#865: The Most Incredible Transformation I’ve Ever Seen — Jerzy Gregorek on Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Coaching, and the Power of Micro-Progressions

**Tim Ferriss** (0:00)
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show. And I'm gonna keep my intro very, very short. There are a few things you're gonna want to pay attention to. This blew my mind. I think it will also blow your mind. Two things, tim.blog/hardchoices.
That is the video mini documentary of Prison No More. This is about the transformation that you're about to learn about. You gotta watch it. It's very short, and it almost defies or seems to defy explanation, but there is a method to it. tim.blog/hardchoices. That's link number one. The second is, if you're interested in supporting or being a part of the cerebral palsy research, go to tim.blog/cp and fill out the Google form. So two more times, the mini doc, tim.blog/hardchoices. Definitely check it out. And after the episode, if you're interested in the cerebral palsy research, supporting it, being a part of it in any way, tim.blog/cp.
Jerzy, nice to see you, as always.

**Jerzy Gregorek** (1:30)
Pleasure.

**Tim Ferriss** (1:32)
I always love spending time with you, and I have wanted to have this conversation for doing the math more than 10 years, because you told me of this transformation that we're going to be discussing in detail a long time ago.
And it blew my mind to the extent that you may not remember this. I wanted to try to figure out a way to hire a long-form journalist to write an entire long-form magazine piece on this. And it turned out that a much better format is film. And certainly in this conversation, we'll talk about it. But not to bury the lead, for people who don't have any context, Jerzy and I have known each other quite a long time. And Jerzy has appeared on the podcast before alongside Naval Ravikhan, who also has worked with Jerzy. And Jerzy is a four-time world weightlifting champion, co-founder of UCLA's weightlifting team, co-creator with his wife Aniela, the lovely Aniela of the Happy Body program. There's a lot more to his story. We get into it in depth in the first conversation. This time around, we're gonna talk about a very, very specific transformation that people might not associate with weightlifting when they envision lifting weights in the gym. And that is just how far reaching coaching transformation can be. And I'm gonna read a definition first of cerebral palsy, CP. This is from the AI answer on Google, but you'll see some version of this in most places. So, cerebral palsy is a group of permanent disorders affecting movement, posture and muscle tone caused by abnormal brain development or damage to the developing brain. Usually before birth, sometimes it's during birth. It is the most common motor disability in children resulting in non-progressive limitations.
I'm just highlighting a few words here. Permanent non-progressive limitations, meaning the brain injury does not change over time on muscle coordination and balance. Now, I'm going to compare that with a lead into the doc, which I'm making available for free on YouTube, which is called Prisoner No More. We'll have more to say about that. It is quite short, easy to watch, about 30 minutes to my memory.
And here's the description. What happens when a doctor's prognosis becomes a life sentence and one person refuses to serve it? Prisoner No More follows Tae Jin Park, and I recognize that is not probably the perfect pronunciation for Korean, but Tae Jin Park, a young man diagnosed with cerebral palsy who dismantled every physical limitation medical science predicted for him. Through elite athletic training under Olympic strength coach Jerzy Gregorek, and an uncompromising commitment to identity transformation, Tae Jin's story redefines what the human body and mind are capable of. And that's directed by Jeff Wolf. And we will come back to that as well. But let's hop into an actual conversation here. And begin with, Jerzy, if you wouldn't mind, just some before and afters, right? And then we'll go into the entire chronology of it and everything else. But maybe we could just touch on a few like bench press, what he could do before Tae Jin and what he could do after.
Math, language, where would you like to start?

**Jerzy Gregorek** (5:03)
Let's start from bench press, I guess.

**Tim Ferriss** (5:04)
Okay.

**Jerzy Gregorek** (5:06)
So the first day he, I loaded the bar 15 pounds and he couldn't lift. He couldn't take it off the rack.

**Tim Ferriss** (5:13)
Right, he couldn't un-rack it.

**Jerzy Gregorek** (5:14)
Just only 15 pounds.
So I have this wooden bar, Olympic wooden bar, that I use to coach children. Four-year-olds, five. I remember my daughter was doing snatches when she was three years old.