David Goggins, Dorian Yates, Eddie Hall, Ross Edgley - Why Most People Quit At 40% & How To Push Through That Barrier

Full transcript: David Goggins on London Real

3:34 Brian Rose: This is London Real, I am Brian Rose, my guest today. Welcome to London Real Journeys, I’m Brian Rose and we’re here at London Real World Headquarters. And I want to tell you one thing, and that is that most people quit at 40%. Now this is a line that was delivered to me in this very studio by David Goggins, who is the US Navy SEAL world record holder, all around kind of badass, scary, endurance dude. And David is known for having a mindset that gets him through places where most humans on the planet could never get to.

4:21 And that’s why I wanted to have most people quit at 40% to be the theme of today’s London Real journey. And that is a new format that we’ve adopted here that takes nine years of London Real, over 600 guests, and takes the specific ones to give you one final lesson that you can take it away. And so today I’m going to be featuring content from David Goggins, from Dorian Yates, from me and John Joseph running an Ironman race last year. I’m going to go through to Eddie Hall, world’s strongest man, Colin O’Brady, who as the the world record for Crossing the Atlantic on foot, Ross Edgley, who swam around the entire island of the UK.

5:05 It took him like 157 days. And I wanna walk you through the stories of some of these gentlemen that is really all about Mind Over Matter. This is them pushing themselves only through a mindset to places that most people never thought was possible. And we’ve been blessed to have these gentlemen in the studio here. And I wanna share with you some nuggets of wisdom from them as you can take into your own life.

5:29 This could be for a physical challenge, this could be for a mental challenge, this could be anything that’s going on in your life, so you can understand that you can push so much further than you realize. Again, as Goggins said, most people quit everything in their life at 40%, which means you’ve got 60% left in the tank. That’s 60% more you could have run, or could have swam, or could have worked, or pain you could have tolerated, and this is what creates greatness.

5:56 This is the people that you admire. These are the world records holders. Sometimes the musicians, the high performance people, they’ve found a way to push through and it all starts up here. And so that’s the point of today. I’m gonna take you on this incredible journey through the ideas and the minds of these incredible gentlemen to where you can have a takeaway today and hopefully find ways that you can push yourself and become a better version of yourself.

6:21 So I’m super excited to do this today. Of course, I’m gonna kick it off with David Goggins. And I had waited years to have David in the studio. He’s got an incredible book called Can’t Hurt Me. David has an incredible story.

6:34 Most people see David as a badass world record-holding, 240-mile racing through the desert type of dude. But this guy used to weigh over 300 pounds. There’s pictures of him. And he had to lose, I think, over 100 pounds just to qualify for the military service. and he had a limited time to do that.

6:54 And once he understood that he could hack his own brain, he started to see how far he could push himself. And I highly recommend his book, The Audible Version is Incredible. But I wanna kick this off with David here explaining this concept of how most people quit at 40%.

7:11 David Goggins: We’re all in a battle with our own brains. That’s life.

7:15 That’s all life is. It’s the most powerful thing in the world. It’s your own brain. It could work for you or against you.

7:21 Brian Rose: And when did you start to realize that the visualization could work for you.

7:24 And as opposed to focusing on all those bad things that happened, all the things you didn’t have, the people that called you names, all the stuff in Brazil, Indiana, and you started thinking, wait a second, I just visualized this, and now I can take it to the next level, next level. Because the visualization got you through the SEAL training, I think.

7:43 David Goggins: It did. And I was able to visualize the end. So before, so when I was 297, and I was all fat and out of shape, and I couldn’t run a quarter mile, And I was drinking milkshakes and eating boxes of donuts.

7:54 I visualized, man, how would it feel? So after I watched that show on Discovery Channel, for a brief moment, so there was 22 guys that graduated. I watched this segment on TV about these guys going through Navy SEAL training. And I couldn’t even, I wasn’t a great swimmer, I was afraid of the water, all this crap, man. And I saw these guys just quitting.

8:18 But at the very end, it says 22 guys, this command officer’s up there and he gives this great speech. I was like, man, I wonder. So I started visualizing, me being the 23rd guy in these dress whites, sitting there with these guys, getting that Navy SEAL, graduating this Navy SEAL training. I was like, God. So I put myself there.

8:38 I was like, man, that’s an amazing feeling. I put myself there at 297, not even able to do anything that these great men were doing. I said, man, if I could feel that, that would change my life. If I could just feel that, one, it lasts for one second. You get that certificate, you walk across the stage, and what’s next?

9:00 But I didn’t know that then. My mind was then, I thought, I live in that moment forever. So I said, wow, man, if I could just feel like them, if I could feel like them.

9:10 Brian Rose: And what was that feeling you wanted so bad, respect, accomplishment?

9:14 David Goggins: No, victory.

9:15 I wanted to win, not like beat somebody else. It wasn’t about that, I just wanted to go the distance. Everything in my life when something got hard, I quit. If it was reading, that’s where you know, I wasn’t great at reading, I wasn’t great at writing, so I just quit. I couldn’t catch on as fast as you.

9:33 I had to work harder than you, so I quit. You know, I wasn’t great at things, so I quit. You know, I’m not good at this. Like man, if I could just go that distance, that extra mile to just go, just to finish. I want to finish.

9:49 I want to feel victory, and victory for me wasn’t winning, it was just finishing. So I said, you know what, if I could feel like these guys feel, it would change my life. But what I realized, the best feeling I had was when I was by myself trying to lose this weight. I’d lose it in literally less than three months. 106 pounds in less than three months.

10:15 And literally, I started feeling victory just by putting myself in the battle. It wasn’t about going to Navy SEAL training. It wasn’t about being the 23rd guy in that chair. I started realizing, man, just by going to war with myself every day and putting these challenges and these goals and these obstacles, these insurmountable obstacles. So it wasn’t about losing 106 pounds.

10:43 Me losing five pounds was an accomplishment. Me losing 10 pounds and then 50 pounds. The more I did this, the more I gained confidence. And then the more I gained confidence, the more I realized, fuck these Navy SEALs, man. These guys can’t do what I’m doing right now.

11:01 I had no coach, had no trainer, had no money. I didn’t know how to lose weight. I had no knowledge of what I was doing. I was just working. I was just sacrificing.

11:12 And then through that, all these different tools started coming up, but I would have never found these tools if I didn’t put myself in a very uncomfortable place. We all look for toughness. We all want it, but we look for it in a comfortable environment. You will not find toughness in a comfortable environment. Those of you who are listening to this, Whoever hear this, you will not find it.

11:41 I was trying to look for it everywhere. The only way you find it is to drown yourself in a position where you’re just out of sorts, where you can’t swim and you’re drowning. Where you’re drowning. You’re drowning in life. But you say, you know what, man?

11:59 Fuck that. I’m gonna figure out how to fucking backstroke or fucking something. I’m gonna figure out how to, And then you’re figuring out all these tools. Your mind starts to, when you quit, your mind does this. Because you’re out.

12:15 Once you say I’m not gonna quit, this is the 40%. When you quit, your mind says we’re done. So it doesn’t expand. There’s no expansion when you quit. When you say, fuck you, uh-uh, this sucks, I’m drowning, I’m miserable, I’m suffering, I’m broken, but I’m not going anywhere.

12:34 What happens to your mind is it does this. It says fuck, he’s not leaving. So we gotta expand. We gotta grow. We gotta figure this fucking thing out.

12:48 So then these compartments in your brain start to, they have to work. They have to work. And then you start to engage parts of your mind that you never engaged before. But you can’t engage it by sitting back in these nice chairs, drinking this nice water, talking to you, talking about what I wanna do. That’s where the 40% thing comes in.

13:10 It comes in when you’re in suffer mode and you say I’m not gonna quit. You’re forcing your brain now to operate. On a level it’s not used to.

13:19 Brian Rose: Look, I can’t lie to ya, I could listen to Goggins all day, every day. I love this guy and he said so many great things there.

13:27 Toughness, we all wanna be tough, don’t we? We all want to be the person that can ride out difficult times, but that doesn’t happen in our comfort zone, which is where we all wanna be. And so what happened when things get hard for most people? They whine, they complain, and they seek to avoid these situations, even though that’s what builds character. That’s how we build something we’re proud of.

13:51 And David said something really powerful there, and that’s gonna show up throughout this entire arc of a narrative when I start talking about Dorian Yates and Eddie Hall and Ross Edgley and Colin O’Brady, and even my own experience is running an Ironman on a plant-based diet with no training whatsoever and that’s this, when you show your mind that it’s gonna be in a tough situation and it can’t run away, it does something that will shock you and surprise you, it expands and you grow and that’s where the growth happens and even though it’s the thing most of us run away from, this whole world is built around making things comfortable for us, making the food delivered to you, making that there’s a lift to take you up instead of stairs, all of that stuff, but that doesn’t get your brain to expand.

14:42 And that’s what David does with his life. To this day, he puts himself in difficult, nasty, uncomfortable situations and says, guess what, you’re stuck. You need to adapt, to overcome, to grow and your mind expands. And you see that, David’s not talking about how he got big muscles, or he got cardio, or he got even an award. It’s about his mind expanding.

15:06 For David, the whole world is a playground and it’s all one big game. These are all tests, right? Life is happening for you, not to you, as one of my friends Wes Watson says. All of the things that present themselves to you that look like bad things, these are actually good things. These are tests that will show you their opportunities to prove to yourself that you’re bigger and better and stronger and bolder than you can even imagine, than your wildest dreams could ever tell you.

15:36 And that’s what life is to give you. And you can run the other way or you can run into it. And when you run into it, you find that you are so much stronger than you ever imagined. And the people you admire are the people that have just done this more times than you. And so I hope today you watch some of this and you realize that you could be David Goggins.

15:55 You could be Dorian Yates. You can be Eddie Hall, you can be Brian Rose. You just have to run into those things and surprise yourself with how strong you are. And so the next clip I wanna play for you is David Goggins talking about his first attempt at running an ultra endurance race. Now, once David got out of the seals, he became obsessed with how else he could push himself.

16:18 Again, you could see in there, he was like, these seals aren’t a big deal. And the crazy thing about David is once he became a seal, he was like, these guys aren’t continuing to push them. And he got a lot of bad blood from the SEAL community because there was like who is this guy who says I’m not good enough for him So Dave is always seeking out new challenges And so he started looking for these ultra endurance races and to qualify for one of these he had to run 100 miles and so this is him talking about an afternoon in San Diego, California not far from where I grew up right near the San Diego Bay Bay where he found a one mile track and he gathered with a bunch of individuals to run this track 100 times in a row.

17:02 David had no preparation. He brought some myoplex which is a crappy protein powder and some donuts with him and his wife and this is him talking about his first experience pushing himself beyond his imagination and here’s David talking about that.

17:20 David Goggins: I did this to mile 81. At mile 81, the person in cream was like, hey, you know what? Basically, I knew I wasn’t gonna make the time cause I was crawling around that track, crawling.

17:33 And this is the Eureka moment. This is it. Out of my whole life, this is the one time, this is when I realized that we are fucking way, way, way cutting ourselves short. Worst state in my life, thought I was gonna die. Never felt this kind of pain before in my life, ever.

17:57 Never again. Am I 81 when I knew I wasn’t gonna make the time? I ran. The next, I ran 20 miles, I did 101 miles. I was average in like 10, 10 thirties.

18:12 Coming from death, being able to barely walk, Now I’m running 10 to 10 30s for the next 20 miles. When I got done with that, I sat back down in that chair that was not my porta potty. And it was my ex-wife, she actually backed the car up on this grassy knoll where I was kind of, you know, camped up at for 19 hours and six minutes. I ran 101 miles, ran walked 101 miles. I got home, I detail it well in the book, I won’t go through it well.

18:50 It was a horrible situation. I was in the worst shape of my life. Passing out, shitting on myself, peeing blood. I got in the tub. I had this poncho liner on because in San Diego in November, it’s chilly.

19:03 So I’m freezing, she puts the water on me and I’m peeing what looks like dirt. It’s just dark, dark, dark. It’s like dirt coming out of me. And we have a discussion and she calls my mom up. My mom has a doctor friend.

19:20 The doctor friend says, you got to get him to the hospital. His kidneys are shutting down. This is going on. This is going on. He could die.

19:29 And this is where the story gets kind of crazy. It was the best and worst feeling I had in my life. I had put myself in a situation where I opened my mind to the fullest capacity pull this off and all the pain I mean it was it was live the pain sensors were going to my body I’m in this tub in the fetal position the water is coming down on me and I’m just sitting there this jackhammer and hot water hit me I’m jackhammer peeing coca-cola out of me I’m like god dog this and she’s we are getting to the hospital it was the best feeling of my entire life never goes how do you say that, I probably could have died.

20:17 And I literally pushed myself to a place that very few human beings would ever be willing to go. And I got to examine myself, I call it the live autopsy, where we find out why someone died after they’re dead. I got a chance in 19 hours and six minutes to put myself in the worst possible condition I could possibly be in and figure out how to get through it and get through it. And all this pain going through it was confirmation that I had just done something that I thought was humanly impossible.

21:03 And I didn’t want it to go away. You’re reveling in that moment thinking, man, look what I just did. Look what the human mind can do. And from that 19 hours and six minutes, I lived an entire lifetime. Entire lifetime.

21:22 People live 100 years and never experience the highs, the lows, the journey I did, all of it. In 19 hours and six minutes, I lived 100 years. And I try hard to put it in the book, but no one would ever be able to really understand what that was about. And I was like, if I die here today, I’m fine with that. Look what the human mind can do.

21:53 Brian Rose: That’s what David said there. Look what the human mind can do. And he said he was performing a live autopsy on himself, watching what he could do at that time. And in those 19 hours and some odd minutes, he lived a lifetime, probably a greater life than someone could have lived in 100 years because he went through the highs and the lows and he pushed through the pain and he had that euphoria and there he is sitting in that tub, pissing Coca-Cola. His wife wants to take him to the emergency room and he is at the happiest moment of his life.

22:26 I mean, what does that tell you about the human condition? I love listening to David because he’s so inspiring And again, he puts it back on the human mind. Your mind can do the same thing he did. He did 101 miles. Of course, David has to stick one extra mile on there, just to prove to himself, and that’s what it is.

22:44 It’s about showing his brain that he is in charge. He’s in charge. Most of us live our lives where our brain tells us who’s in charge. Our brain limits us. It cons us every day into taking it easy, into having the donut, into working only enough to get the job done.

23:04 And yet David is in there trying to push his mind and seeing how hard he can go. I always think about David when I’m out on a long run, when I’m having a long day here at work. And anytime I’m faced with a difficult situation, I think David’s on my shoulder saying, Brian, you’re not even at 40%. How can you quit? Most people quit at 40%, you’re like at 30.

23:23 And whenever you get to 40, you got 60 left. And I’m gonna share with you some of my adventures when I started training for my Ironman race, and he was right. I would start telling myself stories about trying to quit on my runs and my bikes and my swims. And once I told my brain to shut up, I went further and further and further and realized it was economy and trying to bullshit me all the time. And that’s what our brains do most of the time.

23:46 They try to talk us out of greatness. They try to talk us out of pushing through and getting to the next level. And if you know that, then you’re in a constant game of cat and mouse with your brain. It’s and it knows how to push all your buttons. It knows how to trick you with ideas and it can put things in there because it knows how to push those buttons.

24:06 But if you stay vigilant, then you can find a way to overcome it. And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Most people quit at 40%. What is your 40% is what I wanna ask you. What have you quit on in the past that you think you can push through to the next level?

24:19 And next I wanna share with you something from one of the number one guests on London Real of all time. someone who is almost synonymous with the show, and that is Dorian Yates, Mr. Six Time, Mr. Olympia. This guy was the greatest body in the world from 1992 to 1997.

24:40 He had a chiseled physique of 260 pounds at 4% body weight, and would just go on the stage and just blow everybody away. And what I love about Dorian is, he was this guy in a basement in Birmingham, in England. He was not at Muscle Beach, at Gold’s Gym, with the Schwarzenegger’s of the World and all those guys out there who had all the technology, who had all the science, who had all the intellectual property and all the sponsors. Dorian did it his way. Dorian came from hard times.

25:15 He came from council flats. He came from a family where his parents both died. He had nothing except his own mind. And Dorian realized that if he could go into the depths his psyche. He could create the greatest physique in the world and he didn’t need mentors. He didn’t need machines. He didn’t need protein powders. He could do it himself and that’s what he proved and he showed the world and he had the nickname called the shadow because no one knew who he was. They didn’t know his background. They wouldn’t see him all year and he would show up to Mr. Olympia, take off his robes and BAM! Win! And then he would put him back on and disappear for another year and do it again and again and again. And it was because he was able to go darker and deeper into his own mind to access those pain points that no one else was willing to do.

26:03 And so Dorian always fascinated me. And so I decided to go down to Spain, where he lives now in Marbella, to learn more about how he trains and the mentality of this. And this is part of a film we did with Dorian called Inside the Shadow. There’s a whole, whole film here. It’s 90 minutes, where all sorts of crazy things happen.

26:23 But this is the session where Dorian decides to take me through leg day. Now leg day is where you’re working the biggest muscles in your body and it’s something that Dorian’s notorious for. He takes guys through leg days, guys that are body builders at the top of their game and they throw up, they cry, they wanna quit because Dorian is so hardcore. This is how he became a champion, by accessing his brain in a way no one else could and here’s a short clip about him taking me through that same pain, that same mental toughness, and watch what happens.

27:04 My first day here, and Dorian told me to meet him at the gym. It was time for me to understand how the shadow was created. To do that, I needed to walk a mile in his shoes.

27:16 Dorian Yates: My approach to contest is his Dorian Yates against Dorian Yates of last year. That’s what I’m trying to beat.

27:24 I’m trying to beat Dorian Yates of last year, rather than thinking about beating other people, which basically I have no control over. So that’s my competition.

27:39 Brian Rose: Dorian had pushed past every physical instinct in order to reach his goal. He used anger.

27:47 Dorian Yates: Clean up! Get out of the way!

27:50 Brian Rose: It can get you a long way. I used it myself as a young man on Wall Street, obsessed with making money.

28:01 Dorian Yates: What people gotta realize is when I’m on stage, when I’m in the gym, that’s my job. And to me, you know, it is serious. I take that seriously.

28:15 Brian Rose: But Dorian took it to another level. He pounded his body into submission day after day after day. Everyone has access to the same equipment, the same knowledge, even the same drugs. What made Dorian different, what made him a champion, was embracing the pain. Because where there’s pain there’s growth. Dorian’s leg training sessions were notorious in the bodybuilding community. The bigger the muscle group the bigger the pain.

29:00 Everyone dreaded his leg day. But every now and then some sucker would venture up temple gym and give one a try. It never ended well.

29:14 Dorian Yates: Hey, Brian. This is it. There’s the spot, right? Welcome to the jungle, man.

29:22 Brian Rose: Love it. What a great setup here.

29:26 Dorian Yates: Yeah, we’re gonna go start outside a little bit from different from temple gym. Yeah, right. Nice outside area with the sun and everything like that. So we’re gonna start out there with a little bit of stretching mobility exercises

29:51 Brian Rose: okay and it’s leg day today man

29:54 Dorian Yates: leg day straight in the deep end man

29:58 Brian Rose: why not you’re known for your leg days

30:02 Dorian Yates: yeah so it’s gonna be fun let’s go let’s go outside you gotta have a goal you know it’s like you gotta have a plan and a desire because if I’m got desire when it gets really uncomfortable you’re probably just gonna say hey screw this this is enough you know all right so we’re gonna do a light set to get the movement get everything get the in there and do a medium set to further, you know, get the body and the mind ready.

30:47 And then the last set is going to be like, like somebody’s got a gun to your little baby’s head. Yeah? And he’s going to pull the trigger unless you fucking give 100%. It’s life and death. One set, then we move on to another exercise.

31:06 The toughest stuff is first. Trust me, those three exercises. The other ones are tough, but three quad exercises of the beast, you know?

31:14 Brian Rose: I just had a little baby, so the gun to his head references very, yeah.

31:18 Dorian Yates: I thought so. I thought it would work.

31:20 Brian Rose: That’s pretty painful. Are these like the plates you had at Temple? These are old school, right?

32:03 Dorian Yates: Yeah, these are real weights, man. You what?

32:23 Brian Rose: Real old iron. You prefer this?

32:25 Dorian Yates: Yeah. Don’t want to be too sanitized, you know? It’s not nice.

32:29 It’s nasty this shit, you know?

32:31 Brian Rose: Nasty, right? Dark and nasty.

32:32 Dorian Yates: Yeah, exactly. You got to get angry.

32:34 You got to push. You got to push, you got to visualize whatever helps you get through that set, you know. I used to do, you know, I’d say to myself, this is, this is for my family. This is for my wife and my kid and, you know, and even like kind of a fuck you motivation.

32:53 Brian Rose: I still remember that leg press where I’m screaming so loud.

32:57 It was so much pain and I had lifted before and I loved lifting heavy, but I had never gone to that extreme. I just had never been around someone that could push me that hard. I had spotters before, but Dorian pushed me 20, 25% past anything I thought was possible. And then after that, he’s like Brian, I’m talking about doing that every single day. And that’s when I understood what made Dorian a champion.

33:23 Because there’s guys out there that could do that for a month or for a year, but could you do that for 14 years? I mean, that’s just a whole nother level. But that’s all it took. It was that mental toughness that created Dorian the physique which allowed this guy to get out of his environment and become anything he wanted to be. Otherwise, he would have never left that council flat in Birmingham.

33:47 Now, he could do anything he want. He created the man through the discipline that could be anything in the world. And he has become a spokesman for all sorts of things, not just lifting, spirituality, everything, because he put himself through that pain and went through that growth. I learned so much from Dorian that day and it put me on my own adventure of personal growth and I started looking around for ways that I could apply the physical to get myself to grow mentally.

34:17 And it wasn’t long after making the movie with Dorian that a man named John Joseph came into my studio and I didn’t know much about John and John turns out he is the lead singer of the hardcore punk band The Cro-Mags, which was massive in the 90s in New York City. He was homeless for a time. He was a Hare Krishna monk for a long time. He has been plant-based or vegan for 30-some years because he was a monk. He struggled with alcoholism.

34:49 He had an amazing crack addiction for a long time and came out the other side sober with a lot of wisdom. And he started competing in endurance races, specifically an Ironman race. And he came to our studio here in London and he sat literally, you know, three feet away from me. And we had an amazing conversation and John is massively entertaining, is a fun guy, he’s a crazy guy. And at the end of it, I knew something had started and John contacted me a few months later and said, Brian, I need you to come to New York City.

35:23 We got some unfinished business. And John and I both spent time in the East Village of New York City. And when I was there, I went down through some darkness of my own. And this ended up coming out with my further adventures of John. And we ended up talking about my struggle with addiction and overdose.

35:42 And it was the same place where John grew up, where John was homeless and lived in a squat, where John created his music. And we both found a way to get through it to evolve as humans. And so John dragged me back to New York City. I did not wanna go back to New York because I had bad memories there. But he’s like, Brian, we got unfinished business and I wanna talk to you.

36:02 And so this is the start of my adventure with John Joseph. We put all of this into a movie called Iron Mind that you can watch on YouTube for free or on our website, LondonReal.tv. But this is the start of my adventure with John Joseph.

36:29 John Joseph: I got the machine over here. This is my Ace mechanic.

36:35 I love this shop because it’s like my homeboys work here. It’s like a fucking old school shop.

36:41 Brian Rose: Why are you doing Iron Mans?

36:42 John Joseph: What it really is, is about beating down your demons every day, facing your demons, it’s discipline. You gotta do shit when you don’t wanna do it.

36:51 And when you’re at that start line, everyone’s conquering their demons, man. I do it as a way for the motherfuckers that didn’t make it out of all this shit. And to show the next generation you could do anything you apply yourself to. So Ironman is, you swim, you get out of the water, you get on your bike, and then T2 transition, bike to run.

37:19 Brian Rose: How long is the break in between each day?

37:22 John Joseph: None. None. You don’t take no fucking breaks, dude. There ain’t no fucking breaks. You ain’t checking your Facebook page.

37:27 You get off out of the water and you’re fucking running to get your bike shit on. You’re running, it’s move, move, move, move. This is not pussy, man. This is Iron Man. I didn’t call you here to check out the bike.

37:43 I called you here for a reason. And even when I first talked to you, I realized when you left New York, you was running from shit. But now you’re back, first time in 15 fucking years, and I want you to do this half Iron Man with me in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Hold on, don’t freak the fuck out.

38:00 Brian Rose: What the fuck you talking about?

38:02 John Joseph: May 20th, you all come into Chattanooga. I’m not taking no for an answer, motherfucker. You’re coming. May 20th. You are coming.

38:11 Brian Rose: That’s fucking three months from now.

38:13 John Joseph: Yo, you are coming.

38:14 Brian Rose: I got London Real. I got a full-time show. I got two young boys.

38:17 I’m turning 47 this year.

38:19 John Joseph: You already have that fucking mindset in here, dude. I see what you do. You’re fucking, you’re just nonstop doing shit. But this is gonna teach you a whole new level of focus.

38:30 You’re gonna fall in love with this sport. This is serious training, man. I’m gonna tell you what, I’m gonna tell you what. You’re here till Sunday. I want you to train with me, starting tomorrow.

38:42 I’m gonna just take you through some stages.

38:44 Brian Rose: Let’s train for the next few days and see what’s up.

38:47 John Joseph: Well, that’s what we’re gonna do, and have fun with it.

38:50 Brian Rose: Okay. No pressure.

38:51 John Joseph: You’re in New York. Don’t go smoke no cracks. I’ll see you tomorrow, man.

38:58 Brian Rose: All right, bro, peace.

39:01 John Joseph: When you develop a spiritual power, nothing in the material world could touch you.

39:09 Look at the lotus, where does it exist? Comes out of a stem and it exists above dirty water and it’s never affected. Be very fucking diligent in your life. And that comes through sadhana. Sadhana is your practice every day, whether it’s yoga, meditation, or whatever it is you do.

39:34 The physical challenges that come with doing an Ironman You know, to me, that’s a spiritual process too. That’s what left the old John Joseph McGowan in the past. Did I slip up? Fuck yeah, I did. Did I give up?

39:52 Fuck no. Yes, I pulled you up on this fucking bridge for a reason. This is like a painting of your fucking past. Wall Street where you made all your money, here where you’re brewing your fucking life, almost. It’s time for you to man up, to once and for all tell your mind who the fuck this was.

40:30 I need a fucking answer. What’s it going to be? Are you going to make me race by myself or are we crossing the finish line together?

40:40 Brian Rose: Fuck it, man. Let’s do this.

40:42 John Joseph: All right? That’s what I want to hear. That’s an investment in my time and your time to make this shit happen.

41:01 Brian Rose: They say forgiveness can’t change the past. But it will determine your future.

41:14 Bringing back memories, me and John Joseph on the Brooklyn Bridge, man, he gave it to me hard. It was an ultimatum. He shoved my whole, messed up, former life right in front of my face. My life of darkness, heroin overdose and addiction and said, Brian, what’s it going to be? Are you going to be on that race with me in Chattanooga, Tennessee in three months?

41:34 I thought he was out of his mind. I wasn’t prepared. Like John said, it’s a mental process that this physical training gets you through and allows you to expand. And John said, did I slip up? Yeah.

41:49 Did I give up? Fuck no. And that’s what this is about. That’s what I mean by not quitting at 40% is to get back in there and keep pushing. And so this Ironman training really taught me a lot and I was swimming with John in New York City and running with John and watching the way he does this process.

42:09 John’s done 10 plus full Ironman. This is 12 hour plus races and he’s in his 50s. I mean, it’s impressive. He’s training all the time and his body is busted up and he still does it. I mean, he is an inspiration, John Joseph.

42:25 And he does it all on a plant-based diet and again, he sticks to what he believes in. And again, just showing you what’s possible. You know, most people when they hear that I did in Ironman Race, I could never do that. I could never swim. When I hear that, it always kills me because of course you could.

42:41 For me, the swim was, I was never good at swimming. I was exhausted after like six laps when I started. But I knew that the brain always stops the body. That most people quit at 40% and I thought if I can get a trainer, if I can find the mental process, I can get through the physical. But John wasn’t done with me yet.

43:00 So he introduced me to Samantha who is his trainer. And Samantha decided to put me through what she calls a bike test. Now this is six minutes, and it’s her pushing me as hard as I can go on a bike. Now when someone’s yelling in your ear, and you got four cameras on you, I mean, I don’t know if I’ve ever gone this hard. Dorian was a lift, but this was an extended period of time and it took me to the next level.

43:26 And so this is Samantha trying to find out where my endurance was at this point, and what she saw happening and you can see how she’s really pushing me to go deeper and deeper and deeper. So here’s me with Samantha Murphy.

43:40 Samantha Murphy: This is a long day. This isn’t just going to work out for 40 minutes. I don’t give a shit if you can run a half marathon.

43:47 I want you to run a half marathon off of a bike and that’s a very different animal.

43:52 Brian Rose: I got 90 days to prepare for this.

43:54 Samantha Murphy: Yeah, it’s not normally what I would want or do. I’d actually want a year.

43:59 Brian Rose: A year?

43:59 Samantha Murphy: Yeah, a year. All right, ready?

44:05 Brian Rose: Yeah, I’m gonna change.

44:09 Samantha Murphy: Okay, let’s do it. Okay, cool.

44:14 Brian Rose: So funny shoes you got when you were in, Samantha. This is like the quintessential I am not a triathlete outfit you have on.

44:21 Samantha Murphy: Oh, okay. Bye, I just wanna kind of run you through the gear since this is so new to you.

44:25 Brian Rose: Okay, and what do I do with these?

44:27 Samantha Murphy: Start to spin it up. We’re gonna really focus on today is your heart rate. You’re gonna just focus on getting this number as high as you can, but we’ll never go above 200.

44:36 Brian Rose: 200, okay.

44:37 Samantha Murphy: Okay, but if we get to 200, I know CPR.

44:39 We’re gonna go in five, four, three, two, one, hit it. Little bit of bend in the elbow and just relax.

44:47 Brian Rose: This is my relax, I think.

44:49 Samantha Murphy: Okay. You’re focusing on the fact that you’re about to kind of go to battle right now.

44:56 How are you gonna confront the pain? How do you feel?

45:01 Brian Rose: It’s a big burn in the quadriceps.

45:04 Samantha Murphy: Okay. Solid burn.

45:05 Okay, so at this point he’s probably starting to really feel it and the fight is gonna start. So the question becomes, how bad do you want this, right? So think about that. Think about something that is gonna drive you when it really hurts to work harder, to not give in. Whether that’s someone you wanna compete against, whether that’s some kind of demon you wanna fight.

45:33 Channel that really intense determination that you have, Ryan. Stay really present in the pain. Negative thoughts are gonna come, push them out and just stay focused right on the moment. The mind always shuts down the body. The body always has more to give.

46:00 Smooth out that pedal stroke. Happen right now, okay? All I need you to do for the next 50 seconds is to hold right where you are, and then we’re gonna push that last minute. I know you’re feeling it, but you got it.

46:22 Yeah, yeah. So this next minute, Brian, I want you to focus. Any kind of negative energy, anyone who’s ever said you couldn’t do this or doubted you in this project or process, let’s do this. Use that energy. Channel it.

46:39 45 seconds, this is it. You have absolutely no chance left to make it go harder. So you either do it now or you’ve wasted your time. I want you to think about your children, right? You’re doing this as a role model to show them what you’re capable of.

46:55 You will actually not back down because you would not want them to back down. 10 seconds, come on. Don’t give in, or you wanna give in, don’t do it. I know, you got it, you got it, you got it. Two, one, and done.

47:23 Let’s get him some water.

47:25 Brian Rose: Oh, I see some old demons. How was that? It was fun to see them. Wow, that’s bringing back memories of me and Samantha.

47:36 That was a hard, hard day. And what happens right after that is something that you don’t see. And that’s where I told Samantha I had all these flashbacks about all the failures I had in the past and all the people I let down in New York City. And that all came up during that heavy, heavy training where I was pushing myself mentally. And you can watch all that in the full movie, Iron Mind, it’s on our website, but one thing she said there I think is very important.

48:02 She said, the brain shuts down before the body. The body always has more. And that’s something I said over and over to myself as I was training for this Iron Man race. And I went back to London and I trained, I think, I was training 13 times a week, every single day, usually twice a day for this race. And I remember always thinking that mantra in my head, the brain shuts down before the body.

48:25 The body always has more, always has more. It’s the brain that quits first. And so whenever I got into the hard moment, I would push through and then I would expand and my brain would expand just like David Goggins taught me. And you’ll find the same thing happens to you if you can find a way to push through. Now what did I use?

48:42 This is important. How can you have some fuel to push through these moments? For me, I had a lot of people I let down in New York City, a lot of people. And most importantly, I let myself down. I really let myself down.

48:56 And this was my way to put all that stuff right, to finally show up and be redeemed, to be forgiven for everything I had done 20 years in the past. So for me, it wasn’t an option to quit, and every time I was thinking about quitting, I thought about the people I let down, about myself I let down, about my kids if they ever saw me quitting, and I just would not let myself quit. There was too much riding on this, it was too important.