Mark Bell's Power Project - He Ran A 500 Mile Ultramarathon With Just A Backpack - James Pieratt || MBPP Ep. 977

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

In episode 977, James Pieratt, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Jame's 500 mile self supported run across the State of Oregon. Follow James on IG: https://www.instagram.com/wildhuntconditioning   New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

You just ran over 500 miles? I did. Why? I was the son of a bear hunter who spent a lot of time running around the mountains. I like it. I like the freedom of it. I like roaming. I like the self-sufficiency. It's like on this run, it was fully self-supported. Like, I carried everything on my back. I'm thinking this is kind of scary. I heard a bear one time at night. Like, at that point, what are you going to do?

How many miles each day? Between 26 and 77 miles per day. And after that, we had mosquito hell. It's, they're giant super mosquitoes. The swarms are huge. I covered every bit of skin, and they still were hitting me through my clothes, like through multiple layers of clothing. You can be running at full speed, and they're still on you.

These sound like biblical tests. So it was 15 miles of ash, sand, and rock without water, without a living thing. And the ash gets in your mouth, and your ass crack, your fingers, your toes, your like your eyelids. All of that was the first few days. What's some things that are happening that people wouldn't expect after something like this? It definitely was more of a rebound effect than I was expecting. So I was asking about maybe some performance enhancement during the run. In the past, I've done mushrooms. When I really push the mileage, I start to kind of feel like I'm running with one foot in this world and one foot in another world.

A lot of the ideas and people that, you know, I've lost or known that aren't here, you know, they feel closer. I brought some with me on this one. But for whatever reason, I didn't, I just didn't, I kind of felt like I was already there. But I didn't really feel very inclined to lessen my grip on reality any more than it already was. What do you think and see about Andrew so he's being constantly late? Should we have a conversation with him? It's not looking good, right? You know, it used to be me.

I don't know, he had a kid and responsibilities. Pass the torch. I think he just thinks he can beat all of us up now, so he doesn't actually have to. At the same time, make my own rules. He's like, you guys fuck me, I'll just choke you. Don't talk to me.

It makes sense. I think that's why a lot of the best jiu-jitsu guys are so nice. They just know they can snap your neck in two seconds. I wouldn't know. I'm not one of them. Yeah. We were having a conversation, though, about how grapplers are. You want to tell that story?

Grappler's a little bit too comfortable. And SEMA was like, grapplers can't fight at all. No, no. We were talking about how it's like grapplers can definitely fight, but the distinction is that a lot of people would assume that

if you're a jiu-jitsu guy, you would be more comfortable in a real fight because you know jiu-jitsu guy you would be more comfortable in a real fight because you know jiu-jitsu techniques however most of those aren't you know outside of like a guillotine or a rear naked choke most of those aren't going to convert well to street fights you don't want to pull guard and enter into a leg lock or what happened in your situation so the first time actually true story long before i ever trained any jiu-jitsu at all, I'd wrestled, but I was in a fight in a past life, and a guy essentially pulled guard. I didn't know, like, not to just enter straight in the guard, so I just, like, basically jumped on him, and he locked his legs around me and closed guard around my waist and tried to isolate one of my arms to arm bar me. But I, like, I didn't know jiu-jitsu, but I knew it wasn't good to let him do what he was trying to do with one of my limbs so i just kind of anchored the elbow like on my hip and then just

started hammer fisting him and i hit him three or four times and he just went out cold his head was just bouncing off the asphalt why is that so funny to me i mean nani yeah it was just like it was it happened so quickly too that it wasn't even you know there was no like actual threat to it, you know. And but my point being that, well, the techniques themselves may not be as applicable as a lot of us who train jiu-jitsu like to believe. You spend thousands of hours controlling another resisting human body. That gives you superpowers when it comes to like a human conflict. Just the ability, you're familiar with the resistance, speed the angles the anatomy of the body and so it's like for me or in sima or even now or soon andrew if you gave us like our clone like a clone exactly the same me or you know any of us that hadn't trained jujitsu it would be comical like we would we would control them with comical ease you know and i mean it's something a

lot of people don't want to realize however asterisk the thing is that 95 of guys who do jujitsu even at the high level competitive level can't wrestle for shit and they don't have judo games so they can't actually put someone on the ground where those skills are dangerous and that's a problem in the real world unless it's just some drunk asshole who lets himself be bowled over jumps on you or or something. Right. And a jiu-jitsu person can be crazy and can be aggressive, but a lot of times those guys are disciplined. Yeah. And so somebody who's crazy in a fight is like a little –

it could be more difficult. It could pose some situation that you're like had no idea the guy was going to run at you that way or throw some weird flying knee. Well, how about something as simple as you get me in a good arm lock of some sort and i just don't tap right okay you break your arm and you don't care yeah and you know get sued yeah exactly yeah but um having said that like for the average person yeah jiu-jitsu is going to make you vastly more able to you know handle yourself in a real world confrontation the problem is a lot of guys particularly the ones that compete a lot,

get it twisted and they forget, like, oh, hey, I can't actually strike or wrestle, so I'm going to go run my mouth, or I'm going to go transition to MMA, and this isn't going to go well. And traditionally, jiu-jitsu guys don't do well in MMA, not in the modern generation. It's wrestlers, and if you look at the active champions right right now not one of them has a jiu-jitsu background you know you have damian maya you have some guys who you know transitioned from competition jiu-jitsu to mma and did very well but it's pretty rare charles olivera has very good jiu-jitsu but it's not his prime background you know you just You just ran over 500 miles? I did. Why? What happened? So as you guys know, my dad passed away unexpectedly during the winter back in December.

And he was a bear hunter and a mountain man. And so long story short, most of my best memories with him were in the mountains. And I have a propensity to kind of do some longer range ultra marathon stuff anyway and i was looking for a way to kind of say goodbye to him and then what was essentially his funeral since he he had always said he didn't want one he never had one uh so i kind of needed my way to say goodbye and and process that. And so running 500 miles, so running across the entire state of Oregon on eight weeks notice ended up seeming pretty appealing, contrary to, you know, initial appearances, maybe. Did you hear about this from somebody else? Did you hear about some person or I know you're like into history of like running and conditioning and strength,

some fable you heard about somebody running a distance and you were like, I want to try that or how to come about. No, because of the way I study history and, you know, all the stuff I do, I was aware it was possible. Whereas like someone else might not look at like a 500 mile run and think it's possible. But no, the truth is I've always just wanted like what's drawn me to running wasn't speed. It wasn't a background. I have no track and field background. To this day, I have no formal training in running. It was just I was the son of a bear hunter who spent a lot of time running around the mountains.

And I like it. I like the freedom of it. I like roaming. I like the self-sufficiency. And it's like on this run, it was fully self-supported. I carried everything on my back, all my food. You know, I collected and purified my own water with a little UV light device. And it's like on this run, it was fully self-supported. I carried everything on my back, all my food. I collected and purified my own water with a little UV light device.

And I had supply boxes mailed to myself at different points along the way, different like cabins or out-of-season snow parks or just like small town post offices. And then I'd collect my box, refill my my supplies and keep going on to the next but were you scared um not did you get scared at all i'd like i'm thinking this is kind of scary like for myself i'm kind of running myself through it and thinking like once i got like 50 miles from home i'd be kind of scared so i mean you're running it through your head there's bears and like i saw bear droppings and stuff a few times and hurt a bear one time at night. But like at that point, there's like what are you going to do? There's nothing you can do. Be more scared.

Yeah. I mean it's going to shake out. It's going to shake out or it's not. Did you bring anything just in case things got hairy? I'm a convicted felon. So I never carry a weapon of any sort. Gotcha. Things got hairy. I'm a convicted felon, so I never carry a weapon of any sort. Gotcha.

Having said that, he's a convicted felon. Well, having said that, I don't fucking believe anything I say. But no, I figured the jiu-jitsu would be enough to deal with a bear. I competed a little bit, so I got some slick subs. I believe in you. You get a bear and X guard, I competed a little bit, so, I got some slick subs. I believe in you. Get a bear an X guard, yeah, go for it.

What if the bear, like, paused for a second and got his gi on? Yeah. He'd be like, oh, shit. He's fucked then,

bro. My no-gi game's sick, but the gi, the gi is still, that's still a strong point. All right. But, no,

it's, yeah, so, I was mostly scared, might not be the right word, realistically, but I was, like, concerned. I didn't want to, like, there'd be times where I'd look at my map and be like, it's, yeah, so I was mostly scared might not be the right word realistically, but I was like concerned. I didn't want to, like there'd be times where I'd look at my map and be like,

all right, I'm 58 miles from the nearest small town. This would be a really shitty place to break my ankle. You know what I mean? Something like that. Or just get like half killed by a bear but not full killed, you know, and just have like a revenant situation. So like, yeah, the Wilderness ultra marathons definitely have a different component in that regard. However, like, debatably, one of the hardest things was just like basic small

tasks that you had to do at the end of every day, you know, you run 50 or however many miles in a day, it's dark, you're cold, you know, your hands are shaking, you're you don't have enough water, you don't have enough food. And so you have to stop find a decent place to make camp where you're not going to get crushed by a widow maker or what they call a dead tree that could fall in the middle of the night or likely to be like camped right in like a bear game trail or, you know, something like that. These are all things that you kind of know just from being a bear hunter helps history. Yeah. Being a bear hunter helps. So like, also there were like one night when I was like, Oh, it's like a really good place to make camp. Like it's when i was like it's like a really good

place to make camp like it's you know it's going to be you know we're only a little an hour or so after dusk um there's water nearby it's like you know i even have one bar of a cell reception and so i start looking for a place to camp and then i look up and i see like a bear rubbing which is you know like a tree that a bear has rubbed himself on it's like oily and little like micro hairs and stuff in there and then some scratch marks and where he just cracked places, scratch your back. Oh yeah. Well, he just cracked. And then also I went down a little further and saw a log. It's like a fallen log and it was a little soft, but he just cracked it effortlessly, cracked it open. And I was like, yep, not going to sleep here. Whereas if I hadn't

been a bear hunter and hadn't been queued up to look for bear sign, I probably wouldn't have seen that. Question, how many miles each day? It ranged pretty widely. So I went in with a very naive idea that I would get a relatively clean, like 50 miles a day, you know, about 10 days, right? So, uh, first of all, it's not super practical because there's no saying there's going to be like a decent camp place to camp or water source or, you know, anything every 50 miles. Like sometimes camping every 50 miles would be like, all right, well, in the last four hours of today and the first four hours of tomorrow, I'm going without water because there's no water source here. So there's strategy to it. Like you'd get to a point you're like, all right, I'm only 43 miles in for the day, but this is a beautiful campsite with a bunch of water. 33 miles in for the day, but this is a beautiful campsite with a bunch of water.

Do I want to take that, you know, have actual, be able to drink my fill and hydrate and get a good night's sleep and then make up those extra miles tomorrow? Or do I want to push through the night? Like, you have to make those decisions and you're doing it fatigued and undernourished and dehydrated. But having said that, my overall mileage ranged between 26 and 77 miles per day. My first three days back to back, I failed to hit my miles per day. My first three days back-to-back, I failed to hit my mileage every day. I had, it was the first time in a long time where I actually felt physically pushed to my limit and actually had to start questioning my ideas and myself.

Because generally, I'm always confident, but generally I'm pretty much assured of the outcome when I'm doing something. Even if the outcome is not sure, I'm pretty good at occupying that space. Like, oh, this is going to happen one way or the other. And this isn't something you've seen somebody plan before, though. This is something you're the first

person to do something like this. Oh, I'm sure. People run a long ways. There was no cue, no blueprint in anything. I just wanted to run 500 miles, seem tidy. I like Oregon and uh that section of the Pacific Crest Trail which is where I ran most but not all of my miles was just beautiful so I thought why not and uh but the first three days I failed to hit my mileage and I had to

kind of really like talk with myself and I what I I was really like a lot of it in retrospect was the elevation messing not just with my cardio output with my thoughts my brain my confidence because it has like a weird effect on you and I jumped up like this I did this event it's between six and eight thousand feet above the elevation where I live train where I was born and I had no adaptation period so I just literally jumped up six to eight thousand feet in elevation and I live, train, where I was born, and I had no adaptation period. So I just literally jumped up 6,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation and started a 500-mile run. So the first three days were brutal. And I carried extra water because despite all the rain we had last year, a lot of the water sources were considered unreliable.

So that was like an extra six to eight pounds and that was brutal also so between that and the fact that there were a bunch of fallen trees blocking the trail some of them were like several feet tall that had to be either climbed over or ducked under or moved you know ran around um with that extra weight the elevation and then also the fact that the incline i knew what incline like i knew through the course of the run i'd be climbing everest twice more than actually in terms of elevation gain but i failed to account for how much of that would be front loaded on the route and i'd just be jumping straight into steep rocky ground and so what do you mean like most of the elevation gain was at the beginning of the run yeah like they're well not yeah yeah i would say most of it a lot of it was just like immediately

smacked right in the mouth before i had a chance to adapt to the 6,000 to 8,000 foot increase in elevation or the extra weight that the water, you know, that I hadn't trained with. And my normal pack was like 30, 31 pounds with the extra weight. It was closer to 40, which is just really heavy for impact running over hard ground and broken ground. So the first three days were beyond brutal. ground and broken ground so the first three days were beyond brutal but uh and then of course in the early days we had a devil's peak which is it's about 8 000 feet or almost 8 000 feet like pretty much straight up super rocky so high up that there was still snow in july mid-july and even like on the downslope on the back side i had to actually navigate like snow and ice that had melted and refroze, just not slip.

Yeah, and I was all geared up for the heat and everything. And after that, we had Mosquito Hell, which is about 50 to 60 miles of, quite frankly, the hardest part of the whole trail was Mosquito Hell. And it breaks a lot of hikers and people that just try to pass through or work crews who go there to try to like log lumber because it's – I don't even know how to describe it. They're giant super mosquitoes. The swarms are huge. There's like literally nothing alive in their territory. Like it's just dead wood and they just live in all these dead trees and there's like no animals. Nothing goes there because they just wipe – they just eat through everything.

And so it's like I covered my skin with deet like hardcore deet i covered my treated my clothes my gear my tent everything with perimethin which is like a heavy duty like material but you know bug repellent i wore a mosquito net that was infused with bug repellent i covered all every bit of skin and they still were hitting me through my clothes like through multiple layers of clothing they were collecting on my net and just gathering on the moisture. They were swarming in my tent. I ran and just dove into my tent as soon as it was set up. As quick as I could, zipped it back up.

And there were 11 mosquitoes that made it in with me in literally one second. Literally one second. And I had to hunt them each down before I could start doing my nightly stuff. And then hundreds of them collected on the outside. And so it was like i mean on the bright side you don't want to stop like collect water do like rest piss like you know you don't want to do any like you will go to your bladder burst and you have no water left because they're just on you and then the worst parts they're on you even when you're moving at

full speed you can be running at full speed and they're still on you um so mosquito hell was brutal and on top of- These sound like biblical tests. You know, like when God sent locusts? You know what I mean? This is like, geez, it seems like every day was a new test for you almost. Yeah.

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but that's some shit so it's 15 miles of ash, sand, and rock without water, without a living thing. You're just constantly losing the trail because there's nothing to trail through. And it's steep. It's sandy. The ground's, like, soft, so you're constantly rolling your ankle and slipping. And the ash gets in your mouth and your ass crack, your fingers, your toes, your eyelids. And so that was like all of that was the first few days dude can i ask you like how like did anybody have your

location because there's some of these places where it doesn't seem like there's going to be reception yeah so we scheduled check-ins just like when i hunt and it's like if you don't hear from me on this day then you know i'm between this point and this point and it's not like oh where is he you know what i mean and i'm not an, and it's not like, oh, where is he? You know what I mean? And I'm not an idiot, so I'm not going to leave the trail or that zone because I know. But, yeah, I mean, I was on support. Like, you know, most likely if something happened outside of being able to, you know, emergency helicopter or something, I was going to have to crawl out, you know. So I was trying not to avoid that.

How many days did you do this 500 miles in and what was the time it was about a little over 10 days but i actually would have finished a little earlier but i outpaced my pickup and so it was like um it was like uh i think 20 miles or so from the end and i kind of it was like it was actually when i posted that picture of my foot excited at some point that day the tape had slipped off and i didn't I realized my toe hurt, but I hadn't quite realized that it got worse after that. The whole toe got infected and swole up. It was just like red and puffy.

What kind of shoes are you wearing during this, and what kind of socks? The Ultra Olympus 5, which held up amazingly. It only took me two pairs to do all 500 miles. And I always wear Merino wool socks. And I used Smartwool ones for this. And do you have to, like, wash and dry the stuff or you just air it out? Yeah, constant, constant. How many socks are you going to bring? So two pairs.

And then when you're wearing one, you rinse the other and hang them from your pack on the outside so they dry. And Merino wool dries really quickly. What's the brand on there so people smart wool okay smart i've tried several but the smart wool are my favorite and i actually use their here's a little hack for you if you're running really long distance instead of using the smart wool running sock use their light hiking sock has just a little bit extra padding and a little bit extra protection to it for like a longer run you have a lot of experience with hiking and i know you didn't do it on this run but uh what kind of hiking boots would you recommend because i think there's a lot of people that love that but sometimes they go out and wreck their feet with not great shoes so the best hiking boot i have

ever worn is the vivo barefoot uh hiking boot it's not the either the hunter or the tracker i've tried i've tried them both tracker decon it might be it's the one with i like the one with the stitch sole whichever one has the stitch sole not the glued sole just because i like uh that extra connection yeah um for light like for summer like a three season boot that's what i wear myself um for heavier stuff like snow i tend to go like it's really hard to go wrong with danner danner is a good brand and they've been around for a long time. That's what my dad and the old bear hunters always, they all wore Danner stuff.

So I have, I think, two or three pairs of Danner boots and then some Vivos. Is it these ones? Is that? Yes. The ones I have are brown. But, yeah, yeah, right there, right there. This one? That one right there.

So tracker. I have these ones also. Yeah. They're comfy. Yeah, right there, right there. This one? That one right there. So tracker. I have these ones also. Yeah. They're comfy. Yeah, so it's the best balance between support, natural foot shape, and just being light. Like I grew up wearing a lot of moccasins and stuff, which is my first introduction to barefoot. Moccasins? Moccasins, yeah.

And moccasins are dope. Like I'm actually looking for a new pair right now. But to me, like, in the old days, mountain men, when they came west and, like, started living by themselves and alongside Indians, they ditched the boots and all went to moccasins. They would just wear gaiters made of beaver skin because it was water repellent and warm. But, like, moccasins, like the barefoot shoe, it's been around for a lot longer than, know what i mean most of us realize what are moccasins made of again usually deer skin or leather but it's just literally like a single layer of leather and then on the bottom they'll do like a layer of rawhide as reinforcement a little little more thickness for the sole or maybe two layers but and then stitch beads you know whatever you like they make them high they make them low

slip-ons tight you know moccasins are dope. I think that's what David Weck was wearing when he came here a while back. That makes sense. It makes sense. He was going old school. I mean, like I said, nothing new under the sun. What about chafing? How do you battle chafing? Actually, Zach Bitter was the one who helped me with that.

He told me just CBD cream and preemptively put it. But my feet, I'm pretty, I'm pretty resistant to most of the things that ail most runners, the fatigue, the dehydration, you know, and even the blisters, believe it or not, like what you might, despite what you might believe from seeing that toe. But, uh, I preemptively tape my hot, what they call hot spots or areas where, you know, you start running long enough, you start to realize like, Hey, I get a blister in this spot, this spot in this spot.

So instead of waiting for that, just get a blister in this spot, this spot, and this spot. So instead of waiting for that, just put a layer of tape on it. They got blister tape that's, like, super cheap or moleskin. They also have a—I don't use it as much, but some people like the liquid bandage stuff, you know. What would you suggest for between the thighs? Like, for me, my thighs, like, they like that shit. Coconut oil-based CBD cream, like a coconut and beeswax base cbd and put it on there before you run and that'll stay like i don't you don't think i should tape anything that i should just put cbd if like that taping would be the next step but you can if you can avoid it if

you can just get like or even just vaseline but i like the cbd for a number of reasons it's antiseptic there's a product uh there's a product called chub rub that you can check out that's on amazon it's actually just like big stickers. It's a little bit like hostage tape. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. Tape like your crotch, basically. I've actually used tallow with a lot of success as well.

That's what I used for the marathon. That's smart. And I just called it butt cream. But using some tallow really worked really well. And I had to get, just because you're running really far, I had to get my butt cheeks and my cracks. Oh, yeah. Way up in there. You do have deep cheeks.

Oh, yeah. You got to get it. I was all up in there. You got to get deep in there. Yeah. You got to get the grundle. You got to get anything that's contact. You got to get.

But no, I just do, you know. I mean, they also have some specific anti-chafe rubs for runners that you might like. But those are basically just beeswax-based with essential oils, I think. But, yeah, if you coat that area up, you should be good. And, like, taping is last resort. It's like in, you guys see The Office when he goes running. The guy goes running, and he tapes cotton balls over his nipples. And they come off.

Everyone's like, what are you doing? And they come off at some point, and he's just, by the end, they're just bleeding. There's just bloody spots on his shirt. This shit's amazing. off at some point and he's just by the end they're just bleeding they're just bloody spots on his shirt it's just amazing um with uh with uh chafing you can also just wear like if you wear long enough like spandex and you won't have that problem i know but i don't like that i know because you don't get to show off the legs right show them gams bro no i'm a short short guy yeah short shorts but it does work it's effective. Sometimes you got to pick what's going to be effective. Yeah. I got to do that.

But, hey, you were mentioning like. Yep. Exactly. That's so good. Your recovery like has been something that I've never heard somebody talk about like post-run, the things that you've been dealing with. What's some things that are happening that people wouldn't expect after something like this? So I guess I haven't really talked about this. I mean, you and I talk about it. wouldn't expect after something like this so i guess i haven't really talked about this i mean you and i talk about it but the uh basically my body like my muscles my joints all that held up

incredibly well to the pound you know i mean i had definitely had some like i think there were eights like small injuries altogether but nothing really lingering however i underestimated the impact on just my nervous system in general and so it's like what are we month it's been like so i finished about a month ago and i'm still like only back to like 85 percent and like my uh like my my grip strength my explosive outputs on like the assault bike or sprints like excuse me my body's uh just like uh it's taking longer to get back to you know it's like almost like you're sick or just really drained and i've been lingering here, it's taking longer to get back to, you know, it's like almost like you're sick or just really drained. And I've been lingering here and it's like each week's a little better than the last, but it definitely was a more of a rebound effect than I was expecting.

Cause I'd kind of just been like, oh, if it, you know, if it takes me three days to recover from 150 miles and you know, 500 shouldn't be too much, you know, but a week or two, I'll be good. And it ended up being, you know, a little up being a little more drainy on the battery. You even said that your body wanted to sleep way more. Oh, yeah. About double the volume. I normally naturally need about six hours a night.

I've trained myself over the last year or so to get up to about seven, but it's like I was sleeping eight hours in a night plus a three- or or four hour nap in the day and then still just like doing very very light work you know calisthenics and slowly working my way back in and not really working or doing you know doing too much you know like I was before at least and uh I was still just drained man and sleeping way more what about like cravings for food and stuff like that was that a little different your diet get a little different not really so that was the other and the other main other than the fatigue the main lingering What about like cravings for food and stuff like that? Was that a little different? Did your diet get a little different?

Not really. So that was the other main – other than the fatigue, the main lingering effect I had after the fact was stomach issues. And it was – like it's still kind of – still been bothering me a little bit. But it's basically – I think it was just the volume of food I needed day by day, the fact that I was never sitting still to digest it. I'm always digesting on the move and everything i'm eating is freeze-dried you know and i towards the end i actually seem to kind of get used to it and it was just in time to come back here and have all this fiber and like wet hydrated food and then of course the junk food binge you know from yeah the washington border all the way back down you know it's like we're hitting seafood kind of celebrating and stuff yeah and i don't eat gluten and i'm you know eating like from – so there's some of that for sure.

But my gut is, yeah, recovering now. So just eating a lot of like fruit and meat and eggs and kind of keeping it simple, getting a lot of the probiotic stuff in there. Yeah, I've heard that for runners, especially like long distance and going the crazy distance as you're going you can end up with almost like a little bit of leaky gut so i didn't it's a little harder to digest things and stuff like that i didn't have too much of that so actually i was fortunate to uh i worked with our buddies with pretty much the best nutritionist on planet earth and so he handled all of my nutrition stuff for me his uh shout out to jordan solvin but he does the nutrition for the most of the ufc a lot of the ufc champions israel adesanya

alexander volkanovsky and uh leon edwards you know a lot of those guys so specifically that makes him not only an expert in nutrition but also hydration dehydration and rehydration because of the weight cutting involved in elite mixed martial arts. And frankly, he blew my mind. I mean like I'm a fairly well-educated guy when it comes to nutrition and hydration. But he blew my mind. He was – like he taught me that like different type – like slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers hold different amounts of fluid. They hydrate and rehydrate differently. Every single person has like an electrolyte profile that's unique,

like a fingerprint. And some people, you know, need to replace different things at different rates, which, you know, that seems pretty simple and makes sense. But then you start realizing that different people also have different absorption rates. And so it's like you might be an amazing technical runner and an amazing athlete, but the most your water, you know, the most fluid your stomach can absorb is two liters per hour, and you're a person sweating two and a half or three per hour. Just a matter of time until someone like me beats you because we might not be as good, but we're just more resilient.

And so with like the tests he did on me. What kind of tests were they, by the way? Hydration rates. And then also – I haven't done the DEXA scan yet. My bad. But I did the rest of the stuff. So it's like blood work and testosterone and hormones and all that. blood work and testosterone and hormones and all that.

And so basically like the overall picture they got was for whatever reason, my body seems to be more resilient to the detrimental effects of ultra endurance activity than the average person, even at like the elite ultra running level. Number of theories, most likely partially genetic. A number of theories, most likely partially genetic, and then the other part being that I was living – I lived large portions of my life like in – what would we say? Deficits of sorts, either not eating or not drinking enough fluid or taking care of myself just as a drug addict or as an inmate. And through a lot of this, had you know pretty decent physical output you know and so he you know he thinks that your body can to a certain extent adapt to a lot of these resiliences and uh and then you know having higher testosterone and then and additionally they also it seems like my testosterone doesn't crash post-race to the same extent that most people do like so i i naturally sit sit a little below 800.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, 36 years old, lifelong drug addict, a lot of concussions, pretty much every low T. Yeah, pretty much every low T risk factor. But I'm also a guy

who's lifting heavy weights, spending time in nature. I eat real food. Your lifestyle is like a high testosterone lifestyle. Basically, I eat liver all the time. And it just makes me super shredded year round. Just don't test me. Power Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass,

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It will change its temperature based off of how you're sleeping during the night. And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they could have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here. And I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat. That doesn't happen anymore because of the Eight Sleep mattress. And I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover and you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of Eight Sleep. But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and the Eight Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get it?

Yes. You guys got to head over to eightsleep.com slash power project, and you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, eightsleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes but you do eat liver uh yeah i eat everything but see the thing is like i've been doing that since i was a kid running around barefoot eating animal like you know there's actually a picture i was showing my fiancee recently a picture of our meat freezer when i was a kid and it's like there's bear there's rattlesnake there's a raccoon in there like it's like like this is that you know like a lot of the stuff that i was doing that i was embarrassed about as a kid like being the country bumpkin going to school and you know with like suburban kids and now it's all like you know

it's classy to eat organs walk barefoot you know do wheelbarrows and shoveling and you know manual labor and i'm sorry functional fitness but you know but so you know uh but yeah, so I definitely had like a unique imprinting phase and that, you know, early on my body and mind were exposed to difficult things. And so long story short, resiliency seems to make up for the fact that I'm not a very fast or technical runner. faster technical runner how did you uh stumble upon all these uh interesting like fables facts tales about strength um and i was locked up mostly like you hear like urban legends mostly in there most of them aren't true you know something you know this guy used to bench 550 that used to be in here or whatever well yeah and and he did it because he only did push-ups in here and you know what i mean and then he went out and you know he was out for a week before he went back to san quentin and in that time he pushed 550 like six times you know what i mean and uh but uh at

the same time like you hear about a lot of bruce lee stuff in there and a lot you know like a lot of the the mental training and a lot of like henry that was where i learned about henry rollins and so i was just interested in it. And then I've also just been fascinated with like living as close to I could as like the classics, the Spartans, the Vikings, the ancient martial artists. Like, you know, as a kid, I always thought the monk martial artist on the mountain,

like that lifestyle of purity. In a horse stance. Yeah, exactly. At sunrise and sunset, you know, hasn't moved at all yeah uh i always thought that stuff was cool and like i think a lot of guys kind of they misinterpret it like they think like imparting like a viking mindset on your life today means like buying a battle axe and getting a bunch of like viking face tattoos and you know, like, but it's, that's like an external expression.

I like to think more along like internal lines. Like, like I think every man could benefit from reading Musashi's 21 laws or 21 rules for life. And it's like, you go down it and it's just basic, you know, human wisdoms that like treat other people.

Well, is that the book of five rings or is that something else? Yeah. I've read that. And, uh, well, yeah, it's like, and and then like he also has little things, little witticisms that I like, like it is good to be able to say something well, it is better to say it in fewer words. And like, I think like chuckles aside, like that's a great thing to think about, you know?

Uh huh. And so I try to like look at those things and use them as like more of an internal compass, but I also just geek out on the history stuff, you know. And so it's some of it's like like our recent post on, you know, Apache breath work. You know, can we pull that up? It's it's it's it was a. And it's and it's simple. You know, it's just like I heard about this growing up and I was speaking with a buddy of mine, Daniele Bolelli.

He's an Italian historian. That's a name for anything. For anyone who likes history, check out he's an Italian historian. That's an amazing name. For anyone who likes history, check out his episodes on Rogan. They're just amazing. Not that one. But he, and we were talking about this, and he was the one that reminded me of it. But yeah, just filling your mouth up with water and running. And it's the same as like the mouth tape or whatever, but they would take it to another level because they would do like long runs, hill sprints. They would do what they called stocking games, which is like essentially

long range tag in the mountains for runners, you know, stuff like that. And then they could outrun a cavalry horse. And it's like, you know, you hear that and people get super triggered, like, no, no one can outrun a horse. First of all, yeah, they can. I actually plan on racing a horse at some point as soon as I can set that up. But there's races throughout history where men and horses were able to enter and after a certain point, men win because we're the best endurance land animal on the planet. We're bipedal.

We only got to move two legs, not four. We have sweat glands, so technically horses do too. But we're not covered in fur. They're very, very fragile creatures in terms of what they need and food and water and you know what I mean? And so it's like, no, it's not. you know, and you add in heat and the, you know, the Arizona, New Mexico mountains and canyons.

And so anyway, my point being, you know, run with water in your mouth. Let's check this out. Like you do a lot of really cool videos like this. You want audio on this one? Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Why not?

Among the Apache running is a sign of warrior ship and Apache warriors could cover over 70 miles per day on foot through rugged deserts and mountains with limited water, more than what a pursuing cavalry horse could cover, all without leaving a trace. This began with their children, who would learn to run while holding a mouthful of water in order to promote deep, steady nasal breathing. They would practice this technique on long runs, hill sprints and during stealthy games they called stalking runs it was these training tactics that helped cement the Apache Warriors place as the lord of the desert for over five centuries

follow me on Instagram, YouTube, Patreon TikTok and threads for more sick yeah so I love stuff like that and then some of it like some of the stuff some of my page will be like uh like for instance uh babe ruth made his own gatorade by mixing ginger ale and bourbon and he would drink that during games you know like just sometimes just little stuff like that but um it's uh you know just i've always just geeked out on like i said the strength the

history i'm sorry strength history history, and martial arts history. Yeah. I posted that video of the baseball player pitching a no-hitter on LSD. I don't know if you had a chance to see that. No, I didn't see that. That's a trip, though. But a hell of a trip, yeah. Literally.

A no-hitter on LSD? So that means no one managed to hit his pitches. Right. Just full flow state. Is LSD okay to take means no one managed to hit his pitches. Right. Just full flow state. Is LSD okay to take? Is it illegal to take that shit? No. No?

No. I don't think so. Wow. I don't know if it's on banned substance lists or not. Yeah. Could be. I mean, I've definitely never taken it in a jiu-jitsu, so I wouldn't know. You're being sarcastic?

Yeah, I've definitely taken it. And you utilize some of this stuff on some of the runs and stuff, right? So during this 500 mile, did you use any mushrooms or anything like that? Yeah, traditionally I would bring, I'd like to bring a little bit of that. Oh, here's the clip, sorry. Oh yeah, let's see this. Oh, so it was in the 70s. Back when cocaine was legal too, right?

Yeah, why not? There were literally all things were legal? Yeah, why not? There were literally all things were legal. Yeah, why not? Damn. Yeah, some people like, I don't know, were like, like LSD is not going to work when you're, but I mean, I'm sure this guy probably tried to use it more than once and didn't have the same result.

But he also said that he thought Richard Nixon was the umpire. I thought that was pretty dope. Like, Mr. President, how are you doing? Just trying to beam him over the drink. That was a strike, right? Yeah. So I was asking about maybe some performance enhancement during the run. So I, in the past, have done mushrooms, like small, you know, not micro doses, but, you, but maybe like a half gram, something like that, up to a gram.

I really liked it because when I run in general, I kind of – it already feels like I'm – like when I really push the mileage, I start to kind of feel like I'm running with one foot in this world and one foot in another world. with one foot in this world and one foot in another world. Like it's a strange, very liberating feeling. And it's cool in a lot of ways, but it's like a lot of the ideas and people that, you know, I've lost or known that aren't here, you know, they feel closer and things just kind of, I feel a little bit outside myself in terms of objective. I can think about things without having some of the emotional responses or, you know, things that, you know, about stuff in my past or whatever. And so I've found it in the past pretty beneficial if like,

you know, later into an event, if I really wanted to kind of lean more into that, to take a small dose of mushrooms. But I brought some with me on this one. But for whatever reason, I just didn't, I kind of felt like I was already there. Like I got there – maybe it was just how hard the first few days were. It just threw me right into it. But I didn't really feel very inclined to lessen my grip on reality any more than it already was. However, there was one day – like I had two days that were pretty rough due to dehydration. Like crossing the Oregon Desert was one.

two days that were pretty rough due to dehydration, like crossing the Oregon desert was one. And on that day, it was just, I was just dehydrated and there was no water for miles. And I just kind of had to push it. And unfortunately, that was also a day I was running low on carbohydrates. I was due to like a restock, I think, you know, at the end, like literally at the other side of the desert. So to cross the desert without much water or carbohydrates. And on that day, I took a micro dose, like a very, very small micro dose just because it was like, well, here we are. The chips are down.

This is going to work or it's not. Like there's nothing, you know, there's nothing on the other side of this to lose. And it definitely helped, but it didn't take enough to really get off my kilter just because I had to continue making decisions along the way. to really get off my kilter just because I had to continue making decisions along the way. And I also didn't want to fuck up my navigation across the desert of ash. Andrew, see if you can bring up,

there's a clip of Mike Tyson just downing a tremendous amount of mushrooms on a podcast. And it was amazing because he does it with no water. It made me think about that because you were saying how thirsty you were and how you were dehydrated. Oh, yeah.

They're gross, dude. Yeah, they're nasty. The cool thing about like mushrooms, I talked to you about this, like using mushrooms or like let's say like maybe for me, I'm 250. So maybe a half gram to a gram before jujitsu. It makes you – it helps you do new shit. It makes you like – it pattern interrupts. Let me put it that way because there will be something that like you're very used to doing and you do the same thing all the time. But then it's just like my mind opens up to a bunch of new stuff.

And I always do stuff I've never done before. And then it's like it sticks. I don't know why that is, but it just works well that way. It helps me see simple things that were right in front of me the whole time. Like I'd be in my guard in this position and and I'd be working to destabilize them. So you'd play the audio. Oh, my God. They're freaking out.

I can't. Oh, he's going to be chewing for a second. He's just staring at them, too. Are you even going to drink the Fiji? Mm-hmm. But it's a fungus. It's what we made out of. I just want to have that hit him later on in that podcast.

He's a savage, bro. I've seen him do some stuff and just completely seem unfazed by it. If you have knee pain or lower back pain, the initial thought is that it's probably coming from the knee or the lower back. But have you ever thought that it could actually be coming from your feet? Most people wear

shoes like this. They are narrow. They are not flat. They are inflexible. So it's almost like your feet are stuck in casts all day long. And if you imagine that your hand was stuck in a cast all day, well, your fingers are going to become weak, but then your elbows might start feeling a little bit wonky because your fingers don't move and then it might travel up your shoulder. That's the same thing that happens with your feet when you put them in normal inflexible shoes. That's why you want to throw those out and start using some Vivo barefoot shoes. They have shoes for hiking on their website, working out in the gym. They have casual shoes like these

novices right here. But the difference with Vivo is that they have a wide toe box so that your feet, like my wide ass feet, can spread and move within the shoe. They're flat so that your feet are doing the work when you're walking and they are flexible so your feet have the freedom to move the way they need to move so that they can be strong feet. That's why you want to get yourself some of these. And Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at VivoBarefoot.com slash PowerProject. When you guys get there, you'll see a code across the top. Make sure you enter that code at checkout for 15% off your entire order.

Again, that's at VivoBarefoot.com slash PowerProject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Guys, look at this. Look at that bend. I barefoot.com slash power project links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Guys, look at this. Look at that. I could stick that in my mouth. Do it. I'm not going to come on. Okay. What are some of the crazier things that you've run into in studying, uh, some ancient history on strength and, you know, what are some really wild feats that you may have seen or come across? So in terms of strength, it's going to trigger a bunch of people. But essentially the strongest dude ever was this Viking in the 11th, an Icelandic guy in the 11th century who walked three steps with a ship's mast on his back weighing 1,400 pounds.

And additionally, it was like 30 feet long. So he was stabilizing that now that was a feat that was tried to like most modern strong men tried to reproduce

okay Eddie Hall failed they all failed except Thor Thor did it he actually took it I think two steps further it is

thing is Homeboy did it a thousand years before Juice so that's you know what i mean they like people can give me a dozen names of people who did greater things or similar things after 1980 or 1970 and it's like okay cool but were you eating pickled herring and nothing else you know and and dark ale only as your diet back then uh to be fair this guy also broke his back and was like severely fucked up after this, but he managed it.

Three steps, 1400, you know, and not a yoke, you know, an actual, a 30 foot mast on his back. So there's that. And you also have the origin of the marathon, which is all fucked up. But many people, many people think it was just the guy who essentially well short short version of a long story the origin of the marathon starts with the battle of marathon the greeks who were vastly outnumbered and they thought they were going to be defeated by the persian empire managed to beat the persians but all of gree Greece was like on the brink of just collapse.

Everyone was turning on everyone. Cities were burning. And so they needed to let people know, hey, like stop freaking out. We want you to stop burning down your own cities and whatnot. We won the war. It's cool. But they were 25 – Athens was 25 miles from Marathon. And so this guy ran super fast, so fast,

that by the time he got to Athens, said, it is finished, and then died on the spot. He pushed his pace so hard he killed himself. What people don't know is that he ran like 400 miles or so before that because he had been a messenger through the actual battle, before the battle, after the battle, all this, and he had been running constantly for days.

And then finally, this guy having run 400 and something miles he's like all right i got 25 miles left to save my country like that is it you know my mom my my daughter is my you know my wife everyone i care about the temples of my gods the graves of my fathers you know like it comes down to me i got to run 25 miles as fast as i can and he did it so fast that he died so like that that's amazing like stuff like that calls to me in a way that like nothing else does like that level of commitment and sacrifice um so uh those would be like two of the extremes but a lot of it's just like like cool shit like you hear about uh do we ever talk about the,

last time I was on the show, like the history of the heel hook. Did we get into that? No. Oh, bro. I mean, no one knows where it actually came from, but the oldest way I've been able to trace it back was. And for people who don't know what a heel hook is. A heel hook is a grappling submission you'll see in jiu-jitsu and sambo and catch wrestling mma but basically it's

a really gnarly one and while essentially you're tucking the toes of your opponent in your armpit scooping in a variety of ways as in semen knows i like to do mine differently scooping under the heel and lifting the heel in a way that laterally torques the knee. Okay? Yeah. So anything with the knee is nasty, but this one in particular, like the way it twists, it can snap some shit that's never going to heal right. Yeah. You know, not just like your MC,

but like your LCL, PCL. It'll shred it all up. Yeah. You'll never be the same again. It's a very destructive submission. It's outlawed under a lot of rule sets, which is a point of controversy. Some people agree with that.

Some people don't. Is it illegal in gi and no-gi? Generally in some – It's illegal in the gi in most federations. In most federations, yeah. Some super fights will allow it in the gi, but generally in IBJJF, unless you're – in adult black belt no-gi, you can do it. Is that maybe what Gordon Ryan got his ankle busted in? No, that was a toe hold, a similar variation,

but it's actually what Gordon Ryan's beat like 80% of his opponents with. And it's just like that. He doesn't twerk it though either. Like he's nice. Well, he's just control. It's like that whole Donaher camp, you know, control is their byword, and I tend to agree with that approach because if you can't control someone, then what are you doing, you know?

Yeah. But so anyway it's uh become really really popular it's been around forever but it's become more publicly popular in the last 10 years or so and essentially the earliest record i could find about it was ancient greece there was a guy named halter and he was very small guy very unathletic you know and he's a pancreatic pancreatist or pancreation fighter mixed martial ancient mixed martial arts fighter thing is back then not only did not have time limits they didn't have weight classes either yeah so if halter is a buck 60 and he's fighting guys that are 240 250 you know what i mean that's a problem obviously and you got

punches and kicks it's not just grappling. So basically he went, like he was so dedicated to his craft and to being a successful fighter that he went and he actually consulted the Oracle. And the Oracle of Delphi. And he basically said, how do I become victorious in my fights? And she looked at him and said, by being trampled upon. And he's like, as he usually walked walked away, like, what the fuck? You know, I have no idea what that means. But apparently in, like, his next match, he is getting just smashed.

Like, you know, some guy's standing on him just smashing down on him, and he just kind of, like, you know, clicks in his head, like, oh, I see what's here. Like, I see what's happening here. And he gets control of the leg and learns to lift the heel. And I got to imagine that that guy got his knee torn apart too because heel hooks, first of all, if you're not familiar with them, that's one thing, but they don't hurt. Like, there's no pain. You feel pressure and then your whole knee is gone.

Yeah. Like, some submissions, you're like, oh, that hurts. You know, that's a warning. I'm going to tap. Or some are just pure pain. Like, you know, some of them are just compliance, you know. But the heel hook, there's no warning, hurts. That's a warning. I'm going to tap. Or some are just pure pain. Some of them are just compliance. But the heel, there's no warning, and then it's just gone. So I got to think that guy got to halter-towel that guy's knee apart.

But essentially wins his match. And after that, realizes, oh, my God, I can become a specialist at this. And my size, being small and athletic is not going to matter as much. I can get in on these guys' legs. They're confident. They're going to essentially let me under them because typical wisdom says don't put yourself under a larger opponent. And he ended up going undefeated and retiring, which was pretty rare back then. It was an undefeated record.

And he was just a heel hook specialist. Evil. Yeah. Evil. So stuff like that is just cool. And also I like watching how human minds work across the ages. And actually John Donner and I talked about this once, like what the level of expertise in ancient Greek martial arts was. And we agreed that it was probably pretty fucking high because you're talking about hundreds of years of people prioritizing people prioritizing as a primary olympic sport

fighting you know wrestling boxing specifically pancreation like what is the what like because i heard that there's not much known about it so what is known about it basically they i mean they have some rule sets and stuff like that there weren't time limits you couldn't eye gouge you couldn't you know what i mean but the uh you couldn't eye gouge and you know like fish hook and that's about it though there's punches kicks there was grappling um fights were won more often by submission than knockout but there were knockouts and on there were like sometimes people would submit from fatigue because with not a time limit like if you get to a point where you physically can't keep fighting then you should have joined wild hunt conditioning but i mean uh no but then like you know that's a submit like if

you can't fight you're no longer able to defend yourself that's a submission you know so anyway that's uh i like to uh you know any and all of that stuff i collect yeah and with uh that amount of running maybe you're trying to run your way into the history books yourself. Nah, no, I, I've accidentally broke a couple of world records and like niche that, you know, weighted running and stuff like that. But I, I realized it really doesn't matter to much to me. It's the same reason I don't compete in ultras anymore. It's like, I, quite frankly, I don't really care what anyone else is doing or how fast they're running. And more than that, the big appeal to me for running long distances is being alone I quite frankly don't really care what anyone else is doing or how fast they're running.

And more than that, the big appeal to me for running long distances is being alone and being able to wander and have that freedom and complete solitude. And then it's also a more unique challenge in the sense like I don't have a follow team. I don't have these nice, tidy little, you know, checkpoints and refueling stations and aid stations. And I don't have a masseuse or a car, you know, a mobile food truck following me, making my meals, like a lot of these distance runners do. And I don't have anyone pacing me or keeping my mind on track. So it falls to me to iron my shit out, keep my demons in line and not start making excuses for why I shouldn't be

here or why this is dumb or why, you know, I should just go home. So you do it over a marathon every day, right? No, I do like – I mean like I'll peak at like 40 miles like four times a week. I just mean like in this 500-mile journey you were doing – like you said between 26 and 70. 77. And then all – like I think 26 day was the only day less than an ultra. So an ultra is 31 miles or more.

Every day was in the 30s except that. And then the last day, well, the last day was 20 miles, but that was a half a day. And I was still – that 24-hour period still had more than 30 miles in it. First time that you ever ran like a marathon distance or just even over like 15 miles, did it take you a few days to recover from it? Yeah, it must have been pretty good, but I didn't have any training or like good shoes or anything i just literally was sweatpants and broken down old nikes and which is like okay here we go you know and uh it like actually makes me kind of cringe looking back at how unprepared and you know i was for that specifically but you know a really cool thing though is like compared to other people who run ultras, you're built.

You know what I mean? You hold muscle, you're strong, you do grappling, right? Yeah. So I guess for anyone who wants to get into this, what are just the things that they need to keep in mind to just stay built? Because no one wants to be a frail ultra runner. No. Like it's not the want.

So my basic, like the basic over me i'm 5 11 i walk around at 180 something pounds usually could be 180 could be 190 usually somewhere in between uh deadlift 550 i can run 500 miles um you know i can put up pretty like my i'm functionally strong if you give me a kettlebell or a club or have me doing l-sit pull-ups or calisthenics or any of that uh and then i have skills and you know the grappling striking shooting all that stuff but what i call i just refer to it as full spectrum training so it's like if the hybrid athlete is someone who trains strength and endurance a full spectrum athlete would be someone with strength endurance mobility skills training you know calisthenics training functional training and

it's like really just being the whole complete package. And that's how I train myself because it's just essentially I think it's best to look at a way you can train that addresses your weak points first and eventually in time just irons them out altogether. So it's like if I'm big and strong but I'm slow and I get winded going upstairs, what use am I really? But if I can run 500 miles but I'm a string bean who can't, it's like a punch feels like a pillow, then what use am I also? So I try to look at it like that. But as far as what people can do, it's train full spectrum. All of my personal training plans are – I put them up on my website and they're all over my social media.

So it's like I don't hide the way that I train or the way that I do this. I just can say, you know, I give the exact blueprint that I use. I just tend to be more consistent in my application and in the small details than most people. I don't drink, I don't party. I don't, you know, like watch porn or play video games or do any of these diversions to my attention. I train, I eat, I sleep and I spend time with my family. You know, I don't socialize outside of like training. You know, I don't, I just, I'm dialed in and I train, I eat, I sleep, and I spend time with my family. I don't socialize outside of training. I just am dialed in and I pay attention to little things. I do my mobility. I do my active recovery.

I don't skip this or that. And those are the things that add up in time. But as far as how I do it, literally the entire world can get the blueprint for how I train in all these different ways for $30, $40, $50. It's not guarded knowledge, but most people aren't willing to actually apply it over the long term. And so as far as the muscle, I'm not huge, but I find traditional bodybuilding stuff to be very good for your joints in terms of doing full range of motion proper stuff.

If you have weak external mobility and your external rotation of your shoulders get good at pulling down all the way to a squat position you know a lap pull down behind your back like you know if you have something going on with your trap or you know weak shoulders in general like do some lateral raises and front raises with a little pause in there like these are the same things that build muscle the same things that keep my joints happy you know and like yeah i'm not complaining about having abs or having you know some cuts to the back or whatever but a lot of that is just my body adapting to the demands placed upon it and i do a lot of weighted carries i you know i lift heavy i look functional and essentially just try to find a symbiotic mix of how to fit all those

pieces together that's what the whole wild hunt system is and that's like how me and my athletes continually do you know like balance stuff like that what have you uh adopted recently that um is something that you picked up like in the gym you said you uh started doing those jumps those hops yeah messiah hops yeah yeah so i study i steal rather i quote excuse me i culturally appropriate um things from all the cultures that i study so the messiah hops like most uh i'm gonna break a lot of people's hearts here but excuse me, culturally appropriate things from all the cultures that I study. So the Maasai hops, like most, I'm going to break a lot of people's hearts here, but there's a high likelihood that most people listening to this are doing plyometrics wrong with their box jumps and their weighted leaps and stuff like that.

That's not a plyometric. Plyometrics is training the rebound effect. It's the elasticity. It's minimal ground contact time. And so there's a tribe in Africa of lion hunters called the Maasai. And they have these – if you think of them like kind of dancing festivals or community athletic events kind of where they gather together. Andrew, there should be a good one on my page a little ways back. But the – and these guys get out there and they just start jumping and springing like in rhythm in a big circle and they're clapping.

Everyone's having a good time. And they're jumping so high they're making nba dunk contest guys look like you know five foot nine white dentists from detroit like it's it's it's in almost superhuman and it's effortless too and so i'm like what's going on here and i really start looking and understanding but their joint integrity their fast twitch muscle like their tendons must be as thick as the actual bones in their body. But look at that. Even the women too. Like they'll hop over all of our heads.

And these are also people that hunt lions with spears. And so I – What an awesome capacity to have. I'd imagine if that feels good to jump like that, that probably walking and hiking and doing other things probably don't feel bad. Yeah, that's funny. I had to put that clip in there on that one. That was so funny. It is too, but it's also injury-proofing.

So it's like I rolled my ankle four or five different times, ankles at different points during my run, a couple of them badly, and it's like it hurt and it swole, but they stayed together, and they stayed working, they stayed bearing my weight, and it's because I do stuff like that. And then Encima and I were messing around a while ago with something called a shiko, which is an ancient Japanese sumo movement. It's literally like a one-leg squat leg lift, and it's like you add a pause in at the top for up to 10 seconds, and it's one of the best hip mobility and glute medius activators you're going to come across. So I like all these things things the eskimos also

had some cool stuff they did a lot of like uh like different jumping stuff like off the knees and triple jumping and hurtling like very plyometric stuff as well as uh like some cool bodyweight stuff they have a game called like the the one leg kick where it's like you you post on one hand and push all your weight up with your feet and kick a ball hanging from the ceiling. And it's super cool. And, you know, so it's like I look at all this stuff, but like this functional training, it's all around us. And it's been around for, you know, forever.

And it's cool to see it coming back, you know, not just like, you know, all around. I mean, in fact, I have like there's gyms. I have a coaching program, I have like, there's gym. So I have a coaching program where I, I coach some athletes, but a lot of other coaches that have their own gyms or online training businesses or whatever. And we've been getting a lot of them into using these techniques and bringing them back, you know, like, and making them culturally relevant again, as well as like, you know know relevant in terms of their fitness inputs and so it's been really cool to kind of watch some of these things like the one arm you know

the single arm barbell press or the shiko or the masai hop or you know any of these other things that i've kind of adopted or studied and you know from earlier cultures uh making comebacks and uh so yeah just like geek out on all that stuff. What you got going on over there, Andrew? Uh, in Texas, me and Nsema were talking about how, like, it seems like the jujitsu world is a couple of years behind when it comes to like the lifting and fitness side of things. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I mean, more than a couple of years, um, and see if you want to talk about that. But, um, is there anything in like our history that shows that like grapplers or you know

whatever the term may be that they incorporated like a specific training like regimen like it was a part of their daily you know again routines and stuff the grapplers of ancient india they actually we get a lot of including the the weighted club training that's so popular right now the gada they called it back then. They used that. They were also big on high volume calisthenics, you know, like inmates or like I, you know, like I like to use. They had all sorts of cool stuff.

They would do a lot of like what we would consider like GPP, like rope climbing, swimming, carrying, dragging. And then they also had something, I believe it was called the Malhambra, something like that, but it was essentially like a giant steel pole, and they would just climb it like cracked-out strippers, you know, but just in crazy, difficult ways, upside down, sideways, one limb, you know, and it was just like, but just perfect. Not that I've ever seen that, so I wouldn't know, but you know what I'm saying?

That's how you'd imagine maybe. Yeah. If you had a terrible, dirty mind. Yeah. But they – I would say in terms of like grappling-specific strength training, I mean it's really hard to poke holes in what they were doing even today. And they would do like some stone lifting, like heavier stuff. But most of their strength training was calisthenic or – body weight or functional training with bases. Oh, they were big on bags, like Bulgarian bags.

They had their own version of that. It's the resistance of another person too. Yeah. I know like wrestlers commonly just have someone hop on their back and they run. Gladiators too. Or they run up a hill. I actually was able to get my hands on a real gladiator training manual, which is super rare. And it was written by an imperial physician and gladiator trainer from ancient Rome.

And he's actually commonly known as Galen. He's mostly known for his medical research and contributions to the medical community. But he was also before that a gladiator trainer. And he developed his own treaties on how to train gladiators and finding this thing was one of the coolest most validating things for me because it was basically just like a wild hunt playbook it was basically like literally like train everything you know pick up everything like the deadlift the weighted carry uh partner carries uh grappling maneuvers like all sorts of digging like all a lot of the things we were talking about.

Yeah. He had them all in there. And he broke his exercises up into different categories. Let's see. Steady, rapid, violent, essentially like by explosive output. And then he would prescribe these things like do this one steady, do this one violent, which is fully fully explosive do this one you know yeah and so it's like that's energy systems training i mean you know we call it what we call it now like that's that i mean it's funny but the like that whole the program that i use to train for my 500 mile that i'm now you know releasing and

talking about on my social media all the time right now like it's you know for all the science and research that went into that, it's basically the same. The principles behind it are no different than the gladiator training manual that, you know, Galen put out. It's like train all these different things, train them functional at different intensities and levels. And so that, you know, stuff like that's super cool. But then you also find some weird stuff. Like he had this weird belief that beans were the best carb source for gladiators because they built like like flabbier flesh which would give them like more resilience to sword like there's some weird shit in there

for sure you know uh he's like pork is the best protein and beans are the best carb source for gladiators it's like i mean okay but yeah you thought you need to be a little chubby yeah apparently but uh so you know but gladiators weren't vegetarian i'm sorry to break your heart what was that a game changers game changers yeah that was based off a single study of a gladiator cemetery in ephesius turkey and it's like gladiators they lived from britain to africa to germania to you know the middle east like they ate what was available they ate what they were given by the ludus you know what i mean and that's going to vary from place to place simple as that you know were there any like specific diets like back and again ancient times whatever you want to call in

our history where somebody was specifically like i guess like whether it be a gladiator a warrior whatever and they like believed like oh no got to give them the cleanest food so we'll give them vegetables and shit that gross from the ground? Or did nobody do that? No, it's super rare. I know of a tribe that the Spaniards found in South America or Central America that were vegetarian, and they seemed to be in good health and have a long lifespan, but they were also like they weren't a very, very physical tribe.

And also these are Spanish accounts that could have been misinterpreted it could have been that they ate fish during the seasonal run in spring but the spaniards were there in fall and they were only you know it could have been something like that but um allegedly and then of course they're like there were specific individuals like in ancient greece they were prone to the same trends we were like greece got hit hard by the carnivore trend, and then they got hit hard by the vegan trend also. And basically what it came down to is what the guy who won the last Olympics was eating. And the one year they even had one champion who swore, the swore the secret to his success was just massive quantities of honey.

They got hit by influencers too. Yeah, literally. Oh, look, Paul Saladino. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. So it's like,, look, Paul Saladino. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. So it's like the same things apply. But it is interesting because, like I said before,

the human mind doesn't really change that much. It's like you take away the Wi-Fi and the Instagram, and we're still pretty much dealing with a lot of the same shit. And everyone's dogmatic about their way being the best way. There's a video that you had where you were talking about calisthenics and then we kind of glazed over the prisoners thing. But what ends up being so beneficial about calisthenics and aging and then prisoners?

Yeah, so initially I started... 64 years. That guy's a beast. There's also a buddy of mine who's handled a Central Park Joe, and he's a really good dude. And he's in his 60s, and he just does bar workouts in Central Park,

and the guy's completely natural. I mean, you look at him, it's just, it's amazing. But the thing is, I got started with calisthenics when I was locked up. And I started doing them every morning, first thing. Because I was doing, I got pretty quickly to a point where I was doing such high volume that I needed about three workouts. Like if I'm going to do a thousand push-ups in a day, like, you know, with supporting stuff and some burpees and you know like bag curls and stuff probably gonna need to break that up it's also the fact that i wasn't getting much food so i wanted to work out before each meal yeah and so it's like i could finish my workout in time which when you're eating 4 a.m breakfast to chow that means getting up at three

and getting to it you know and so i got in that habit when i was locked up and then after that i would kind of use that post uh post workout high, calm, whatever, to chill and just kind of read. And I'd read about some of the history and I'd learn to meditate. I kind of taught myself from books to meditate a little bit. And I – so as far as like a morning routine goes, I found that that's just really beneficial in general. But specific to the calisthenics, I mean, even science doesn't fully understand it, but it just seems to keep people young in a way that other training doesn't. And it's not like you don't have to be a bar specialist or anything. Like I myself do about five minutes a day.

Yeah. And like I'm to the point now where I'm doing like single leg squats and single leg pushups, you know, stuff like that. But you just get – you progress less with anything over time. But it's – I think your body is meant to move under its own weight. So there is that to consider. Like there's not additional load. On top of that, just the sheer number of reps you're going to get coming in and out of any range of motion and assuming you're doing even a relatively balanced calisthenic program. Like you're going to be doing a lot of pushing, pulling, squatting, and hinging.

Those tissues are going to be moving, engaging, limbering, hydrating, you know. And if you're not doing that, even if you're like a relatively balanced weightlifter, you're still going to be a lot of ranges of motion, little muscles and areas, and ranges of joints that you're not accessing day to day, you know. And that's the shit that keeps you not just young but keeps the quality of life high so you're not you know squinting every time you bend over at age 34 and you know yeah degrading from there you're releasing a documentary yeah so thug life the documentary it comes out tomorrow so is that thursday um and it literally this just covers the 500 mile run. Like it shows the why, the prep for

it. And then right now it's a three part series and the final series that's coming out tomorrow, what covers the actual run itself. Comes out August 24th. August 24th. Correct. Covers the actual run itself. So it'll, the things we talked about, plus going to a little more detail and kind of show you, like I filmed a lot of as much as I could. Um, and so you can kind of follow along for all of that. And it was, um, I was just a really cool, really cool experience overall. And, um, just, I'm super grateful that I was able to do it and that so many people were, you know, supportive. So thanks. Did it help in the way that you thought it would? It did.

Because the original reason for running was kind of for your dad or to help put some of that to rest. It did actually. And it also kind of gave me more than I kind of bargained for as well. So I go into it in the doc, but basically it helped me put a healthier perspective and understanding on his death because he – in addition to dying unexpectedly, it was also suicide. He had fallen off a cliff. He was – like I said, he was a mountain man and bear hunter, so he spent a lot of time in the hills. And he fell off a cliff and just like broke his whole body basically. And eventually they got a helicopter to him, pulled him out, and then they took him back to the hospital. And it was like the next day or something he checked himself out and he was at home.

And just when it became apparent that he wasn't going to be able to run around the mountains and do the things that, you know, he'd done his whole life. He shot himself. So that kind of took, you know, that adds an extra layer of processing and understanding. And basically it just, you know, gave me the objectivity to look at it and just kind of decide that every man has the right to, you know, decide his own fate. And I can't promise that I'd do anything different. And just to be grateful for the time we had. And then beyond that, I actually got there pretty quick. It was four or five days and I'd kind of worked through that and started feeling more at peace with it. And then after that, it was just like that kind of effect rippled outward to the

other areas of my life. And I just kind of started looking at society and my history with it, my place in it. Were you maybe mad at your dad? No, for some reason I wasn't. Like a lot of people assumed I would be, but I really wasn't. You know, I missed him and, you know, I was sad. And I wished that we had had more time together. But I came pretty quickly to a place where I was just I was just grateful for

the time we had because we we did have you know for all we had a complicated relationship but in the end we had some great years together we you know I got to I hunted bear with him just last year and uh we would have hunted or bear in Oregon together this year and that was one reason I chose there too was because it was kind of my way of showing him, you know, I never really got to hunt out there. He hunted California and Idaho. And so it was my way to show him, you know, kind of show him that country too. But, and then from there, like I said, I just, when you remove yourself from like the noise and just the society in general for that long, you get a different look at it.

And you get to kind of examine things. You don't have the noise in your ears. You don't have the dopamine hit every time you pick up your phone to check your social media, your texts, or, you know, see how many likes or whatever this got. And, you know, there's no Kardashians, there's no politics, there's no bad memes or, you know what I mean? Comment haters, whatever, you know, whatever the thing that defines your day is. And it's a little unsettling because it's only you. Like, you're there and it's just you. And you're like, okay, so who am I?

Like, where do I end and where do all those things start? You know, what's really me and what's just the noise passing through? And so I came to enjoy that and also just kind of realized that like, maybe don't take shit so seriously. Like you can do serious shit and not take it, not be super emotionally involved in everything and aggro and emo about it when it doesn't go your way or this or that. And, uh,

that's something I've learned in general from running, but also just looking at like looking at it from the outside, like man, life, life is short. Uh, it's going to be over before you think about it. Like, you know, before you realize before you're willing to accept, it's going to be over before you think about it like you know before you realize before you're willing to accept it's going to be over and so maybe let's just have some fun

like doing hard shit and like exploring different parts of ourselves and doing different things and trying to enjoy it as much as we can along the way and not get sucked into the idea that joy lies necessarily in comfort by association because i felt more joy running 500 miles through the wilderness alone than i ever have sitting on a couch or in a five star hotel or even like i fucking love steak but no steak compares to what i felt on that run any one day you know and i mean to the point that is busted up as my body is i'm going back out for another hundred miles you know on the pct next in what four days five days and uh for a lot bro i just like i my whole thing was like i wasn't trying to heal from the last one to just be better i was trying to heal from the last one to get back out there yeah you know and so it was like the second don't be wrong like by the

time i ended when i crossed the wash the bridge of the gods at the washington border i was like okay so never gonna run again like fuck this i don't even like running you know and then uh like i got a shower i got a couple meals and it was maybe 48 hours later and i was like oh yeah oh we got to get back eight like we got to get this body ready i got to get one more in before the season ends so next week uh i will be on the oregon pct for 100 miles or you know i think i can get about two days out there dude i don't know about you guys but i feel like such a bitch like i've never actually done anything hard now uh after hearing everything uh but with that in mind like for people that are listening like where do you think like for somebody to become a little bit more badass like where can people start like because you were saying like like you know your first couple

marathons you were like i wasn't even prepared for that let alone this this fucking amazing feat but like yeah what can somebody do if they're feeling like whoa dude i'm kind of a piece of shit i've been going the comfort route more than anything. I want to get a, you know, be a little bit more hardcore than I am. So do something that you suck at and just jump into it. Like it's, I try to always like rotate new things in so I can, you know, I can be a white belt in something always and always be somewhat outside of my

comfort zone. And I mean, yeah. And like the, and the things I'm proficient in, like running, I'll put, I push the envelope,

but like if you're really, really like that like unfulfilled like you need to activate and really get after some stuff find something that you're going to love something you're going to enjoy uh swim to alcatraz or do something small you know i don't even care like it could be a swim a mile run a mile walk a mile whatever but pick something that actually calls to you not something that the internet told you is badass or that you should be doing a MRF or doing what I'm doing or doing whatever. Like everyone is different.

So it could be, shit, it could be a chess tournament, you know, but it's something outside your comfort zone because you're not going to grow where you are. Like if you sit in your same routine day after day, the one thing I can promise you is you will die in that routine day after day unless something else rips you from it. So if you want to change, if you want to push yourself,

like the growth happens outside that comfort zone. And you don't have to like jump violently outside it. You can take three steps outside it, you know, but just start something and make sure it's something that actually speaks to you, something that actually calls to you because you won't stick with it otherwise. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.