Episode 147: How to Make Fitness Fun

One of the creators of one of the most successful fitness programs in history would say that he thinks Finns is horrible. He hates fitness. Has nothing to do with it, really. Well, we're going to talk to that guy on today's episode of the movement movement.

The podcaster people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting Pete first is, you know, those things are your foundation, although he might take it in a whole different direction. What do I know? He's got a cat on his lap, which we can talk about too.

We're now dog people in our houses at a cat people, but that's a whole other conversation. Anyway, this podcaster for people who want to know what it takes to be able to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or cross. Or whatever you like to do and enjoyably, efficiently, effectively, and wait, did I say enjoyably? Trick question.

I know I did because if you're not having fun, you're not going to keep doing it. So find something that you want to do that's fun. And I am Stephen Sanction from Zero Shoes dot com, your host of the podcast. And we call it the movement movement because we're creating a movement that involves people.

You were one of those people. I'll tell you about that. It's really easy about natural movement, letting your body do what bodies are supposed to do. And what else can I say about that?

The movement part is really simple. We're just trying to spread the word. So go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You'll find previous episodes all the way to interact with podcasts, which means like and share and give us a thumbs up, hit the bell icon on YouTube, etc., etc., you know how that works.

And in short, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. And so let us jump in, Mason, tell people who you are and why you're here. And I don't know if we want to start on what I tease in the intro. Yeah, we'll do that.

So who are you doing here and why did I say what I said? Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show, Stephen. I'm like most people on the lifelong fitness enthusiast, but I don't like fitness. And when I got into my direct at P90X, it was like the last thing on my list.

If you were like, do you want to do car commercials? Do you want to do this? But I was very lucky. And what I did was just really flip it around because prior to that, it was like Jane Fonda.

And everything was pastel and perfect. And I really wanted to have fun. I wanted to make fitness enjoyable. If you were going to spend an hour working out, I wanted it to be something that was an experience and fun, not just counting reps or talking about weights and posture.

So I joke and say, I don't care about fitness. I care about entertainment because I run to the camera and you can entertain people. Well, then they keep coming back and they don't think about it as fitness. And then lo and behold, if you show up on a regular basis, you're going to get some results.

I always find the phrase working out very funny because who wants to work? And why are you doing this? I'm working outdoors. It seems a little now to me.

I'm not an audience connection. You know about this? What? No, I do not.

What is it? All right. One evening, Sunday evening, my wife and I are on the couch watching TV as we do because as an entrepreneur, I think the most important skill you can have is knowing how to turn on a television and turn your brain off because the hologram. Anyway, phone rings.

I look at it and the caller ID says Tony Horton. You know, Tony Horton. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, Tony was for people who don't know.

Remember, he was the guy in P90X. Tony is Tony is Mr. P90X. So I say, Hey, look at this.

And my wife says, well, if he's, you know, the famous guy you think he is and why is he calling you your cell phone? It's Sunday night at eight o'clock. And so I let it go to voicemail and then a couple hours later, I check the messages and it was in fact, Tony and I call him back and we hit it off like way too crazy. I mean, we're in many ways, brother from another mother and just had so much fun and happily.

And you don't know this, apparently Tony's been like, you know, wearing zero shoes for a couple of years now and has turned almost everybody into turned almost everybody. He bumps into into zero shoes fans because they put him on and like himself. That's awesome. That's my wacky connection.

P90X. But so how did you become a P90X director and people might find this interesting. What does it mean to direct? I don't know if you did the infomercials as well as they work out themselves.

But what does that mean? And how does one get that kind of a weird gig with it? No one ever even thinks about it. They don't realize what you do to do that.

Well, back when I directed it, the end of 2003, believe it or not, we're close to 20, the 20 year mark. Oh, Molly. It was just by luck. So my one of my sisters roommates had married the CEO and Beachbody was a very small startup.

And Carl and I became friends. He said, I'm looking for somebody to do, you know, young directors. And I became part of the original P90X test group, P90X test group. And one thing led to another and I ended up being the one who directed it.

But I kid and say, or not really. But back then doing a fitness video to me was akin to doing a wedding video or porn. It was like the same, like nobody cares. You're going to get some money and it's just, but it's not a career.

It was slightly sweatier than the latter and slightly more interesting than the former. And so, you know, and there's a lot of those jobs that I had turned down along the way, but this one felt like there was some opportunity there. And one of the big opportunities that I latched onto was Carl, the CEO, it said, this is going to be completely different. It's extreme and just the completely different part.

I was like, great. So there's a room for me to bring in some other ideas. And he had a crew of producers and everything that I was wanting to change. So they all kept on like going, you can't do that.

That's not how it's done. And I said, yeah, that's how we're going to do it. And Carl kept on saying, yeah, trust this guy. So let's back up around that era.

What did the fitness? I mean, hold on to 23. So I was long out of coaching and teaching by then. I was working at a gym in New York in 19 went back to high school in 1981 when aerobics was the thing.

And so leg warmers were everywhere. But so now we're talking 20 years after that, even what was the universe looking like and what were you then looking to do to shake that up? And Jane Fondes was still on the scene. Richard Simmons, Tybo, like these were the leading brands and they all had some.

Sorry, wait, I'm sorry. Billy Blanks. Where's your legs? Yeah, nice.

Yeah. If that's some good endorsers there, well, you know, Billy, the problem with the Jane got to get Jane. Oh, man, I'd be great. The problem with Billy is that I probably shouldn't have even said that because while he's been wearing our shoes, he won't publicly say that like a number of other people unless I gave him an insanely large amount of money, which, you know, we just were not that kind of company.

Well, you can say it. I guess we see. Well, yeah, that's, you know, there's things we're not allowed to do. Like there is there is a photo circulating on the internet of Billy Eilish wearing our shoes, speaking of at least, but we can't like, you know, promote that per se.

So it's anyway. All right. So yeah, so it was Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, all the Tybo was kind of breaking out of the mold because that was trying to, you know, it wasn't it wasn't. I mean, the big difference in the production and I would say in the approach that I took is that right.

That wasn't really directors of fitness. Like they just set up cameras and people did their thing. I approached it very much as theater. I looked at it as I've got all these talented people I get to work with, not just in front, but behind the camera.

I'm a very creative person. I'm a an artist at heart. I grew up as an actor at the high school performing arts and study dance outside of it. And I just love musical theater.

And so eventually I got into film and video and directing and producing. And so when I did P90X, I just brought all of that to the table. I was like, how do I make this without overthinking it? I really did.

Like, I didn't say I want to make this entertaining. I was doing it because it was fun for me, but I didn't like the repetition and just the music that most other brands relied on. You know, you think of, you think of Billy Blanks at the time and I love I loved aerobics, but it was a repetition that was the driving beat to it. Jane Fonda was music and all of these, including everything that was done at Beachbody at the time, they were shot in blocks.

People took breaks. They tiled down things. And I said, I was doing a one take and I was nuts. And they were like, why do you want to do that?

And I said, well, this is supposed to be extreme. Well, that's what you're asking the people, the people who bought it to do is do it in one. And it seems so obvious, but yet it was still not how things were done. And I was very much looking for the saga of it, the breakdown.

I wanted Tony to push as much as he did with me in the test group. I wanted to see people fail. I wanted to see the drama of how incredibly challenging this was. And I broke the third wall.

We brought cameras into the set and had Tony talking to them and I hired real people. We cast people that had been through test groups. We cast people from real life. It was only and prior to that, it was all fitness models, something.

We had a couple of them, but and that really made it fun. And the biggest compliment I ever got was hearing people as I directed every P90X there was except for the very last one, which is P90X3, but there was P90X plus and P90X one on one that went on for years and P90X2. And I would get this a note every once in a while from a fan, somebody who was part of the beach body community, they'd say, man, your stuff is so good. I will sit down and watch it and have some popcorn the first time before I even work out.

Like that's how I first I thought it was a joke. And I realized, I said, no, I'm dead serious. Like, that's how I entertained. I am.

I just like, enjoy watching. Well, you know what's funny? There's the flip side of that too, because I remember seeing somebody originally infomercials and they were so engaging that you I mean, I literally remember getting off the couch to follow along with the infomercial, which, which was not something you could do with any of the other ones. I mean, it was a great storytelling.

That was that was done by somebody else. Of course, all, you know, the videos that got away as the videos and the before and after because of the product. Yeah. Fascinating.

So then how are you saying more about then your thoughts about fitness from what you did as again, being a pivotal component. That's a parable term. I couldn't think of a better one. Critical component.

That's what I was looking for. Of one of the most influential, if not the most influential, fitness products to now. Big question is where are we at now or where? No, well, you know, it's more like how is your thinking of how is even what you do evolved as you and I and other people I hear rumors have gotten older.

That changes things as well. So and just, you know, and as things have evolved in the fitness world, I mean, of course, the joke is the biggest change in fitness in the last 20 years is testosterone, but that's a whole other story. So I mean, it's just unbelievable. The number of people who are suddenly diagnosed with low testosterone, which is statistically meaningless phrase.

So, but since you were kind of behind the scenes there and really seeing what was what for quite a while was a real trend and things have evolved. I mean, now CrossFit is a thing, quote, functional fitness. I'm putting your quotes around that is a thing, you know, Zumba is a thing, which is what did someone call that? Oh, they called it white person jazz or something, which I thought was pretty funny phrase.

I'm not trying to dis-Zumba. I just thought it was kind of entertaining, but it's an interesting thing. Zumba is in a much more low impact and dancing rather than sort of, you know, high intensity, whatever crossfit is trying to take high intensity to an extreme. The first time I saw them coming through a crossfit workout, they're trying to like yell at me to motivate me.

I went, right. It's not an actual competition. So you're yelling at me is doing nothing. If there's a guy next to me that I want to beat, that'll work.

Otherwise I'm just doing this for me. But, you know, but, but that's just because of when my brain works. But anyway, I mean, the way fitness has evolved in the last 20 years is tremendous. Oh, yeah.

It's, I think the good news about where we're at in fitness today is so many more people are aware that they need fitness in their lives and older people. You know, I consider myself in the older category in my mid 50s. Like there wasn't a lot of people exercising in their fifties when I was a kid, you know, walking, but like playing casual tennis. There you go.

Yeah. You know, it was a, and today people take it really seriously. I know I take it very seriously and it doesn't mean that you have to be extreme. So where have we gone?

P90X certainly had its moment. I will say that lessons that I personally learn from it were it's too extreme. Like you really, it's easy to get injured if you weren't really listening to your body, which Tony always preached, but it's a lot to do when you're also being told. You know, well, there's also, there's also a line that I say, which is, you don't know you did too much too soon until you've done too much too soon.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I still like right now I've had like a week and a half hiatus, where I just didn't have my normal routine down and getting back into it. I know that, you know, if I turn on the music and I get it in my head, I'll do too much and then I have another, then I have a couple of days where like I can't really work out because there's a problem.

Yeah. But if I really just go, okay, 20 minutes of like moderate working out and then the next day maybe move on to some cardio and then maybe come back to straight, but that takes time to understand that. It's hard. It's hard because.

I want to push. Yeah, because going on, yeah, going hard is going all out is more fun than knowing that you're pulling back in order to build back up. I mean, I've been off the track for a couple months because I've messed up spine and I did something where my sciatic flipped out and I haven't ever run for a month and I'm going to be on the track this weekend and it's the same conversation. It's like, how do I do these high intensity drills at 50%?

How do I do my all out sprint at 60% and just, you know, do that? Frankly, this is, we're taking this in the beginning of November. How do I do that for the next month? So I'm ready for the next indoor meet, which is six weeks from now.

Yeah. It's hard. It is. But again, back to where we're at in fitness today is more people aware and it's more accessible than ever.

The thing that I preach and talk about, which goes back to being on the X, which I still use as kind of my anchor because it was such a change is that somebody like yourself who's self motivated, who's in the industry, who's creating products and that's a different story, but the average person has access to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of videos and experts, experts claiming they get you in shape. Right. And so the good and the bad there is it's more accessible. People are more aware of the opportunities to be in shape.

The bad part is it's a glut of kind of mush. Not to find somebody you connect with who not only understands it, but then can motivate and entertain you. So my big thing is take an expert and teach them how to be a performer and then you really have a magic recipe. Because otherwise the entire training you need to be a fitness professional is to be able to count to 12.

Exactly. And that's I get one of the first things I do. For people who don't get a reference, that's just, you know, the maximum number of reps you're going to count to. Yeah.

I tell trainers, I go, if you're counting while I'm paying you, you are the most expensive counter on the planet. I'm like, madness. That's not going to teach me how to do a pushup. Like stop, stop explaining how to do a pushup.

It's ridiculous. Like, sorry, you're not allowed to say stop the madness. I can't. Why not?

Let's use a powder. All right. Stop the insanity. Oh, insanity.

That's what it was. Yeah, there we go. So it's just, it's, it's as simple as going. We know that we need to get out off our asses out from behind the computers and move our bodies.

It can, there's no one, there's no one magic bullet or secret. You've got to do the moves. And if you're entertained, you find somebody you connect with and you can keep doing it. It's not, that's when success comes.

It's really, you say that one of the things that was so fun for me when I got back in a track and field now for the 15 years ago is that it's all the track and field events. So everything from the short sprints, which indoors 50 or 60 meters outdoors, 100 meters the shortest that they care about all the way up to marathons and ultra marathons beyond. And I say, you know, the thing about, and then of course, the field events, the whole advantage of track and field is you can find the thing that works for you, that you enjoy doing. And then you said about the entertaining part, I have two training partners and any, on any given day, at least one of us will say to at least one of the others, I'm so glad you may become out here because I wouldn't have done it on my own, but we just love hanging out.

And you know, that social component, even if it's not from a coach from a peer is so critically important. And I think that's often overlooked. Totally. It's a, and a lot of people don't have that.

They don't have a peer. If you don't have a group, you are looking for something online, you are looking for your own community. And often that comes in this kind of form, which is you're on camera with somebody or you're working out at home alone. And so it really then falls to the trainer to excel in reaching through the camera and being able to connect with somebody at home.

That's the part that I like working on the most. My cat is making so much noise. Oh, it's not coming through the mic. That's good.

I mean, and if I like, so I reluctantly got a cat three something years ago and it was my favorite thing ever. I mean, I love this cat and everyone who knew her said, this is not a normal cat, which she was not. And then she died and we had two more cats and then they died and we're thinking, Oh, we're not going to maybe not get any pets. And to make a long story short, we both got our first dog.

We're more accurately. We both got a dog together. It's our first dog either. And my line is, I can't say that I love my dog more than my wife.

She tells me better. Not. Well, she says I'm not allowed to say that, but that's okay. She thinks the same thing.

It's crazy. So for both of you, and we still love cats, but holy smokes, man. Dogs are I got I got my big guy laying here and I know the old dad is like, I don't know what I did to deserve him. You know, it's like much better person than I am.

Oh, there's no question about that. It's all pets. I mean, at some point, we were thinking about getting a parrot actually a cat. For people who are into parents, we were looking at a kayak, which is a small Brazilian parrot.

But then we realized that we weren't planning on having children and getting a parrot is like having a three year old for 30 years. So that's funny. So we decided not to do that. But anyway, so back up to fitness things.

If somebody were to approach you at a random social event and and said they were you know, looking to do something, getting into the fitness, not even fitness, but just looking to find a program, find something to do. They're looking to get in shape. They're trying to lose some weight there, whatever it is. How do you give your experience?

What do you say to them? How do you respond? Well, I think I'd reframe it and say, if you want to make it, if you're a trainer and you want to make it in the industry today, the only way to do it. Besides, of course, just the part that I don't care about is the fitness part.

So your fitness credentials, be great at it. That is like square one. The bigger part is most people, if you want to have a longevity in the industry today, you really have to have a presence on camera, even if it's only for marketing. But the idea is you want to make more money than just the hours you're trading in a gym.

You have programs, you can do Zoom, you can do group sessions, and it is then you can really have a career. But to do that, you have to have a personality and have a personality. How I coach and extrovert. Hold on.

Where do you want? Can you find us on Amazon? Is that you can buy your personality in a combo platter? If you know your personality is who you are, and it's one of the most frightening and hardest things to tap into.

But like we're sharing stories here in a conversation, the thing that I teach and preach is that you have to learn how to tell stories about your life through in your fitness workouts, because I use the example of the food network or any cooking show. We don't tune in because we're like, Oh, I need to figure out how to make flapjacks. You're tuning in for the story and the emotional value. And yeah, you'll pick up some stuff, but there's not much network and the channels are running 24 hours a day.

There is tons of it. And it's not recipes, right? Storytelling, the majority of it. That's why we watch it.

So trainers are just now learning how to tell stories while they're taking you through a hit workout. It takes some, it takes some work, but that's where those are the trainers I see excelling and doing really, really well is they've, that's how they bridge that gap, build the community, build the trust and really then get fans that follow them forever. Well, that's great. From that perspective, and by before I asked the next question, I do have to back up and say that I don't think anyone has ever tried to look for or even try to make a flapjack in the last 50 years.

So you like my old school, if I can pan cake. Yeah, that's what I think you're telling. I think you're telling me. You're telling me.

Things that makes it different. Yeah, absolutely. Like you and I even talked about where we were from and how it feels. You were talking about New York and Colorado and we know, you made a joke.

You said I moved on Halloween because the culture shock was going to be less and for the people don't get that joke. People in New York are so different and strange that only at Halloween in a place in the middle of the country, could you even come close to find those people, right? So you and I know that in shorthand, but what makes, but if you had that conversation with a virtual audience and I wasn't here talking to you, explaining that way, yeah, entertainment is interesting to hear where people are from. It is interesting to hear our differences.

And by talking about our differences, there's often these deep connections, which is the best part. And for any listeners who happen to be trainers or thinking about this and scratching their heads, my favorite moments with trainers is when we get to the heart of who they are, which is usually through our greatest struggles and figuring out how to tell a bit of that story and bring it to the lens. There's something interesting about first of all, I'm still stuck on flapjacks. I'm trying to think of what else I can channel from the little rascals to beat that reference, but that's a tricky one.

I'll think about something Darla said, you know, I was in an event for people who wanted to start podcasts. And after hearing like 50 people pitch, what made their podcast so special. I noticed something that's kind of funny and interesting. And it was that everybody was pitching what you just said, it was their story of some struggle and how they overcame that struggle.

And there was two things that were interesting about that. One is after you hear the 50th person tell their story of struggle and redemption. It's like, yeah, yeah, I've heard it before. So on the one hand, it is what we as humans relate to.

On the other hand, everyone is pitching it as if their story was special. And what's so interesting was it's so universal and not special at all. And that sort of weird, not conflict, that sort of weird country. Yeah, it's like that's just such an odd thing to hold that on the one hand, we relate to these as being very unique special stories.

And yet we all have the exact same thing, which creates a different kind of bonding. And I find that fascinating. And of course, I have to throw on the flip side is, I mean, my quote, struggle, redemption story, just about being a injured runner, taking off my shoes and finding out that that here could not be frankly less interesting compared to, you know, or less dramatic than what everyone else was pitching. You know, I've been very fortunate that for whatever reason, mostly because I'm oblivious to many things on planet, you know, I never had like big, struggling things that I had to deal with.

I bet you have and you just don't think they are because of how you look at it in life. That's the other thing is if you don't understand that could be I guarantee, even if we have the time, I would ask you questions and be like, you know, that's well, let's just let me say this way. I never I don't have any memory of ever having an experience that seemed like, you know, hitting bottom or like having to ask for help or they mean, I've just been and but literally I don't think I didn't grow up in some sort of, you know, rarefied privileged air. It was really that like I remember my parents used to take vacations without my sister and I and it was like, all right, whatever, but I just didn't care.

In fact, just like, Oh, God, I don't have to think about them for a few weeks. That's awesome. So go away for a couple of weeks. You go over to two weeks.

Yeah. And how old were you? Oh, from the time I was seven or eight, maybe. And who did they leave you with?

Well, some human. I don't remember. Good. Listen, so you and I are similar in that respect.

I don't look at I don't look at my the other way of saying it is it doesn't have to be a struggle can just be a big shift. It can be a time where things everything changed. That's that I got one of those. I was embezzled and it was a horrible experience, but I don't spend a whole bunch of time dwelling.

I learned from it and move on with horrible experience. But I like in the right time, the right moment, I share that story. In the right time, the right moment, I share the story about spending time on a ranch in Montana, even though I'm from New York City and being being like called out as the city kid and crying. Like, I mean, there are hard stories to tell.

It was worse. You were a city kid who liked musical theater. How did you not get the shit beaten out of you every minute? Yes.

And very true. Very see, so exactly. But even though even though I look back on all these experiences as good ones, yeah, it's it's I mean, what you just said is funny and very true is that there was some very hard moments growing up. Right.

Like my parents got divorced. I still don't look at some people. It's like, it was a lot. But you know, this is going to come back to our whole thing about fun.

And I still have the questions that I've had locked and loaded for five minutes, which is that and this is me personally, I'm not suggesting other people should be like this, but because these stories are so universal, I fundamentally don't care about them. Like I've gotten kind of bored with them in a way. So if you're going to interact with me, I'm most likely to not get a lot of weight to your story of well and misery. And I'm by just saying that as being hardly rude.

But what I'm more interested in is very rude. It is. But what I'm more interested in is what you're doing. I mean, when I meet someone, I'll often say, so what do you do that you find fun?

Keeps you happy. I don't care what you do for a living. Although if that's what it is, I'm happy to hear it. I want to know what's the, you know, I'm just curious about the cool part, the afterwards part.

I don't need the because part before. You know what? Maybe I didn't finish this. Ultimately, ultimately, a great story is one of redemption and it explains what you've learned and how you have blossom because of it.

So it's not like always me. I get it. My thing is, I don't know. For whatever reason, and this is my whack out psychology.

I will confess. I don't even like telling my own stories of anything that may have been unpleasant in the past. And there's a weird, again, I'm just revealing a bunch of my bizarre psychology. Laina, my wife refers to something that I do as my most endearing and confusing trait.

And that is there are people who have done things that have cost me in actual dollars, like tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Now, I think of it in a few cases, literally millions of dollars. And when I see those people, I'm still happy to see them and curious to know what they're up to because I know that what they did, even if it was personal, which it never was, but even if they were find a deliberately screw me, that's just some messed up thing in their brain. It's not personal.

So why, you know, I don't take it personally. And so I'm curious about that. Now I'm going to ask you a question. Okay.

So I'm like this for as long as I can remember. And, you know, look, you could argue that it's a sort of spectrumish, if you will, but it's really that I just like when someone is at a situation like this, somebody called me, they were potentially investors in our company and they were going to pass on investing us. And I could tell from the opening line that it was going to be, it's not you, it's me call. And as soon as they said, look, we're going to, now you can stop right there.

I know what you're going to say. And I don't care about what you're going to say afterward because so I will tell you in the six to 12 months, I'll be sending you an email with the subject line. Is it too rude to say I told you so because we're going to prove that you're wrong, but that's okay. If you don't believe me now, I don't care.

I'm moving on. Or here's a weird version that's relevant for you to pull out of today's headlines. I remember when I was going away to a summer camp for a couple weeks, when I was 10, actually, I know exactly how it was. And my dad who grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania as a Jewish kid in a predominantly Pennsylvania Dutchy neighborhood, he got passed a lot.

And so he was sitting down talking to me about anti-Semitism and all I could think when he said, you know, there's these people who might try to get in your way and prevent you from doing things because you're Jewish, all I could think was, well, then I'm just not going to deal with them. I mean, why would I try and it just didn't occur to me that any, I mean, that just seems silly. It's like, why beat my head against a wall if someone has some crazy thought. And then in college, I was dating a woman and we're having a great time.

Then we had like, I don't know, some vacation, he's something that we separated and when we came back, she totally ghosted me. And this was before that was a verb. When I finally tracked her down and said, you know, what happened? We were having a great time.

She says, I found out you were Jewish. And I went, wait, are you serious? She was, yeah. And I just walked away.

I had the exact opposite experience of that. A really close girlfriend and she broke up with me because I wasn't Jewish. We're still friends, but I remember, I remember going, wait, what? Yeah.

Like, yeah, we never worked out. I remember saying my parents, you know, they did have the Mary and I, a real thing. And I said, look, if I can find anyone who can deal with me, putting an extra barrier in the way of that is just really a problem. It's not going to be worth it.

I get the point. I mean, I will do it on with religions all the time. Oh, yeah. They do whatever.

It doesn't matter. But suffice to say, again, you know, what's interesting to me is always the, what are we going to do moving forward? Like, I don't care. You know, this is something that happens even with the business.

Someone does something and they made a mistake, whatever it was. And I say, I only care about that because to the extent that you've built in a system for not doing it in the past, but I really don't care why you did it. I just want to know what you're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, because talking for me to talk about unless you need me to help you hack out a system, I just don't care because it's not going to help us. You're doing, sorry for interrupting is you're doing another version of entertainment or we are having this conversation where you're talking about your philosophy in life.

And so that's another way of going, that's a little bolder because it can come across as preaching. Like, here's how I believe you should live. Oh, no, it's just narcissistic. Well, listen, to be in front of the camera, you've got to be confident and a little bit of that too.

No, it can come in all sorts of forms of entertainment as my point. I just want to get back to the idea. OK, you've got to be able to do more than fitness. So if you can do what you're doing, which is here's my philosophy in life, I usually like the idea that it stems from something you learn so you can explain the learning process, but you could also do what you're doing right now, which is, hey, this is how I've lived my life and I believe it's a good way and always looking forward and never.

Oh, yeah. Well, of course, I would never say that because it's going to be a weird one. A friend of mine, another entrepreneur calls me one day and says, hey, we're getting some people to get together to go to Richard Branson's island to hang out for Richard Branson. Do you want to go?

And I said, why would I do that? I'll take your place. Well, it's just happening to us. But why would I have any reason doing that?

This imagine what you could learn from Richard Branson. I said, I'll tell you what I can learn from Richard Branson. I'm not Richard Branson. Yeah.

No one else is Richard Branson. You know how we know? There's only one Richard Branson. Here you go.

So, you know, I don't need to spend 20 grand to sit on an island and figure that one out. Oh, yeah, just spend 20 grand. Oh, it's going to be stupidly expensive. Yeah, it's not going to happen.

So here's the questions I have locked and loaded for now, about an hour and a half. Right. You got me warmed up. So now let's start.

That would be a fun one. We'll have to do that. We'll get Tony and Volto. Oh boy.

It would be ridiculous. Anyway, so we're just... We think you and I talk a lot. You didn't get a word in edu-wise with this guy.

Well, no, this is why he and I got along so well is that it was just like verbal tennis for an hour and a half and it was silly. And we said things that are just not fit for human consumption. Right. So we're at said party and someone who comes up to us is not looking to be a fitness professional, but it's just looking to get in shape.

And without just saying, hey, get some form of P90X, given the plethora of options and given your experience and given this whole idea that we want this to be fun and we're talking about the professionals making it entertaining and fun, what do you recommend to someone who's looking for something to do to get in shape or whatever that means? Yeah. I mean, there's so many questions to ask of somebody, but eight and a half. I'm that guy.

Hit me. You're that guy. So what do you like to do, first of all? I know you.

Well, other than watch TV and cook. I like those things. I get what happens is I get to the point where I just feel like I've got to go do something and I have a fondness for high intensity things. I'm a sprinter and I'm not a runner.

I like lifting heavy stuff. But as a 60 year old guy with a back problem, I'm not allowed to do that so much anymore. But I like things I get bored easily. So it's got to be something that's engaging and it's got to have a challenge component to it, either a literal competition or something that is self competing enough, self motivating enough and where I see progress so that I want to get to that next step.

There's got to be some light at the end of tunnel, some thing that I can actually accomplish that feels satisfying. So remember, I'm not a fitness professional. I'm an entertainment professional. I'm a director, but I would say where you could be my older brother in terms of our age and I would say if you didn't know much about fitness and I'd say, look, Steven, you're right.

You've got to be careful with your body. Everybody's backs breakdown as we get older. Number one, protect what you've got. And number two, you got to keep moving.

So for instance, one of the things I'm picking up because I like to keep on changing it up is pickleball because I like community because I like movement because I'm over 50 and there's excitement and there's fun and community and getting out. So there's one I'm also doing and I would recommend for you a little bit, not that this replaces everything. I think variety is really the spice of fitness. So I did some consulting for a VR company that was bought by Meta called Supernatural.

And because of that, I researched VR and now I play table tennis with people around the world in virtual reality and it's mind-blowing and I'm dripping in sweat. Often, you know, most of the time I'm having good conversations. Once in a while, there'll be some jerk that's on there and you'll have to turn them off or deal with that. It's fun.

And then last, and then my last comment, you would be, if you wanted to get something, if you're in a, you know, I know you're in Colorado, so you have sometimes when you usually have beautiful weather, but sometimes if you're indoors, one of my favorite content is treadmill rises, I fit, has a Nordic track, I did a bunch of work with them and they have done an extraordinary job of creating content that doesn't, that is not based on fitness, it's based on an experience. So one of the things I do, and I'm not a runner, but I wanted to do more cardio, do more walking, do more running, learning how to do it, is I climbed Mount Everest. I think it was six weeks, I think it was six weeks, a six week program with three of the best climbers of Mount Everest in the world that told their stories, talked about the history of the mountain. It was almost like watching a natural geographic movie while you were participating.

And so that is something that stimulates the imagination as well as getting you in great shape and is different. So those are kind of like the three different things that are in my life, and I recommend a use since we're in similar categories. I love it. And the VR table tennis, I'm not a table tennis player, but I love that idea is fascinating.

But I got to tell you, where are you letting now? I'm in Los Angeles. Okay, if you were back in New York, I would point you to our friends over at Rome 149, which is a sort of VR treadmill thing. I can't even describe it.

Let's just say Chris McDougal, who were born to run, we sent him over there and he said, this is the most fun I've ever had running. I don't mean running on a treadmill. I mean, running ever. And so they're just getting started.

They're hoping that they can franchise or build out over time. But for anyone who's in New York, go check out Rome 149 for something. I'll do it in some on there. In that same vein, there are hundreds of nerds I think.

And so, yeah, it's so funny. It's like I'm thinking about when the Nintendo week came out and it's sort of a virtual fitness, except that everyone quickly learned that you could sit on a couch and flick your wrist and do the same thing that they're doing. The Xbox Connect never really took off in that same regard because it was a little ahead of its time in terms of what it could do about being engaging. But those are really interesting ideas.

There's one that I was waiting to see if you set it when you set it indoors. One thing that I actually do like, but I don't do it enough, I don't know what that means, is jumping rope. And I like it because there is that thing of developing a skill where you can very quickly see that you're demonstrably getting better and finding ways of making it harder too. I'm not allowed to mention this one explicitly the same way that I mentioned people like Billy Blank's before.

But there's a guy who owns a, or he's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar footwear brand. He's a big jumper and he calls me every couple of months to say, you know, I only wear two shoes, the ones that we make in yours. And I wear yours when I'm jumping every day and sometimes I just keep it on all day. And I'm not allowed to say who it is.

But that's another, again, for me, that was, in fact, I was competing in jumper rope for a while until I realized, what happened? I don't know, there was something about it where I hit a point where I went, eh, I'm not going to be able to do the things that I really want to do. Like I'm too old to be able to do some of the stuff that was super, super fun. So yeah, yeah, I hit a limit in, or sort of like, way back when I was doing circus arts like Chinese, Paul and trapeze and things, and same thing.

I'm not going to be in circus, LA. I'm not joining a circus. And this is really hard. So yeah, that didn't do it.

Sprinting is still for me, you know, a thing that I just enjoyed. And you know, I'm going to throw something else in the mix. I'm going to say that, and I'm going to see what you think about this one. Ideally, you also might want to find something that gives you some intermittent reinforcement where you can tell that it could have gone a little better if you had only done that.

And I say that because intermittent reinforcement is the most addicting thing for human beings. Give us an example. Well, sprinting. So no one has ever finished a race thinking they did it perfectly.

They always could have done better. When I finished a race and someone says, how'd you do? I said, do you just want a number for the time? Or can I tell you what I did wrong and give you the excuses?

Because that's the way we normally talk about it. It's like, I did OK, you know, I stumbled out of the blocks, you know, I got it. Even if your time is great, you always know you could do better. And that's very addictive.

It's very much like any of the Japanese arts like Zen archery or Icabana or, I mean, any of the Japanese arts where they set you up where you want to try and do it perfectly, but it's just not possible. Right. It's true of anything in life really. True.

But they like really explicitly, you know, put you in that bind and you either just finally ask where I'm not going to do it or it just keeps you for life because you know, you can always do a little better. You can always pull that slob machine and get, you know, all sevens instead of seven, seven in part, since them. And, you know, and and so I think that the social component is huge. However you do that.

And then that intermittent reinforced, look, playing table tennis, I have no doubt without asking a question that there's times where you walk out, you have a great workout, but you're going, ah, I could have, I could have just take that one. It was always somebody better. It's always in my head. How do you get that guy's spin?

There you go. Oh, it's nonstop. That's what I like about it. I interviewed a guy on the podcast interview.

I had a chat with a guy on this podcast who's a professional world class tennis player and he said something that I had never even heard of because I'm a defensive player. It's like, my whole job is just to return the shot. I'm not trying to crush it. I'm not trying to play it.

I'm just going to wear them out. It was like, oh, that was so cool. I've played people who are much better than me and I and sometimes I'll pick up like, oh, they're not killing the ball. They're just returning it.

I'm the one who's trying to kill it and eventually I make the mistake. It's brilliant. You know what? It's been so crazy, but just for the fun of saying it.

So another conversation I recently had was with someone that we support named Raffian Stott. He's an MMA world champion. In fact, we're about to start a contest. He's got a world championship fight coming up and we're giving away to one person tickets for two, fly you there, put you up, the whole thing.

I said to Raffian, how do you, if somebody's never watched an MMA fight who thinks it's just horrible, brutal, whatever, but if you were to sit him down and watch it and have them understand it at a different level, what would you ask them to do? He said, you want to constantly look to see if you can figure out who's in control. Interestingly, the guy on the bottom, if it's on the ground, is often the one in control. The same thing with table tennis.

It's like everyone's looking for the smashes, but the guy in control is probably the one who just returns those. It's often. That's really cool. Yeah.

There's nothing I like more than discovering something about a sport or an activity that I would have never imagined in a million years, which is, and that's a good one. Yeah, that's true. Sorry, true. So, you guys, this is one of the podcasts, in fact, maybe the first where we haven't talked and don't necessarily even need to talk about feet and footwear unless you find some urge to say something about that, but this has been more than enough fun for me without it.

I have nothing to add probably that has ever been said on your show about that. Yeah, that doesn't matter. But more importantly, this, I will, well, anyway. I will add this about, actually, there's something.

My, we adopted our children from Taiwan. This goes somewhere, believe me. And we were visiting, we went back for a visit and they have, they're much more in tune with just general body wellness, not fitness, but body wellness. So we went to their old neighborhood and it was a park that ran down the middle of a thoroughfare.

And there was like a gazebo that was a very long gazebo and it had all of these rocks that were embedded into this walkway. And it was long. It was like, it's like a hundred feet. And we realized what this is for you to walk and to work on your feet.

To build up, to work on your nervous system. And it was none of us could really do it. Like I think I walked the whole length, but it took forever and I'm taking it. And I've now, I've bought like a small pad and almost daily during TV time or something.

I'll take off my shoes and socks and I will need my feet on that. And it's gotten better and better and I'm very like soft feet because we, I wear shoes all the time. Yeah, here's your thing. And it's great.

It makes it makes a real difference in your body health, I believe. Well, thank you for that pitch for a little product we saw on our website called a rocks R.X Rocks map. It's a little bit. There you go.

That same thing inspired by that same idea. I need to get one of yours. I know. I got to get it.

Yeah. And so there's that we also have, there's a friend of ours, a doctor, a surgical podiatrist named Emily Spliggle. And she's developed a product called, it's a technology called Naboso technology, which Naboso means barefoot in check. And it's basically the right geometry for these little foot stimulating things.

We have them as insoles and we've got to sample with the Naboso technology. It's all about foot stimulation. We don't need to dive into this. We had more than a fun, but yeah, that, you know, starting by just getting your feet able to be, get the stimulation they need and then be able to function in something like, you know, a rocky surface is critically important for anything else you're going to do.

My wife and I, we had a little anniversary vacation up in Grand Lake, Colorado, which is the headwaters of the Colorado River. And the trails around there, it's just all granite. And I mean, it's like lots and lots of rocks. They dug these trails out of a mountain.

And it's just so many rocks coming out of every place you could possibly walk. I joke that when they built the trails, it was like, yeah, it was good enough. And then they just walk away. But it's incredible if you're in a shoe like ours or you can hide these things barefoot, you have to actually work with the terrain and think about it.

And you're working a problem. It's like rock climbing with your feet in a way. And it was so much fun to do that. So yeah, that was another blast.

Anyway, any last anything we want to think about in terms of the fun of fitness instead of the county to 12 of fitness? Yeah, fine. What? Back to like our personal conversation.

Yeah. Fine. What works and don't measure yourself against anybody else. Oh, see, see, I'm going to counter that with part of me.

One of the reasons I love sprinting. Well, there's a caveat to it is that you do measure yourself about against other people. Like at the starting line, someone will inevitably turn to us, you know, and like very seriously, it's like, I have a good race. And I go, hey, look, have fun.

Don't get injured. And oh, yes, I really want to kick your ass. And it is very different philosophies. But it's all of it encompassed.

Like we all want to have fun and we're all trying to win. Let's not be coy about it. We're all super competitive. We know that about ourselves.

We know that it's stupid and we're over trying to change it. I get it for like the table tennis. Usually, you know, I want to win, but when I'm playing somebody who's much better than me, I'm enjoying learning. Absolutely.

But for the reason why I said that is because I know if I'm overly competitive on some things, I'm going to get hurt. I don't want to get hurt anymore because I don't want to get hurt anymore because I'm counterproductive. No, no, you're totally on people. There's a lot of people who will not do anything because they're not in shape.

So that's one of the things I'm just advocating is if you're not in shape or you don't feel like you fit in or whatever it is, it's fine something that feels good and just be consistent. Absolutely. That's the thing I'm pitching. And I agree.

And if you are in that situation, I mean, I'm putting in a whatever I'm putting my hat in the ring for competition at the level that's appropriate. And this is the other thing where in certain sports, for example, they really do break it down. So there are levels of the competition where you're working with right people or a good friend who's really into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And I said, you know, I would love to try that, but I know myself and you know, I know I put myself in a dangerous situation because oh, then you work out with the best people in the gym.

And I'm like, what? Because they're the ones who know how to take care of you. They're the ones who know how to teach you what you know, what you need to learn along the way, just like you said, rather than trying to beat you, frankly, the kids that are going to start kids, the people that are going to start in your basic class, they're the dangerous ones. So I thought that was interesting.

But backing up to the competition in a weird way for me as a sprinter, I have another layer of competition because one of the reasons that I enjoy the competition is I'm good. I'm not the best in the world. I'm an all American and I'm, you know, I'm up there. If I was really bad, it wouldn't be as much fun.

But the weird way that I'm competing against myself is that my goal is not to win a race necessarily. My goal is that I want to just keep hitting these all American times in my age group. And that's really. That's a great goal to reach.

Well, because they get slower over time. And so my secondary goal is to live long enough that, you know, it's easy to hit those and that I can win the race is going to run us aside. But it's a good one because it's, I mean, it's a fixed number. It's just on the edge of achievable.

I mean, it's not pushing me so hard. I'm going to do something stupid, but it's pushing me and to your point though about, you know, the problem with competition, it took me and I hope this is a lesson. It took me two years to learn that when I was training, if I had the thought, I'll just do one more. And that was the 20 year old part of my brain talking and I got to shut that guy up.

And it took me another two years to learn not to change my gate when I'm in a race and there's someone in the lane next to me, either right in front of me or right behind me. Either one was making a difference for a while. I learned to literally and figuratively stay in my lane. And those are those are both hard one lessons.

It took me years to learn how to do both of those. The one you're talking about that I can relate to very much is I very much love snowboarding and skiing still. And the idea of you got to get in as many runs as possible totally change that philosophy, get in as many great runs as possible. Lucky enough that I'm not like, oh my God, you got to get your money's worth.

Like, no, my money's worth is great runs. Not how many runs. So often you're like, oh, the snow is still great. The light's still good.

But your body's just had enough and you know, quit while your head is the opposite. If I'm planning on doing, if I'm planning on doing, you know, 400 meter runs and the third one is really good, I'm done. That's it. Yeah.

We got to come up with a good philosophy catchphrase for that. We talked about your head. Yes. Do it.

Somebody got it. Yeah, we'll think of something. We'll think of something. It's do 3 quarters of your best.

It's go back, wait, hold on. It's just do it at 75%. That's it. Just do 75%.

Thank you. We'll think of something. Great. Yeah.

Here we go. Do P89x, do we'll find some? Anyway, Mason is being a total total pleasure and thank you. And so if anybody wants to get in touch with you for any reason whatsoever, is there a way for them to change?