Gamal Awad Talks KAATSU
Episode Description
The husband-and-wife duo of U.S. Marines Major Gamal Awad and 2-time Olympian Hawley Bennett talked about their use of KAATSU with retired Navy SEAL captain and KAATSU Master Specialist John Doolittle.
They regularly use the original KAATSU Nano unit with their KAATSU Air Bands.
Awad and Hawley have used KAATSU to help with their rehabilitation from numerous injuries – all quite serious from broken pelvis bones to broken backs. They also use KAATSU in the course of their daily exercise routines. Awad talks of his daily need for KAATSU while Olympian Hawley talked about her own KAATSU journey in the podcast above.
Awad is shown below on the day of his most recent injury – and soon thereafter during his recovery with his pink KAATSU Air Bands on his arms.
To learn more about equestrian athlete Hawley who is looking to participate in her third Olympic Games next summer in Tokyo in 3-day eventing, visit hawleybennett.com.
Check out and order a KAATSU support system and keep in the fight.
Transcript
It made me better, basically, because even if that only lasted an hour, which it lasted more than that, that’s a break. You know what I mean? Like, that gives your mind distinct pause to recalibrate and just enjoy it, even if it’s for that period of time. And if you can get the dopamine response or kind of that endorphin response from working out, I don’t know about you, but when I was in the military, we could get that, but only after going hard. Hard, hard. Yeah, yeah, yep. Right. It took a lot of effort. Yeah. And you feel like you’re able to get that doing what? Just cycles? Well, if I do the cycles, I always use the hand grips. Some kind of movement. Yes, yes. So when it’s inflated, that’s when I’m doing that. So that’s what I was doing pretty much within the first month to two months of rehabbing. And then I was able to start walking after that. And actually, the indicator for me, if I did the KAATSU cycle or the KAATSU workout properly, was if I felt that dopamine effect, you know, or the endorphin effect. If I didn’t, then I know I didn’t do it right. And I did it again later on in the day and just adjusted my.. But then when you did start working out, you were only using like five pound weights. Like you didn’t have to go hardcore and a million reps.
Statements made in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. For more information about KAATSU and KAATSU products, visit KAATSUglobal.com. That’s K-A-A-T-S-U-Global.com.
John Doolittle from KAATSU Global and I’m here with Gamal and Hawley Awad. They’re in Temecula, California. Gamal is a United States Marine Corps devil dog veteran. Got out in 2006. So we had some commonalities there. I’m a Navy guy. And Hawley, a really interesting three-day eventing. It’s an equestrian event, and Hawley’s an Olympian. And we’ll talk a little bit about that. But thanks a lot, both of you, for agreeing to jump on with us and talk about your experiences with KAATSU. Why don’t you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves a little better than I just did, I guess. Well, my name is Gamal Awad. I’m from Washington, D.C. originally, and got stationed out here in 2003 and met Hawley after my second tour. As a matter of fact, a couple weeks after I got back, I met her. And yeah, we’ve been together pretty much ever since then. And I’m originally from Vancouver, Canada, and I compete horses. I know it’s beautiful, but the winter’s stuck. So once I realized that you could be warm in the wintertime, I was hooked and ended up staying in Southern California and started a business and got married. And here we are 15 years later. It’s crazy. Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Well, I know we’re going to go into KAATSU just a little bit, but Hawley, can you give us a little bit of background on the three-day eventing?
Is it true that that’s how people used to be tested to determine if they could go into the Calvary back in the day? Yeah, absolutely. What’s it about? So the first day is like nowadays, it’s kind of like doing figures in like a skating test. We have a certain dressage test that we have to be judged upon, and that’s our starting score. And then we don’t want to basically add any points to that. And then the second day is like an endurance day. It’s over three miles jumping, over 45 fences. For the horse, it’s quite a true test of your horse and rider. And then the third day is called show jumping. So that’s what most people have seen. It’s where the jumps are in a ring. And it’s just testing the endurance of the horse that they can still be rideable and you know keep all the sticks up, basically. And you know if you have a rail, you get penalized. On cross-country of a stop, you get penalized. So it’s a true test.
It’s kind of like a triathlon for horses, but you know it’s hard. Yeah, absolutely. Right, well, yeah, I mean, we could do that to help prevent injuries and recover from injuries. I’ve been hurt a few times. I’ve had some bad falls. And the KAATSU has actually really helped me recover from them. It may have something to do with the specialists too. Yeah. Yeah.
Gamal, are you the specialist? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s a great kind of lead-in. How did you, how did you guys first learn about KAATSU? I mean, how did you kind of get? By accident. Yeah, it was totally by accident. Before we were going up to her clinic, like probably about three day heads up about, you know, her wanting for me to work out with Dr. Stray Gunderson and Hawley. So I was supposed to go teach a clinic in Utah. And the lady that organized the clinic is really good friends with the doctors and trainers at the US Olympic Ski Center in Salt Lake. And she knows Gamal loves working out and gadgets, basically. And so she invited him up. And you know typical, both of us, a little bit skeptical. Like I don’t like promoting or talking about things unless I truly believe in them. And Gamal and I got hooked on it.
So that’s where he met Hawley and her husband. Yeah. And before that, like I said, we got a little bit of a heads up, so I had time to do a little bit of research. I found an article in Military Times, and that’s what really picked my interest. And then also went on to the KAATSU Global website and looked at all the studies that were there. Anything that I could find that would give me some you know idea what I was getting into. But I was 60/40, you know what I mean?
Like I was like, okay, this seems like it would work, but is it snake oil? And you know again, went in there with an open mind and asked a lot of questions. And they were very thorough. It was an intense workout. I didn’t know that, you know, I could feel that way after just lifting five pound weights. When I heard about it, it’s like five pound weights. You know, I’m in there in the gym pressing, you know, you know, a lot of weights and, you know, this just didn’t seem like it would give me the same if not better results. Right, right. Quite surprised. You know.
Well, especially in the military, it’s kind of a type alpha demographic where it’s just like, go, go 100% all the time. All the time. And it’s always push weight, push weight, push weight. If you tear stuff, tearing down muscle fibers, that’s okay. You know Go hard on legs, have a couple days rest, go hard on chest, have a couple days rest there, go hard on back. But everything is just hard, hard, hard all the time. So you got your first, you both got your first experience with doing something with KAATSU with a very light intensity or light resistance or lightweight or no weight. Did you do just body weight stuff too? Yeah, we did both. And again, like I said, we were doing, start with curls with just five pound weights.
And I’ve worked out in gyms with, you know, the big, you know, knuckleheaded gym rats, and they see me with my five pound weights and they’re, you know, over there. What the heck is wrong with this guy? But yeah, so we did, you know, calisthenics and like I said, we did hand clunches to to start out with that and then went to curls, tricep extensions, and then push ups. It was like five pushups and one and then none. So were you guys dealing with rehab or any injuries at all? Or was this just being exposed to this as a workout kind of new way of working out? Well, that’s two part for me because and also a bit for Hawley because she’s had injuries. But for me, I was already in pretty good shape. I was having back issues at the time. So that’s what was the most noticeable effect of KAATSU. It didn’t take me to 100% capacity, but 20, maybe 30%, you feel that difference.
Like you have more mobility and you’re able to do a bit more and carry more load because your muscles are increasing systemically, not just the muscles that you’re working on. Right, right. Getting that systemic response. Did you notice any improvements with pain or chronic pain or inflammation or inflammatory response, that kind of stuff? Yes. Yeah. The pain levels in my back went from approximately from a seven to an eight to about a three or four. So that was noticeable enough, you know. But like I said, that was that enabled me to get past those issues. And I could do other workouts like hiking, I haven’t been able to do that in a while. The other thing that I noticed is my tolerance for lactic acid.
So going uphill, normally, you know, that lactic acid builds up and you can’t, you have to slow down or stop, you know, get your, you know, rest a little bit just so that can dissipate. But I can keep going. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, which has been very interesting. So that’s been the other side effect I’ve noticed. And the dopamine? Yes, yes. But for me, it’s a two-part thing. So there’s that in 2015 to 2018, October of 2018. I had a serious, serious fall in my front yard, just doing the most trivial of things. You know I’ve been through two combat tours, been shot at, you know mortars shot at you. But I was using a two-foot box to adjust the angle on my camera, and the box collapsed, swung backwards, and I fell, but it was a whipping action. So my legs went over like a cobra, and my face, I fractured my skull, subdural hematoma, fractured pretty much every bone in my face. My right eye popped out, broke my neck, all the muscles and tendons from my shoulder to the front part of my neck. Oh my God. Yeah, it was brutal. And I have pictures of this too. I didn’t do it as progressively as I could just because I was just focusing on rehab. Within about a week of that accident, I had to wear a neck brace, but within a week of that, I started using KAATSU on just doing the cycle three times a day. It was insane the difference and how quickly he healed.
Like the doctors couldn’t believe it. Yeah Like from the swelling and the contusions on his face, like I mean, he’s got beautiful skin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know I’m glad you said that. I was going to go there. But I mean, we do have pictures from like the first day, like the third day, the sixth day. And it was, and then within months after. And the healing process is nuts. And the fact that he looks normal and can function well. And I mean, that I think was a huge game changer in his healing on that one. And that was true for me, the true litmus test, because we were already having some issues and you’re already pretty much in shape and you use KAATSU, it’s hard to justify it sometimes, like you’re on the fence. I was all for, like I said, just for the dopamine effect. But when this accident happened, I was like, all right, so this is really going to be the litmus test, whether or not it blew me away. Yeah, it was amazing. It wasn’t easy because you can imagine like one arm was in a sling. I had to, you know, you know, manipulate that and then put, you know, on my other arm. And just like I said, just do it three times a day. I mean, sometimes I would just leave it on and just loosen it up and then just, you know, retighten it when I needed to do it again. That’s fascinating. And we hear all the time about these rapid rehabilitation stories.
And just in the time I’ve been in the company, I’ve learned a fair amount about how some of that works. We don’t need to get into it now. But I got introduced in the rehab aspect of it as well. And I was pretty blown away with the recovery piece. One of the most fascinating pieces, I think, with this is when you talk about the hormonal response that takes place in the body, one of the biomarkers that goes up significantly when you’re expanding and relaxing vascular tissue is nitric oxide. We talk about that a lot, but also VEGF, the vascular endothelial growth factor. When those numbers go up, that stuff’s like like fertilizer for your capillary beds throughout your body. So when you have an injury that needs more oxygenation and more nutrients around the injury, the capillary beds around that, and it’s been shown enough to actually grow. It’s pretty incredible. But Gamal, the dopamine piece that you just kind of glossed over it a few times.
I know exactly what you’re talking about, because for me, that’s a huge part of KAATSU. But I don’t know, can we deconstruct that a little bit? What do you mean when you say the dopamine response? Well, for those who have been exposed to trauma repeatedly or in a hypervigilant state for an extended period of time, it’s hard to, and not because you don’t want to, it’s because that’s your new normal. So the other hormones are affected, serotonin, melatonin, and dopamine. I actually got tested for that. And those levels were extremely low, and all of the hormones related to anxiety were pretty high. So when I obviously used KAATSU, that was one of the other hormones that was released, you know, besides human growth hormone, as you know.
And that really made me feel good. I mean, I hadn’t felt that in a long time. It was, it was that noticeable. I mean, not just because that’s part of the KAATSU effect, but it was noticeable because I wanted to feel like that more. And so when I did it every day, I had that release and it actually made that, it made me better, basically, because even if that only lasted an hour, which it lasted more than that, that’s a break. You know what I mean? Like, that gives your mind a distinct pause to recalibrate and just enjoy it, even if it’s for that period of time. And if you can get the dopamine response or kind of that endorphin response from working out, I don’t know about you, but when I was in the military, we could get that, but only after going hard. Hard. Hard. Yeah, yeah, yep. Right. It took a lot of effort. Yeah.
And you feel like you’re able to get that doing what? Just cycles? Well, if I do the cycles, I always use the hand grips. Some kind of movement. Yes, yes. So when it’s inflated, that’s when I’m doing that. So that’s what I was doing pretty much within the first month to two months of rehabbing. And then I was able to start walking after that. And actually, the indicator for me, if I did the KAATSU cycle or the KAATSU workout properly, was if I felt that dopamine effect, you know or the endorphin effect. If I didn’t, then I know I didn’t do it right. And I did it again later on in the day and just adjusted my– But then when you did start working out, you were only using like five pound weights. Like you didn’t have to go hardcore and a million reps of I will say this though, my pressure like on my arms is above 350.
Oh wow. SKUs and on the legs, it’s over 400. You’ve built up to that. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It’s taken this much amount of time that I have to do that. So I have to tighten the bands a bit more in order to achieve that you know therapeutic level. I was going to say that’s pretty significant. How long have you been doing it? Since 2015. And like I said, it’s been almost daily, so I have to, yeah. So I just, you know, I wish it can go higher than that, but I think I can still achieve the same results by just changing up the workouts, you know, just to keep the body shocked. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
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Did I cover the dopamine effect? I just want to make sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that and I think most people listening or watching this will get it. You know People understand what that is. Is it safe to say that that’s your favorite aspect of KAATSU? Yeah. Well, it’s kind of a leading question because it definitely is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it totally is. And there’s usually a nap involved after. Yep. Yep. It’s going to induce that. Like I just sit down afterwards and I’m watching TV and then all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s funny you mentioned how we had another call earlier today and we were talking about the importance of regenerative sleep, you know, stage three and stage four sleep. And when you’re talking, and since we’re veterans, we can talk about this pretty freely, right?
You know, a lot of guys that are first responders, police officers, ambulance drivers, hospital workers, first-line medical care workers, especially now. People that get stuck in that hypervigilance state, they get stuck. You have that parasympathetic aspect of life, and then you have your fight or flight or that systemic, not systemic, parasympathetic and sympathetic, right? I’m bouncing around. But it’s so easy when you’re exposed to traumatic stress to get stuck over here. And the first thing that happens is you start to lose stage four and stage three restorative sleep, which is so important to everything, you know especially when we’re talking about immune response and things like that.
So to hear that you sleep so easily after KAATSU. That’s actually a very normal thing. There’s an actual insomnia protocol that Dr. Sato and Dr. Nakajima came up with. Within an hour of going to sleep, you do the KAATSU cycles and you do very, very light stretching and very light, easy neck and shoulder movements while you do the cycles. So while the vascular tissue is expanding and relaxing, expanding and relaxing, you just integrate some very, very light, not stressful, but very light movement. And it just helps. It worked for me immediately. The first time Stephen showed it to me. I was blown away. But anyway, we could talk about that all day. But Hawley, what’s your favorite what’s your favorite aspect of KAATSU from your perspective?
I like working out, but I don’t like lifting a ton of heavy weight and all that. And I’m athletic, but I don’t want to be a big bodybuilder. So I like the way it makes me look like I’m strong, but I’m lean, you know? And those results for me, I think, have made quite a big difference. And honestly, I like variety. So it just gives me another way to work out. And like I said, I’ve had a couple injuries. If I fall off, I’m usually going to go to the hospital. It takes a lot for me to fall off my horse. So it’s helped me. And same thing. I’ve broken my neck. I broke my back. I’ve broken my pelvis twice. Both of you guys. I know. We’re a little crazy. We’re getting older. We don’t bounce as good as we used to. And I like that I travel a lot. So it’s packable. It’s something you can bring with you. It’s easy to travel with. It’s light. It’s easy to set up. And it’s a quick, easy workout with results that happen. Plus, it maintains your game. So if you’re a gym rat or if that’s what you normally do and KAATSU augments that, you know typically when she’s competing, she doesn’t have time to do an extended workout. Two hours at the gym. I’m busy. I don’t have that time. 15, 20 minutes with KAATSU, you are feeling great. And it’s, like I said, keeping your strength in.
Yeah, we say all the time, if you’re looking for an effective and efficient way to get some exercise in. Definitely. Now, okay, so my wife and I do this all the time. And I got to ask you guys, do you guys experiment? No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going around the house when you’re doing, I’ll just call them day-to-day chores. Do you guys ever use KAATSU cycles when you’re, I don’t know, doing dishes or working in the kitchen or doing things around the house? He does. Yeah, absolutely. I love doing, and you don’t think that it would wear you out, just like folding towels. I am exhausted after that. And I’m like, really? Of doing housework. So yeah, I have a tendency to put those on and go through the cycle when I am doing some sort of, you know, chore like that. I actually like that. I mean, and I like doing chores, but I love doing KAATSU with that. I’m the exact same way. I’m leading the witness because my wife and I are the same way, man. Laundry, cleaning up after dinner, walking the dogs. Yeah, we did that. We have a little Jack Russell and we walk every night and usually just throw the arms on yeah and cruise. Awesome. We’re probably going to do the legs tonight. We get competitive though. You know So we start seeing who can last the longest.
When are you going to take that off? Well, hey guys, I don’t want to I don’t want to use up too much of your time. And we usually try to keep these you know somewhere in that 20, 30 minute realm. Is there anything you want to is there anything you want to touch on as we wrap it up? Is there anything we missed? I just want to make sure that you know obviously this is going to go out to everyone, but you know to the specialists and the people that are familiar with it, you know they’re obviously going to look at this and nod their head and approval. But for the people that are on the fence about it, you really at least need to give this a try. You know On the KAATSU website, they have a link for the specialists that are in your particular area. So you can probably link up with them and give it a try or two. You know It’s not something you’re going to see within that first day. You have to give it a couple tries. So I would say that would be something that you should at least look into doing because it is life-changing. And again, I take this with me everywhere I go, and I will not leave home without this when I go traveling.
Awesome. Awesome. Hawley, how about you? You got anything you want to close up with? Well, I’m in the position I’m in. I’m pretty humble and quiet about what I do. But I have a ton of people always coming at me about sponsorship and, you know, oh, use this, wear this. And I don’t like to just take stuff to take stuff. And I only promote stuff that works for me or that I truly believe in. And I was honestly a little skeptical. When we first, I was like, “What’s this?” you know But the results speak for themselves. And you know we’re a big believer in it. And that’s why we, you know every now and then you’ll see us on Instagram promoting it. And I’m a big believer in it. If it works for me and gets me results, I’m going to talk about it and promote it. And it has for me. Awesome. Well, really appreciate your time. Hawley, later on offline, I’ll push you some stuff that KAATSU has been used in the equestrian research. Oh, I know. So really cool stuff that’s out there. But thank you so much for your time and have a great day. Thank you.
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