You know, when you're thinking about exercise, maybe the least important thing about exercising is what you actually do for exercise. What does that mean? Well, you're going to find out on today's episode of the movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, specifically starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs, they are your foundation after all. And we also break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the outright lies you've been told about what it takes to run, walk, hike, play, to yoga, cross whatever it is you like to do, and to do that effectively and efficiently and probably most importantly, enjoy it.
Because if you don't like it, you're not going to keep doing it anyway. So find something you like, hey, I'm Stephen Zash and co-founder and chief barefoot officer here at zero shoes.com. And we call this the movement movement because we, that includes you more about that in a second, are creating a movement about natural movement. What happens when you let your body do what it's made to do instead of forcing it to do things that it shouldn't do.
In my case, by shoving it into shoes that don't fit like the way human feet should fit or work or eat a dead. Anyway, the way that involves you is really simple. Just spread the word, share, like it as a thumbs up, give us great reviews, tell people about what we're up to. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
And one way you can do that, go to www.jointhemovementmovementmovement.com. You'll find previous episodes, all the places you can find us on social media. If you want to get this podcast from somewhere other than where you already found it, we'll show you the other places you can get it, et cetera, et cetera. So let us have some fun.
Brian, welcome and tell people who you are, where you are and what you're up to and why you're here. That was four big things, but I trust you can do it. Stephen, thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited.
I'm actually vibing and feeding off the energy already. It's going to be a great conversation. I'm Brian Keene. I'm Brian Keene, I'm on all the social media channels hosted at the Brian Keene podcast.
We're on the top health podcast in the world interviewing guests in health wellness fitness, three time best in an author. And I am a, you could probably say a hybrid athlete. I've done basically everything I paid high level sports. I competed in bodybuilding.
I went into ultra marathon triathlon, adventure races, and I've got a wide spectrum of what I've done. And I basically spend my living now working with people, helping them get into great shape, looking at their fitness and documenting my journey online with all the cool stuff that I get to do. You might want to tell people where you are or where your voice is from. I am in the west of Ireland where I'm born and bred.
I lived in California for years in London. So I was away for quite a while. So I've learned to slow it down and speak and enunciate and say all the words are supposed to be said, but I currently reside not too far from where I grew up in the west of Ireland. I think we might have known this.
So I was just in Dublin about a month ago, a little less than a month ago, hanging out with our lead programmer who we've been working together for 12 years and we never met. And my wife and I had to come over to Europe to do some business with our European office. And I had an absolute blast there. And it also cracked me up because they were definitely stereotypical things where it was a handful of guys who at any given time of the day or night were clearly just looking for a fight.
It's true that the cliche of fighting and drinking is so ridiculously true that anyone that comes to Ireland is like, why are there people just looking to fight and why are there people drinking at two o'clock in the middle of the day? I'm like, yeah, we just do that sometimes. Well, they're drinking at two o'clock because I couldn't find anything open at 10 a.m. And I will, I'm going to pat myself on the back when I say this and you'll have to explain what I'm about to say because I, well, let's say I think you'll be able to explain what I'm about to say.
And I did head over to the 40 foot. And how did you find it? I loved it. Do you want to tell people what it is?
I think it'd be better explaining your words because I would have been your experience. We'll tell the story. Okay, let me back it up. I'll start by saying, so I've been a polar bear, someone who jumps in the freezing water running plus or minus New Year's like chip away the ice in the water for a long long time when I first moved to Boulder, I think I did 17 years in a row.
And so the 40 foot is this little outcropping where you can jump in the water outside of Dublin. And the water is just the water. It's not overly salty, overly salini. It's like the night before I had really good oysters and it felt like I was just having really good oysters.
So I mean, it was delightful. It's a beautiful experience. We I'm on the West Coast. So the 40 foot 40 is on the East Coast and then Black Rock is on the West Coast.
So people kind of alternate between the two with something like do myself more so for recovery and just for grounding like yourself when you're typing it all up in your head. There's nothing like just getting into the water, getting a little bit of that salt connecting grounding and you're like coming out feeling like a million dollars. Yeah, don't leave out the coldness of the water. In fact, to your point, I had a friend called me one day.
He was having some sort of emotional turmoil and he was asking for my help. I said, just bring a bathing suit and come on over. This is a time when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, right off Boulder Creek. So he comes over and he starts to tell me what's going on.
I said, I shut up. Just come with me. So we go to Boulder Creek, we jump in and he gets out of the water and starts to try and tell me something and I went do it one more time. He jumps in one more time.
I said, okay, what was your problem? He goes, no idea. Yeah. Yeah.
Like how good is that? If you could bottle out like we won't get into a tin foil house in pharmacy, if you could bottle out feeling we'd be multi multi billionaires and it's completely free. You just hop in when you feel amazing. When it's funny, people think that a cold plunge is a similar thing, but when it's moving water or an ocean, whole different world entirely.
Yeah, it's you can't compare the two at all. Oh, definitely not. No, the benefits that you get from being actually in nature, getting a bit of the magnesium, the, as you said, the water flowing in a cold plunge. It stays so you're able to climatize to it.
It feels it's night and day in terms of difficulty, but also in terms of benefit. It's just and there's something there's something I find very entertaining when you get out of that water, you stay in long enough until hey, it feels totally fine, which means you stay in a little too long and then you get out and the entertaining part is watching your body try to figure out what the temperature is internally and externally. So for a moment, you feel hot and then you're just going to start shivering like crazy and it's like everything in between, but it's, but, and then you have this insane thought. It's like, I got to do that again as soon as possible.
It's amazing. I remember the first time I ever had that. The after drop is what it's called. I ran an ocean marathon in the Arctic in 2019.
So I was doing a lot of cold water, swimming and dives and plunges to try and position myself for that. But the first time, even I went in, I did 20 minutes and it was October. So it was cold. It was absolutely freezing.
I'm not sure what the Fahrenheit equivalent does, but it was about three degrees centigrade. Yeah, four degrees centigrade. I was barely over freezing. I was, I came out feeling like I'm in your daughter's interview.
Like when you get to a minute, you're shaking, shivering and then your body just becomes a climatize and you're like, oh, I can do as long as I want. And then I came out and I got that after drop. I was in my car. I'm not even joking.
I got a cup of tea. I couldn't drive the car. I had to turn the heat on for last because I was like, for half an hour. I was like, I'm late for work.
I want to drive home and I think right. We will go slow and steady next time. Let's not jump in and do 20 minutes the second time ever. So just a nerd, anyone who's listening that wants to do it, maybe stare with three, four minutes and build up.
It was funny. And my jaw doing that shivering. Where am I teething or chattering? And I'm with my friend, I'm saying, I can stop it.
I can stop all this if I want to for only about 20 seconds. And then it just takes over. It's uncontrollable. You just give me a flashback or this whole thing.
Give me a flashback. When I was living in New York City, I was doing IKEA with a bunch of very interesting, very crazy people who were trying to break it down and see, does this really work at all, let alone as a fighting art or martial art or self defense or whatever it is? And there was this one teacher, his name was Hal Lerman. Hal was a real estate guy from Brooklyn who was one of the best IKEA guys I've ever met in my life.
And all of us had hung out with in that class with him. We were really just really trying to explore this whole thing. Anyway, it's a February New York. We finished the class.
We all leave. We're heading to the subway and it's one of those New York biting, biting cold days. The wind is blowing. There's snow on the ground.
It's just a little drizzly. Everyone's complaining about the cold. And I say something like, I like it times like this to try to just really feel the sensations without attaching a label to the experience. And then it doesn't really feel as cold.
And there's a long pause. And then Hal says, yeah, I did that Zen shit for 40 years. It's fucking freezing out here. There we go.
I would have said that there's going to be some Buddhist Zen like response. That everyone can take and I'm going to be able to take up the back of the podcast. And I'm like, no, it's cold. It's just freaking cold.
No, no, that is the Zen life response. Mountains or mountains or rivers or rivers in New York and February is fucking cold. That is the Zen response. But it's an interesting segue.
I mean, to go from bodybuilding to triathlons, unusual path to take, can you say a little about actually, well, I want to frame this. Can you tell people what your, I mean, what's the word it is? This is the whole idea that when it comes to exercise, the least important thing might be exercise. You want to tell people why I said that.
And if that fits in with your story of going into bodybuilding, what that experience was like, because most people have a very worked idea about that. And then the transition to what you're doing now, that'd be, that's interesting to me. And it's not about me. So if you can, if you do, that'd be really fun.
Yeah, that's a great question, Steven. You said that right before we went on air and it fits perfectly because what I was attracted to when it came to things like bodybuilding and triathlon and ultra-marathons was more the kind of discipline and resilience that came with it as opposed to any of the physical fitness. Now I had different reasons for going into different things, but when I talk about even fitness and the exercise being the least important thing, which is so true in a lot of cases, there's like, I always tell people it's not the exercise program that's important. It's how you're executing the program that's important in a lot of cases, of course, as you want to then that we can go through it.
But my journey was a little bit, and I have to tell a little bit of a backstory because otherwise the transition into bodybuilding makes less sense. I used to be an elementary school teacher. So I was living and working in California. I was working with UC Berkeley in Northern Cal as a soccer instructor.
And when I was out there, I got a couple of health problems. I was hospitalized a few times with stomach problems and didn't really know how to fix it. I was given a lot of medications and kind of Western medicine of, right, your medicine is working up the dose. It is working up the dose.
It is working up the dose. And I got to that point when I was 21, 22, where I thought this can't be it. I can't go and 10x how much medication I'm taking. I need to like look at what's going on here from a holistic standpoint.
So I started to look into nutrition and that's what got me interested in that area initially. And fast forward 18 months, I was able to heal all my gut issues, heal all my health problems with my nutrition by changing up my lifestyle. And it got me into the space where fitness became a huge part of my life. Now I ended up working as an elementary school teacher because I thought that was the career path I was born in a school in a family for teachers.
It was a very safe and secure path. And it wasn't something that I particularly wanted to do, but it was the path that was laid out before me. And my very first teaching job was an elementary school teacher in a third grade in London. And I walked into a job because I was a male teacher, the shorter teachers, I was into sports, so I was able to coordinate physical education in the school.
And again, had a hand pick of jobs. And I was 30 minutes into my very first day of teaching. And I thought, this is what I want to do. This isn't what I want to do.
I spent four years getting a degree a year post grads. This isn't what I want to do. And I came home that Christmas a couple of months after. And the analogy I use in books and on podcast was it's like I spent years climbing ladder only to realize I was up against the wrong wall.
And when I got home that Christmas, my mom was having a conversation with me and I was really low and depressed and just feeling very down that, look, this is my career now. And I don't want to be doing this. This is 18, 12 hours of my day, Monday to Friday and I hate us. And she asked a question that I still use this day, which is 15 years later.
She asked, what would you do for free? And I thought about that and I was like, well, I would work in fitness for free. I was like, I love going to the gym. I love working out.
I was like, if I was cleaning the floor in a gym, I'd actually be happier than what I'm doing now. And fast forward, I signed up to a fitness instructor course, personal training course, qualified as nutritionist, certified as nutritionist, sports nutritionist. And started working in that space with people. And one of the ways that I tried to separate myself as a personal trainer one to one at a time was competing in these bodybuilding shows because it was something that was different to what other trainers in the gyms were doing.
So I ended up going into bodybuilding doing really well. I got a pro card in November of 2014, which just means that you can compete for money. And I was traveling around the world as a fitness model. We fought a shoot magazine, things along those lines.
I was really unhappy during this time. I was very calculated. I had a terrible disorder eating pattern. Like I was very strict for six weeks and then I would look like a Michelin man for two, three weeks at Ben & Jerry's for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So whole history and healthy patterns there. Let me make a note. Don't eat Ben & Jerry's breakfast, lunch and dinner. That's going to change my.
Just lunch and dinner. Just lunch and dinner. I got to breakfast with the problem is the intermittent fasting version of eating Ben & Jerry's. I got to.
100% Yeah. And you can't go wrong with that. Not Ben & Jerry's amazing. Don't get me wrong.
It's not to knock him. And Ben & Jerry's is literally one of my favourite foods. Post breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not a good idea.
Yep. And with bodybuilding, I was competing in that world and it's a very, for anyone that is even slightly familiar with it. It's exactly as you think. It's oiled up, muscular dudes and girls, depending on the categories.
And they're just on stage getting judged on how they look and getting marked on how big they are, how lean they are, etc. Basically like a dog pool competition for people. Just your on stage as a person instead of twirling around doing tricks and jumping up and down. So it's.
Anyway, I just like the idea of the documentation, especially thing of poodles. Because with poodles, the way they get those, those topiary like hairdos, that's the closest thing to bodybuilding I can think of. So they've got the little puff on the bottom there. There's their forums.
I got the little bicep puff. They got the, I mean, I never thought of bodybuilders and poodles, but now I won't be able to ever get that thought out of my head. There you go. And I feel like I've identified a spirit animal as a poodle, maybe my bodybuilding is for sure.
So there's obviously a connection in a tie there somewhere. But I did that for a while and in 2015, my daughter was born and that was my life changing moment for me. I was wanted to just be a better dad. I was walking around tired all the time.
I felt really unhealthy. Like I was calorie depleasers and just brain dead all the time. And I wrote my first book in 2016, released in 2017. And that changed everything for me.
The fitness mindset has been 16 weeks on the Amazon best setter lifts and it was it opened up all these doors for me professionally that were previously closed to me. And I had a great 2017 with work, but I started to feel a little bit unfulfilled in other areas of my life. And that's how I got into ultra is and that's how I got into triathlon. I was looking for a challenge that I could choose that would give me something to train for directionally.
That wasn't going to completely ruin my relationship with food and body image, etc. So bodybuilding was out for me. I wasn't going back into that. And the first ever ultra marathon I signed up for, I know you had an episode with David Clerick recently talking about bad water and the life of 100, etc.
Mine was married in the top, which is the six back to back marathon through the Sahara Desert. So I signed up for that in August 2017 and started training for that and ran as well completed it. Ran walked, hobbled the six marathons in April 2018. And that was my first ever transition into that world.
And then for 2018, I did marathon to stop 2019. I ran through the Arctic 230 kilometers through the Arctic. And then in 2020, I ran my first 100 mile ultra marathon in Nevada, the jackpot 100. And I've been trying to see now.
So I'm doing more martial arts and white high things and those lines now because I've kind of closed that chapter of my life. But yeah, as I mentioned, training ADHD, I literally jump around in all these different disciplines, depending on what I'm curious about. Something I recommend to people I work with as well as follow your curiosity. So no matter what you've been to the area about the enjoyment, what gets you excited, what can you find enjoyment in and then lean into that.
But that's a long winded way of how I went from bodybuilding to ultras and triathlon adventures. I like it. And I like where you landed because it's something I've been talking about quite a bit lately and you'll appreciate this. I think I don't know.
Well, find out the part of you know, find the thing you enjoy is critical. And I think people are human beings just in general. We like to imagine what we think we need to be happy in some imagined future. And then we look for someone who seemingly has done that.
And then we try to figure out what they did and we want to get a paint by number step by step, follow the lead, take do what I did plan. But that's not the way it works. And in fact, I'm going to take it out of context into business. Someone approached me years ago and said, do you want to pay some ridiculous amount of money to go hang out with Richard Branson on his island?
And I said, why would I want to do that? Imagine what you can learn from Richard Branson. I said, I know what I would learn. I've learned I'm not Richard Branson.
So I can't do what he did because I don't think and act and move and do anything like what he did in a similar vein. I especially when I stopped doing gymnastics when I was 32, I spent the next 10, well, 13 years till I got into spring at 45 trying things to see what I enjoyed and what made sense. Because there's some things that I enjoyed, but there was no value for doing them. Like I was doing a bunch of weird circus art things that were super fun.
But I wasn't going to be in circus LA. And so what am I doing this lately? I've been working out with a trainer. We do the most intense, difficult, super short workouts I've ever done in my life.
They are literally the most difficult thing I've ever done athletically in my life. And it's my favorite thing that I do every week because it matches my personality so perfectly that even though it is literally at the end of 10 minutes, I can't get off the ground. I'm ecstatic. And I'm not suggesting this for everyone because it's definitely not.
But the point is to find the thing that that lights you up that makes you just go, I want to do this again tomorrow, not because I have to, but because I want to even even even those days when it's like, I'd rather take a nap and you still do it. And after you did it, you feel good that you did it. That's good enough. So that mindset thing, which is why I brought you on here.
So in terms of moving what your mind is doing is a thing as well. Let's jump into that. Talk to me about how you really turned that in that understanding that you were getting into what became that first book and what you're doing with human beings or whatever you want to go with that, frankly. It's doesn't really interest in there, Stephen, that I want to ask first, if you don't mind because I'm curious based on the gymnastics, the sprinting and the high intensity.
So now, and I'm curious if this is the same for you because this is something I'm 36, 37, and I've been playing around with this idea for the last few years that it's a season of life thing. There was a time when I needed a very tangible goal, like a race or a competition I was working towards. And now at 35, 36, or 37, it's very much an enjoyment. It's why I'm doing my time and things that I'm enjoying.
Did you find that it was a season of life-based or was that always a case of it felt wrong and now that you enjoyed it? You enjoyed it? Or how did that look for you? I don't think it's a season of life thing for me because part of what I enjoy about sprinting is the competition.
What I like the reason that I didn't do any sprint training from college to 1145 was why it's hard. And there's no good reason for doing that. Now, the joke that I have about Masters, Track & Field, especially this sprints, but pretty much now the Masters Track & Field athletes I've ever met. We're all typically at an age where we know that being this competitive is stupid.
We're also old enough to realize that that's the way it is. And we're working really hard. Frankly, once you get past about 45, depending on the event you're in, but for sprinting once you get past about 40, it's just a question of how slow can you slow down? Because you're going to get slower, but you just want to slow down how you get slower.
Like for me, I'm a Masters All-American and while that means I've hit the run of the 600 to 100 below a certain time. And that time changes every five years. My goal is just to keep hitting that All-American time. My stretch goal, if you will, is hit the All-American time for someone five to 10 years, you're jumping to me.
And so that's motivating for me. That gets me out of bed. And I also enjoy the training. It's difficult.
There's something about that particular type of burst training that matches the way my brain works. And on the lifting that I'm doing now, there's all of that plus, some of what I'm doing is explicitly for becoming a better sprinter. And some of it is for building some muscle mass, so because that's connected to longevity. And some of it is undeniably for vanity.
I like it when I'm changing my clothes and my wife goes, oh, I like it when I'm hanging out with people and I tell them I'm 62 and they go, sorry, what? And I like it when people say, geez, you're in really good shape. And I'm thinking, not quite, but okay, I'll take it. So that's the combination that's, and some of that I would actually, I'm going to change my answer somewhat.
Some of that may be life stage, but some of it might just be the serendipity of finding all these things at this time in my life. And what I mean about the first part of that is I didn't, I wasn't working quite as hard to find a workout program beyond sprinting. That really fit me that I really liked. I've got a great home gym.
I do stuff every time I walk by it, most of the time. But I never like, I never was able to put out the effort to really turn it into something that I would do, in part because for the last 15 years I've been running zero shoes and I just didn't have the brain space to do it. So some of that fits into your cycle of life component and we can start singing in Hakuna Matata. And some of it is just the serendipity of all these things lining up the right time.
That makes sense. And it's interesting because what you mentioned there about zero shoes and the capacity, that's what happened to me after I wrote the first book was I had more money than I'd been making in a very, very long time, open to that point. And I had a lot of time, a lot of free time because the opportunities that opened up for me were very high leverage. They were speaking appearances, higher ticket offers for programming.
And I had all this time that I thought I actually need to go and physically challenge myself. And it's interesting, you mentioned there, and it's slightly opposite to my story when it came to what I enjoyed. I'm very vocal on my podcast and channels about how much I hate running, but I do ultramarathons. I'm very vocal.
I love having ran, but I hate running the process. I'm not built to run. I'm 5'8". Like going to a runner on a sprinter.
Yeah, I'm like you, I'm built to sprint. I'm 5'8", 175 kilos of 175 pounds, but 83 kilos of imagine. Someday, some day, fingers crossed, some days. I'm like a little hobbish.
Like I'm not built for these long distance 200 my ultramarathons. But what I loved about those challenges was they forced me to do things that I wasn't good at. And it humbled me a lot. And I found it made me a better person in other areas of my life because when you go into fitness areas that when you feel like a running downhill for a metaphor, i.e.
bodybuilding for me, I look at a way I put on muscles. It's very much a genetically gifted for that. But if I stop running for a week and I try and run a 5k, I'm out of breath. Like it kills me because I'm not built for that.
No, no, no. So here's the part we have in common. Power athletes in general don't have a good VO2 max. But the flip side is, I would argue, even though you don't like running but like having run, the part that you like is the finding and adopting a challenge.
And so for you, it was finding a thing that I need to figure out how to get good at, even though I'm not, I don't have a propensity for it. And for me, it's been just finding the thing that I just have the propensity for, because I have no interest in trying to fuck the tide. And maybe that is a cycle of life thing because I try to, I mean, I want to learn new things. I want to learn to do stuff I haven't done before.
I just have one that just happened where I'm like, oh, I got to do that. And now I can't remember what the hell it was. Anyway, it'll pop back in my head at some point. But so there's always things that I want to do.
But I'm very clear that I don't want to suffer for the sake of suffering. If I've got a good goal in mind, I'll put myself through it. But if I'm doing it because the goal is this imaginary happiness at the end, not because I want to pursue the goal is that I'm not going to do that. Yeah, they call it in one of the books, the I'd be happy win fallacy.
I was probably the king of that I'd be happy win fallacy. Oh my God, that is a life hack in, I know that's been a completely bastardized term. But if ever there was a life technique or hack, it's not a real thing that I'd be happy win. Yeah, do you know the book stumbling on happiness?
Yeah, great book, dang, yeah. That's what the hell, I mean, for people who haven't read it, I highly recommend it. But the premise of the book in a nutshell is that every thought we have is some version of I'll be happy when we're horrible at predicting I'll be happy when and being correct. We're even worse at remembering how bad we are at predicting it.
And we think we're special because we think if a million people that we interviewed got what we thought would make us happy and they're no happier, we'd still go, yeah, but if I got that. And his recommendation for getting over it, I want to hear how much this was yours or what you did differently, was go meet as many people as you can who've gotten it. And once you find out that ain't it, when that thought arises, it's not that it's going to stop. But when it arises, you're going to have a hard time believing it.
One of the stories, I think the universe sent me, my college days, that I never appreciated until I was older in life was exactly as you said there. And the language I've used, my own dialogue was when you speak to those people who are in the position you want to be in, you have to understand the cost they paid to be there. And are you willing to pay that cost? And I remember in our 20s and we were on what was a J1 in California at the time, we were in Berkeley University, we were before I got my job there a couple of years later, and we were on the night out, I think in the States it's called City Different, we were basically out in the pool, we'd go out chatting to girls, me and my friends, and that was all we were doing.
Irish guys, Irish accent, going into night, and you were shooting a barrel. It was the best thing ever, like literally all you'd have to do sometimes was ask what the time was and the accent would open the door for you. And as long as you would, any sort of wish about you at all, you were fine. But his line was, and I remember we'd be chatting and we'd be looking at really attractive girls on the other side of the bar and we'd be talking to them for five, ten minutes.
And he would always ask, is the juice worth the squeeze. And that was his line. And it's basically a representation, are you willing to pay the cost for the people who are in the position of where you want to be in? And I never connected with that at 2021, that I now do in my 30s, but I think it's applicable across timelines.
You want to hear something, this is something I don't think I've ever talked about this publicly, not that it's a secret, but I've never talked about it publicly, because why would I, and you'll see what I mean in a second. I got that lesson when I was 15, maybe 14, I was at summer camp and I was sick. And so it was my best friend. And there was a guy also in the infirmary who was the dishwasher, who was a few years older than us.
And my friend was like super obsessed with sex and said, I had sex and the guy says, yeah, I have. My friend's like, oh my God, what's great? He goes, what happened? Was this someone that was really hot?
No, wait, what? Well, we were friends, our parents were out of town. We thought, hey, what the heck? And then he started to say something for whatever reason.
I felt like my brain just opened up and I knew what he's going to say next is going to be really, really important. And he said, here's the thing I can tell you about sex. If you have it with someone you really like, it can make you closer. If you have it with someone that you don't really like or know, it can make you much more distant.
And it's not enjoyable to be like that. And I was a stand-up comic for 10 years where similarly there was lots of opportunities. And I actually did say to one woman who was hitting on me and I'm usually oblivious to that happening. I've been told that I'm a complete idiot when it comes to women being interested in me.
And I said to her, I said, yeah, I'm not really interested in doing this thing now when we're going to wake up tomorrow and have that awkward silence. And so she said, what are you talking about? I said, no, we're about it. And then we just went to sleep.
In the morning we wake up and there's an awkward silence. And when she meets my eyes, I went, that's what I was talking about. Wow. There's so much.
I feel like I knew that. I feel there's so many of myself included in past timelines and past versions of myself that needed that message. Even like I have a weekend plan now and now I'm going to question everything I do and all those things I make. And I'm like, I'm going to get it that weekend.
I'm like, you just told me. Didn't mean to ruin your weekend. You made it better. You probably made it better.
I feel like the higher version of myself. Thank you. OK. So this is a big tangent as I tend to take people on from the talking way back.
Not the what, but the how and comes to exercise and we're talking about mindset things and how. And again, if you can, what was it that sort of snapped you out of believing the I'll be happy when part. And let's kind of feed into the work that you've actually been doing. So people understand what it is that you've figured out if you want to call it.
That's a hard way of phrasing it. But it's all I've got and how that works when you're working with humans. Yeah, I remember when it happens. It was 2015.
I was backstage at the WVFF World Fitness Model Championships, which is basically where they bring all the top fitness models in the world. It's just a bodybuilding competition. And I was chatting to people I had been following online for years who I thought had made us. They had millions of followers.
I thought they were doing amazing. And I was chatting to them backstage in one in particular and he was miserable. He was miserable. And I'm like, Jesus, you aren't at all like the person that I follow online.
I'm like, you're actually really unhappy. And he was giving out about he wasn't making enough money. His drug bill was really high. And I didn't realize that was a whole subsection of that world.
And in terms of the extremity. And I remember thinking, I wouldn't swap positions with you. And that was a bit of a wake up call for me. I did that competition.
I ended up coming in eight. So top 10 in the world, which worked well for marketing outside of it and all that other stuff. But I was done. I was did that show and I was out.
And that's what made me question the idea. I'd be happy when sometimes switching positions and something I've said regularly is generally don't take advice from people you wouldn't switch positions with. Again, that's 99% of the time. There's always only 1% where somebody can offer really good advice and you wouldn't switch.
But 99% of the time it can be really useful as a filtering process. And that made me look at my ladder against the right wall analogy. And when I was teaching, I used the example area that I felt like I'd spent years climbing the ladder, but I was up against the wrong wall. Something that I never questioned was when I'm climbing a ladder, stopping and going, am I enjoying this process?
Am I enjoying this? It's the old Buddha course. How do you expect me to have the destination if you're not happy on the journey? And now when I make decisions, I'll set the end goal and I'm all for big goals.
I think people should have big goals, body composition, weight loss, sprinting, gymnastics, business, relationships, how big goals, life is for living. You should live your life. Bush, you also have to ask the question and you join this process. And is this something you really want to do?
Is to choose what you're giving up and sacrificing what it is. Because sometimes the answer is yes. And then sometimes the answer is no. In the case of different conversations with your spouse, your loved ones or your kids will have my daughter and you'll have different conversations because I want her to show up in the world in a certain way and make sure she's kind and respectful and has worked for herself.
So sometimes there's different conversations around that when she's obsessed because somebody has said something externally. But checking in with that and checking in with what your values are, your junk values versus true values can be really helpful. But also giving yourself permission to change your mind. I think confirmation bias is a big thing.
Will people will just confirm their own best of beliefs and they'll say, well, I need to get this thing about you. You just keep going on that path. And sometimes you have to give yourself permission to change your mind. Don't quit because something's difficult.
Sometimes you have to take a rest and persevere and go through. Once they're back to step forward. But also don't be afraid to quit if you just find your ladders up against the wrong wall. Yeah, you answered the question that brought up was in terms of the, if the juice doesn't work, the squeeze doesn't necessarily do it.
But things are not always swimmingly simple. So I was going to say what percentage, it's a silly question. But I mean, anyway, it's what percentage of difficulty would you endure? Not necessarily because you're believing this thought about how we have to win.
But just because that's just comes with the territory. It reminds me there was some actor who said, there's nothing better than getting paid for what I used to love. And it's interesting because it's a little glib. And it's not like there aren't times where he loves what he's doing.
And when you're doing it for a living, it's different than just doing it. Well, it's a really deep question as well. That's a great quote, a great line actually to search it after. Yeah, it is.
I really like that. In terms of the percentage, it's interesting because something I changed my mind about going back to give yourself a mission to change your mind is sometimes difficult things can be nourishing and sometimes difficult things can be depleting. And what I mean by that is generally I factor most things in my life through asking the question, will this thing nourishing or will this thing deplete me? The job tasks I choose, the projects I work on, the people I spend time with, the people who are in minor circle, my friends, my family, etc.
Most of those things sometimes it can be difficult, but they're ultimately nourishing. And a workout is a great metaphor for this. Sometimes people go into the gym, you know this from your 10 minute workouts where you're exhausted before you're tired, you're mentally tired, you're confusing physical and mental tiredness and you're like, oh, I don't really feel like this. You do your 10 minute workout and then your energy level skyrockers.
So the thing that you were going against actually nourished you and gave you more energy. And sometimes the things in life are a little bit like that. The difficult conversations, the difficult things you do, like writing books, I'm working on my fifth book at the minute and they are so destroying the editing phase every single time. I feel like, and again, for women this and they're going to hate me, but one of my ex-partners is always telling me that when I was writing books, she used to think it was like childbirth.
Like, every time you forget how bad it is, every single time. It's just like on a Costco on Sundays. It's just like, oh, it's fine. Sundays are the day to go.
It's handy. And you're like, never again, never again. Why am I here on a Sunday again? Exactly.
Yeah. So, yeah. Sorry. One key.
Keep on it, please. No, I was going to say books are a bit like that. But you know that it's going to open doors. It's going to give you royalties.
It's going to give you financial freedom down the line. So sometimes the initial difficulty is worth it in the long term. Well, let's be clear. You know that because you now have a history that allows this to be the case.
If it's your first book, who the hell knows? So this is one of those things where someone asked me the other day, what's my best business advice? I said, go to the go to a bookstore by every book on the shelf they have about business. If there's more than one by mall, then take them out in the parking lot and like them on fire because it's just not going to be like that.
That's all the confirmation bias and hindsight bias. And, you know, point being that for and the reason for that, in part, if you open up all those books and read the advice, one book's going to conflict the next, which will conflict the first, which will make up a third thing, which it's like, just again, all confirmation bias and hindsight bias. So now it's appropriate that we're still talking philosophically, and we haven't talked about working with humans in actual fields. And so, you know, we're talking philosophically and we haven't talked about working with humans in actual fitness things since mindset is the key.
Does it make sense to bridge that gap at this point? Yeah, 100%. I think given the overarching theme and the idea can be useful as a foundation because when you're giving the practical tips, you have that underlying knowledge, that pyramid of prioritization on rice. This is the overarching idea.
When it comes to actually working with human, then I do want to one with people coaching and that the problems tend to be the same, just the language is different. People tend to struggle with very similar things. It's just they use different language first. So sabotage is a big thing, not being able to set a realistic goal, not focusing on the mini wins, pressing what I call the fucking button when they go off a little bit of tracks or nutrition is big, go off plan on a Saturday and then they press the fuck up button and go, okay, I'm just going to go off plan for the rest weekend and I'll start back again on Monday, the myth of magic Monday and all these principles.
And I have confirmation bias and ability bias based on the area that I work in. What people tend to have very similar problems when it comes to mindset. They're just using different language subscribers. So, do you want to break some of those down?
Self-sabotage is one that I find interesting because I don't agree with that as a concept. In other words, and feel free to tell me if you think I've got my head about this one. But in my mind, if you, I'm going to, I just turn me off to do it in a different way. So, back to your point about not setting realistic goals.
If you're not setting realistic goal, the thing you're doing can't be self-sabotage. It's actually probably smart. It's probably some semi-conscious recognition that you were bonehead about the goal part. But either way, let's say you set a realistic goal.
What seems to me to be the case is that you have some probably unexamined belief that just conflicts with something that's either that you're doing or that's happening as a result of what you're doing. And so, you're actually acting in what you think are your own best interests, even if they may not be. And the reason that, I mean, that might sound just semantic. But I like to think of that way, because the idea of self-sabotage, it's almost like you have an evil inner twin who's just trying to mess with you.
Versus you have an evil inner, someone looking out for your best interest who may just be a little misinformed. Like, look, every bit of advice my father gave me was complete bullshit. But he meant well. He just didn't know who I was.
He just didn't understand my brain. He was giving me suggestions that for him would have made sense and would have changed his life. For me, they just had no application whatsoever. And when I finally realized he's doing the best he can to give me his best advice, then I could listen to it and just say, no, I appreciate that.
Yeah, I'm gonna go do this instead. And it's a bit of a shame that he died about eight years ago, because he would have been just giddy with the fact that I proved him wrong with what's happening with business. Actually, he'd be jealous. But he'd also be giddy that he got to be jealous.
So it looks like you may have to take the self-samatage and realistic goals combined to talk about that for people to understand what you're thinking and what the remedy is. Yeah, it's a great point, Stephen. I think they tie really well together. And I agree with you, up to a point, and this is where I feel it will slightly verge off in terms of opinion based on my experience and feel a full track in the different direction, is with the people I work with generally and what I see in the first book.
And again, just to break it down because the whole way I wrote that, and it's not a book for the book, I don't believe it's a book, it's a book to read about. It's what you said there, every fitness book is going to have similar ideas. Like, well, there's mine or somebody else's. So if you want to read it, if you don't, it's fine.
I'll tell you what's in here. Like, I broke down that book into two sections. It's called the fitness mindset. The first section was fitness.
So everything needs to know about basic training, movement, nutrition, sleep, alcohol, hydration. The second section was the mindset side. So setting the realistic goals, self-sabotaging, dealing with the worry, dealing with setbacks, failures, feedback. But my clients at the time, and I was the one who was a personal trainer and a gym when that book came out, most of my clients knew what to do.
They knew they should lift weights, they knew they should move more, they knew they should eat more fruit, vegetables, good proteins, complex carrots, healthy fats, but they couldn't stick to a plant. They kept falling off track. And when it came to the self-sabotage, what I found was always an underlying issue. There was either a self-worth issue, a self-confidence issue, a self-respect issue.
There was something underneath it that people were struggling with. And there was normally a worthiness where they didn't think they deserved to get it or they just genuinely didn't have the education on how to do it. They were doing what they thought was right and it actually ended up being wrong, i.e. going in and going across one.
Well, no, I want to, because we're on the same page, I just want to do this and see where you go with this. I think that referring to something as a self-worth thing doesn't give people any agency. What you said afterwards, like, oh, I believe I don't deserve it. That's a thought you can actually investigate and see why you think that, what that means, what that could do and see if there's any truth to it.
Because deserve, of course, implies there's some external something, whether it's okay or not. So that's interesting. When people call it self-worth, that's such a more of a concept. What do you do with that?
But I have the belief that I don't deserve to be filled in the blank. It's like, oh, that's something I can work with. That is one of the most common things I've seen with people is it's belief systems. Like fitness and nutrition aren't overly complicated for the most person.
Eat more real food, eat less processed food, move more sleep well. Like you could rent a hydration, drink water, good clean water. Those four things, you're going to get 80% of the results you want with most fitness goals. Assuming you're not trying to be a professional bodybuilder, all American sprinter, et cetera.
You have extreme high level goals. But for most people, it's going to be helpful. What isn't is that underlying belief system of, I don't feel like I deserve to have this or emotionally, machine, conflict, big areas that I focus on with people. A lot of people struggle with that.
And that tends to come back to internal and again, it's woo-woo terms. I hate using them sometimes, what self-love, self-respect, that umbrella of actually how you feel about yourself. And I don't want to go too less of a tear up with that. No, no, no, no, no, yes, I think you're on it.
Which is that those are the words that people are using, but what you said about the language of it and the beliefs. Like even the thing of emotional eating or comfort eating, it's like, I'll just map this way and tell me if this resonates with you, with anyone, for you or anyone you worked with. I was doing some stuff with a friend of mine who was saying he was having some problems with drinking. And I said, so the last time you went on a little drinking binge, let's try to play the film really slowly.
And not by the way, this is not advice for anybody who's listening. This is just a specific situation. Take it as a story. If you think I'm full of shit, I totally get it.
But I'm just going to tell the story. This is what happened in this situation. So I said, let's play the film really slowly. Before you grab the bottle, what was going on?
Because I had a huge fight with my wife. Okay, so between the huge fight and grabbing the bottle, what were you thinking? And play it frame by frame. I had the idea that getting the drink would do what it is.
It would just calm that all down and make everything okay. I said, and let's not take it too far. Like after you had the first time when he drinks, did it seem to make it okay? He goes, yeah, that's a cool.
Let's back up half a step. Now, let's go for it half a step. Was it really okay? The effects of the drink is no.
I said, okay, cool. Now let's back up half a step. You can't take it anymore. Is that even true?
I mean, that you couldn't take it or you can't think about it for a second. No, I'm an adult. I could take it. I just didn't like it.
I said, so your drinking was all based on I can't take it anymore. And now can you force yourself to believe that? Now that you just looked at that body goes, no, that was completely bullshit. Didn't see the guy for six months.
I said, how do you know? I said, how do you know? I said, I have an drink at six months. I said, I'm fighting for the wife.
He goes, yeah, once a week. Well, Stephen, there's genius in what you've just said there. And it's a thought pattern interrupt. And it's nearly identical.
Like when you were saying that I was nodding here for people who aren't watching the video, because I've had that conversation hundreds of times over the years. It's not all your people with food. It's your reverse engineering, right? You reacted and had a reaction to this thing.
Fight with a loved one, your boss shower at you, stressful day, etc. You had this feeling or story that was playing out as a narrative in your head. I can't take this. I'm fed up.
I'm sick of this. And your reaction was to use a coping mechanism in this case without calling. In some cases, I've used most of them as food. And you're breaking that thought pattern in between.
You're just pulling a stop gate in between and bringing a bit of emotional intelligence and awareness to that feeling in that moment. So that you can rewrite that story and tell a new narrative. So you're not using that coping mechanism every time you have a fight with your loved one or you feel stressed or your boss shouts at you. And it sounds like a small thing.
But like your friend, it's everything. It's literally everything. If you can get to that and you can really get someone to check in with that. And they get there, you'll see it.
It's what I call the olfok moment. Where they go, olfok. And when they have that, you know, you have it. And then that can compound positively over time.
And a lot. So and we started with this. We went back to it. So again, we're talking about the how rather than what?
Because everyone knows the what now we can clarify that. There's a lot of what we already said. Basically find the what that works for you. But the how is this mindset part?
So out of the thing, you said there were sort of five of those things you identified. What have we not touched on? In which respect? Well, so self-sabotage, realistic goals.
Oh, it means or the actual ones. Yeah, many wins failures feedback and they're kind of the main principles. Like I think they all tie together. So if you've got your setting realistic expectations and again, have a massive goal, but just adjust the timeline.
I don't think most goals are realistic, in particular, body composition of an able to be an expert or body composition building muscle weight loss, et cetera. Most goals are just the time that needs to be adjusted. Wait, I'm going to pause on that one. That is so, so good.
Because I hear that also when people say, hey, I want to run a marathon barefoot in three weeks. Like, whoa, no, no, but I also noticed, look at 62. I'm not putting on mass the way I did when I was 22. And I've basically, I never had, I didn't have a goal about this to begin with.
But lately it's been coming up. It's like, I'm giving this a good year and a half before I have anything that I want to measure. It's kind of funny. If you look at some, if you talk to people about starting a business, they go right out of your business plan, then double the expenses and half the revenue that you're projecting.
I think we need to do, I think people need to start doing that for fitness. Double the amount of effort, half the results, minimum. And in fact, I did a talk for the small business administration. I said, don't even do the double your revenue and half the, or double your expense and half the results.
Because whatever you write down, it just cost twice as much and make you have as much, no matter what you write down. And if people just did that around the fitness question, because people think you probably get with this back to this setting, having realistic expectations. People don't realize the limitations or opportunities of their genetics. And I want to look like that guy.
That guy is a genetic freak who doesn't produce myostatin. You are, you know, filling the blank. It's interesting. And I agree completely because straight away, I feel that question is broken.
When somebody goes and I heard no for me, because people that work with one to one, they have to apply to come into a program, is when somebody sends me a phone and I want to look at that person. It's normally hard, no, but I will send a question back on look. There is absolutely no way. I don't even know what you look like now.
All I can tell you is we're not going to look because that's not you. You're a different person completely. But genetics are one of the things I tell people now, again, if you want to be LeBron James, NBA basketball, Olympic sprinter, professional bodybuilder, yes, genetic player, you'd roll. They're literally the thing that separates those top one, two percent of people.
But body competition weight loss, fat loss, the muscle, genetics, not only does it determine the results, it determines the speed. And that's an important thing to look into. OK, I would say there's speed bumps and limiters along the way as well. Back to look back to you and me.
We're never going to have the Dio2 Max to be able to just crank out of 10k and not breathe hard. But anyone can complete a marathon. Correct. But it might take them five years to train first.
Right. And you're not going to be setting world record. I got back to sprint without knowing anything. I can't wait to win races.
My goal changed too. I just want to keep hitting all American times. And when I show up the starting line, I'm five, five on a tall day. And the guys that are racing are big buff dudes.
I just want to be the guy who shows up and everyone goes, what's he doing here? And then I beat them and they go, what just happened? So that one I could pull off most of the time. But yeah, hold it for game.
I love that. And there's something in there that I want to pull out for people just in case they didn't pick up the first time. Stephen, that you need to have what your version of winning looks like. And the Valrava count is a great line that you place to be game's wins to prizes.
And going into trying to win a marathon. I love that line. OK. It's great.
I live my entire life. It's quite the brain tattoo for me. And but if you never ran a marathon, you're not going to break a world record on your first one in three months. You're just not.
But if your goal is to complete a marathon because you can run 5k now, 10k now, and you want to run one in six months or eight months or 12 months. And the goal is completing this within four and a half hours because you have a good 5k 10k time. That's a really realistic target for you if you work with the structured program to it. And that means you set yourself up to win, even though you technically didn't win the marathon, but you hit your goal.
And I think your version of coming up to the sprint line and beating those guys were like, what's he doing here? And they wonder what happened? That's a beautiful version of that. It's a fun one.