Ben Pakulski - The Bodybuilding Yogi: How To Unify The Mind & Body

Full transcript: Ben Pakulski on London Real

3:40 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ben Pakulski, the Canadian former professional bodybuilder turned yogi and muscle educator. You have competed in two of bodybuilding’s most prestigious shows, Mr. Olympia and the Arnold Classic, where you placed in the top 10 three years running. You’ve trained professional athletes, bodybuilders and celebrities since 2005 and are recognized as one of the top trainers and physique coaches on the planet.

4:04 Today, you travel the world teaching your six pillars of a lean, healthy, and muscular body, promoting upgraded consciousness, self-confidence, and an overall positive outlook on life. Ben, welcome to London Real. Brian, thanks for having me. That’s a very glowing introduction, and thank you, hopefully I live up to it. I’m super excited to talk to you.

4:21 First off, wanted to say, what’s it like being in London, and how do we measure up as a city when it comes to health, consciousness, all that stuff? Well, I’ve got a very unique view, right? So the last few days I’ve been here, it’s been beautifully sunny, which may not be characteristic, So I think I brought that with me in the last few days. I’ve been attending the health optimization summit So being around people who are extremely bright and you know, extremely motivated to optimize their health So I’ve got this very very narrow world view of London Although I’m here often right and I love it man to be honest so much character in so much history The people have always been very welcoming, you know, maybe not characteristic you could tell me but my experience of London has been amazing Yeah, no, it’s it surprises people because I think it always had that old rep of you know fish and chips and all this other stuff, but when they come here, they realize it’s a.

5:09 It’s great. Great culture. I’m very into culture, right? I love the idea of accessing multiple cultures. I have no fear around culture.

5:16 A lot of people have fear around culture, right? Propaganda, incentivizing fear around culture. Those are different people and I love it. I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world and meet people and you realize, they’re just human beings. There’s good and bad people in every culture, right?

5:31 You can’t just segregate or isolate a culture Well, that’s not you know, they’re not like me. So therefore they’re bad. So you’ve kind of open to all these new ideas Do you see that? What do you see when you walk around London? They’re like little things you’re like, oh, that’s different Yeah, why grew up in Toronto? So there’s a lot of multiculturalism in Toronto as well So maybe that’s part of why I’m so open to it. But yeah, I mean just the idea I was walking down the road the other day and there’s a guy riding a bike with two people in the back and he’s playing Like Middle Eastern music really really loud and I was like, this is interesting. Like maybe not something you would expect expect in London.

6:04 Maybe I would expect it in, you know, if I was in Kuwait or Dubai or something, but like here, like I’m playing very loud Arabic music and I was like, that’s very interesting to me. That’s, I was like, am I in an Arabic area? And I love seeing people submersing themselves in different cultures and the integration of us as a human species. Yeah. You know, what caught my attention about you is that you obviously put in the years working on becoming a bodybuilder, you know?

6:33 And we’ve had some great guests in here, including Dorian Yates, who spent a lot of time. The goat, man. I know you’re a big fan of his. And it was also interesting to see how a man like that then completely decided to evolve in a different way, not in the physique. And I heard you say, we are all love, I think, on another show.

6:53 And I thought, there’s something about this guy that you wouldn’t expect, a guy that’s kind of made this transition from what you might expect to be just completely focused on the physique to realize there’s so much more going on in the world. And I think as we learn with Dorian, it was just these assumptions we made. I mean, everybody has the capacity to obviously be thinking about so many different things and be involved. But I think you have a really interesting perspective and I’d love to try to touch on a lot of that stuff today.

7:18 But out there, you had mentioned a moment when you were going on the stage for Mr. Olympia, which is a big deal to be on the stage for Mr. Olympia, something that guys work their whole lives or never get to, where you said, okay, I’m glad to be here, but I realize that there’s more to life than this. And I was wondering maybe if you could walk us through that moment, because it feels like a transition. Sure.

7:41 So give you a quick backstory, it’ll make sense. So at 17 years old, I started working out, I started taking up bodybuilding and I picked up a Flex magazine and I was flipping through and I saw an ad for the Mr. Olympia, it was 1998. And I said to my dad, I was like, can we go to this? And he goes, sure.

7:55 So I was like, wow, really? I thought that was easy. So we drove to New York, 10 hours from Toronto. And I attended the 1998 Mr. Olympia, which was the first year Ronnie won, and sat relatively close.

8:05 And I was not even a body blur at that time, but I was interested. And having seen all these guys walk around at that time, I was hooked. Like at that point, I was like, this is what I’m gonna do. Like, this is the most amazing thing. I can’t imagine, and I didn’t think I had the genetics, right?

8:20 I was skinny, I was an obese kid. Didn’t think I had the genetics at all, but I was like, this is what I wanna do. So at that point I was hooked and I made that decision at some point and be on that stage I said to my dad at that show like that something to be on that stage And that was my focus, you know, I went through University Still focused on that and I didn’t compete during University for obvious reasons I really want to finish my degree and do well As soon as I was done I competed within six months and set that goal of kicking now I’m gonna get my pro card. So you can imagine this is effectively 12 years between a little more than 12 years actually in between The time I went to the first Olympia to the time I walked on stage, 14 years actually.

9:03 So this is building in my head and my belief was this was my pinnacle. This was what I need to do in life and I put everything into it 24 hours a day and a lot of athletes talk about obsession and I was the epitome of obsession. I was obsessed with being the best bodybuilder in the world. I was obsessed with having the best legs that anyone’s ever seen and that was always my focus. And so when I walked on stage, I just had this belief previously that this was gonna be the pinnacle and this was gonna make me feel fulfilled as a man and feel like I’ve accomplished everything.

9:37 And what did that obsession look like on a daily basis? A lot of selfishness, a lot of time, a lot of focus, man. And I had a tremendous amount of struggle, right? Because I put so much pressure on myself to perform every day. I wasn’t always nice to people because I put so much pressure on myself to perform every day.

9:57 Like if you were getting in my way, I wasn’t gonna be nice to you. And it wasn’t always, like I was not a bad person per se, but I was very, very focused. And you can ask any one of my training partners that I’ve had and it’s been a lot and they’ll all say like, well, like when it goes in the gym, it’s time, right? And there’s points where I’d have one training partner for the first hour and one for the second hour because I was so focused on like, I need to do this, like I need to crush this guy and then crush this guy, and then I’ll have done enough.

10:27 So, you know, bringing it back around, walking on stage that 2012 Olympia, where I feel like I’m gonna have to be just overwhelmed with accomplishment. I had felt a sense of accomplishment, but it was also very hollow for me. It was also very empty, because you realized, or I realized at that time, upon reflecting on it, that it wasn’t about this journey that I had been on to accumulate muscle or step on stage, this external things that I’d been focusing on, Like buying the new pair of shoes feels awesome for about five minutes.

10:55 And then you leave the story and like, oh, right. And so I realized that, you know, instead of shining the spotlight outside of myself and focusing on all these things outside of myself, the only true journey to happiness was within. I wasn’t happy walking on stage at the Olympia. Like I thought I would, I thought it would just be the happiest man. I thought it’d be breaking down and I certainly felt accomplished.

11:13 Like I know what had gone into that. And I made sure I meditated on that. Like you put a lot into this. Like I was pictured in the 17 year old kid. 160 pounds when I first went to, you know, the Mr. Olympia in 1998. And I walked on stage, and I was about 275, you know, having effectively put on 120 pounds of muscle, like it’s a lot of muscle. And I celebrated that. But at the same time, I realized like, this isn’t where fulfillment lies for me. And a lot of people will relate to that, whether it be in sport or accumulation of money. We know many wealthy people who have tremendous amounts of money and you know the amount of money people would kill for and they’re not happy and not fulfilled and i think i hope that many people in life can come to that realization that the external desire to accumulate or pursue is not the goal man the only goal is going inside and finding whatever happiness means to you on the inside because happiness on the outside is transient happiness on the inside is something you create yourself you already are at your core but you just need to realize that that it’s there you just need to get rid of all the stories you You tell yourself and the beliefs that you have as to why you’re not good enough. Yeah How many guys on stage do you think with you? We’re having similar realizations What do you think it’s not that it’s something everyone realizes?

12:28 Or does it mean you have to kind of be able to go into yourself to have that for sure for sure? You’re going in yourself, and I don’t think a lot of guys on stage have that realization I think a lot of them need bodybuilding I don’t think a lot of them even want bodybuilding once you get there right and that’s not something I’ve talked about before I think A lot of these guys need it as far as finance. They need it as far as that’s their escape from all the pain in their life.

12:47 And that’s not everybody. Some people obviously have just a tremendous ability to do it, right? And they’re very gifted and they love it and that’s awesome. But a very large percentage of the fitness population exercise is because they need to. It’s their escape, right?

12:59 Some people use drugs, some people use alcohol, some people use sex. And fitness is an escape. It happens to be one that we view as healthy. But when you’re using it as an escape, it’s not healthy, right? It’s a coping mechanism.

13:10 So that was kind of a big thing for me too, leaving the muscle building scene, was realizing that that was my coping mechanism, right? I had a lot of underlying anger and anxiety and demons that were there from my childhood. That’s how I coped. By pumping it out in the gym. Right, and masking it, right?

13:26 And creating this big armor. And had I not done that, chances are, like most people in my family, I would end up being an alcoholic or a drug addict or whatever, one of those things. It’s very, very prevalent in my family, because who knows why? but I was very blessed to find effort and find discipline. And, you know, that was kind of my badge of honor is as a kid, I actually associated with being lazy.

13:49 It’s like, I thought it was a very lazy kid and I hated it, I resented myself for it. And that was what drove my work ethic as a competitor. It was like, I never want someone to say I’m lazy again. And it was like this inner fire, this inner anger that I’d run through a wall before I’d be called lazy. And I drove the path.

14:09 Yeah, and it got you here. So you gotta kind of cherish it for that, but then it was time for you to evolve. So much gratitude for everything I’ve been through. Yeah, and you know, obviously I spent some time with Dorian over the years and we did our first documentary film with him and it was this whole idea of telling yourself a new story and evolving. And now when Dorian goes back to the Olympias, he goes back, but he’s a different guy and he doesn’t need to keep his physique up for the sake of it.

14:33 And he can tell himself a new story and go on that new path. whereas some people are still trying to cling to it. And as you get older, it’s really hard to cling to that identity. I don’t think it’s hard to cling. I think people, it’s appealing to cling because that sport, and it did this to me, it almost like pulls you back in, right?

14:49 Because, you know, I’m very well-recognized in that sport. People often come to my facility to train with me. They want to train with me. So I get in there and I’m getting after it. You know, I got my body weight down.

14:58 So I was competing on the off season, I was 320. So whatever you want to figure that out in kilos. And then, you know, I got my weight down under 250. after retiring, because I was so mentally okay with walking away after competing. And then some guy moves back into my gym for four months because he’s preparing for Olympias.

15:14 I train with him every day. Before you know it, I’m back up to 280. I’m like, oh, that’s pulling me back in. And people are always like, oh, what happened to him? Like, he lost a bunch of weight, he must be sick.

15:22 And I’m like, man, I’m perfect. Like, I’m absolutely in perfect health. And I’m trying to come down, but there’s always so many people going, oh, man, you look good really good there. You look better there. And so you start to kind of get that draw back.

15:34 So you have to be very conscious of, well, why am I intending to lose this muscle that I once, you know, craved? So it’s a very different paradigm. Yeah. Yeah. So most you said, I thought it was really interesting.

15:45 You said that training in the gym can almost be one of the most unconscious things that you can do, which is kind of an interesting thing. But now that I think about it, it kind of makes sense because like you said, you could just get out of your head and just be somewhere else and pump out that iron and get out that aggression. It looks like the solution. Where, and you said even the fitness industry in general can be something that’s very unconscious. I was wondering if you could explain that.

16:11 Sure, well, most people when they train, are they thinking about what they’re doing or are they just doing, right? So I would suggest, most people aren’t thinking, they’re just doing, they’re acting on what they think is correct, right? And when someone walks into my life, the first thing I say is if you want to progress, you have to forget everything you think you know about exercise and start to think. And so that’s really what it is, is most people put their hat over their eyes their music in their ears, or are they going back, they go back in and they do the same thing over and over and over again.

16:39 The same crappy execution, the same exercises, over and over, they’re routine, right? People like routine, it becomes easy. So your brain is burning less calories, your brain is less stress, is less mental growth. So that’s what the unconscious thing is, right? In the fitness industry, I’m gonna say it’s unconscious because most people are trying to numb the pain.

16:55 We use exercise because there’s anxiety, there’s fear, there’s self-resentment that exists, right, we don’t love ourselves. So we’re trying to go to the gym because it makes me feel better, right? Life is just this sum of do I feel bad? What can make me feel better? Even if it’s 1% better, it’s still a positive sum.

17:12 So if I eat sugar, it makes me feel better. I develop a habit around that. If I drink alcohol, it makes me feel better. I develop a habit around that. It’s just this attempt to escape that little negative feeling that we have in our body.

17:23 And so for some people, it’s exercise, right? And kind of part of my conversation now is people can do that without having to leave their home, Like, create your mind before the world creates it for you. Something that I say all the time, how do you do that, right? Well, you can do that during training. You can do that during meditation, right?

17:41 You’d have to like, okay, who do I wanna be? How do I wanna show up? And then create those emotions, create those anchors in your mind. So like, I can develop any personality trait. I can develop any emotion that I want, happiness, joy, fulfillment, achievement before I ever leave my house.

17:55 And that way I show up to interview with Brian Rose and I’m this person that I wanna be rather than letting Brian Rose dictate the person I am. And that’s just an example of the scenario, right? But I can show up as any person that I want. It can be confident or it can be insecure. It can be well-articulated or it can be someone who’s unable to access their speech.

18:12 So you decide and then create that and make that the daily habit. And like anything that takes practice, the first time you sit down has been very difficult. But if you did it every day for 30 days and you consciously said, you meditated on this ability to create your mind, you can do it. And you’d be surprised with how fast your life will change. But physical exercise, even if it’s unconscious, is probably a better alternative than drugs and alcohol or some other behavior.

18:38 Of course, man. Here’s the problem, right? Everything you’re doing, everything you’re doing, including the way we’re sitting and speaking to each other, is being remembered in your brain. It’s becoming a habit, it’s becoming a trait. So if I’m exercising with this, oh, I have to, mentality, or oh, gosh, I have to go to the gym, I don’t want to go to the gym, and you’re anchoring these negative emotions with the exercise.

18:56 We’re anchoring emotions with this room, right? So when I walk into the gym, what’s my state? What’s my cognitive state, my emotional state? And can I anchor this person that’s very strong and very powerful and I’m gonna dominate this versus I have to do this. Your brain remembers that, right?

19:11 It’s like walking into your parents’ house. Are you the same person there as you are in your house, as you are in your job? I hope not. Like are you the same person with a two and three year old as you are at work or you’re in the gym? I hope not, right?

19:22 If you are, well, there’s your problem. Like start creating different anchors and different avatars in those different scenarios. Like if I’m walking to the gym And I’m the same person I am with my daughter at home. Well, both of them are gonna be a failure, right? I’m not gonna be a great dad.

19:35 I’m certainly not gonna be successful in the gym. So I need to look at, okay, how do I create these avatars in my brain? And I’m literally becoming the superhero in each scenario, right? I wanna become the romantic lover at home. I wanna become the super dad at home.

19:45 I wanna become the beast in the gym. I wanna become the great leader at work. And those things can’t often overlap. And you have to be conscious of that, right? How do I create that before I walk into that scenario?

19:56 And you literally create an anchor, right? walking into my home, the jingling keys going into the door, right? Or my kids running to go, daddy, how can I ever be upset or angry or emotional? This is what people do, right? They walk in the house, they take their work home with them, or they walk in the gym, they take their work to the gym, or they take their family problems to the gym, and they don’t succeed in anything, right? So you have to go, okay, take that 30 seconds to breathe, right? Every time I was competing for the last few years, I take five minutes before every workout, and I literally sat in my car, and I created the person I need to be inside. I I didn’t always want to go to the gym.

20:27 I was tired of shit. I was hungry, I hadn’t slept. I didn’t want to go to the gym preparing for Olympia, but you sit there and you say, why am I doing this? Who do I need to become? And you go in there and you just own it, right?

20:41 Because you’re not a victim, right? That’s the number one rule for me in life. Never be a victim. Take ownership for your body, take ownership for your words, for your finances, for your family, right? Whatever you value, you take ownership for that.

20:56 And everything else doesn’t matter. But what you value, you value. You take ownership for it. How many avatars do you have? Do you name them?

21:04 Or do you encourage people to name them? That’s probably a good idea. But for me, it’s kind of been something I’ve been doing for a while now, so it’s kind of unconscious. Okay. The big one, the big realization for me, to be honest, was my kids were born.

21:16 Like, that was really my kick, right? You know, I won’t say where, but that was my kick. And, you know, prior to that, I was so selfish It was all just about the gym. And then no other avatars exist. It was like, I’m just that guy.

21:26 Like, I’m gonna be Mr. Olympia no matter what. And then as soon as my kids were born, I started to have a reason to not be that guy anymore. Like, I couldn’t be that guy at home. So I was like, okay, well, how do I still be dad at home and be this guy at the gym?

21:41 And I literally had to sit there and anchor myself in the car or, you know, in the grass or whatever. Maybe it’s a meditation, whatever. Like, you have to create some thing that becomes your trigger, right? So, yeah, that’s how it started for me. I didn’t name it at the time.

21:54 It was just like, I just know that if I’m the same person in the gym that I am at home with my daughter, my brand new baby daughter or my son, that’s gonna fail. That’s gonna be a problem. So naming it could be useful, but certainly listing it, like being very intentional about, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this. And anchoring even with posture, right? Like, what does your posture look like when you show up to the gym?

22:17 Because your brain’s remembering that, right? Where’s your breath? Is it, or is it strong, right? You think about that stuff, and if you can become very intentional about this, like success is inevitable, man. If you show up to work the exact man you need to be every day, success is no longer questionable.

22:34 It’s inevitable, and the same in the gym. If you want results, stop showing up to the gym, soft and tired and not wanting to be there. Create the person you need to be, and it’s gonna be hard for 30 days. Everything should be, it shouldn’t be easy, right? But when you finish it and you do it, you know, I own this.

22:51 And that, ah, self-confidence, ah, character, right? There’s something there that people are not tapping into. And I wanna talk about breath and then walk into meditation shortly. You know, I was watching an interview this weekend with Tyson Fury. So, you know, one of the top boxers in the world, English guy, and he was actually talking with Mike Tyson and talking about his depression.

23:13 So he took like a year, year and a half off boxing, He gained 150 pounds, became nearly suicidal, was drinking, was doing drugs, it was just really bad. And he came back and Tyson said, do you use antidepressants? And he said, no, training is my antidepressant. As long as I train and have a goal and also have the right mindset. Tyson actually, he says, I don’t really care anymore.

23:36 I just wanna go in and put on a great performance and have fun and if I win, I win and if I don’t, I don’t. But for him, it was really his antidepressant. And I had Eddie Hall in here, world’s strongest man, And he was near suicidal when he was a teenager, just stuck in his home. And it was going to the gym and lifting that kind of got him out of that state. And I know you think a lot about this stuff as well.

23:55 And I was just curious how you feel about physical training as the mental state, as that, you know, antidepressant. Right, well, no matter what you do, it’s a positive result on your state, right? If you’re in a negative state, it’s going to be a positive result. No matter what you do, if you go in there, you’re completely mindless. It’s still gonna get that positive result.

24:13 But now imagine if I go into the gym, Brian, and I’m anchoring joy and happiness and achievement fulfillment with my exercise. Rather than going in and going, oh man, I’m going to the gym to escape something, right? I can go in and say, I’m gonna go in there and think about a time when I felt joy, a time when I felt fulfillment or achievement or happiness, and I’m gonna think about that the entire time that I’m exercising. And now most people who are high-end and we train athletes, well, man, I have to be angry.

24:37 No, you don’t, right? No, you don’t. Positive psychology will tell you, any psychology will tell you that positive emotions are gonna get you better result than negative emotions. So, and again, I presented on this in health optimization, there’s so much data that suggests anchoring that state, anchoring that emotion with your exercise, with being in the gym is the most powerful way to train your brain because when you’re exercising, your brain becomes more plastic, right?

25:01 What’s plastic? Neuroplasticity, the growth of new brain cells. So when I’m standing doing nothing, neuroplasticity isn’t always going on, right? Your brain’s just in this default rest in state, but if I exercise, my muscles start releasing something called myokines, which is things like brain-derived, nootropic factor, and nerve growth factor, and IGF, people responsible for IGF, or VEGF, all these growth factors that are released into your blood can also go to your brain, and it makes your brain more pliable, more receptive to learning.

25:28 So if I can now go in and anchor all these positive emotions while my brain is this pliable thing, now I’m anchoring it and I can accelerate that even faster than if I were just trying to create this positive emotion at home. Meditation has a very similar effect. I don’t think it’s as positive. I don’t know, right? This is my speculation, because if you just look at the physiology of it, the muscles are releasing these, what’s called myokines, circulatory enzymes, basically, that influence all the cells in the body, right?

25:54 So if I get in that, and get in that when I’m exercising, then I know it’s gonna increase the pussity of the brain. That’s the best time to anchor anything, right? That’s the best time to learn. That’s the best time to anchor new emotions. So as soon as you’re done exercising, and during the exercise, you have this window where these myokines and your brain is just hyper-responsive to anything you put into it.

26:13 I think that’s something that people don’t explore. Yes, you’re gonna get this positive result anyways, but imagine we could amplify that exponentially, right? Just by looking at, what are you rethinking about when you’re doing that? You know, are you dreading this next set? Are you thinking about pain being uncomfortable?

26:28 Are you thinking about pain being something that maybe leads to your goal? And that was something I was able to do toward the end of my career was actually really take enjoyment in the discomfort because I knew I was doing something great for myself. I knew I was taking a step closer to that objective. So rather than, most people feel pain and they think, oh, I don’t want pain. Well, is pain bad?

26:48 We put a definition on it as bad, but maybe it’s just awareness. So if you put your hand on a stove and you get angry that you’re in pain or you get angry at yourself for doing that, why? So I say thank you, right? Well, I’m never gonna do that again. So I wanna say thank you because that pain gave me an indicator that I shouldn’t do that again and the exercise is the same thing.

27:08 Like maybe instead of saying, I don’t want to do that again, you say, I really like that. That’s taking me toward my goal. And that’s not an immediate shift. But again, like do it for 30 days. See what happens.

27:19 You’ll have a big shift in your psychology. It’s so strange. Like if you go to like any normal mainstream gym, there’s the last thing that anyone there is trying to teach you to think about. My fitness is so new. And this is what people don’t realize.

27:30 Muscle building is so new. The whole gym industry, like 30 years, 40 years, right? Like it’s a very new industry. So all this stuff is just being discovered. People have defaulted to this particular way of approaching it because of what has come before them, right?

27:43 But it’s not the way it’s meant to be, man. Like most people, the fitness as it exists now is completely formed around the bodybuilders of the 80s and 90s, right? Everybody saw those guys. Well, they trained this way, therefore I should, right? Why?

27:54 One, you’re not built like them, right? Two, your emotions aren’t the same as theirs. They trained angry because that’s what worked for them. And maybe if you ask them now, they’d be like, oh man, I wish I didn’t do that, right? But that’s what we think we have to do, right?

28:06 Which is very different than athletics and a lot of the fitness industries formed around athletics or formed around powerlifting People think like how you get angry Maybe like if I’m trying to lift something once Maybe anger helps because I’m getting this huge amount of sympathetic arousal. I’m getting this huge spike of epinephrine cuz I’m pissed off That’s great for one lift. That’s gonna help you lift more weight It’s gonna help you lift that car off your child, but it’s not gonna help you improve your fitness if anything It’s gonna make it worse. So it’s not gonna help you improve your health, right?

28:35 So it’s a different paradigm that needs to be separated. I’m not trying to do something once. I’m not trying to create a huge amount of stress I’m trying to create a body and brain that are integrated and I love yeah Yeah, so I started lifting anything in 2004 something when I came to London and in the last five years I stopped bench pressing. I stopped back squatting. I stopped doing all these things that I did for so long I don’t even know why I did them because everybody else was doing it Like you said it was it was a carryover from the bodybuilding industry And it was the eat all your protein and do all this stuff and then I actually met a guy named Edo Portao Who’s a movement guy who?

29:10 I did a seminar with him and I came in the gym the next day and I’m like Why am I doing this and I had a big strong personal trainer who you know I think wanted to compete at some point and I’m like why am I bench pressing and he was like What do you mean? Why are you asking me that question? I was like, I don’t know why I’m doing this and I started doing lizard walks on the ground and Edo once said if you Know if you haven’t been kicked out of your gym yet, you’re doing something wrong, right?

29:30 So now I’m doing breakdancing and hand balancing and all this stuff that incorporates it into my brain and it’s a skill and it’s fun And I’ve just pared down a lot of those old lifts, you know, and I’m learning and I see what you’re talking about Yeah, and that’s why I found yoga, right is because when I was 320 pounds walking into a yoga studio I was really bad at doing yoga and that’s why I did it What made you walk into a yoga studio? Well because I knew I’d be really bad at it So you have a phrase that says if you can’t you must must yeah, that’s always my thing man If I know I’m gonna be really so here’s the irony of my life I grew up obese in a family of alcoholics and drug addicts With a speech impediment and I learned disability. So if you look at the trilogy there I’ve made my living, you know in my underwear on a stage. So I overcame the obesity I’m now you know travel the world speaking on stage So speech impediment has apparently left which wasn’t speech impediment at all now that I realized I learned disability I’m now an educator, and it’s my passion in life, too.

30:29 The only thing I want to do is learn and teach, right? Because I just have such a passion, and it’s the most amazing time to be alive as a human being. And if people don’t get that, you’re not running in the right circles. Like I get to talk to people like yourself, and people like the people at the Health Organization Summit who are doing such amazing things, it just makes me so excited to be alive as a human being. We’re in the most incredible time.

30:49 The discoveries that are going on, I interviewed Aubrey de Grey yesterday, you know, the longevity, I think the godfather and talking about he goes, man, we’ve solved it. We’ve solved the riddle. I was like Like how amazing is that and there’s so many health discoveries They’re just so exciting and invigorating and like how can you not want to be alive, right? How can you not just want to be joyful all the time? So I said to people like start making yourself happy now because you might be around a while You don’t want to be angry for a very long time, right?

31:14 But yeah, that’s you know, it’s a it’s a different shift from where it was as a bodybuilder So you walked into yoga at three hundred forty pounds. Yeah, because it was difficult and you thought it might help Now because I knew I’d be really bad at it. Okay. Yeah, that’s quite a transition to make Yeah, I’m a former bodybuilder to Yogi. Yeah, so why did I why did I do it?

31:36 I felt the draw to be in really uncomfortable positions for a long period of time like The idea of like quote-unquote stretching, although I think yoga should not be focused on stretching yoga should be focused on achieving mind-body integration, right? So I’m gonna get myself into these incredibly uncomfortable positions where I’m very weak and very unstable and now tell yourself to relax and stay there and be calm and become stronger there. So I’m building stability, I’m ultimately building mobility, not necessarily flexibility, there’s a difference there and I’m integrating my body and mind and allowing me to be really really relaxed in a position that’s incredibly uncomfortable for a guy who’s 300 pounds. And it was, it was a big shift that happened for me. And I was so blessed, right? Because I’ve done a lot of yoga over the last few years. And instructor makes a big difference. I was very blessed to find this amazing instructor in Tampa, Florida, who just literally changed my life, man changed the way I look at the world changed the way I looked at my body, the integration of the body and the breath. You know, I owe a ton to him.

32:37 And how did yoga change you? Well, the only way I’d achieve fitness in the past was in the gym, and I realized that this yoga thing could be really, really instrumental in my acceptance of who I am and learning to love my body and learning to really have a calm, peaceful mind. There’s this term that comes to mind, equanimity, right? Which basically means something positive can happen to me and I’m not really disturbed by it. something really negative can happen to me.

33:10 I’m not really disturbed by it because I realize that consciousness is an unpainted canvas. It’s a white canvas. The only colors that it takes on is the ones that I’ve decided to put there with my perception. And so that’s what yoga did for me. It’s like, rather than having this belief around, hey, this thing means that, what doesn’t mean that?

33:25 Somebody’s come before me and said, well, that thing means that. Well, no, if I don’t decide to put a meaning on something, like yoga, most people have the meaning that it should be made for women, or it’s mostly women, or it’s mostly for these people who are from the East or India or whatever. Why? If I find amazing benefit from it in my body, in my mind, and it really allows me to, it’s meditative for me, right? I’m in my mind for, I’m integrating my body and mind for 90 minutes a day.

33:52 It’s just the most beautiful mindset when you leave. You’re just in this amazing state of elation. They’ve just created without having to take a substance or without having to buy a pair of shoes without having to step on stage in Mr. Olympia. I created that myself in a short amount of time.

34:10 At first it takes maybe an hour or more and then eventually it’s second, it’s minutes and I can create that state. And that’s just a beautiful thing. Yeah, and it goes in with your theory that while that body is being used then the brain becomes pliable. Yeah, so I was, Dorian got me doing yoga when I went down to Marbella for the movie and I got back and I started to practice for about a year. And I mean, I’m a scientist by background and I couldn’t ignore what was happening in front of me.

34:37 For an hour, I was doing this practice that was nothing like lifting or jujitsu or Thai boxing, and yet it was having a significant effect on my mental state and physical state, but I was going places I could never go before, so there’s definitely something going on with yoga. Yeah, and now imagine you could take any exercise you’re doing and create that, right? So this is kind of what just started to come together for me, this idea of the bodybuilding yogi, is how could you take movement in any form and turn it into a mindful endeavor, right?

35:07 So ultimately it’s the same thing. It’s, you know, body-mind integration. So how do I then become present in my movement, no matter what the movement is. If I’m riding a bicycle, if I’m walking down the street, if I’m lifting, how do I become present and conscious in how I’m doing that and learn to integrate this movement in my mind. So it’s not an external focus.

35:25 Most people are focused on the way on the bar, the exercise they’re doing, the name, the sets, the reps, the volume, the load. All that stuff to me is secondary. I’m not saying it’s irrelevant, but I think it’s secondary to this reality that we need to connect our body and our mind first. And that happens through the breath and that happens through just paying attention to where’s my body in space. Because so, especially scientists are very disconnected from their body.

35:47 They’re very left brain, right? So learn to sink those hemispheres is just a matter of like, pay attention. What is doing this right now? What is the muscle I’m trying to train actually doing the exercise? Can you do a bench press and not work your pecs?

35:58 1000%, right? So it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. And let’s integrate those things, right? Let’s integrate any movement, right? It can be jujitsu, and I’m sure it requires you to be present at the moment, because you have to feel and think and be present.

36:12 That’s beautiful, and that’s probably why so many people are addicted to it, because you’re getting that myokine release, right? You get an obedient F release that’s causing your brain to become addicted, you get those neurotransmitters being released, and you can turn any exercise into that, anything, and I just happen to be the one teaching people how to build muscle and do it. But man, what an amazing opportunity to shift the scope of the fitness industry, right?

36:32 Rather than having to do this and continue to resent it and have to do it, you just love it, gotta love it. And I never did. That’s a powerful place to come to the world. When we see great athletes doing great things, is that where they are? You think?

36:47 Thousand percent. For sure, right. It’s celebrating what you’ve done, right? Every day, like, be grateful that you did this. Celebrate your body.

36:54 You’re giving this gift, right? And that was one of the kind of revelations that my ayahuasca journeys is giving this gift. And most people think that heaven is the thing that happens after. But what if this is heaven? What if you’re giving this gift and you’re like, you know, you’re this soul existing, this physical reality, giving this gift and you don’t celebrate it.

37:15 And you’re like, holy shit, this is amazing. Like the likelihood of being alive, people talk about it all the time, but like, it’s not very good, man. Like the likelihood of you being alive is pretty damn slim. You’re here and you’re giving this gift and people don’t celebrate the gift. Like, be grateful for every part of this thing that you’re given, it’s not gonna be around forever.

37:29 So celebrate that you’ve got it, celebrate you use it, and use it, take advantage of it, full advantage, right? Life’s an adventure. You know, I’ve just talked to some friends recently, like my life for the next 50 years is an adventure. I’m not sitting in a box like everybody else is living it, man, forget that. I don’t wanna look in a box that society’s created and like, hey, this is where you have to live and you have to have these particular things if you wanna be called successful, that’s the box that someone has created before you that says you need to live in that.

37:56 Forget that shit. Go find what brings you bliss, man. Find what brings you joy. Whatever it is for you. And if someone doesn’t like it, fucking cares, right?

38:04 Who cares? Right, it’s not their business. It’s yours. Find joy, find love, and find acceptance of everything that you bring to the world. Because ultimately, man, we can all have that ability to be happy.

38:17 Yeah, and I’m thinking about like that Olympic athlete we watch, or that fighter that we see, or that dancer, you know, they’re at this, Wonderful state within themselves and their physicality at the same time and I think when we see that we feel it too And there’s a lot of people that talk about that when you win the champion Yeah, when you see something happening They’re actually reminding you that that’s inside of you and that’s something maybe we don’t talk about or besides it’s sub communicated Which is why we’re like, oh, wow how beautiful that is Well, we watch somebody else do it. We absolutely feel that’s when our spirit sports team win That’s why we want to watch this might be people become addicted to sport Because now they’re used to living their life here and now sport brings them here Oh, now I want to have to watch my favorite sports team I’m addicted to my favorite sports team because that’s my only place or one of the other places where I get a Sense of belonging a sense of elevated emotions, right?

39:03 Most people but you don’t realize you can produce that yourself, man You produce it in your living room at home You can put it in your bedroom you can produce it walk it down the street You can do all that stuff if you just spend a little bit time learning it, right? How long did you spend learning to write? Well, as long as it took how long did you learn spending to? to read as long as it took or speak, right? As long as it took.

39:23 So if I could learn to create emotions at will, why am I gonna let something outside of me create these emotions when I can do it myself? And all these opportunities sit in front of me. It’s just a matter of creating that 10-minute practice every day, right? And integrating that into your meditation or into your exercise. If you’re already doing it anyways, why not make it better?

39:41 I wanna go back to that phrase, if I can’t, I must. Talk to me more about that. Man, it drove my life. And I remember driving my life, as young as seven years old, right? There’s things that I was really bad at that I didn’t like.

39:53 I didn’t like to not be able to do something. You know, the one phrase that rings in my mind, and I hope everyone understands this phrase, if anyone in the world can do it, so can you. And if people can get that, I hope to give that to my kids. Like if you wanna be an astronaut, why wouldn’t you? If you wanna be the president of the United States, why wouldn’t you?

40:10 Like you can’t, you just have to figure out what it’s gonna take to get there and do it. Take a step every day. And so that paradigm was in my brain, maybe when I was young, I don’t exactly remember, but this idea of no matter what it is, it may just take time in a particular skill set, but if you wanna run a multi-hundred million dollar business, find someone who’s doing it and get them to mentor you, or find 10 people that are doing it and learn little things from them, right?

40:34 It’s all there, it’s all been done before, right? So that was kind of where my paradigm came around. If you can’t, you must. You know, when I was 15 years old, starting into my exercise journey, I remember sitting on the couch and not wanting to go to the gym, and it flipped in my brain. I was like, the harder this is, the stronger I become.

40:50 So the more I feel this pull, the stay home, the more I go. I was 15 years old and I was freezing cold in Canada, you know, grew up in Toronto, and I’d go out running at five in the morning, and people would go, why do you do that? Because it sucks. And that was always my belief. I was like, because I hate it.

41:07 And I would go off until I just threw up, or until my lungs burnt, and maybe that was the inner contempt that I felt, but it was also like, I know that I don’t wanna do this. Nothing about me wants to do this. So I do it, right? And that may be what allowed me to build that mentality to overcome all of those obstacles that occurred during my bodybuilding career, right? And there was endless obstacles.

41:29 There was a lot of deterrence. There was a lot of negative mindset. People think I’m just naturally a mentally strong guy but like, oh man, I had more struggles than anybody and that’s why I succeeded, right? Because I used those struggles and I looked at them And rather than saying, oh, I can’t do it, I go, all right, I don’t know if I’m gonna come out on the other side, but I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna try, right?

41:48 It’s just like seeing it as an opportunity for progress. Your greatest obstacle is your greatest opportunity for growth and progress. And if I can switch that mindset, rather than, oh, that’s an obstacle, I don’t wanna go over there, take the first step and then run full speed. And that’s the greatest opportunity for progress. When you see the easy road over there, man, let everybody else go that way.

42:09 Let them all go that way. And you go over there, right? And again, why did I build big legs? Some people say some of the best legs in all time because nobody else did it. I have so much respect for the guys who build the amount of muscle I did because it’s not easy, man.

42:23 It’s not, you get it, it’s not easy. And the amount of struggle I went through and I had such an obsession because I sucked at it. It’s funny that I was told I’d never be a professional bodybuilder because I had small legs and narrow shoulders. And if you ever want to look at a picture of my bodybuilding career, I had the biggest legs on stage by far and the widest shoulders by far because somebody said that to me and I was like, okay, thank you. Like, right?

42:48 I’m not gonna get mad at you. I’m not gonna take it in and go, oh, I don’t. He was mean to me. Thank you. Fuel.

42:54 Yeah, no means not yet. And there’s a great book called The Obstacles of the Way by Ryan Holiday and I’ve read it a couple times. Yeah, it’s great. I always go back to that a lot and just think that’s, you know, sometimes you’re like, why am I doing this? And then it’s like, oh yeah, that’s why.

43:11 It’s a good thing to meditate on. You spoke at the conference this weekend and you said three things you wanna talk about. Breath, meditation, and walking. And people look at you and they’re like, wait a second, aren’t you gonna tell me about muscle fiber and ultra-nutrition and zen states? You know, people are like surprised because they’re looking for what?

43:35 Sexier stuff. And you said, no, focus on the basics, why? Well, everyone wants a shiny red ball, right? Everyone wants to be the one who look at me, I want attention. Well, listen, you know, best practices always win, right?

43:46 What is best practice in business? What is best practice in everything? Well, in even nutrition, like simple always wins. People are always trying to complicate it. So what’s the simple foundation of human optimization?

43:57 Human, no matter man, woman doesn’t matter. What’s the foundation? Breathe, walk, meditate. If you don’t do those things, you can’t build a strong, you know, muscular body or a strong athletic body, right? Like you can’t build anything above a foundation that’s going to crumble.

44:15 And I can walk through the reason as to why, right? So if I’m not breathing correctly into my diaphragm, you create a non-physiological, poor biomechanics of your breath, right? So you’re not really working and involving the muscles of the core. So those things become weak. So your body will start to develop compensation patterns in everything you do.

44:33 So if I have a really shallow breath pattern, and if you want to take a deep breath in, you breathe in, your spine extends, and you exhale, and your spine flexes. So if I’m always in this really narrow breath, which most people have a very shallow breath, well, that changes the way my spine moves. Like, it’s not only my spine should be moving through this natural flexion extension with every single breath. My ribs should be expanding, contracting with every single breath.

44:56 My diaphragms move with every single breath. Well, if any one of those things is not working correctly, Now, everything in your body is gonna become impacted. So if you can imagine, maybe I just live in a slightly flexed forward position, like a lot of people do. Well, what happens to my shoulders? Well, now my shoulders roll forward and often come up, I can’t get my hand above my head, my shoulder starts to lose it, mobility, my elbows start to hurt, it’s a big chain reaction and it all starts with breathing.

45:18 So the foundation of all optimization of movement, of athletics, everything is breath. And as we spoke about previously, probably 50% of professional athletes have breath that’s optimized and that’s not because they practice, That’s because that’s their genetic advantage for some people. And some people just, maybe they’re aware of it, but it’s just what they have. And so that’s huge, man. Like if you walk into my gym and you say, I want to build your body, it’s always breath, right?

45:41 And then so second one is walking. Why walking? Well, think about your gait. Think about when your feet hit the floor. What happens?

45:48 If I have no flat, no arch in my foot, and I have a flat foot, what does that do to my whole body, right? So if my arch is supposed to be big or present and it’s not, my whole hip then internally rotates, and my knee internally rotates. And okay, what just happens up my chain? Well, my spine’s doing something different, my pelvis is rotating, my shoulders are rotating, just because I have a flat foot. And learning to have conscious walking is beneficial for movement mechanics, for every joint in the body for biomechanics, but also for integrating the left and right hemisphere.

46:19 So I suggest that everybody of the brain, so I suggest that everybody walks every day for 30 minutes as soon as you wake up, and you can run if you choose. But anything that’s just bilateral stimulation, realizing walking and running are very different mechanically. But this bilateral stimulation, paying attention, becoming present, rather than just doing what’s happening in this thing. Like what do my muscles feel like? How’s my foot hitting the floor?

46:41 So I often recommend people doing a barefoot or like maybe using some barefoot type shoes. It’s because you need to learn to be proprioceptive, right? You don’t want something that’s constricting your foot into a box. You wanna have something that’s allowing your feet to move relatively freely and allowing your body to move properly because that’s the foundation of movement. If you can’t build a muscle, it often has nothing to do with the muscle and has to do with everything else up the chain that’s disrupting it.

47:03 So let’s breathe and walk. And the final one is meditate. Why? Because meditation is exercise for our brain, right? And you can create the mind you want.

47:11 You can create the person you’re going to be as you walk into any scenario in life. And I think the super power, I really do. And again, five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. I don’t care when you do it. Morning, night, in your car, perfectly not moving.

47:23 But, you know, any time of the day, right? It’s just learning to pay attention, single point focus, right? Clear the canvas of consciousness. You know, it’s a white canvas, man, clear. There’s no meaning except what you put on it.

47:36 So I’ll pay attention to my breath. I’ll pay attention to my muscle tone. I’ll pay attention to who I’m gonna be today. And all of those become easy after a while, right? It’s practice.

47:47 And I use meditation as my means of accessing my greatest self. So you have kids and you get this, and you want to have kids that get this, sometimes they get on your nerves. Does that have anything to do with you or does that have anything to do with them, right? So my question is always, if they’re getting on my nerves, my belief, it has nothing to do with them. It has to do with the way that my body is perceiving them, right, the way my nervous system is interpreting them.

48:13 I’m interpreting them as annoying. Why? Because that’s just my belief. So if I go and meditate, I know that I can calm down my sympathetic tone, increase my parasympathetic tone of the autonomic nervous system. And now everything around me is no longer a stress.

48:31 Everything around me is no longer annoying or getting me really like irritated, right? So if someone out there is sitting and is easily irritated by your environment, your coworkers, whatever, your children, realize it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you. And you can change that state through meditation. minutes right yeah minutes because it’s just changing your pretty changing your wall so to explain it scientifically so your brain gets it I mean you understand the autonomic nervous system heart rate variability yeah we have two branches right we have sympathetic parasympathetic sympathetic is stress if you remember s stress parasympathetic is rest and digest so if I’m highly sympathetic it means my brain is very very stressed like there’s a line sitting over there I’m sitting here like this constantly right like oh shit what’s gonna happen so that’s a very different state than if I’m sitting at a in a parasympathetic state where I’m very relaxed, my muscle tone decreases a little bit.

49:22 It’s allowing your body to digest and rest and recover. So most people live in this highly sympathetic state, right? We live in a sympathetic world. But learning how to input those parasympathetic things is the key to balancing these things out. Because we still want to have the ability to access parasympathetic.

49:38 But we don’t want to have an amplified parasympathetic or sympathetic be our default. I don’t want to have this sympathetic tone that just kind of sits up here and becomes more default is that’s where sleep falls off and that’s where stress starts to come in because you live in this constantly elevated and rigid state. I wanna learn to train my body to bring that down and bring this parasympathetic cup. And there’s so many ways you can do that, right? It’s the basic things that everyone knows.

50:02 It’s breathing, it’s walking, it’s meditating, it’s being outside of nature, it’s connecting with a loved one, just doing things that fill your cup, right? That’s what’s gonna be the parasympathetic input and not being constantly running away from the lion. How’d you learn this? Was it through the yoga years? pain, man. I’ll be honest with you, that’s why I started meditating is because there’s certain people in my life who irritated that had to come to me. And I hated it. I hate that someone, another human had control over me. Like they could say something and just set me off.

50:29 I had a terrible temper as a teenager, man, like bad temper. And I was like, man, I hate that. I hate that somebody can do that to me. And so I was like, how do I change that? When then someone said to me, hey, man, that’s nothing to do with that. That doesn’t even do with you. I was like, light bulb. Okay, thank you. So now how do I then learn to control this state that I’m existing in all the time? And that’s where I live, man. And just the more, the reason I’m able to evolve is because I see pain as an opportunity to learn and evolve and get better rather than something to avoid, right? And, you know, that doesn’t say that there’s installed things in my life that need to be fixed, but there certainly But when I see those things I use it as an opportunity to get better, right? You mentioned heart rate variability We’re both sporting oral rings right now Talk to me What is it and what can it tell you about how your body is and how does that relate to sympathetic comparison?

51:21 Yeah, as I said right before we spoke. I think it’s the next frontier of human performance, right looking at heart rate variability is Effectively a biometric marker as to what’s happening inside your body So it’s like this this feedback as to what’s happening inside my body So, if I have low heart rate variability, that means effectively the time between beats is kind of beating like a metronome, right? So, you know, every second or whatever I’m getting a beat, that’s low heart rate variability.

51:51 High heart rate variability is it’s very variable between beats. You might have a slow amount of time, so the heart rate’s fast, and you may have a greater amount of time to see as the heart rate slows down. So the variability between heart rate beats is very important, and it’s kind of this result of having more parasympathetic inputs. So the sympathetic nervous system is very much like a metronome. It’s like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

52:13 Whereas when you get more parasympathetic inputs, it’s more like erratic. And that sounds most people like, well, it’s not good. In reality, it’s good. So when you take a breath in, your heart rate should go up. And when you take a breath out, your heart rate should go down.

52:27 So Dr. Hamilton taught me about this, this idea of people in the Russian cosmonaut program when one breath in can get to 90 beats per minute and one breath out can get to 40. That’s the ultimate resilience. So imagine I’m preparing for an athletic endeavor or a hockey player, soccer player, football player, and I’m ready to go and I go, boom, I’m ready to attack, right, well, do I wanna stay up there? Or do I wanna go and come down?

52:53 But knowing that as soon as I’m ready to go, bang, right, I’m ready to attack. Like any athlete, think about that super power, right? If I’m a hockey player and I come off the ice, I’m gonna sit down and my heart rate’s back to where it needs to be. My body’s recovering. My body’s breaking down the nutrients maybe that I have.

53:08 That’s heart rate variability. It’s the ability to get up to a high amount of sympathetic stress so I can go and attack. And it’s the ability to come back down and be completely at ease immediately, right? And that’s this resilience factor, right? This anti-fragile factor.

53:24 Like I wanna be able to get up high and a little bit like we talked about, most people live here, right? Most people can’t get up, most people can’t get down. They live in this reality of just these little small flux, this tiny flux between sympathetic and parasympathetic. So you’ll see a very low heart rate variability. Right.

53:38 I remember Chuck Liddell, who was a big UFC fighter back in the day. They used to find him the night of the fight. They’d go back to his dressing room and he’d be asleep. So much sympathetic. Your body would put you on your ass.

53:48 Right? And so like most guys are freaking out. I got a big fight. I got a win. He’s asleep.

53:54 And then when he’s ready to go fight, he’s like, okay, I’ll go fight and go crush people. It’s just like, I rarely heard about that, but that probably is a great description of someone who’s got maximum heart rate variability. And so with the ring, it gives you the feedback and watches you overnight and then tells you kind of the readiness that you’re in. If you wake up and you’re not in that ready state, what do you do? Because you say champions don’t take a day off, and I agree.

54:18 And sometimes I respectfully disagree with my ring and I go and get some anyways. So you need to have those inputs that you can immediately apply Let’s say, okay, I know my heart rate of ability is low. That means that if my heart rate of ability is low, that means my brain and my body in a very stressed state. So should I go do things that are stressful? Probably not, right?

54:36 I shouldn’t do something that’s massively stressful. So how can I adjust the exercise or adjust what I’m gonna do that day? So it’s less stressful. So I’m not saying don’t train, but maybe before you train or early in the day, you shift to, I’m gonna meditate a little extra today. I’m gonna breathe a little extra.

54:50 I’m gonna do some grounding and be outside. I’m going to spend a lot of time with loved ones. I’m gonna do some yoga, some meditation, all your basic, you know, what you would call a parasympathetic input, right? So things that are just going to plug in the human charger, right? The human battery.

55:05 Right. So that’ll fill you back up. And there’s a lot of considerations there, right? So people who often want to train and kill all the time, if they’re not paying attention to calories, that can drop your HRV too, right? So if I’m always in this fasting state or I’m not eating a lot, your HRV will drop because your body isn’t recovering.

55:20 So going out and crushing it that day is just going to drive it lower and lower and lower and put more stress on the adrenal glands, right? So we wanna make sure that we’re, if we’re in this stress state, we wake up in the morning and we see low heart rate variability, be conscious of the fact that your body needs more substrate to recover. So maybe that’s a day to have more carbohydrate, right, like, hey, let’s put this up. So give my body a little bit more of this anabolic support with insulin and carbohydrate, right?

55:43 Maybe a little more protein. And that’s just how you should, everyone should be guiding the nutrition and the training. It’s like, wake up in the morning, this is what I have. I’m not saying let it be the end all and beyond, don’t train, sometimes you just gotta nut up and get a ton, but maybe there’s some things you gotta do, or you can do, to support, right? So if I know having a little extra carbohydrate on that day will improve my HRV, will improve my resilience to this next stress I’m subjecting myself to, because the objective isn’t to exercise always, right?

56:07 The objective is to get the benefit of exercise, right? So I don’t go to the gym because I have to go to the gym, I wanna get better, or I wanna improve my brain, or whatever, and if I’m in the stress state, it doesn’t happen, it’s an impossibility, right? So you’re not gonna build muscle, you’re not gonna lose fat, you’re not gonna learn new skills when you’re in a stress state. So what can I do in that immediate moment that I see when I wake up to put myself into a less stressed state, increase the heart rate variability, and then go and do my exercise.

56:29 And maybe I adjust the exercise as well. Right, you mentioned fasting and food. We might as well talk about that. How do you feel about both of those things? I know you have a very simple diet.

56:39 I try to simplify, yeah. I do believe in fasting, I think it’s useful. But I also think people need to realize it’s not the panacea, and it’s non-selected, so you’re gonna be burning fat and muscle, most people realize that. If you’re doing the prolonged fast, your body will switch into ketosis, which will allow you to preserve muscle intensity, muscle sparing. But for most people in a three day fast, you’re gonna be bringing both muscle and fat.

57:00 So doing that often, maybe isn’t a good idea for most people, unless you have an abundance of muscle. Like most people are trying to retain or at least build muscle, right? One of the two. So maybe be aware of that. Like fasting often isn’t the best idea for people.

57:15 Learning to control your heart rate variability is important to losing fat and learn to control your diet is important. But I think fasting is amazing. I fast often, I’m fasted right now. How often do you fast for? How often or how long?

57:29 How long and how often? Yeah, so I’ll have to do 24 hour fasts. I’ll do 24 hour fasts at least once a week. And within that, I’ll do a timer straight to the eating window because I’m trying to lose muscle, right? Believe it or not, harder than it sounds.

57:42 It sounds kind of ironic. I just don’t think it’s very healthy to walk around at 250, 260 pounds all the time. So, and I love the way I look, I love the way I feel, I feel great, but I still realize long-term it’s probably not the best place for me to be. And I’m not trying to get down to 160 pounds by any stretch, but just trim it down a little bit more so that I feel like I have that athletic feel back, that athletic body, rather than being mostly body blur.

58:07 So speaking of simplified food, again, it’s a lot of organic vegetables, it’s a lot of wild meat, some berries, occasionally I’ll have like some sweet potatoes or something, and olive oil, avocado, And that’s really it, man. Coffee, that’s it. Chocolate, without? Yeah, dark chocolate. Yeah, so because of the polyphenols.

58:29 So I really believe, so I’m very much pursuing this brain health piece. It’s not a lot of concussions as a kid. Speech, or learned disability, speech impediment. Concussions from hockey, or? Sports, everything, yeah, hockey, yeah.

58:42 Punch ups, or whatever, right? Okay. Yeah, so everything I can do to optimize brain health, right, so there’s a lot of nutrients that I’m taking on a day-to-day basis. They’re optimizing brain health, so it’s fish oils, it’s methylated vitamins, it’s, you know, lines made mushrooms, a lot of polyphenols. And there’s a huge list of polyphenols that I won’t mention.

59:02 Okay, so it’s kind of a paleo with some sweet potatoes when you need them for some carbs. And most of the time it’s not, but if I know, like, I know I’m training with 38s tomorrow, for example, I’m not, but if I was, I’m probably gonna have some sweet potatoes the night before because I want to fuel that, right? So most of the time I’d say I’m in ketosis, not intentionally, I don’t broadcast that I’m in ketosis. Most of the time I’m probably in ketosis because mostly my diet is meat and vegetables and some fats.

59:25 But yeah, if I need carbohydrates, or I feel like I want carbohydrates, I’ll eat them. Okay, meat is necessary. Have you ever played with veganism? Soon as I did, actually when I was a teenager, I did play with veganism. I do believe meat is necessary.

59:38 So here’s my stance, and you know, love it or hate it. I think for moral reasons, veganism is amazing. If you’re doing it for moral reasons, great. For health reasons, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think meat is an absolute necessary part of human optimization.

59:51 That being said, the more we learn about genetics and epigenetics, we see that there’s different phenotypes. There’s different people who have, can get away eating a vegetarian diet and potentially be healthy without that meat. Whereas you have other people who can also benefit from being a carnivore and it’s a continuum, right? It’s not black and white. There’s not the optimal human diet, it doesn’t exist.

1:00:12 You have to find what works best for your genetics and your environment and your current amount of stress and your activity level. So people looking for this dogmatic approach to nutrition are just nonsensical, right? Everyone wants to be told what to do, like just give me the fish, don’t teach me how to fish. But it can’t be that way, man. Like until I see your genetic profile and I have someone breed it and we look through like, hey, this is what you’re needing, it’s impossible to say and that can change in six months based on what you’ve been doing, right?

1:00:36 Based on the fact that, hey, I’m doing a marathon or hey, I’m doing a triathlon or whatever, right? It’s different and people just don’t think that way. So I like to eat seasonally. So in the summertime, more sunshine, your body’s more prepared to eat carbohydrates, sugars, because the vitamin D prepares your body to use more of that stuff. So in the summertime, I’ll have a little bit less protein, a little more carbohydrate, a little lower fat.

1:00:58 Wintertime, predominantly gonna be ketogenic based, right? Occasionally, like, you know, once every couple of weeks, I’ll have some carbohydrates. It’s very sporadic, and if you think about that ancestrally, it’s probably how it would’ve been, right? So in wintertime, a little less sunshine, a little less fruit, makes a lot of sense. Okay, and your clients, you try to limit them to certain types of food, and then you don’t have to necessarily count the food because if people are eating those, they’re usually not gonna overeat the healthy foods.

1:01:23 Only in the beginning phase. So some people read that and they assume it’s perpetual. Now it’s only in the first 30 days, right? So my first 30 days with anyone that coaches with me, I give it to everybody for free. It’s like breathe, walk, meditate, and here’s a simple diet, right?

1:01:33 If you can’t get that done in 30 days, you can’t do anything else that happens after that. So everyone wants to sign up for coaching. There’s a free month of coaching. It’s literally 30 minutes a day of, I try to say 20 minutes a day of breathing, 30 minutes a day of walking and 10 minutes a day of meditation. Do that every day.

1:01:48 Give me a 30 day checklist and then we’ll start working together on the things that matter more because that’s gonna optimize your health. More than anything I can do, looking at your genetics or looking at your blood work or like that stuff’s great but if you can’t do these basic things, now that stuff matters. So yeah, so as far as the first 30 days, it looks like, you know, hey, we’re just gonna limit the number of foods so we decrease inflammation. All right, I wanna improve insulin sensitivity and decrease inflammation.

1:02:12 Those are always my first two pillars that I’ll go after when I’m transforming somebody’s body. And that’s just by, hey, we’re just gonna let, we’re gonna take all the things we know are inflammatory. So it’s gonna take out dairy, it’s gonna take out grains and corn and soy and any obviously artificial flavors and sweeteners and stuff. Are all those things probably not good for a body to consume? I don’t like to be dogmatic.

1:02:35 Some people can consume grains and be fine. If they’re very high quality, they can. Some of them can consume dairy and be fine. Not everybody, not a huge population of people, but they can. So, I don’t want to say, don’t eat these things, right?

1:02:46 Like, eh, if you want to eat it, eat it. But if it doesn’t work for you, don’t be an idiot, right? If you constantly feel like crap, it’s probably an indication that you shouldn’t do this stuff. And we can objectify this too, right? We can look at your genes and we can look at your biometric markers and we can say, okay, well, this thing is obviously causing a massive amount of inflammation.

1:03:03 You know, let’s pull that out. Right. You have like six essentials of exercises and I know you have kind of like the six pillars as well. You don’t have to give them all to us, but just things that we should think about also kind of when you teach people how to train with their muscles. What are some of the things that are important to you?

1:03:17 Sure, so specific to the muscles, there’s basically three things that I like to teach people. So I kind of narrowed it down. Six was hard to remember, so I narrowed down three for people, and so the three things are SSI. So setup, stabilize, initiate, and so setup means everything. The way you set up for an exercise, if you don’t do that correctly, what happens afterwards is absolutely a waste of time.

1:03:36 So as we spoke about previously, we have all these guys who have a huge amount horsepower, producing a tremendous amount of work, but if they set up in a position that disadvantages their body from using particular muscles, they predispose themselves to injuries. So I’ll give an example. I’m doing a bench press and my shoulders roll forward. The pec no longer works. So now the front delt and the tricep are forced to do the work.

1:03:57 So people are going, well, I can’t build my pecs. Well, you just didn’t set up correctly, right? Doesn’t mean you can’t build pecs, just means you didn’t set up correctly. It’s just a simple example. So that’s like, hey, let’s make that happen first.

1:04:07 And that’s true with every exercise. Your setup has to be optimized so that as soon as you start moving, the muscle you’re moving or your muscle you’re training is actually the muscle doing the work, right? So if I’m setting up so that something else has to overcome inertia or propel motion, I’m losing an opportunity in that muscle. So I don’t view exercise as an attempt to complete a movement. I view exercise as an opportunity to challenge a muscle, right?

1:04:34 So I don’t think it’s like, hey, I wanna finish this bench press or I wanna finish this squat. I don’t care. My objective is I wanna challenge this muscle. How can I maximally challenge that muscle? What does that look like?

1:04:42 So if I said to your listener at home, what does it look like to challenge your bicep from the lengthened portion, so my arms fully extended all the way to the shortened portion, as much as you possibly can in one rep or three reps. What does that look like and feel like? And most people just start doing it and they go, oh, it might be kind of slow and really like squeezing it. Yeah, now take that, put a resistance in your hand, which adds to the challenge and do that.

1:05:05 What does it look like to challenge your quad muscle? Well, it’s just extending my knee. Okay, well, how do I do that with resistance from at every centimeter of this range of motion, right? That’s it, that’s exercise. And that all is very dependent on how you set up, how you stabilize, because muscle contraction is governed by stability.

1:05:24 If I don’t have stability, I don’t contract muscles. That’s the bottom line. Your brain will literally down regulate muscle contraction based on its interpretation of stability. The simplest way to think about that, If I stand on ice and you try to lift weight, what’s gonna happen? Shit, I can’t do this.

1:05:38 I can’t lift it. Your ability to produce force goes down. That’s just, we know that. So we have to create massive amounts of stability. So thinking about that, every muscle has two ends, right?

1:05:46 What all muscles do is this. They shorten, pull the one end closer to the other. So in order for me to do that, I need one end to be absolutely anchored in order for me to pull the other one to it. If this end is moving as well, you get some zero gain, right? You get this, both ends moving.

1:06:00 So that’s what people do wrong. Both ends are moving, their whole body’s kind of swinging in space. You have to create, I always say like you’re in a cast or like in a full body cast, I’m gonna immobilize my body and then isolate things. So that’s kind of this foundation of contraction. And then the final one is initiate because the muscle you’re training has to initiate the movement.

1:06:17 Otherwise you’re wasting opportunity. Okay. Yeah. You know, I always remember that Arnold Schwarzenegger was interviewed and he talked about meditating on the muscle, when he used to work out. And he didn’t talk about it back in the day, but I mean, in the last few years, He said he would really focus and meditate on that muscle while he’s working it.

1:06:34 Sounds like a lot about what you’re talking about. And it’s funny, because Arnold is one guy who speaks about that. Dorian was another guy who spoke about that, but nobody else. It’s like it’s just breezing over everyone’s head because they want to attach to what they know or what’s easy. And their worldview is this is the way it needs to be done.

1:06:48 And when someone comes in and tries to disrupt their worldview or disrupt their belief system, they tend to be resistant. But the reality is if you actually want to do things correctly, if you actually, like I don’t teach Ben’s method, right? I teach what’s correct, right? It’s just the way the body moves. So it’s just like, okay, if you’re resistant to it, that’s one thing, but acknowledging that it’s incorrect is probably a good starting point to start shifting.

1:07:09 Yeah, so it’s exactly it, man. I use exercise as meditation. People laugh when they train with me because oftentimes, my eyes are closed. Oftentimes, I’m very stoic, right? I’m very stoic in my expressions and just because I’m trying to connect.

1:07:25 I’m trying to feel rather than think. I think a lot of guys when you’re taught is you focus on the rep You know you focus on getting something to something or completing a something which is then everyone comes back It says your form is wrong You’re cheating on this because yeah You just focused on getting the one rep at this weight so you can tell everybody you did it Yeah, and then I guess kind of misses the whole point, right? Is the objective to complete the exercise or is the objective to challenge the muscle?

1:07:51 I don’t think either one is wrong. It just depends on your goal And my goal is to lift more weight more than lift more weight I don’t care what it looks like, but you may want to care It looks like long-term because ultimately form does matter in that too But in the short term it doesn’t like long-term if you really want to get to world-class the way you do It matters tremendously short term go lift fine But if your objective is to build this muscle challenges muscle how much I lift only matters if it’s creating an internal result, right? I have this external stimulus that’s intended to create an internal stimulus an internal result And if it’s not, what the hell am I doing? I’m wasting time. I’m just creating stress. I’m not creating a change, right?

1:08:25 I need to create that internal environment that tells my body to respond and adapt. Yeah Yeah I think when Dorian came up with this whole high intensity training It went against all the conventional wisdom of you spend hours in the gym or maybe you just saw an old version of pumping iron And you think that’s the way to do it and Dorian was like I’m in and out in 45 minutes Or I think Arthur Jones was a big impact on Dorian. I’m Mike Menser, right? And then he was brilliant, right? Arthur was but again, way outside of his time, like he was so early and people at that time didn’t want to talk about how to work hard.

1:08:56 Most people don’t want to work hard, right? They want to be able to say they went to the gym. They want to feel good about like, oh yeah, I went to the gym. I want to tell their friends. They don’t actually want results, right?

1:09:04 If you actually want results, you would intentionally seek what’s hard, right? So many people come to me and go, oh, I don’t want to train with you, man. Why not? Well, because it’s going to be hard. Isn’t that the point?

1:09:12 Like I get literally pro bodybuilders, oh, I can’t train with you, man. Really? Like if the greatest bodybuilder of all time, Go, hey man, let’s go. If I felt like I was gonna die, I still, oh, okay man, let’s go. I’m ready to go, right?

1:09:22 Because I know that I’m gonna get better. But most people avoid that. So most people tell you that they wanna get better, but they don’t actually wanna get better, right? And that’s what we know. So most people don’t wanna do this stuff because they know it’s gonna be a shock to their ego.

1:09:33 They’re gonna have to use less weight, potentially, and they’re not gonna be doing it as well. I go, oh, wow, that hurt. I don’t wanna, it makes me feel good. Great, but that’s the path to long-term optimization, right? Yeah, yeah.

1:09:43 Yeah, I’m having flashbacks to my leg workout Dorian and Marbella and we put it in the movie and it was really fascinating I got a little sliver into the Dorian the way he trained and he took me to this Place of pain in my brain that I don’t think I’ve been to he said is the analogy before he said, you know I’m gonna take you to a place where You’re gonna push so hard as if I’m gonna put a little gun to your baby’s head He’s like and that’s you’re gonna have to go so hard to get me not to pull the trigger Right and then once I did it he said and Brian it’s showing up at doing that every single day He’s like, that’s what it took to build and there’s so much more than that too Because if you look at heart rate variability, not everyone has the ability to get there, right?

1:10:24 Not everyone has the ability to get that how high amount of sympathetic stress their body will literally shut off I thought you’ll pass out or you’ll throw up while before your body can actually get there So Dorian had this ability to take it to this place that nobody had because he didn’t train as often and he trained much lower volume, right? So it allowed him to kind of amplify the space between sympathetic and parasympathetic, whereas most people are training really, really often, and they never get that high amount of stress. That’s what I’m teaching people is like, the goal isn’t to do more, the goal is to do better, right?

1:10:52 Let’s get better first. And then and only then does it make sense to actually start quantifying these things and maybe increase the amount that you’re doing, right? So yeah, Dorian had it down, man. Like the amount of work that he did, which is kind of legendary, right? Training four days a week in Mr. Olympia is unheard of, But the reason he was able to do that was because it was pushed to such high intensities and he needed to have those two things together, right?

1:11:13 He couldn’t train at the intensity. He didn’t do it five days a week. He would have broke earlier, right? Yeah. He just couldn’t have.

1:11:19 So you need to have that recovery. So his HRV was probably very high. When you go back in the gym, my HRV’s high, I can push my sympathetic stress to a massive level. Most people can’t. So you’re obviously a very healthy guy, you’re very fit.

1:11:29 We can push it really far. But I get people that come to the gym, we’re pro athletes. You’re like, they’re like, oh, I wanna train legs with you. And like one set that lay on the ground, they’re done. So they’re not even capable of going to that place.

1:11:39 It’s not a mental thing. It’s a completely physical thing as well, right? We have to train the body and train the mind to be able to go there first. And that’s just this resilience piece with our heart rate variability. Yeah.

1:11:50 Gratitude is a word that comes up a lot with you. And again, not the word that you see plastered across the wall at Gold’s Gym, you know, very much, you know, and so I’m just wondering, again, it’s what I think is very interesting about you to use a word like that. Why is that important? And how do you use that in your training and your teaching? The simplest thing that I say to people is, you can’t be grateful and pissed off at the same time, right?

1:12:10 So if, you know, one thing that clicked for me and still sticks in my mind is if I’m driving down the road and I get pulled over by a police officer and they say, hey, I’m giving you a ticket for speeding. Am I pissed off? Or am I grateful? Most people are pissed off. But see it as an opportunity to go, well, man, I’m giving this guy, you know, his salary.

1:12:26 I’m probably feeding his family. I have a beautiful car. I’m safe. I’m in a wonderful country. And you can look for things to be grateful for and you’re training your brain rather than going, This is a terrible person. I’m having a bad day. They’re going I kind of be grateful for man So I don’t start any day without being grateful, right? So I won’t even get it bad I won’t even open my eyes. I’ll say I’ll lay there and usually three minutes and it starts with I’m so grateful for I’m So grateful for I’m so grateful for this repetitively and I don’t stop for three minutes at least and sometimes it goes longer But and I think saying I’m so grateful for in your brain You could say it louder say it in your brain is so important because it’s just teaching you that emotion So if I just go like, you know, save the things, my brain doesn’t really associate what I’m thinking about. So I’m so grateful for it. I try to feel it. I’m so grateful for my daughter.

1:13:13 I’m so grateful for my son, right? I’m so grateful for my team. I’m so grateful for my family, right? Whatever happens to me. I’m so grateful to be alive. I’m so grateful for my body.

1:13:21 And just go through this list. And I literally start with like concentric circles, right? Usually my daughter is sleeping beside me in the bed. So it’s the first thing I start with, right? And and then it’s my branch out from there to my family.

1:13:30 Yeah, it’s just, how do you feel it in your nervous system rather than just intellectualize it? Learn to feel gratitude. What does gratitude feel like? Because it’s not just an intellectual thing, it’s an emotion, it’s a feeling. And if I had the ability to create that at will in the first three minutes of the day at any time in my life, I can create that.

1:13:46 So if I’m in a situation where things are stressful, it doesn’t have to be stressful. I can choose stress if I want, or I can choose gratitude, right? All right, and that’s my immediate switch. You can’t possibly be angry and grateful at the same time. So, how do you switch, right?

1:14:00 Just create that habit every morning, just like, I’m so, we do it for dinner, like as many times as we can, like I’m so grateful for, I’m gonna just do 10 things, right? I’m so grateful for this food, I’m so grateful for this animal that gave its life for me, I’m so grateful for the person that cooked it for me, whatever, right? But feeling it, rather than just intellectualizing it. Everyone, it’s a catchphrase now, like I’m gonna be grateful, yeah. But feeling it and creating that emotional shift your body will literally bring that default mode up, right?

1:14:27 So most people live in that angry kind of pessimistic state where they’re down on themselves. You can shift it, you just have to train. On that same note with the feeling, how do you work on your intuition? Because you were saying like a lot of times we’re in our brains and there’s that logical left brain side and I have a whole history of doing that and yet a lot of times the directions we need to go, they’re not logical directions. It’s something we really feel.

1:14:51 And I was just wondering, as something you’ve cultivated inside yourself more over the years and how you try to intuit something as opposed to, yeah, logically think what your next move is. Yeah, paying attention to your feelings, right? And this is why I think exercise is really an opportunity because people are disconnected from their body. They don’t feel their body, they live in your brain. So how do we learn to feel our body?

1:15:12 So I can walk up to something, I walk up to someone and I get a feeling, right? Most people don’t realize that and I’m not saying I have some mental power. It’s like everything around you gives you a feeling. Most people are just disconnected from it. They intentionally disconnect from it, right?

1:15:25 Because they have so much pain, typically, in their life. But if you can learn to re-connect with these feelings inside your body, and that’s just by paying attention, and it’s like listening to, you’re in a silent room, and you’re listening to the most minute sound that’s happening at first, and then eventually, you do that often enough, and now the sound becomes very pronounced, and like, oh, I know that sound, I remember that sound, it’s right there. And that’s really what it is at first, it’s listening to complete silence, and there’s just like a drop of water in the background.

1:15:53 Like I have to focus in that water. I have to bring it closer to me. I have to like amplify it in my brain and make my brain focus in on that. And that’s what it is. So you have these feelings inside your body that at first are just like little drips of water in the background of a noisy room.

1:16:05 And you got to first quiet the noise and then listen to the sound, right? So that’s what intuition is, man. It’s the ability to walk up and shake your hand and know everything about you before you open your mouth because I can feel your energy. I can feel who you are just based on what’s going on there. Like, oh, that’s interesting, right?

1:16:21 But first, you gotta pay attention, and most people don’t have that ability because the noisy room is always going on, right? It’s always in the brain. Yeah. What excites you most about human optimization in the next five or 10 years? Like, what’s something that you’ve been looking at or hearing about that you think is gonna be a game changer or you wanna be involved in?

1:16:40 Well, man, everything. I mean, you like to keep it simple to start, but you’re looking at everything. Right, so heart rate variability is something that I’m going to do my best to become a ninja on. Like I want to be the Jedi on our own variability. I want to know everything about it because it’s the next frontier.

1:16:55 It really is. You know, how do we, how do we play with this system that allows us to access, you know, the most calm state of mind, the most focused state of mind and the most amplified animalistic primal instincts, right? That’s the autonomic nervous system. So I want to be able to be fine-tuned like a Stradivarian, right? I want to be just, you know, how do you get that?

1:17:15 That’s super interesting to me. That’s just something we can all do ourselves. It doesn’t require any hack. I’m interested in a lot of things. I’m interested in anything to do with brain optimization.

1:17:23 So if it’s, like I spoke about, if it’s neurofeedback, if it’s electrical stimulation, if it’s supplements, if it’s whatever right now that is contributing to improving our brain’s function, I really believe that should be the next frontier of what people are looking into, right? Because we’re really, what we’re limited by is the technology, right? because you can’t really study inside the brain, because unfortunately, you can’t penetrate it when someone’s alive and when they’re dead, things change.

1:17:49 So I’m hoping that the AI comes along that will allow us to advance. There’s a lady named, I think her name is Mary Lou Jepsen, who created what I believe is the size of a cigarette pack and I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard of it, that allows you to see four inches into your brain with infrared light. And so they’re looking at all these different pathways and how you can potentially impact them with this infrared light. So it’s almost like a real time view into what’s happening in your brain.

1:18:14 And that to me was like, okay, this is really cool because now we can see what’s happening inside the brain and maybe real time. Super interesting, right? So yeah, things like that very, really interesting. I’m super interested in just upgrading the health and consciousness of humanity. That’s kind of my big mission.

1:18:31 What did that look like? Like making people, general people, giving them some tool to become more conscious. And when I say conscious, they don’t mean some esoteric term. I just mean, be present, pay attention, stop the noise in the self-talk, be present. And, you know, it’s certainly not easy, but it is simple.

1:18:48 And I think if everyone, again, it’ll never happen, right? It’s not gonna happen in my lifetime, but it’s a very interesting thing to pursue because I think it may be the only thing that will change the direction of humanity and the direction of the earth is, you know, I walk down the road some days and I see people have thrown out plastic out of their window or like you walk down and you see like shit, sorry, trash, all over the ground in the grass. I’m like, do people still throw garbage out the window of their car?

1:19:18 Like, do people still walk down the road and throw things out of their pocket? It blows my mind, and I go, well, no, it’s just these people that are living in this unconscious life where they’re just like, ah, you know, throw it out, because I’m so much more important in the environment, and you get this, because I hear you talk all the time. I think that the world around you will become a reflection of your internal reality, right? So if I value myself and I value my body and I value my health, and I wanna look good, feel good, perform well, I’m gonna start paying more attention to things around me, right?

1:19:51 So if I pay attention to what goes into my body, my food, my water, my air, well now I have to pay attention to what goes into the water and what goes into the air. And now I’m gonna be so much more conscious of it. I’m not throwing it on the ground because eventually I know that’s gonna end up in my body, right, and I think that changing humanity starts with changing your body, right? Like if you can empower teenagers with the ability to love themselves, Love your body, you know, accept who you are and love it.

1:20:13 Maybe it’s an interesting opportunity to allow them to, like, hey, I actually respect and love this thing. If I respect and love this thing, I can’t throw something on the ground or I can’t disrespect anything around me because ultimately it’s going to be back into this body, right, it’s gonna be in my food, it’s gonna be in my water, it’s gonna be in my air. Now I have to start taking care of the things around me, right, and I think that may be the way that we shift this world, man, is making people more conscious by making them love themselves or helping them love themselves, right?

1:20:39 And so my big picture vision is to create the blueprint for your body. What does that look like? You’re heading a 13-year-old boy or girl, you know, first-year high school, like, here. Here’s the blueprint for your body. It’s like the Arnold Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.

1:20:51 Every man in the world has read it. But like, how do we do that and give that to them as like, hey, but it’s not a blueprint for Ben. It’s a blueprint for your body. Like, here’s some stuff on the way you should be doing to optimize your body. And then maybe we get rid of bullying and we get rid of, you know, eating disorders and teenagers and anxiety and stress and suicide because they actually care about themselves because they realize they can change their body.

1:21:14 They can learn how to eat, right? It’s this education process that I mean, this may be a pipe dream, right? But if we empower these young people, there may be an amazing opportunity there to shift the world. With mobile technology and social media and the internet, are we going back now or is it a hard battle to fight knowing that a lot of kids are on their phones and a lot of adults are unplugged that way? Man, no question, right?

1:21:38 No question, and I talk to some friends about this all the time. It’s like, we’re just puppets, man. One of my wisest friends calls it zoo humans. I’m like, yes, that’s it, and people think you’re free, but everything’s manipulated, man. You’re absolutely controlled, and they’re doing it on purpose.

1:21:54 That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s just a reality. They’re controlling what you see. They’re controlling what you think. They’re controlling what you do, what you eat, and that’s a challenging place to come with the world, and but here’s the thing, you may not be able to change everybody, but you can certainly give the people who are looking direction.

1:22:12 Because at some point, many people are gonna go, man, I see that, that I don’t wanna be like that, but I’m not really sure how to get there, right? So it’s our job to spread this message of, hey, there’s the path, right? Pay attention, care about yourself first, because you can’t care about anything else until you care about yourself first. And that’s why I still attach to exercise as being a really great way to connect and to love yourself and to love your physical body, challenge your physical body, develop discipline, right?

1:22:41 All those things exist within training. It’s your greatest daily opportunity for self-discipline. What else do we do in life that’s hard? Nothing, life is made for convenience. Get out there and challenge yourself, discipline yourself, right, and that could be meditation, training, running, walking, whatever, right?

1:22:57 Yeah, I totally agree. It’s like the single most obvious, easiest box to tick to get down and start that journey. And if you can’t, you must. Yes. Tell me about you, what are some daily habits that are just not negotiable from you, even when you’re traveling and you’ve got a crazy schedule area all over Europe and stuff?

1:23:14 What’s something you make sure you do every day? The following success secrets are only available inside the London Real Tribe, where you get exclusive access and insights from our high performance guests on wealth creation, productivity, leadership, morning routines, health, and well-being. To join our tribe community, go to londonreal.tv forward slash tribe. Now, let’s continue with the show. So it’s a reflection of how you are.

1:23:43 Yeah, that’s super helpful. It’s a test, right? And I think that’s amazing. I love to wake up and have that daily feedback, like I don’t need a ring, right? I love my ring, but I can walk into my water or I can walk in and have a conversation with my children.

1:23:54 If they’re being absolutely erratic and crazy and it irritates me, well, nothing to do with them. So that’s, yeah. So yeah, those are my things, man. I’m gonna walk every day. I’m gonna breathe every day.

1:24:04 I’m gonna meditate every day. And it may only be five minutes of meditation when I’m on the road, man. Like even if it’s in bed when I’m falling asleep or in bed when I wake up or sometimes in the shower. You just have to find those times to be present. You can walk while you’re meditating.

1:24:15 Or so you can meditate while you’re walking. Yeah. Yeah, it’s true about the cold water. When I first started, it was freaking me out. And then even for months, it was still hard.

1:24:24 And now I can just do it. I just get in, I’m like, I got this. And I can stay calm. And then I start to enjoy it a bit too much. And then so, you know.

1:24:33 But it’s a good test. Man, I do ice baths at home sometime. I did one last week and my daughter comes in and she goes, daddy, can I get a bath? And I was like, yeah. My six year old got an ice bath.

1:24:43 I was like, I’m so impressed with this. That’s good, man. They did it. I was wearing shorts, that’s not weird, but like, yeah, I got an ice bath and she’s like, jumped in, man. She’s like, oh, it’s very cold.

1:24:53 I’m like, uh-huh. Pretty cold, man, I was impressed. That’s good. Well, they do what they see, man. That’s one thing that is assured.

1:25:00 They will do what you do. Hear nothing of what you say and do everything you do what you do Yeah, we had the whole we took the whole team to a Russian bath called the Bonya It’s here in town. It’s gay. It’s totally gangster. You need to go and there’s all sorts of stuff They do they hit you with the with the leaves and it’s super hot, but there’s a cold plunge in there It was super cold. I have one in Toronto that I go to like every time I’m in town I’m going there at least once a week It was great and it was a lot of people didn’t want to go there worried But at the end of the three hours, I couldn’t get four out of taking that or the sun hats.

1:25:31 Oh yeah, wear the hats, yeah, they’re awesome. But at the end of four hours, I couldn’t get everybody out of there. We wanted to stay, because the state change was amazing. It was just incredible all around. If I were to ask friends of yours, what is your superpower?

1:25:44 What is it that makes you able to do all the things that you’re gonna do? If I was gonna ask five of your friends, what would they say Ben’s superpower is? No. Yeah. Passion, probably.

1:25:56 Like I have an insatiable desire to be better. I have an insatiable desire to help people and a sincere desire to help people. And I think that’s where a lot of people lose the battle is they have the ability to help, but not the desire to help. And my desire to help is sometimes my greatest curse, right? It’s my greatest blessing in life, but it’s also my greatest curse is sometimes I give people too much time and attention and then sometimes other things fall by the wayside.

1:26:21 So like actually caring about people is, you know, I think it’s a great superpower, because I actually want to see you get better, psychologically, physically, and maybe I’m a healer at heart, but at the same time, it’s time, right? Time, so I’m spending time with people all the time. I’m always giving advice, I’m always giving them my sincere attention, and yeah, it’s probably that. But you have to make sure you don’t go too far with it. Yeah, and I have to do, right?

1:26:49 But I’m learning to get better. I’m learning to say no. I’m learning to hopefully help train people to do the same thing as I do, But again, it’s challenging. All right, what was the best day of your life and the worst day of your life? Best day of my life was the day my kids were born, man.

1:27:02 And honestly, every day that I get to spend with them is, everyone asks, like, what’s the day that you spend with your kids? It’s like, every day that I spend with my kids, it’s just that same feeling, like when they were born, you get it, man. Like, I can’t explain the feeling. If some of them had children, it’s just, that was, it shifted me. And I often say that I’ve never had love before in my life.

1:27:20 I didn’t have love growing up as a child, at least what I thought was love. Yeah, so that feeling was just a completely overwhelming thing for me that I’ll just, I have ingrained in my heart and my mind for the rest of my life. I’ve shifted who I am as a man. That was like the first time you felt like real love, Ward. Yeah.

1:27:40 Yeah. Worst day of my life, I got arrested, wrongfully. They had the wrong person and I thought it was me. I’m like, dude, the description’s not me. I was like, all right, I got arrested.

1:27:51 I spent three days in L.A. County Prison, and that was terrible, and I never wanted to go back. Wow, what was it like? Well, you’re in with the hardest criminals. We spent room, half the size of this one, you’re in there with 40 or 50 people, and you’re in there for hours as you get checked in.

1:28:08 I’m like, I never done anything wrong, right? And I was like, man, that was a challenge. And I said to my friend at the time, I was like, if I had to stay in there any longer, I would have had to become a different person to survive. Because it’s clearly what you see in movies, right? It’s like, everyone’s got a shank, everyone’s got a pipe, everyone’s got like something.

1:28:29 And you’re like, okay, well, if I’m gonna survive here, like I have that in me. I’ve been making sure I don’t bring that guy out. But if I have to, like, I’m gonna have to shift. And, man, it was terrible. Like just the thought of like, man, what’s gonna happen?

1:28:45 Because at some point, someone’s gonna test you, right? Yeah. So it sucked because the timing so I went in on Friday afternoon So I wasn’t able to see the judge some Monday morning It would have been Thursday. I would’ve seen him on Friday, but now but I could spend the weekend in there It’s really bad worst day of my life man every hour. You’re counting down thinking I just got to make it through another hour and it’s such a game, right?

1:29:03 They’re all coming over to you with the food. They’re like here take my food really big Please take my food. I want to talk don’t know learn who you are, right? All right, and then get in your head Yeah, get in your head but also learn if you’re gonna be a tough guy, if you’re gonna be a good guy, bad guy, their side, this side. So, it’s an interesting, interesting reality in there.

1:29:24 Yeah. And I’ll never go back. Okay, yeah, that can be a pretty crazy place mentally, you know, yeah, for sure. Those are good examples. And I know what you mean with kids, like I always have this joke with my wife and I always like, I always look at my boys, I’m like, isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life?

1:29:43 And I know how ridiculous that is, but that’s the way I feel when I look at it. I’m just like, I can’t believe I almost missed this ride. I almost missed it, just being a self-centered, Rambo young man, which there’s so many of us out there. That’s what I was taught as a kid by watching the movies. I’m just gonna do it all myself.

1:30:01 I don’t need anybody. I keep them there. And I almost missed this greatest joy to have these boys in my life. If something were better to happen to me, it would hurt me tremendously, which is why I think I avoided it in the past, but the upside of the love is worth it. Every time I look at them, I just think about the miracle, man.

1:30:20 I’m like, and I’m not a religious person, but I’m like, you know, my son’s seven, like seven years ago, this thing didn’t exist. This person, this personality, this amazing little human wasn’t here, and now he is. What else could it be than a miracle, man? Like, and I guess not from a religious perspective, but I have no idea how or why it happens, but it’s just incredible to me, and it just fills my heart. Every time I look at the man, I can’t not look at my shoulder and just be like, overwhelmed with emotion.

1:30:46 I’m just amazed they have all the right bones and everything, I’m like, all that coming out, you got all the right things and everything moves, and it’s like, what? Yeah, and I think, and they create unique thoughts that are, this is amazing, man. Yeah, it is quite a miracle. What scares you?

1:31:04 Being a bad dad, until I grew up with a really non-awesome relationship with my parents, and relatively absent. So looking back on it and being a parent now, I realized that my belief around my childhood is very much the story I’m telling myself. I don’t remember a lot of things that happened and I don’t know that my parents were bad parents. I also know they were good parents. I know they were absent a lot.

1:31:26 But again, the story I’ve told myself my whole life is I had a terrible issue with my parents and I do have some instances where it wasn’t very good. But that I know is my greatest pain in life was not having parents who were there for me, who loved me, who cared for me, who showed me that and told me that and taught me things and wasn’t there. So from the time I was like seven years old, I was kind of the lone wolf man, like you said, I literally was like two middle fingers to the world, I’ll do it myself.

1:31:51 And that’s, man, that’s even my, unfortunately been my approach early on in business. There’s a lot of men too. Yeah, I alienate people. And I’m like, I gotta stop this, right? And I have to learn that in order for me to really, you know, conquer this world, I need, I need to try it.

1:32:04 I need people who, you know, think and feel and act the way I do. and we’re having unique skill sets that contribute. So that was very much my greatest fear and still is, is, you know, my, and here’s, and I’ll use a term, you can choose to edit this out or not, but I thought my dad was a piece of shit. He thought his dad was a piece of shit. And I got to break the cycle.

1:32:24 And that, so I went to Tony Robbins last year and I did the Dickens process where you kind of do that forward pacing. Like you think of the thing that’s, that your greatest fear and you amplify it and that you’re, so you’re amplifying your brain. What would it be like if it actually happened? What would it be like if it was 20 times worse You’re amplifying your brain, it’s just bawling. I’m like, oh my God.

1:32:40 Like, because I had this vision of my son saying you’re a piece of shit. And man, like, that’s my greatest fear in life. Right? My greatest fear in that. And so if you’ve never done a Tony Robbins event, I would suggest it, like just a UPW, unleash the power within.

1:32:53 And it’s powerful, man. He’s a wizard, right? Tony’s amazing. And so you did something called the Dickens process, where you think of your worst case scenario, you think your deepest fear, and you amplify it, and you make it real. And that propels action, right?

1:33:08 You’re never gonna let that happen. So I think that was powerful for me. I went there being like, man, I’m an emotionally stable guy. Like, I know that’s never gonna happen. And I’m like, phew, I’m good.

1:33:16 And then he’s like, hey, let’s try it anyways. And I was like, I’m sitting in the front row, so I can’t not do it. So he takes us through it. And I just couldn’t help it, man, because you feel it, right? And he’s walking you through it.

1:33:27 He’s not gonna amplify it. Now it’s gonna be 10 times worse than you thought. And you’re like, phew. So I’m so consciously aware of just giving them unconditional love every day. And I’m not perfect, man, but they know more than anything in the world that they are loved and wanted and appreciated, and they’re special, and that’s how I approach life.

1:33:50 Nice. What would we be surprised to learn about you? That’s a long list, man. So I knew someone was gonna ask that question eventually. Yeah, something weird.

1:33:57 Oh, man, there’s lots of stuff that’s weird. Out of the character we might have in our brains, you know? Yeah, let’s take some stuff that’s weird. I don’t wear shoes, normally, except when I’m doing an interview, because of the mechanics thing. I need to feel connected with the ground.

1:34:12 That’s weird. I mean, putting me on the spot with that question is a challenging one. What’s weird? That’s good, though. So you like to be barefoot wherever you are.

1:34:18 Yeah. So I do my walks barefoot, usually, nine times out of 10. I’ve actually just started wearing Vivo Barefoots, which I think is a UK company. They’re great. So because the reason I want to be barefoot, one, I want to be connected with the ground.

1:34:28 Two, I don’t want to heal, and also I want to be able to move my toes. So Vivo Barefoot is, no affiliation, is a great company, great shoes, you know, high-end shoes, nice shoes. They have dress shoes too. I’m sure some of my friends and my family could tell you some things that are weird about me, what’s weird? I prefer to eat with a spoon.

1:34:47 Everything? Most things, yeah.

1:34:54 What’s weird about me? I’m left-handed.

1:35:00 I’m a little neurotic about things, but less so now. I’m thinking of something juicy. Any guilty pleasures? No, peanut butter. People always make a joke, like I don’t have a lot of things I like to cheat on, but like almond butter and peanut butter, like it’s one of those things, if I’m gone a long day and I haven’t eaten, and you just start a little bite, and all of a sudden half the jar is gone, and you’re like, oops, that was a mistake, and that would be the only guilty pleasure.

1:35:32 I mean, people in my podcast assistant, who’s now interviewing me, said, what would your last meal be? And I said it would probably be like a salad with a big steak on it. I was like, what? Like, that’s what I like to eat, man. So I think I have this association with this is good for me, therefore I’m gonna eat it and now I enjoy it.

1:35:55 I don’t have that many interesting obscure habits. That makes sense, sounds like a great meal anyway. What keeps you awake at night? Legacy, financial freedom, like most people, and not just for me, but for my family. I have this intention to hand each of my kids $500,000 when they’re 18 years old, because I don’t want to force them to go to university or college.

1:36:21 I want this to be a conscious decision. And if you want to, I’ll pay for it. And if you don’t, here’s 250 to travel. Do whatever you want. Come back in a year, two years, whatever.

1:36:31 And then take the next 250 and start a business. And that’s, you know, so I want to make sure that I’m financially able to do those things. And that’s not a ludicrous number, but I think the idea of education, you know, I’ve learned more after university than I ever did in. So like, I’m not pro-education, I’m not anti-education, like if you want to do it, great. If you don’t, I think people go to school because they think they have to and they end up learning nothing, right?

1:36:53 They end up learning, you know, a little bit that they like and the rest of the stuff they just get by and don’t remember very much. So if you can find passion in something and pursue that, that to me is more valuable. And I think the opportunity to see the world will allow them to discover their passions. We hope, right? So that probably keeps me up more than anything is, you know, like I said, being the best dad.

1:37:13 Did I show up today at my best for my family? So my values in life are family, finances and fitness in that order. So did I show up for my family today and in every way that I can, present and loving and caring and giving them what they need and accepting and then finances, am I gonna provide for them as long as they needed so they never have to, again, this is not that I’m gonna hand thing on a silver platter, but I never want them to have to be worried, right?

1:37:40 And maybe you could argue that that’s Bill’s character, but at the same time, it may just be one of those things that the day that I dive, I’ll get a huge inheritance and not know about it until then, but yeah, those things keep me awake. Yeah, it’s a tricky one with a finance, whether it builds character or not. I kinda had to do it on my own and there’s something I thought was good about that, but it depends, you know? If you have the right kid, they might, you know, if you raise them great, they could take a quarter million and do incredible things with it, and vice versa.

1:38:09 Yeah, man, my daughter’s six years old, she’s already got a dog same business, she’s making great money, man. It’s serious. She’s amazing, she’s got a crazy, I came over last week and handed her a thousand bucks to take care of the dog for a month, and she goes, no, take this back, it doesn’t fit in my piggy bank. I’m like, that’s amazing. She gets too much money, I don’t want it, take it back, because sweetheart, he’s giving money.

1:38:28 It doesn’t fit in my piggy bank, daddy. I was like, okay, so we’re gonna get a bigger piggy bag, I guess, right? Yeah, but it’s an interesting way to think about, right? She doesn’t care about the money, she loves dogs, and I won’t let her get a dog, because we travel so much that we’re homeschooling, so we take her with us everywhere we went. Yeah, so they’ve seen a lot of the world already, but so they’re in school now, so just for a year.

1:38:49 But yeah, dog sitting, interesting. That’s amazing. What does your obituary read? Oh man, I really believe that I’m gonna be remembered as the man who impacted many people and made them love themselves, right? And that’s physical and that’s mental.

1:39:05 And hopefully it’s people in the fitness industry because that’s where my heart is, you know, people who, you know, I say industry, people who care about fitness and health. And, you know, in 2010, when I started my business, you know, I had this intention to be the catalyst for intelligent muscle building in the world. And I really believe I’ve done that. You know, there’s so many people around the world who have taken, you know, I won’t say my information, but some manipulation of it and made it their own.

1:39:32 And now they’re teaching people this intelligent approach to building your body or optimizing your physique or optimizing your mind. So now it’s shifting to like, I wanna help 100 million men and women build a body they love and love themselves, right? And they live your greatest life. Nice, and the fitness industry traditionally is one that’s a bit self-absorbed, unconscious. Yeah, again, that may be really limited in people’s belief or understanding what the fitness industry is in them.

1:39:58 For me, it’s like if you go to the gym, if you go to the gym, I wanna help you because so many people struggle with their ability to build their body and they shouldn’t have to. It’s so easy, man. It’s so simple. I shouldn’t say it’s easy. Simple, right?

1:40:13 Like muscles are so simple, but everyone does it wrong, including every trainer in the world, right? And everyone in training says, I know how to do this correctly. No, you don’t, man. Like you don’t, you’re doing it wrong. And this is not an attempt to put anybody down.

1:40:26 It’s just an attempt to go here. Like you said, I’m giving, I’ll help you. Like just take this. And I don’t want anything to return for it. Just take this.

1:40:33 So you can actually feel empowered to love your body, to feel like you can build your muscle because everyone has a story around why they can’t, right? My genetics, my time, it’s too much hard work, whatever, pain. It’s all the BS story you’re telling yourself, man. So I want to be able to empower people with that, you know, as a foundation. And then it’s like, okay, Well now how can I tell you to use that as an ability or an opportunity to build your mind?

1:40:58 And that’s what my mission is. Okay, solid mission. Ben, I always ask a few questions at the end. I’m gonna ask you if you could pick up a magic phone, call the 20-year-old Ben, give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell him based on what you know now?

1:41:13 Smile, yeah, probably like yourself, right? So you’re so myopically focused on the end result The end result and I don’t know that I would say to stop but I would certainly say Take time to appreciate people and experiences and to celebrate your victories Rather than just ascending the mountain. Have you ever climbed a mountain? Yeah, so when you climb a mountain It’s not just about the top, right? You notice at any point you stop and you maybe have some water or some food or something and you look around and just go Well, thank you, right?

1:41:50 It’s the most amazing opportunity and that’s life, man. Life is this proverbial, essential, numerous mountains. So you climb a mountain, you ascend the first peak and you go, oh, I can see the peak, I’m gonna get there, I can get there, I can make it there. You get to that one, you realize you’re at the foothills, right, and you see the next real peak behind and you’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do it. You do it and one step at a time and you get to that one, you go, oh, I did it and you look again.

1:42:11 There’s another one that’s even bigger, you’re like, oh my God, I don’t know if I can do this. It’s life, man. So for myself is not focusing on that end destination and just focusing on appreciating this moment because I’m very happy and I feel like I accomplished some cool things to this point in my life but I also realized I’m at the foothills and there’s so much more above and set goals massively high but still just be present the moment and appreciate it.

1:42:39 On that same note, best advice you ever received could it come from another trainer or? Challenge everything you think you know. Tom Purvis. Tom Purvis is by far the smartest man in the world when it comes to biomechanics. He’s got a business called Resistance Training Specialist, rts123.com, by far the smartest guy in the world when it comes to movement.

1:42:58 And he said, challenge everything you think you know. And to me, that just blew my head open. And like, stop fitting into the box, right? Stop and challenge it. And it could be true.

1:43:10 Like you could choose to make that decision, but it has to be a conscious decision. can’t be an unconscious decision, right? I think that, and again, it’s very hard to, and I shouldn’t say it’s hard, it’s very, I don’t believe anything’s hard, but it’s very challenging sometimes to not conform to society’s beliefs and expectations, right? Because, like, it’s weird, but you should, you really should challenge everyone’s bullshit rules, right, and Vishan Lakhiani, who you may have at the end of the show, rules, it’s a beautiful term.

1:43:39 I borrow it often for rules, like bullshit rules, man, and challenge it all, because it’s all just nonsense that’s created up by someone else before you to make you fit into the box, right? And Tom Billy talks about the matrix, right? It’s the same thing, fit into, get out of the matrix, man, get out of the box. But yeah, that was the greatest advice I ever got. That shifted, at the time I didn’t even think about it.

1:44:01 It was like, oh, that’s interesting. But now I challenge everything, for better or worse. Last part to that 20 year old that’s out there watching us, listening to us, Advice to give to them. What can they do to learn your lessons and take their life to the next level? Intentionally seek your struggles, intentionally seek your discipline.

1:44:19 Don’t avoid them. That’s, you know, anyone is intentionally, they feel fear and they walk the other way and I think that’s the opposite, right? I think it needs to be, your discipline is your greatest opportunity for progress and you need to intentionally implement discipline on a day-to-day basis, right? If you can’t, you must discipline, man. And that to me is everything because many kids grow up not ever feeling a sense of accomplishment.

1:44:45 They never develop that character of success. So what is success? It’s accumulation of small victories. What is character, right? It’s the accumulation of small victories daily.

1:44:55 And how do you accumulate victories if you never subject yourself to a challenge, right? So I need to have something in my day-to-day routine every day that challenges me and whatever, right? It could just be, hey man, I’m gonna sit down to keep this daily routine to breathe, walk, meditate every day, right? That’s a challenge, man, that’s an obstacle because there’s always something pulling your attention. Jim Rohn, I don’t know if you know Jim Rohn, the amazing, you know, Jim Rohn.

1:45:17 I said, it’s so easy to do, but it’s also easy not to do. And that is what separates the successful from the dreamers, right? The stings that are so easy to do on a day-to-day basis, but it’s very easy not to do, it’s very easy to get pulled, Ah, it’s okay, oh, it’s okay, three months later. Oh, I didn’t do that. That’s the problem.

1:45:42 And keeping yourself accountable somehow, right? And that could be with people. Great people in your life who are always honest with you. Or that could be with journaling. And that’s the reason if I journal, that’s it.

1:45:51 It’s like making sure I’m keeping myself accountable. Yeah, that’s really good advice. Ben, I was looking forward to this for many weeks and I’m really glad you came on. And there’s just something about you. You’re really congruent with everything you’re saying.

1:46:05 And I can see this real shift in you. It would have been nice to see the old Ben as well, the hardcore, but like, there’s something very yogi-ish about your vibe, you know? And I get that vibe, talk about energy from people, and I got it right away when I heard about you, and that’s why I wanted you on. And that means you’re living it, you know? And that’s a big deal for me, and I like the fact that I used to do this, and now I’m taking lessons from that, and I’m moving into this way, and I think it’s super helpful for a lot of people out there, and everything you say, I think can help people take responsibility for their own consciousness.

1:46:39 I agree with you, the only way we’re ever gonna get where we need to go as a species, or survive, is if we all just spend a little time every day and try to be the best version of ourselves and show up, and imagine if that happened. It would be a crazy world, amazing world. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of men living that reality, man, and I always speak to men because I’m not a woman, and I can’t say I don’t know a woman’s mind or what their issues are, but there’s definitely a lot of men living that.

1:47:04 They’re trying to keep up with someone else’s expectations for themselves, right? Everyone thinks, oh yeah, I’m living my life. Man, we’re all living someone else’s life, right? From the time you’re born, you have to meet certain people’s expectations to get love. What you wear is probably a result of what other people are wearing or what’s in the media right now.

1:47:19 You’re not making your own decisions. So I just have to encourage men to realize that you don’t have to fit in that box, man. You can carve your own path. Is it gonna be hard? I hope so.

1:47:30 I wish for it to be hard for you. I don’t wish for it to be easy, but realize you’re strong enough to get out of it. Yeah, and be yourself, you know? I mean, and luckily, I mean, and love yourself. And we got some great examples of that.

1:47:42 We have this beautiful thing called the internet, and this beautiful thing called YouTube. Blessing and a curse, right? Yeah, it’s blessing and a curse, but you no longer have to look at just Rambo on the screen. Now you can find all these great archetypes and you can then be yourself, and that’s what we’re looking for. Yeah, that’s, I often say that phrase.

1:47:56 The irony of life is sometimes your greatest blessing is also your biggest curse, and it seems like that’s the reality with the internet, but here’s the cool thing. you get to choose, right? It doesn’t have to be one or the other, you get to choose. So if I want it to be my blessing and I want to curate what I’m looking at or curate what my kids are looking at, I can make that happen. Or I can make it my greatest curse because it becomes a way for me to numb out my brain or it’s curated by somebody else.

1:48:18 So I think that that’s sometimes or often the reality in life. Yeah, how can people find you and subscribe to your podcast as well? Yeah, Muscle Intelligence podcast, iTunes, it’s at muscleintelligence.com. That’s probably the best place to track me down. Okay, fantastic.

1:48:33 Instagram, Twitter, all those things available. Cool. Thanks for making this happen, man. Really looking forward to keeping this relationship up and wishing you all the best, man. Thanks, man.

1:48:43 Super grateful to be here. You’re doing great, thanks. Cool, man. My pleasure.