Yo gorillas, welcome to the second episode of the Athlete Insider Podcast by GORNATION. My name is Phil and today we have again a really really special guest. One of my favorite athletes from a person and also yeah like really really successful as an influencer, as a calisthenics teacher, I would say, like mentor whatever you want to call it, you will say what you do, how you call it, but Eric with over three hundred thousand followers across social medias, extremely successful for me yeah really a role model but not only for me but for a lot of people in the french-speaking community. You're doing your videos mostly or only in French so yeah I'm really really happy to have you here today and to be able to interview you.
Well thank you, thanks a lot Phil. Hi and thanks a lot for this kind introduction I feel honored to be able to to speak with you which I always like since we've been we've known each other for for a few years now so yeah very very pleased to have this conversation with you today, thanks. Awesome, so you're on a birthday party and somebody approaches you and you don't know this person and that person doesn't know calisthenics how do you explain what you do and who you are?
What I do and who I am. Well generally I try not to say all of this to people I don't know but if I had to I guess I'd say that I what I say generally is I'm doing videos on YouTube because that's an easy way to understand it and then they ask me well what about them and I say yeah it's you know bodyweight training videos, how to use tutorials as well as videos on nutrition and personal development in the global sense of it that's generally the three main topics that I would think of when I have to describe my content, which is generally on YouTube. I also have Instagram and all of this but that's what I am mostly doing. A YouTuber, as someone would like to call it and yeah that's that's about it: Bodyweight training, Calisthenics.
But Calisthenics is not really a word we use in French we say Street Workout.
That's the French way to say, so I generally say Street Workout and when they start telling me about CrossFit I stop them, I stop them and I explain, you know the differences and it's more about general bodyweight training, yeah. That's like a weird thing because in most Spanish countries, it's called Calistenia.
Without H and with "a" written at the end. And most of the world I would say like it's Calisthenics and French speaking countries it's mostly Street Workout, yeah.
It's a too bad because I like Calisthenics better to describe what I like to do. Because for me Calisthenics is more about everything you can do with your body moving it into space, whereas Street Workout is more like a sport with regulations, Federation's with rules when you want to compete in Street Workout.
For me there are Street Workout competitions and the World Champions but
there are no Calisthenics competitions per se well that's how I see it though but it's difficult I'd rather use this word in French but it's not understood very well generally. Okay, you're quite inspiring person not only like for me like I said but for a lot of people and you're living the dream of a lot of adolescents, a lot of young
people being a YouTuber, making a living from it and being able to make your passion to your job like, how do you see this? How do you, what is your life like right now? What is my life like right now? I'm not sure, it's very it's - well - good sides and worst sides, I guess, my life is pretty boring actually, it's very boring, you know.
Depends how you see it, I can do what I want whenever I want, I guess because I don't have a boss, I'm working from home which is pretty, you know, doesn't change too much for me regarding the current situation, I'm always working at home anyways and I spend most of my time between working, my private life with my girlfriend and working out and basically that's everything I do besides eating and sleeping. So it's a lot of work, it's a lot of time spent in front of a computer. That's basically my day, so it's pretty similar to some other jobs where you spend most of your time sitting in front of a computer. I'm not spending all my days filming videos and talking to people, it's mostly you know, administrative stuff from what I see. I spend maybe, I don't know, five percent of my job filming things so YouTuber is not exactly, from my point of view at least, the dream job but it can look like. But it's very nice and I'm doing it because I like it obviously but it's a lot of work and work includes a lot of things you don't really like or you don't really want to do but that you still have to have done even by yourself which is always yourself doing them at the beginning maybe then you can have someone else helps you with that but yeah that's what I do, yes.
Okay but let's pretend there's somebody a young person coming towards you on an event during training or something and asking you Eric how can I become also like an influencer or how can I go this journey that you went and yeah.
mm-hmm
Well if you want to be an influencer I guess I hope well being an influencer for the sake of it is not something I know because I kind of started with sharing things I liked with my friends and then it grew to something like - alright I like sharing things to my friends but I saw I actually like sharing things to people, so that's how it kind of blew. I didn't start
from the idea of becoming an influencer or becoming a celebrity or being famous or something like that. The better way I think if you want to be an influencer still, I think the better way is to actually create around and share things around what you as a person really like.
Not things that you think people will like or that you think would be, you know, funny or will get views, you know, to say as it is, if you really like something and especially if you really like something that you believe nobody else really likes, so nobody else is interested in - that's actually the best place to start because if you start videos about, you know, humor or comedy, everybody likes comedy comedy, everybody does comedy, so it's very very hard to find someone which is gonna like what you do, but if you start with something that you really like it's gonna show in what you do and then it's gonna be contagious and people who think and believe the way you do or are interested in the same things as you are then they will connect with you in a better way and you yes you will start slow and small and you will not have well you should not, you should not be an overnight success. I think it's probably unhealthy when it really happens and it very rarely do happen. I mean it's like winning the lottery. Nobody really, somebody wins but nobody ever wins, you know, so yeah that's how I see it. You really start very, start very slow, focus on what you like, just do what you like and try to connect with people who like the same things and eventually they will tell a friend and then you will influence all of them in the end I guess.
Okay that's like an a really interesting point because when somebody asks me "Who is Eric Flag?"
I often respond with "He is like - of course a really good-looking guy, like a really strong athlete, it's everything that you would wish for but like something that's really really special about you
in my opinion is that you have a really deep relation to your followers and they are not followers but you really mastered the principle of making them
to fans or as you said like they feel they feel like friends of you I guess because that's how you started it and that's something that you feel, I think.
Now that's actually a good point, I didn't think of it this way it's actually telling you that I
I actually really started sharing content only with my close friends. I was doing it on snapchat and I remember that was the first thing because it's very easy.
You put out your phone, you take 12 seconds videos and you share them and you can make them better. I was trying to make my stories entertaining and I was a you know, I liked when friends told me oh yeah I liked the story, it was nice things like that but yeah I guess people see me more as a friend than
yeah well I don't know, I
don't know what to say yes, it's very important for me, my relationship with people I like to consider it and to maintain it as horizontal as I believe it was always, I mean you're not superior to anyone just because you're doing videos or anything anything like that and people know that and you should definitely treat everyone just like everyone is which is just someone like you who likes watching videos and and and then you know that's that's how I see it I guess. Okay and you justify it.
I'll just, I'll just bounce on something you said because you said it twice so now I have to, you know, I have to say it you said twice that I am an athlete and it's funny because I definitely do not consider myself as an athlete because for me an athlete is more like someone who competes. So you never competed?
Actually not really, I'm not
There are YouTube videos I guess. What?
There are YouTube videos of you
competing though. Well yeah yeah friendly matches let's call them, I don't know yeah I'd like to think of myself more as somebody who likes sports than an athlete who is really all more about performance because for me creating content is well above getting better in my sports that's why I believe I'm not really an athlete which for me an athlete is maybe, sounds a little bit too professional to me but I guess it all depends how you see it but I
like sports and I like sharing content about it and I guess saying this is also a way for me to protect myself against people who are way better than me at all of this and who would like to point this out like oh this guy is successful but I'm way better than him at the sports he does, so why is he more successful than me and it's this away because I am not competing against those people. I am creating content, I am NOT trying to be world champion or something like that so for me that's a an
important distinction in my mind at least. Okay but I still like, I still have some questions how you achieved the one arm handstand, the planche, the hefesto. That's stuff that yeah that seems for me that you're an athlete but yeah we will come towards this topic afterwards. Yeah I still love training and I love, I
respect all of those people who do all those moves which I'm trying to get better at as well because it's
I like really like Street Workout, so yeah.
Okay, so your love to
content producing and to street workout I think you had some decisions to make in your life to get where you are today and something that I had present in my mind was the decision after your studies, the decision even if you go the corporate way or
the self-employed way. Do you want to tell something about it? Um yeah I completed my studies in finance, it was maybe three and a half years ago now, yes something like that and right after that I decided to try my luck on YouTube when I was supposed to go apply in banks and big companies or things like that I guess I was lucky to get into all of this content creation things at the end of my studies because if I got into it at the middle or something I might have stopped or you know I might have not gotten my diplomas which are pretty nice as a parachute, which were at least in case it didn't work, you know, YouTube and all of this and also helps me convince my parents to help me by you know giving me food and the bed to do my things while trying to make it work and if it didn't work I
actually had a back-up plan which was getting a normal job which I didn't have to do because well because it eventually worked and I did it
because it sounded to me like but that was what I wanted to do and that was the right time to try in between things you know in between studying and getting a career having a two-year job I was like alright everything that I'm risking is mostly time since the situation and financial situation with my parents was alright I guess
I'm just gonna give it a year see how it goes and well here is how it went.
That was, that was two and a half years ago now but I'm doing this but I started doing it as my full-time job from the first day. For me it was really a job from the beginning which I had to, which I had to treat as job, I had to treat myself as my own employee which had to go to work every day and all of this because if I would have considered it as a hobby just in between partying or stuff like that, that would have never worked and regarding my parents I felt a lot of pressure to actually, you know, deliver on what I told them to
convince them to support me so yeah well that's uh that's about it.
And what since then was the most satisfying moment? Maybe, do you have like a key scene where you thought yeah that's that's yeah why I did it.
Oh why I did it. Or just what did you want to say? Well what I wanted to say: One key moment from those past
two-and-a-half years was the time where I could move into my own place and support myself completely financially and regarding every aspect of
it took me a while, it took me about one and a half to two years in between at the beginning and after one and a half years I was able to support myself financially, then I started to look for a place and eventually six months ago now I moved into my own apartment which for me was a symbol of - All right, now I am legitimate saying that I am a YouTuber because I always, I never wanted to say it because I never wanted to be the guy who says yes I'm a YouTuber but I still live in my parents place, you know, so you're not credible well I didn't feel credible when I was saying it so it kind of stuck afterwards but now I feel like right now I yes I am creating guns and then people like: What? Are you
living off of it? and I say yes I am now and I'm pretty proud to
to back it up with you know living in my own place and paying my own bills and all of this so yeah that was a key moment for me. Awesome yeah I can totally relate to this
and yeah what was like the small Eric?
I don't know, 10 year old, maybe 8 year old Eric. What did you want to
become as a child? Oh it's a fun question I haven't answered that any time. What did I want to do, I don't really remember, I think I wanted to be a teacher at some point. A French teacher but then my mom had
this theory that it was just because I was in love with my French teacher at the time, you know, I'II actually don't really know, I never really wanted I never really wanted to be a content creator, I guess
because it was not really a thing back at the time. Social media was not existing. I didn't know. I kind of followed this regular path. My older brother actually had the same path, he did the same studies and everything, my parents also went to university. For me was just like alright I have this stuff, I'm kind of supposed to follow it. I'm gonna follow it because it's the best option. It's also the best option by default because I was not especially passionate by finance or business so something like that. I remember very very young, I'm not sure if it's really known about myself, but I did my first videos maybe 12 years ago or something because there was this thing on dailymotion at the time, YouTuber were a little bit. Big very big YouTubers
in French now, Norman, Cipriani some very big YouTubers with over ten millions followers now they were just starting their videos back at the time and I was watching them and they had this very small success you know but still something to be noticed and I was like wow I want to do some
funny videos as well and it sounds fun and we actually did two with my best friend and then we gave up but they are still I think on dailymotion, very very old. I was a teenager and that's how it started.
Then I kind of through it
at the back of my head, waited for maybe ten years before daring to try again and then , that was it but yeah, it's funny because I uh I had this idea a very long time ago but then it was very easy to make
myself believe in and it's still hard today to make myself believe
that I am that I can do this that I am, you know, this imposed syndrome or I don't know how to say in English though this feeling that you
feel like: Who are you to talk about this? Who are you to do this? Why you? Why he? Why people should believe you?
That's what I was always thinking and I was like, well I'm not funny, I'm not muscular, why should I even start thinking about telling people how to do it? Thinking that people will care or something that was hard to fight against that but uh I guess it's the same feeling for everyone. And do you still have it today sometimes?
Yeah of course, yeah it's always, I guess with the years and with the experience you grow into
self-confidence about what you do.
Of course you get more
external validation as well if that helps but uh but yeah it's still it's still harder for me sometimes when I think about it, to feel like yeah alright why
why me? why?, well you know but
that's also why it's easier to
to stick with what you know
and what you do and what you know about and it's harder sometimes to expand to maybe different content things that people are not used to see you do and that's why sometimes YouTuber kind of burnout or kind of don't like what they do anymore because they fail yeah they would like to try something but they don't feel like it's gonna be successful or people are gonna like or people are gonna care or yeah, I think it grows, you know it shrinks all the time but it's always there. Okay yeah but that's great to hear because it's another example you don't yeah like you don't need to be perfect to start because like even big names like yours they still have these doubts but they still
execute and in my time and in
business now I just saw that everybody like everybody has some doubts everybody has some problems etc but these who execute nevertheless and who don't like you just overcome that fear or that problem these unnecessary thoughts, these are the ones who really reap the rewards and get the attention. And
especially regarding content
creation and things like that
because I get asked questions sometimes about - oh that's a DM on Instagram I get a lot from generally younger
people who are training and interested in Calisthenics and all of this and they tell me things like: Eric you
know what, I want to start my Instagram account and become an influencer but I'm gonna wait to have the planche or the frontlever or something impressive before I start and then when I see that I answer them and I answer start right now because what people want to see is how you actually got to the things you believe you need before starting I much would much rather see someone start very slow and you know get stuck on the tucked planche like we all have been get stuck for a long time and then see how we actually manage to progress from this and to see the before and after you know people love transformations but that's why it's it's very popular kind of videos on YouTube for example but you know about performances all about statics or things like that
people love to see the journey. The destination is actually what people think is the more interesting to see but no we like to see
how it's been done so that's why I say to those people just start
just do it, don't overthink. Should you do eight or nine push-ups every day? Just do your push-ups.
Don't even count them at the
beginning if you don't want to it's not important enough to keep you from starting right now and that's
a very important thing to try to understand at the beginning but it's very difficult at the beginning. Because we feel like we should be better to talk about it. Like something, videos that a lot of people like on your YouTube channel are about experiments like about habits, life changes, like the minimalism video or the Wim Hof method etc and that's also combining with your with your input to personal development, not only Calisthenics, so Street Workout but also like personal development. What were the habits or what are the habits that you do still and that you stick to and that you still like? Mmm regarding a content creation point of view in all my experiments well every experiment I did on YouTube I never consider those experiments as entertainment videos because I was not doing them for them to be success.
I was first doing them because I was interested in actually doing the experiment for myself and then the content creation around it made it even more motivating for me and nice but I kept something from every
experiment I did. I actually did one month vegan that was the first
experiment I did and I went out of it staying vegetarian because I felt like that was better for me and I am still I'm still not eating meat today and I'm never really talking about it because I feel like it's a very personal opinion, I don't feel like I have to talk about it.
It's funny but I even have to say that but yeah. The Wim Hof method I'm still taking cold showers every day because I really do believe it's it's nice to me, it's nice in my head, it keeps me, it trains my discomfort muscle, it trains the habit to actually enjoy things that are uncomfortable but there's a lot of uncomfortable things we need to do in life and if we train ourselves to disconnect emotionally from it like actually pouring freezing water on yourself. You are doing it, you are actually, you know, nothing and you don't have to do it, nobody will know if you're taking hot showers, nobody forces you to invest, you know, there are probably some health benefits but for me it's just bonus.
The psychological aspect of it is much stronger which you actually decide that you are doing this to yourself just because you gonna go out of it
better and well also it helps starting the day, feeling all warm afterwards and all of this and this I'm still doing. The Minimalism thing I still try to apply to what I do because that's the way I think about things. I don't think more is always better definitely not and that's just things I yeah I'm mostly doing this experiments, I should, you know, selfishly just for myself and I was doing it then for myself. That's why I'm not jumping on every experiment that would be very popular on YouTube but I believe sometimes are kind of silly but yeah I'm just documenting those things and not trying to say that this way of living is better than any other way. I'm just sharing what I'm trying to experiment for myself and what I keep and what I do not enter, yeah. Yeah they're very very nice experiments I think for me. Nice I can just recommend them. Do you have English subtitles or on some of those videos? Some of my videos I have English sometimes maybe even German but I would need to find someone to help me with those titles because English is very requested and it helps for the discoverability of videos as well so sometimes. Maybe like some of your French fans are listening to this and somebody's like really yeah really interested in English and really well in it and will contact you for the subtitles. Now that would be nice, I would pay you know, just that you know. Perfect, let's come to your calisthenics moves - yeah how did you become such a great athlete? No I'm just joking, I'm saying this to provoke you but like still I'm thinking I'm always impressed how somebody with your height with your weight does a hefesto, that's something that I admire and also like your hand balancing skills, your straddle planche stuff like that, I really think that it's great and also like The question that I have: What do you see as your signature moves? What's your favorite calisthenics move? Well it's a pretty obvious one I guess. My name is Eric Flag, well the name I chose from myself publicly. Eric Flag, the flag, the human flag is the first actual calisthenics move that I taught myself because before that I was weightlifting in the gym for a few years and in between my transition between weightlifting and calisthenics, that's the flag, that kind of drew me from one side to the other one - to the dark side of the bodyweight force, you know, yeah, that was the first one. I got it six or seven months, I remember and then and I got very into the handstands, I love handstands a lot. Those are my probably my, I guess handstand is my favorite move because it because it's nice it's not that tiring once you get to know it a lot, so you can do it a lot, all the time, every time and you're never done with it, you know, unless you're some Cirque du Soleil Acrobat which can do stuff on one hand for half an hour, but then you have a long a long long long time ahead of you to to train this, so I think hand standing is what I prefer but you know Eric Flag and all of this so, yeah. I like the human flag as well. And how did you learn the human flag? You did Fitness before? Yes I did some, I did fitness but you know fitness doesn't really, general weightlifting doesn't really prepare you for all of those straight arm bodyweight exercises so that was something very hard for me because you know most people that are very strong most weightlifting guys that are very strong they can generally do pretty well at the human flag because it's if you're very strong you can do well at that but it's difficult to do well and keep your arms straight because you really want to bend them because it's easier. So I struggled a little bit with that and yeah I was very, I'm a very progression type of guy, you know, I like having my 10 progressions to get to the human flag, so I really you know decomposed the thing, doing tuckeds doing jumps to negatives, a lot of negatives, that's how I got my human flag. Straddled you know one leg, all of this, that I saw on YouTube videos I guess and that's very effective and I also, since I was lifting weights for six years I had some strength because at the end I was really into, even as I was weightlifting I really loved those moves so this really helped you with calisthenics and strength moves because it's just, brute strength in a chin-ups and dips really helps everywhere, so I also almost had the backlever the first time I tried and that was, I had a straddle, you know banana straddled backlever, this is really horrible to look at but it's somewhere to start and then I was pretty proud and it keeps you motivated to have some moves you can show your friends at the beginning it's pretty nice and the frontlever was a horrible journey for me as well as the straddle planche which was very hard. I'm really not the frontlever type of guy. I do have, I actually have my best frontlever today because I really restarted to train it lately but it's always been so hard for me if I stop doing it for two and a half weeks I lose everything and this is pretty frustrating so well yeah and the planche took me one and a half years or something like that to have the straddle planche and I am right now working on my full planche as well yeah because yeah because I'd like to have a full planche before I die. I will always said that, firstly I said that to myself then I said it in a couple of videos so I feel like I have to get it as well you know and I like the fact that you know to go back to what I said earlier about being an athlete and all that uh yeah I want to have the full planche firstly because I will be able to do a video about it and show my progression and the road to full planche kind of thing and secondly as an athlete to be able to call myself an athlete who can do a full planche and all of those. Because it's very impressive I mean I'm living on Instagram where everybody I follow can do full planche and things so I kind of I kind of forget sometimes how difficult it actually is to hold those things because everything I consume most of what I'm consume, motivating content, is about people doing those incredible things, doing all of those planche push-ups in a row, doing incredible freestyle things which I definitely suck at because I never did freestyle and yeah don't forget that even if you can, you know doing the muscle up will impress almost the entire planet. So sometimes we actually forget about this and we feel like yeah it's too bad, I can only do the human flag, is very bad, I am not an athlete, I'm, I just suck just yeah. These are the two sides of the coin I guess of social media and what we do with calisthenics because on the one hand I see that people have really really high standards. For them it doesn't seem impossible to do the planche like it does for a lot of normal people who never saw like somebody doing it but or just gymnasts or something but on the other hand it gets normal, it gets like the appreciation is not there anymore even though it's a move that only a few percentage like a few percentage of 1% is like a really really minimum part of the population would will ever be able to do that's the danger and that yeah also the reason why yeah people advanced. At the same time, it's exactly why so many people can do things like that is because they saw it on Instagram so they know it's possible so somebody is able to actually kind of teach them how to do it. So that's the beauty of it without Instagram I think I feel like without social media I feel like calisthenics and Street workout would be so unknown. Really unknown as a sport and I think we have much more to thank social media than we have to despise it regarding this sport at least. That's true, like something that I see a lot, a lot of people are just working out at home and not calling it Calisthenics or Street workout but just doing bodyweight training in front of the TV, PC, whatever, just in their living room and these are a lot of people who are not touched by social media or not inspired by social media for these and they just work out for themselves they have like low standards if you can do like 20, 30 push-ups that's already good yeah of course it is like it's not bad but it's a totally different standard then we have. Yeah it's definitely all about the reference points and benchmarks that we put for ourselves and it's good to have higher standards I guess, it pushes you to the top but at the same time don't beat yourself up too quickly either. Yeah that's like for me I always name it for myself: Always be happy with what I have but never be satisfied, so I always want to be happy that I can do I don't know a handstand push-up or like a handstand hold, let's say that, I want to be happy with it even though there are people doing it on one hand and doing push-ups at the same time and reading a book on the other hand that's what you see on social media but I still want to never stop developing and I never want to stop growing and going after these high standards so that's what's really important Mm-hmm yeah I agree with you, it's something we need to - yeah address it within yourself just what well yeah just try to keep a balance in between what you really like and joy want to do and what you feel like you should be able or what other people are actually able to do. Okay well if somebody approaches you and tells you: Yeah I want to make progress in calisthenics and you just have like I don't know five sentences, two or three minutes to explain him, what do you say? They want to progress in calisthenics. For a beginner I think I would tell them to get a program - anywhere - some kind of program from a source that you feel like is reputable, credible, anything. Could be your friend, could be on the internet, on some dark forum, could be something you buy, it could be a book, could be anything but find a program and don't jump all the time from one program to the other one and do the actual program. Yeah you need to find it, to buy it, to anything but you need to do it as well eventually. And when you start doing it keep track of what you're doing you know because if you want to progress you need to actually progress and if you want to know if you progress you need to measure just enough so that you know if you actually moving into the right direction. So if a program says yeah today you're going to do three sets of your maximum of push-ups and you do it and all the time you actually you actually do it well it's actually a bad example because if you have something that pushes you all the time to do your max you're probably gonna progress even if you don't really know what you're Max's but sometimes you most of the times you find programs where it says do three sets of ten push-ups so you do your three sets of ten push-ups but maybe you can actually do 15 push-ups so you're not actually pushing yourself beyond what you capable so your body's not gonna adapt you're not gonna gain much strength, much muscle but if you progress and if you actually write down what you're doing and you see if every time you write something it's the same than the time before but you're not gonna get better you're just gonna stay exactly the same you're gonna be the best at the program you're doing, your body is gonna be very efficient doing this program but it is never going to be able to do more than that so: find a program, do it, track it and be sure that your numbers are going up or the exercises are getting harder or the weight you put on the bar if you doing a weightlifting program is going up as well, sets, reps all of this. Some things should go up and that's when you know you're gonna progress and that's what I would tell him but first I would say him you know it's gonna take five minutes, not 5 sentences, so stay with me. I'll explain it to you and here we go. Yeah I think it's too late I think he already walked so. What is the hardest move you've learned so far? Hardest move. I think it's the hefesto definitely. I'm not sure how to rank the hefesto against the one-arm handstand but I believe I'm better at hefesto than I am on the one-arm Handstand which I can sometimes hold for three, four seconds but it's not like I control it very much all the time. Hefesto I can actually do it every time - well since I've done it pretty much every time I tried it again I could do it and last time was a week ago something but I don't do that very often because it's horrible on the wrists really horrible, it's really not good for the body - not good for my body at least you know my body doesn't really like it when I do it but uh that's probably why I'm proud because it's pretty hard, it was very painful to learn and I had to do a lot of negatives, I did a lot of assisted work with elastic bands as well and yeah I guess that's the hardest one I can do and I'm working on the full planche which in my mind at least is harder but well still a long time to go. How heavy and tall are you? I'm 184 centimeters and generally I'm around 84, 85 kilograms sometimes a little bit lighter when I try to get a little bit lighter which always helps yeah obviously but yeah that's it. I was like a few seconds I was really shocked because you started with I'm like 1, 1 and then I thought like what the f* maybe he gained so much weight now - 100 - over 100 No but like for your height and weight like the Hefesto I guess it's a different thing than for somebody else. It's not an excuse because you showed that it's possible but still the pressure on your wrists and also on your biceps et cetera is like a different thing. Yeah, it's horrible for the biceps as well yeah It's very painful, it's painful but yeah it's not an excuse you can find on Instagram you can find a lot of very tall and heavy dudes doing even full planches and Maltese I guess we need to know that if you're looking at gymnasts well no gymnast always pretty pretty pretty pretty short actually it's kind of a requirement to be at an elite elite level I guess but everybody can learn all those cool moves they want to do, people want to do the human flag, want to do the muscle up, want to maybe the frontlever, of those I think are pretty accessible to pretty much anyone which is not too overweight of course yeah. What is your nutrition like? That's something I'm interested in because you also give some input for nutrition, you also have your own plan I guess and yeah I just I'm interested in how do you eat? Well this goes back a long time ago when I was interested in weightlifting and it's pretty you know the stereotype of bodybuilders with couple wears and very you know careful about the nutrition this is what I was when I was younger when it was the most unnecessary I guess that's when I was the most you know mad about all of this because I was doing all this things at the beginning so along the way because when I was younger I was only interested in you know aesthetics and women and girls I guess that's probably why you do it and the look of yourself in the mirror of course you know because everybody likes to look at themselves in the mirror I know I do so that's what I was doing and you know everybody tells you nutrition is very important and it is, so I read a lot of books, I tried a lot of things, I counted my calories for a long time maybe two years or something total with my macronutrients and all of this and I think it's a very efficient way to do it but it's also risky because you maybe, then you can get obsessed and have a very weird relation with food and it's difficult but it's good to know the basics of energy balanced you know eating more calories than you actually burn will make you gain weight, it can be muscle, it can be fa,t it all depends what you eat and what you do besides eating in your life but that's important to know and nowadays I don't really care I don't care about how I look other than the fact that I'm attached to my image of my body which is not you know I still have a little bit of muscle I'm not too fat you know and I also need on my, you know, for my content, I cannot be the guy who teaches people to do stuff if I look like shit, so you need a good look, good pump and a little bit of muscle yeah to have good thumbnails and thumbnails are very important as well as it's in Instagram of course but other than that I don't really care, I like my body, my girlfriend likes my body I think and that's all that matters. So I just eat whatever I like but I have ingrained so many healthy habits over all of the time I only eat you know non-processed things, I'm very careful about what I eat as macronutrient profile, I eat protein rich things of course and with all of this calorie counting when I see, when I see a plate when I cook something for myself I can know what it costs that comes down to in numbers and I know my body so I know what I need and all of this. It's a long way and it's very overwhelming at the beginning but it's definitely doable it's very nice just reading the labels behind what you buy you would be very surprised to see sometimes what's inside, what's not inside and you don't need to study books for two years to actually do better choices which can start right when you're doing your grocery shoppings and things like that everybody knows what to do, eat more vegetables, eat less processed food ,we don't want to do that because processed foods and all of this tastes so good and you know that, we kind of all know what we should be doing but if you want to get very precise and you have very precise goals then you should get more knowledgeable about all of this I think. Ok nice that's interesting like yeah it's such a small thing to do but it's, it will have a big effect
that's true. Like on the one hand knowing what these, all these yeah like words mean, I don't know if you buy like sausage or something really the processed stuff, what's in there to understand what these words mean and then also looking at the nutrition, at the food and checking what's in there, that's actual. It helps it's something what I like about this and what I like about maybe optimizing your grocery shopping is, that it's something you can do once and for all because once you have good shopping and grocery shopping habits you're just gonna keep them you're gonna go into automatic mode and you just need to change this one time this thing that you're doing every week and then you can get compounded interests on this for the rest of your life and it's probably the same way to think about exercising regularly. Once you get the habit to do it it's actually more painful to you not to exercise many days to actually exercise so yeah it's all about habit building and all of this which are very interesting topics and there are a lot of good books about it which I'm sure people will be able to find because habits yeah foundation of a lot of good and bad things so yeah that's true. Nice thanks for the inside there. I have some quick questions. We're coming to an end of the interview and yeah you are allowed to respond quickly. I have short questions: Pizza or Burger? Pizza. Dog or Cats? Like are you a dog person or a cat person? Okay I guess I'm more of a cat person. A cat person okay. Your favorite location for holidays? Favorite location for holiday. I like the beach, no matter where it is. Okay. You also live at the beach or no you lived at the beach, now. No, well we have some lakes here. We have a lake close to here so. Yeah okay like a Lake also has a beach were.. yeah okay um What would you work as if social media just  disappeared? Probably some marketing consultant I guess something like that. I haven't really thought about that. For newspaper etc if social media disappears what do you want you to consult as a marketing. Oh well if all of marketing did well I don't know in some kind of cooperation I guess you know I feel like I know how I understand how to sell things as well you know human psychology so I guess I would dig into that and offer my services. I don't really like to think that I would get employed but I'd like to consult if that's even a thing I don't know. Is there a calisthenics athlete because of whom you started? Because of whom I started. Maybe not a special name but I remember watching Chris Herias' videos probably at the beginning on his YouTube channel I really like what Daniels Laizans is doing on the content creation side of things because he's a monster otherwise he's a real athlete if you ask me so that's about it but I started before knowing about Laizans but Chris Heria I think yeah. Okay and do you have a favorite calisthenics athlete right now? Mmm it's a difficult question. Well I liked Calisthenic Movement which you probably know because they're German YouTubers. I like them because they are YouTubers you know because I like their content which is very methodical and very thought out and that's probably, those guys I like to talk to and I know Laizans as well because he's creating content and I love his style of editing as well so, Okay, Probably those. Okay, your favorite book? Favorite book. Be obsessed or be average from Grant Cardone because now people are asking me very regularly what kind of book you like and all this. I always tell this one because that's the one who actually made me like TICK all right I can try to do this and this is like creating content and all of this but the one I would like to recommend even though it's more like a business selling book it's nice I liked it. Ok and dynamics or statics? Statics. Definitely for me. Even well I'd like, I like to think I will go into dynamics some some time but uh statics for now for sure. Ok perfect then we're coming to an end. I really have to say thank you to you for the possibility, for sharing a lot of stuff out of your life that yeah that's sometimes difficult to get I mean you do YouTube but it's difficult to see, to get it in 2 to 15 seconds videos on Instagram or yeah also on YouTube to talk about some stuff so I'm really really happy that you did it and yeah just before I want to let you end the episode I want to ask you as a listener to write in the comments how you liked this episode, if you have something that you liked a lot, if there is something that we can improve, it helps a lot and also if you comment who you want to be interviewed next or if you have like other questions for Eric maybe for a part 2, will see but yeah drop this in the comments that helps a lot so yeah.
Thanks everybody for listening, thanks for growing calisthenics together and Eric you have the last words. Well thank you very much for the opportunity you gave me to actually speak with you and it was very nice. Thank you very much, it was a very very nice conversation and it's good to have those kind of formats when we can talk more freely than just you know creating content on Instagram which is not the same. I like this kind of content more actually. I like speaking about interesting things with interesting people such as you so yeah it's been nice thank you.