13:06: love training and I love, I respect all of those people who do

00:13:12: all those moves which I'm trying to get better at as well because it's

00:13:17: I like really like Street Workout, so yeah. Okay, so your love to

00:13:24: content producing and to street workout - I think you had some decisions to

00:13:29: make in your life to get where you are today and something that I had

00:13:36: present in my mind was the decision after your studies, the decision even

00:13:41: if you go the corporate way or the self-employed way. Do you want to

00:13:47: tell something about it? Um yeah I completed my studies in finance, it was

00:13:55: maybe three and a half years ago now, yes something like that and right after that

00:14:03: I decided to try my luck on YouTube when I was supposed to go apply in banks and

00:14:11: big companies or things like that I guess I was lucky to get into all of

00:14:17: this content creation things at the end of my studies because if I got into

00:14:22: it at the middle or something I might have stopped or you know I might have

00:14:27: not gotten my diplomas which are pretty nice as a parachute, which were at

00:14:34: least in case it didn't work, you know, YouTube and all of this and also helps

00:14:39: me convince my parents to help me by you know giving me food and the bed to do

00:14:47: my things while trying to make it work and if it didn't work I

00:14:54: actually had a back-up plan which was getting a normal job which I didn't

00:15:00: have to do because well because it eventually worked and I did it

00:15:06: because it sounded to me like but that was what I wanted to do and that was the

00:15:11: right time to try in between things you know in between studying and getting a

00:15:17: career having a two-year job I was like alright everything that I'm risking is

00:15:24: mostly time since the situation and financial situation with my parents was

00:15:30: alright I guess I'm just gonna give it a year see how it

00:15:34: goes and well here is how it went. That was, that was two and a half years

00:15:40: ago now but I'm doing this but I started doing it as my full-time job from the

00:15:48: first day. For me it was really a job from the beginning which I had to, which

00:15:53: I had to treat as job, I had to treat myself as my own employee which had to

00:15:59: go to work every day and all of this because if I would have considered it as

00:16:05: a hobby just in between partying or stuff like that, that would have never

00:16:10: worked and regarding my parents I felt a lot of pressure to actually, you know,

00:16:16: deliver on what I told them to convince them to support me so yeah

00:16:22: well that's uh that's about it. And what since then was the most satisfying

00:16:29: moment? Maybe, do you have like a key scene where you thought yeah that's

00:16:35: that's yeah why I did it. Oh why I did it. Or just what did you

00:16:42: want to say? Well what I wanted to say: One key moment from those past

00:16:47: two-and-a-half years was the time where I could move into my own place and

00:16:52: support myself completely financially and regarding every aspect of

00:17:00: it took me a while, it took me about one and a half to two years in between

00:17:08: at the beginning and after one and a half years I was able to support myself

00:17:12: financially, then I started to look for a place and eventually six months ago now

00:17:18: I moved into my own apartment which for me was a symbol of - All right, now I am

00:17:25: legitimate saying that I am a YouTuber because I always, I never wanted to say

00:17:32: it because I never wanted to be the guy who says yes I'm a YouTuber but I still

00:17:37: live in my parents place, you know, so you're not credible well I didn't feel

00:17:42: credible when I was saying it so it kind of stuck afterwards but now I feel like

00:17:46: right now I yes I am creating guns and then people like: What? Are you

00:17:52: living off of it? and I say yes I am now and I'm pretty proud to

00:17:58: to back it up with you know living in my own place and paying my own bills and

00:18:02: all of this so yeah that was a key moment for me. Awesome yeah I can totally

00:18:10: relate to this and yeah what was like the small Eric?

00:18:18: I don't know, 10 year old, maybe 8 year old Eric. What did you want to

00:18:23: become as a child? Oh it's a fun question I haven't answered that any

00:18:32: time. What did I want to do, I don't really remember, I think I wanted

00:18:39: to be a teacher at some point. A French teacher but then my mom had

00:18:45: this theory that it was just because I was in love with my French teacher at

00:18:49: the time, you know, I'II actually don't really know, I never really wanted

00:18:56: I never really wanted to be a content creator, I guess

00:19:01: because it was not really a thing back at the time. Social media was

00:19:06: not existing. I didn't know. I kind of followed this regular path. My older

00:19:12: brother actually had the same path, he did the same studies and everything, my

00:19:16: parents also went to university. For me was just like alright I have this stuff,

00:19:21: I'm kind of supposed to follow it. I'm gonna follow it because it's the best

00:19:25: option. It's also the best option by default because I was not especially

00:19:30: passionate by finance or business so something like that. I remember very very

00:19:37: young, I'm not sure if it's really known about myself, but I did my first videos

00:19:44: maybe 12 years ago or something because there was this thing on dailymotion

00:19:49: at the time, YouTuber were a little bit. Big very big YouTubers

00:19:55: in French now, Norman, Cipriani some very big YouTubers with over ten

00:20:01: millions followers now they were just starting their videos back at the time

00:20:04: and I was watching them and they had this very small success you know

00:20:09: but still something to be noticed and I was like wow I want to do some

00:20:13: funny videos as well and it sounds fun and we actually did two with my best

00:20:18: friend and then we gave up but they are still I think on dailymotion, very very old. I was a teenager and

00:20:27: that's how it started. Then I kind of through it

00:20:32: at the back of my head, waited for maybe ten years before daring to try again and

00:20:39: then , that was it but yeah, it's funny because I uh I had

00:20:48: this idea a very long time ago but then it was very easy to make

00:20:53: myself believe in and it's still hard today to make myself believe

00:20:58: that I am that I can do this that I am, you know, this imposed syndrome or

00:21:05: I don't know how to say in English though this feeling that you

00:21:10: feel like: Who are you to talk about this? Who are you to do this? Why you? Why

00:21:15: he? Why people should believe you? That's what I was always thinking and I

00:21:20: was like, well I'm not funny, I'm not muscular, why should I even start

00:21:25: thinking about telling people how to do it? Thinking that people will care or

00:21:32: something that was hard to fight against that but uh I guess it's the

00:21:39: same feeling for everyone. And do you still have it today sometimes?

00:21:45: Yeah of course, yeah it's always, I guess with the years and with the

00:21:50: experience you grow into self-confidence about what you do.

00:21:55: Of course you get more external validation as well if that

00:22:01: helps but uh but yeah it's still it's still harder for me sometimes when I

00:22:06: think about it, to feel like yeah alright why

00:22:09: why me? why?, well you know but that's also why it's easier to

00:22:17: to stick with what you know and what you do and what you know about

00:22:21: and it's harder sometimes to expand to maybe different content things that

00:22:28: people are not used to see you do and that's why sometimes YouTuber kind of

00:22:33: burnout or kind of don't like what they do anymore because they fail yeah they

00:22:39: would like to try something but they don't feel like it's gonna be successful or people

00:22:44: are gonna like or people are gonna care or yeah, I think it grows, you know

00:22:50: it shrinks all the time but it's always there. Okay yeah but that's great to hear

00:22:56: because it's another example you don't yeah like you don't need to be

00:23:00: perfect to start because like even big names like yours they still have

00:23:07: these doubts but they still execute and in my time and in

00:23:13: business now I just saw that everybody like everybody has some doubts everybody

00:23:17: has some problems etc but these who execute nevertheless and who don't like

00:23:22: you just overcome that fear or that problem these unnecessary thoughts, these

00:23:27: are the ones who really reap the rewards and get the attention. And

00:23:33: especially regarding content creation and things like that

00:23:38: because I get asked questions sometimes about - oh that's a DM on Instagram I get

00:23:44: a lot from generally younger people who are training and interested

00:23:50: in Calisthenics and all of this and they tell me things like: Eric you

00:23:55: know what, I want to start my Instagram account and become an influencer but I'm

00:24:01: gonna wait to have the planche or the frontlever or something impressive

00:24:07: before I start and then when I see that I answer them and I answer start right

00:24:15: now because what people want to see is how you actually got to the things

00:24:21: you believe you need before starting I much would much rather see someone start

00:24:27: very slow and you know get stuck on the tucked planche like we all have been

00:24:34: get stuck for a long time and then see how we actually manage to progress from this

00:24:40: and to see the before and after you know people love transformations but that's

00:24:44: why it's it's very popular kind of videos on YouTube for example but you

00:24:50: know about performances all about statics or things like that

00:24:54: people love to see the journey. The destination is actually what people

00:25:00: think is the more interesting to see but no we like to see

00:25:08: how it's been done so that's why I say to those people just start

00:25:12: just do it, don't overthink. Should you do eight or nine push-ups every day? Just do

00:25:18: your push-ups. Don't even count them at the

00:25:21: beginning if you don't want to it's not important enough to keep you from

00:25:25: starting right now and that's a very important thing to try to

00:25:31: understand at the beginning but it's very difficult at the beginning. Because

00:25:35: we feel like we should be better to talk about it. Like something, videos that a

00:25:44: lot of people like on your YouTube channel are about experiments like

00:25:48: about habits, life changes, like the minimalism video or the Wim Hof method etc

00:25:56: and that's also combining with your with your input to personal development, not

00:26:03: only Calisthenics, so Street Workout but also like personal development. What were

00:26:07: the habits or what are the habits that you do still and that you stick to and

00:26:13: that you still like? Mmm regarding a content creation point of view in all my

00:26:22: experiments well every experiment I did on YouTube I never consider those

00:26:27: experiments as entertainment videos because I was not doing them for them

00:26:34: to be success. I was first doing them because I was

00:26:37: interested in actually doing the experiment for myself and then the

00:26:41: content creation around it made it even more motivating for me and nice but I

00:26:47: kept something from every experiment I did. I actually did one

00:26:53: month vegan that was the first experiment I did and I went out of it

00:26:59: staying vegetarian because I felt like that was better for me and I am still

00:27:04: I'm still not eating meat today and I'm never really talking about it because I

00:27:09: feel like it's a very personal opinion, I don't feel like I have to talk about it.

00:27:15: It's funny but I even have to say that but yeah. The Wim Hof method I'm

00:27:21: still taking cold showers every day because I really do believe it's

00:27:26: it's nice to me, it's nice in my head, it keeps me, it trains my discomfort

00:27:33: muscle, it trains the habit to actually enjoy things that are uncomfortable but

00:27:42: there's a lot of uncomfortable things we need to do in life and if we train

00:27:48: ourselves to disconnect emotionally from it like actually pouring freezing water

00:27:57: on yourself. You are doing it, you are actually, you know, nothing and you don't

00:28:02: have to do it, nobody will know if you're taking hot showers, nobody forces you

00:28:06: to invest, you know, there are probably some health benefits but for me it's just bonus.

00:28:12: The psychological aspect of it is much stronger which you actually decide that

00:28:17: you are doing this to yourself just because you gonna go out of it

00:28:22: better and well also it helps starting the day, feeling all warm afterwards and

00:28:29: all of this and this I'm still doing. The Minimalism thing I still try to

00:28:35: apply to what I do because that's the way I think about things. I don't think

00:28:42: more is always better definitely not and that's just things I yeah I'm mostly

00:28:51: doing this experiments, I should, you know, selfishly just for myself and I was

00:28:56: doing it then for myself. That's why I'm not jumping on every experiment that

00:29:02: would be very popular on YouTube but I believe sometimes are kind of silly

00:29:08: but yeah I'm just documenting those things and not trying to say that this

00:29:16: way of living is better than any other way. I'm just sharing what I'm

00:29:23: trying to experiment for myself and what I keep and what I do not enter, yeah.

00:29:27: Yeah they're very very nice experiments I think for me. Nice I can just recommend

00:29:35: them. Do you have English subtitles or on some

00:29:40: of those videos? Some of my videos I have English sometimes maybe even German but

00:29:45: I would need to find someone to help me with those titles

00:29:51: because English is very requested and it helps for the discoverability of videos

00:30:00: as well so sometimes. Maybe like some of your French fans are listening to this

00:30:07: and somebody's like really yeah really interested in English and really

00:30:12: well in it and will contact you for the subtitles. Now that would be nice, I would

00:30:19: pay you know, just that you know. Perfect, let's come to your calisthenics

00:30:27: moves - yeah how did you become such a great athlete? No I'm just joking, I'm

00:30:33: saying this to provoke you but like still I'm thinking I'm always impressed how

00:30:44: somebody with your height with your weight does a hefesto, that's

00:30:51: something that I admire and also like your hand balancing skills, your

00:30:55: straddle planche stuff like that, I really think that it's great and

00:31:00: also like The question that I have: What do

00:31:04: you see as your signature moves? What's your favorite calisthenics move? Well

00:31:09: it's a pretty obvious one I guess. My name is Eric Flag, well the name I chose

00:31:15: from myself publicly. Eric Flag, the flag, the human flag is the first actual

00:31:21: calisthenics move that I taught myself because before that

00:31:28: I was weightlifting in the gym for a few years and in between my transition

00:31:34: between weightlifting and calisthenics, that's the flag, that kind of drew me

00:31:41: from one side to the other one - to the dark side of the bodyweight force, you know, yeah, that was

00:31:50: the first one. I got it six or seven months, I remember and then and I got very

00:32:00: into the handstands, I love handstands a lot. Those are my probably my, I guess

00:32:06: handstand is my favorite move because it because it's nice it's not

00:32:11: that tiring once you get to know it a lot, so you can do it a

00:32:19: lot, all the time, every time and you're never done with it, you know, unless

00:32:23: you're some Cirque du Soleil Acrobat which can do stuff on one hand for

00:32:28: half an hour, but then you have a long a long long long time ahead of you to to train

00:32:33: this, so I think hand standing is what I prefer but you know Eric Flag and all

00:32:39: of this so, yeah. I like the human flag as well. And how did you learn the human

00:32:44: flag? You did Fitness before? Yes I did some, I did fitness but you know

00:32:50: fitness doesn't really, general weightlifting doesn't really

00:32:54: prepare you for all of those straight arm bodyweight exercises so that was

00:33:00: something very hard for me because you know most people that are very strong

00:33:04: most weightlifting guys that are very strong they can generally do pretty

00:33:10: well at the human flag because it's if you're very strong you can do

00:33:14: well at that but it's difficult to do well and keep

00:33:17: your arms straight because you really want to bend them because it's easier.

00:33:20: So I struggled a little bit with that and yeah I was very,

00:33:26: I'm a very progression type of guy, you know, I like having my 10 progressions to

00:33:33: get to the human flag, so I really you know decomposed the thing, doing tuckeds

00:33:37: doing jumps to negatives, a lot of negatives, that's how I got my human

00:33:43: flag. Straddled you know one leg, all of this, that I saw on YouTube videos I guess

00:33:49: and that's very effective and I also, since I was lifting weights for six

00:33:56: years I had some strength because at the end I was really into, even as I

00:34:02: was weightlifting I really loved those moves so this really helped you with

00:34:06: calisthenics and strength moves because it's just, brute strength in a

00:34:12: chin-ups and dips really helps everywhere, so I also almost had the

00:34:18: backlever the first time I tried and that was, I had a straddle, you know

00:34:24: banana straddled backlever, this is really horrible to look at but

00:34:29: it's somewhere to start and then I was pretty proud and it keeps

00:34:33: you motivated to have some moves you can show your friends at the

00:34:39: beginning it's pretty nice and the frontlever was a horrible journey for me

00:34:44: as well as the straddle planche which was very hard. I'm really not the frontlever

00:34:51: type of guy. I do have, I actually have my best frontlever today because I

00:34:56: really restarted to train it lately but it's always been so hard for me if I

00:35:03: stop doing it for two and a half weeks I lose everything and this is

00:35:07: pretty frustrating so well yeah and the planche took me one and a half

00:35:15: years or something like that to have the straddle planche and I am right now

00:35:19: working on my full planche as well yeah because yeah because I'd like to

00:35:26: have a full planche before I die. I will always

00:35:29: said that, firstly I said that to myself then I said it in a couple of

00:35:33: videos so I feel like I have to get it as well you know and I like the

00:35:38: fact that you know to go back to what I said earlier about being an athlete and

00:35:44: all that uh yeah I want to have the full planche firstly because I will be able

00:35:49: to do a video about it and show my progression and the road to full planche

00:35:54: kind of thing and secondly as an athlete to be able to call myself an

00:36:00: athlete who can do a full planche and all of those. Because it's very

00:36:05: impressive I mean I'm living on Instagram where everybody I follow can

00:36:11: do full planche and things so I kind of I kind of forget sometimes how difficult

00:36:17: it actually is to hold those things because everything I consume

00:36:22: most of what I'm consume, motivating content, is about people doing those

00:36:26: incredible things, doing all of those planche push-ups in a row, doing

00:36:30: incredible freestyle things which I definitely suck at because I never did

00:36:35: freestyle and yeah don't forget that even if you can, you know

00:36:41: doing the muscle up will impress almost the entire planet. So sometimes we

00:36:50: actually forget about this and we feel like yeah it's too bad, I can only do

00:36:55: the human flag, is very bad, I am not an athlete, I'm, I just suck just yeah.

00:37:01: These are the two sides of the coin I guess of social media and

00:37:06: what we do with calisthenics because on the one hand I see that people have

00:37:10: really really high standards. For them it doesn't seem impossible to do the

00:37:14: planche like it does for a lot of normal people who never saw like somebody

00:37:19: doing it but or just gymnasts or something but on the other hand it gets

00:37:25: normal, it gets like the appreciation is not there anymore even though it's a

00:37:31: move that only a few percentage like a few percentage of 1% is like a really

00:37:38: really minimum part of the population would will ever be able to do

00:37:43: that's the danger and that yeah also the reason why yeah people advanced. At the

00:37:50: same time, it's exactly why so many people can do things like that is

00:37:56: because they saw it on Instagram so they know it's possible so somebody is able

00:38:00: to actually kind of teach them how to do it. So that's the beauty of it without

00:38:04: Instagram I think I feel like without social media

00:38:08: I feel like calisthenics and Street workout would be so unknown. Really

00:38:14: unknown as a sport and I think we have much more to thank social media than we

00:38:22: have to despise it regarding this sport at least. That's true, like something

00:38:29: that I see a lot, a lot of people are just working out at home and not calling

00:38:33: it Calisthenics or Street workout but just doing bodyweight training in front

00:38:37: of the TV, PC, whatever, just in their living room and these are a lot of

00:38:44: people who are not touched by social media or not inspired by social media

00:38:47: for these and they just work out for themselves they have like low standards

00:38:52: if you can do like 20, 30 push-ups that's already good yeah of course it is like

00:38:59: it's not bad but it's a totally different standard then we have. Yeah it's

00:39:06: definitely all about the reference points and benchmarks that we put for

00:39:11: ourselves and it's good to have higher standards I guess, it pushes you

00:39:18: to the top but at the same time don't beat yourself up

00:39:23: too quickly either. Yeah that's like for me I always name it for myself: Always

00:39:32: be happy with what I have but never be satisfied, so I always

00:39:38: want to be happy that I can do I don't know a handstand push-up or like a

00:39:42: handstand hold, let's say that, I want to be happy with it even though there are

00:39:46: people doing it on one hand and doing push-ups at the same time and reading a

00:39:50: book on the other hand that's what you see on social media

00:39:56: but I still want to never stop developing and I never want to stop

00:40:03: growing and going after these high standards so that's what's

00:40:07: what's really important Mm-hmm yeah I agree with you, it's something we

00:40:12: need to - yeah address it within yourself just what well yeah just

00:40:22: try to keep a balance in between what you really like and joy want to do

00:40:27: and what you feel like you should be able or what other people are actually able

00:40:32: to do. Okay well if somebody approaches you and tells you: Yeah I want

00:40:40: to make progress in calisthenics and you just have like I don't know five

00:40:44: sentences, two or three minutes to explain him, what do you say? They want to

00:40:51: progress in calisthenics. For a beginner I think I would tell them to

00:40:57: get a program - anywhere - some kind of program from a source that

00:41:03: you feel like is reputable, credible, anything. Could be your friend, could be

00:41:08: on the internet, on some dark forum, could be something you buy, it could be a book,

00:41:14: could be anything but find a program and don't jump all the time from one program

00:41:19: to the other one and do the actual program. Yeah you need to find it, to

00:41:23: buy it, to anything but you need to do it as well eventually. And when you start

00:41:28: doing it keep track of what you're doing you know because if you want to progress

00:41:32: you need to actually progress and if you want to know if you progress you need to

00:41:37: measure just enough so that you know if you actually moving into the right

00:41:42: direction. So if a program says yeah today you're going to do three sets of

00:41:47: your maximum of push-ups and you do it and all the time you actually

00:41:53: you actually do it well it's actually a bad example because if you

00:41:57: have something that pushes you all the time to do your max you're probably

00:42:01: gonna progress even if you don't really know what you're Max's but

00:42:05: sometimes you most of the times you find programs where

00:42:08: it says do three sets of ten push-ups so you do your three sets of ten push-ups

00:42:12: but maybe you can actually do 15 push-ups so you're not actually pushing

00:42:18: yourself beyond what you capable so your body's not gonna adapt

00:42:23: you're not gonna gain much strength, much muscle but if you progress and if you

00:42:28: actually write down what you're doing and you see if every time you write

00:42:32: something it's the same than the time before but you're not gonna get better

00:42:37: you're just gonna stay exactly the same you're gonna be the best at the

00:42:41: program you're doing, your body is gonna be very efficient doing this

00:42:46: program but it is never going to be able to do more than that so: find a

00:42:51: program, do it, track it and be sure

00:43:00: that your numbers are going up or the exercises are getting harder or the

00:43:05: weight you put on the bar if you doing a weightlifting program is going up as

00:43:10: well, sets, reps all of this. Some things should go up and that's when you know you're

00:43:14: gonna progress and that's what I would tell him but first I would say

00:43:20: him you know it's gonna take five minutes, not 5 sentences, so stay with me. I'll

00:43:25: explain it to you and here we go. Yeah I think it's too late I think he already

00:43:32: walked so. What is the hardest move you've learned so far?

00:43:38: Hardest move. I think it's the hefesto definitely. I'm not sure how to rank

00:43:45: the hefesto against the one-arm handstand but I believe I'm better at hefesto than

00:43:50: I am on the one-arm Handstand which I can sometimes hold for three, four

00:43:55: seconds but it's not like I control it very much all the time.

00:43:59: Hefesto I can actually do it every time - well since I've done it pretty much

00:44:05: every time I tried it again I could do it and last time was a week ago

00:44:09: something but I don't do that very often because it's horrible on the wrists

00:44:15: really horrible, it's really not good for the body - not good for my body at least

00:44:20: you know my body doesn't really like it when I do it but uh that's probably why

00:44:24: I'm proud because it's pretty hard, it was very painful to learn and I had to

00:44:31: do a lot of negatives, I did a lot of assisted work with elastic bands as well

00:44:37: and yeah I guess that's the hardest one I can do and I'm working on the full

00:44:43: planche which in my mind at least is harder but well still a long

00:44:49: time to go. How heavy and tall are you? I'm 184 centimeters

00:44:58: and generally I'm around 84, 85 kilograms sometimes a little bit lighter

00:45:06: when I try to get a little bit lighter which always helps yeah obviously but

00:45:11: yeah that's it. I was like a few seconds I was really shocked because you

00:45:17: started with I'm like 1, 1 and then I thought like what the f* maybe he

00:45:23: gained so much weight now - 100 - over 100 No but like for your height and

00:45:30: weight like the Hefesto I guess it's a different thing than for somebody else.

00:45:35: It's not an excuse because you showed that it's possible but still the

00:45:40: pressure on your wrists and also on your biceps et cetera is like a different thing.

00:45:45: Yeah, it's horrible for the biceps as well yeah It's very painful, it's painful

00:45:50: but yeah it's not an excuse you can find on Instagram you can find a

00:45:55: lot of very tall and heavy dudes doing even full planches and Maltese I guess

00:46:01: we need to know that if you're looking at gymnasts

00:46:03: well no gymnast always pretty pretty pretty pretty short actually it's kind

00:46:08: of a requirement to be at an elite elite level I guess but everybody can

00:46:14: learn all those cool moves they want to do, people want to do the human flag,

00:46:18: want to do the muscle up, want to maybe the frontlever, of those I think

00:46:22: are pretty accessible to pretty much anyone which is not too overweight of

00:46:26: course yeah. What is your nutrition like? That's something I'm interested in

00:46:33: because you also give some input for nutrition, you also have your own plan I

00:46:38: guess and yeah I just I'm interested in how do you

00:46:44: eat? Well this goes back a long time ago when I was interested in

00:46:51: weightlifting and it's pretty you know the stereotype of bodybuilders with

00:46:56: couple wears and very you know careful about the nutrition this is what I was

00:47:01: when I was younger when it was the most unnecessary I guess that's

00:47:08: when I was the most you know mad about all of this because I was doing all this

00:47:14: things at the beginning so along the way because when I was younger

00:47:21: I was only interested in you know aesthetics and women and girls I guess

00:47:27: that's probably why you do it and the look of yourself in the mirror of course

00:47:31: you know because everybody likes to look at themselves in the mirror

00:47:35: I know I do so that's what I was doing and you know everybody tells you nutrition

00:47:40: is very important and it is, so I read a lot of books, I tried a lot of things, I

00:47:46: counted my calories for a long time maybe two years or something total with

00:47:52: my macronutrients and all of this and I think it's a very efficient way to do it

00:47:59: but it's also risky because you maybe, then you can get obsessed and have a

00:48:04: very weird relation with food and it's difficult but it's good to know the

00:48:09: basics of energy balanced you know eating more calories than you actually

00:48:16: burn will make you gain weight, it can be muscle, it can be fa,t it all depends what

00:48:22: you eat and what you do besides eating in your life but that's important to

00:48:27: know and nowadays I don't really care I don't care about how I look other

00:48:36: than the fact that I'm attached to my image of my body which is not you

00:48:42: know I still have a little bit of muscle I'm not too fat you know and I also need

00:48:47: on my, you know, for my content, I cannot be the guy who teaches people to do

00:48:52: stuff if I look like shit, so you need a good look, good pump and a

00:49:01: little bit of muscle yeah to have good thumbnails and thumbnails are very

00:49:05: important as well as it's in Instagram of course but other than that I don't

00:49:10: really care, I like my body, my girlfriend likes my body I think and

00:49:16: that's all that matters. So I just eat whatever I like but I

00:49:19: have ingrained so many healthy habits over all of the time I

00:49:25: only eat you know non-processed things, I'm very careful about what I eat as

00:49:30: macronutrient profile, I eat protein rich things of course and with all

00:49:39: of this calorie counting when I see, when I see a plate when I cook something for

00:49:44: myself I can know what it costs that comes down to in numbers and I know my

00:49:50: body so I know what I need and all of this. It's a long way and

00:49:54: and it's very overwhelming at the beginning but it's definitely doable

00:50:00: it's very nice just reading the labels behind what you buy you would be very

00:50:06: surprised to see sometimes what's inside, what's not inside and you

00:50:14: don't need to study books for two years to actually do better choices which can

00:50:19: start right when you're doing your grocery shoppings and things like that

00:50:23: everybody knows what to do, eat more vegetables, eat less processed food ,we

00:50:29: don't want to do that because processed foods and all of this tastes so good and

00:50:33: you know that, we kind of all know what we should be doing but if you want to

00:50:37: get very precise and you have very precise goals then you should get more

00:50:42: knowledgeable about all of this I think. Ok nice that's interesting like

00:50:50: yeah it's such a small thing to do but it's, it will have a big effect

00:50:56: that's true. Like on the one hand knowing what these, all these yeah

00:51:02: like words mean, I don't know if you buy like sausage or something really

00:51:08: the processed stuff, what's in there to understand what these words

00:51:13: mean and then also looking at the nutrition, at the food and checking

00:51:20: what's in there, that's actual. It helps it's something what I like about

00:51:26: this and what I like about maybe optimizing your grocery shopping is,

00:51:33: that it's something you can do once and for all

00:51:35: because once you have good shopping and grocery shopping habits you're just

00:51:40: gonna keep them you're gonna go into automatic mode and you just need to

00:51:44: change this one time this thing that you're doing every week and then you can

00:51:49: get compounded interests on this for the rest of your life and it's probably the

00:51:55: same way to think about exercising regularly. Once you get the habit to do

00:52:01: it it's actually more painful to you not to exercise many days to actually

00:52:05: exercise so yeah it's all about habit building and all of this which

00:52:11: are very interesting topics and there are a lot of good books about it which

00:52:15: I'm sure people will be able to find because habits yeah foundation

00:52:23: of a lot of good and bad things so yeah that's true

00:52:27: Nice thanks for the inside there. I have some quick questions. We're coming to

00:52:34: an end of the interview and yeah you are allowed to respond

00:52:41: quickly. I have short questions: Pizza or Burger? Pizza. Dog or Cats? Like are you a

00:52:50: dog person or a cat person? Okay I guess I'm more of a cat person.

00:52:53: A cat person okay. Your favorite location for holidays? Favorite location for holiday.

00:53:00: I like the beach, no matter where it is. Okay. You also live at the beach or no

00:53:05: you lived at the beach, now. No, well we have some lakes here.

00:53:12: We have a lake close to here so. Yeah okay like a Lake also has a

00:53:19: beach were.. yeah okay um What would you work as if social media just

00:53:27: disappeared? Probably some marketing consultant I

00:53:33: guess something like that. I haven't really thought about that. For newspaper etc if social

00:53:41: media disappears what do you want you to consult as a marketing. Oh well if all of

00:53:48: marketing did well I don't know in some kind of cooperation I guess you know I

00:53:53: feel like I know how I understand how to sell things as well

00:53:58: you know human psychology so I guess I would dig into that and offer my

00:54:02: services. I don't really like to think that I would get employed but I'd like

00:54:07: to consult if that's even a thing I don't know. Is there a calisthenics athlete

00:54:15: because of whom you started? Because of whom I started. Maybe not a

00:54:23: special name but I remember watching Chris Herias' videos probably at the

00:54:30: beginning on his YouTube channel I really like what Daniels Laizans is

00:54:35: doing on the content creation side of things because he's a monster otherwise

00:54:40: he's a real athlete if you ask me so that's about it but I started before

00:54:48: knowing about Laizans but Chris Heria I think yeah. Okay and do

00:54:52: you have a favorite calisthenics athlete right now? Mmm it's a difficult

00:55:00: question. Well I liked Calisthenic Movement which you probably know because

00:55:04: they're German YouTubers. I like them because they are YouTubers you know because I

00:55:07: like their content which is very methodical and very thought out and

00:55:11: that's probably, those guys I like to talk to and I know Laizans as well

00:55:17: because he's creating content and I love his style of editing as well so, Okay,

00:55:21: Probably those. Okay, your favorite book? Favorite book. Be obsessed or be average

00:55:30: from Grant Cardone because now people are asking me very regularly what kind

00:55:37: of book you like and all this. I always tell this one because that's the one who

00:55:41: actually made me like TICK all right I can try to do this and this is

00:55:46: like creating content and all of this but the one I

00:55:50: I would like to recommend even though it's more like a business selling book

00:55:56: it's nice I liked it. Ok and dynamics or statics? Statics. Definitely for me. Even well

00:56:07: I'd like, I like to think I will go into dynamics some some time but uh statics

00:56:13: for now for sure. Ok perfect then we're coming to an end. I really

00:56:19: have to say thank you to you for the possibility, for sharing a lot of stuff

00:56:24: out of your life that yeah that's sometimes difficult to get I

00:56:28: mean you do YouTube but it's difficult to see, to get it in 2 to 15 seconds

00:56:34: videos on Instagram or yeah also on YouTube to talk about some stuff so I'm

00:56:39: really really happy that you did it and yeah just before I want to let you end

00:56:46: the episode I want to ask you as a listener to write in the comments how

00:56:52: you liked this episode, if you have something that you liked a lot, if

00:56:58: there is something that we can improve, it helps a lot and

00:57:01: also if you comment who you want to be interviewed next or if you have like

00:57:07: other questions for Eric maybe for a part 2, will see but yeah drop this in

00:57:14: the comments that helps a lot so yeah. Thanks everybody for listening, thanks

00:57:19: for growing calisthenics together and Eric you have the last words. Well thank

00:57:25: you very much for the opportunity you gave me to actually speak with you and it

00:57:29: was very nice. Thank you very much, it was a very very nice conversation and it's

00:57:34: good to have those kind of formats when we can talk more freely than just you

00:57:39: know creating content on Instagram which is not the same. I like this kind of

00:57:44: content more actually. I like speaking about interesting things

00:57:49: with interesting people such as you so yeah it's been nice thank you. Thank you