Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 56 - Kyle Kingsbury

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

Today we have former UFC Fighter and host of The Onnit Podcast, Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle was one of the first to talk to Joe Rogan about the Ketogenic Diet and might be the first man to convince Mark Bell... to try psychedelics. Re-watch the live stream: https://youtu.be/IvDJeGpLOk4 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Is it maybe similar to, I've never messed with any of this kind of stuff. I've never, other than Kratom, I never smoked pot. I never tried really any of this different stuff. But is it maybe somewhat similar to, just so other people can be more related to it, just the effects of like alcohol in terms of what it does to kind of let your guard down in terms of like inhibition of like maybe going to talk to a girl or something. You're right. I know it probably doesn't feel the same way, but maybe. It feels way different. There is euphoria. It lowers inhibition to an extent. You know, I don't make stupid decisions on pharmaceutical MDMA where I make a lot of dumb decisions on alcohol.
Starting point is 00:00:44 That said, I think it, you know, one of the critical differences is, you know, alcohol numbs you. It, it quiets the mind in a different way. It really, it is a sedative. Whereas the MDMA that I'm talking about opens you up. It makes you want to have the conversations you normally wouldn't feel comfortable with. And in that, you know, some people feel like, fuck, I said too much, or I told this person, I love them and I don't really love them. You know, those kinds of things can be, you know, maybe the, the, the double-edged sword if there is one. Um, but I think also a clear, you know, distinction to make is that this stuff is way different than what you would take at a rave. You know, like, like the pharmaceutical is so much different than, um, ecstasy, you know,
Starting point is 00:01:30 that's cut with uppers and different things. And you really have this, this huge low point for days, even weeks following that, you know, as long as like, as Rick Doblin says, um, if you give it the space necessary and treat it as a ceremony where you're, you're journaling, you're meditating, you're taking time to decompress, you're going to bed on time, you're staying well hydrated. There's very little side effect. Is, is there a little bit of a battle, uh, from, uh, the company on it, Aubrey Marcus yourself, uh, against, uh, people just thinking you guys are just like high all the time kind of thing? Because you have a lot of science behind you. Like you're extremely intelligent when I hear you talking on Instagram about, you know, the benefits of sauna and benefits of fasting.
Starting point is 00:02:15 And, you know, the actual science behind it. And you have that credibility of knowing that. And the Audit Academy seems to take great pride in researching the supplements that they make and stuff like that is there ever kind of a knock against like hey man these guys are just weird spiritual people that are hanging out at a campfire getting high as shit all the time there's there's definitely resistance always you know and um certainly you know you look at the way the company was built and joe rogan being a big part of that you know a lot of people have come out and said hey this shit's snake oil it doesn't work blah blah blah and then
Starting point is 00:02:46 you know they had a pony up 200 grand for a double double blind study done it at a boston center for memory to verify alpha brain works and they do it a second time with a different age group all with healthy individuals i like alpha brain i mean this is not a commercial for it but i i legitimately when you're trying to pull words and you're trying to pull something from your memory, I legitimately have noticed a benefit from it. It fucking works. I feel it works. There is resistance with that. And then certainly, you know, as you start, anytime you use the word God or you start talking about things in a spiritual sense or the benefits of meditation, you know, there's resistance there.
Starting point is 00:03:20 Because if you don't know about it, like, did you ever see the fucking documentary Wild Wild Country on Netflix? I have not. It will blow you away. I'm going to write it down. It's with this dude Rajneesh before he became Osho and he moves his ashram from India to Antelope, Oregon. Is he a monk? No, he's not a monk. Spiritual teacher.
Starting point is 00:03:40 I don't want to give it away, especially if people haven't listened, but it's worth watching. And there's a lot of resistance from these old white Christians out in the middle of nowhere in Oregon. And, uh, they show both sides beautifully because you can see that resistance. So there's always fear of the unknown and certainly with other cultures and things that are, that are out there. My job is to try to distill and break down what's useful and what are the best, most effective ways
Starting point is 00:04:08 that are also time sensitive because people don't have an hour to sit in a dark room. Truly, if you start to learn and feel the benefit of these things, you can extend that. You don't have to just do it for 10 minutes, but if that's the entry point, the low hanging fruit for people
Starting point is 00:04:22 to get a piece of the action and say, oh shit, I feel better. That's important. So those are the low-hanging fruit for people to get a piece of the action and say, oh, shit, I feel better. That's important. Those are the tools I want to give to people. There's a lot of things to talk about when you talk to Kyle Kingsbury. It's hard to fucking figure out almost where to start. To me, you're like a hero in some ways because anybody that has stepped inside the octagon for the UFC, I'm a huge UFC fan. I've been watching it from day one, and I've loved it for a long time.
Starting point is 00:04:50 And so anyone that steps into the cage, I got great respect for. But there's so many other things to talk to you about. You have a great relationship with your wife. You got your maniac kid bear. Literally a little animal. Yeah, the fearless one. And you have this, you seem to be in pursuit of something larger than just your job on it and just being a former competitive UFC fighter. It seems like you're in search of something greater.
Starting point is 00:05:26 What is that that you're in search of something greater. Uh, what, what is that, that you're in search of? Do you think? Well, you know, I guess the coins term at on it is to live each day a little bit better than we did the past. Right. And, um, it's funny, you know, when you use the term searching or grasping or longing for something like that, that thing is always out in front of you, right? It's never fucking there. You never actually embody it. So I want to be careful when I talk about that, because it's not, I want to be happy. You're always in a state of wanting that thing as if you don't fucking embody it. Right. And, um, but, but you are correct. You know, I'm looking for all the tools, all the different tools, all the different ways that can help myself personally
Starting point is 00:06:02 to live better, to feel better, to know how to deal with stress, to be able to reset myself quickly and just see things from all sides and have a little bit of perspective. And then training, movement, you know, diet, nutrition. I mean, it all goes together. The body and the mind are interlinked and people think that that's, that's separate and it's really not. So figuring out all these different methods that can help me personally and then whatever it does, really bringing that out to the world. I like the word that you said. You said perspective. And to me, like that's a really crucial element of being a human being.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Because if I don't understand where you're coming from, it's really hard for us to communicate. coming from, it's really hard for us to communicate. That's really hard. If you said you're really pissed off about something or you're super happy or whatever the situation is, if I don't have perspective into how you might feel, or if I never even think about, hey, when I go to say this to this person, how are they going to react to that? If I don't have that, then I feel like I'm missing a key element of being a human being. Yeah. And that's, if you look at like, if you, again, going back to some of the spiritual teachings and I'm not trying to make this too spiritual, but just take the word compassion. It's really easy to feel compassion. If you try to piece together all the things that led this
Starting point is 00:07:16 person to screaming in your face or crying on your shoulder for an extended period of time, and nothing coming out of your mouth is fixing the situation. Right. Right. But if you put yourself in their shoes, if you're able to see things from their angle, then that can at least paint a picture where you can feel what they're feeling and understand why. Right. And that, that makes communication way easier from that angle.
Starting point is 00:07:38 Right. It's a lot easier to have a little love and understanding for that person that's going through some stuff when you have compassion for them. Right. And that's not always easy to do, especially if you're getting yelled at or you're the one that's being blamed for something. You get in a tense situation, it makes it more difficult. Yeah. And having different tools, like, I mean, the breath work has been essential because you train your body to shift into parasympathetic state instead of being in fight or flight and this, this beta wave where we're high thinking, go, go, go type a personality. And we shift that down into a flow state or alpha wave. And we're more meditative and parasympathetic rest and digest. And we're just in a relaxed state.
Starting point is 00:08:14 If I can do that through breath work, then as the shit's coming my way and I take a deep breath, the body remembers, it remembers that slow, deep exhale as a ah everything's okay i'm safe right everybody listening ready i'm okay i'm safe in the nose out the ass wait what it's in the ass out the nose oh you got it backwards how how do you breathe i mean it sounds like a weird thing but uh when you started to investigate and started to poke, look into some of these things, were you kind of almost like, well, fuck it. I know how to breathe, right? Yeah. Well, it was funny you mentioned that because, you know, I've heard a lot of people talk about breathwork and I was like, yeah, that's bullshit.
Starting point is 00:08:59 And then I was working with a sports psychologist. People blowing up balloons and shit. You're like, what is this guy doing? Hey, I got to do that with the Art of Breath guys. Yeah, laying on your back and like squeezing a ball between your legs and like blowing up a balloon. You're like, is this person going to squirt out a baby or something? What the fuck's going on here? Is this Lamaze?
Starting point is 00:09:13 Yeah. Well, that's to teach you diaphragmatic breathing. You know, you look at kids, they breathe with their belly. And then, you know, we get so tight and we're worried about our abs and everybody's breathing into their chest. And that's not good. You know, you're using accessory muscles like your neck and your throat. That's the breathing that happens when we're tense. And if that's the only way we breathe 24 seven, that keeps us sympathetic. That keeps us in this, this portion of our body that's go, go, go and worrisome. Right? So if we can
Starting point is 00:09:40 learn to relax and use our ability to breathe, that has a lot of benefit, you know? So I first got into this stuff and fighting and it was really simple, like inhale for 10 seconds, hold for 10 seconds, exhale for 10 seconds, all through the nose. And, um, you know, that just layered into other techniques and utilize that like in, in training or just when you're like relaxed and just when I'm relaxed, you know, first thing in the, like twice a day, I do it for 10 minutes, twice a day. That's kind of hard 10 seconds 10 seconds oh you could do anything you can do i mean box breathing does five five five five so that military uses that five seconds in five second hold five second out if you uh go to take a breath in and you have a hard time because i've tried some of these things you have a hard time getting a big gulp of air what does that mean that you're gonna die in 10 seconds or no, you're not going to die. It probably means you're excited.
Starting point is 00:10:29 You know, you might've had a lot of coffee. You might be in a stressful situation and you have a lot of shit on your mind, but heart rates up. You know, I mean, if you try to do, um, the five second box breathing, which is a 20 second cycle in between big squat sets, that's going to be pretty fucking hard to do. Right. So there's a time and a place for it. And usually when you wake up and when you go to bed are pretty good. Cause you're, you're, you're tired and you're kind of already in that relaxed state. Um, so just pairing it with that, but then, you know, you circle back to that when you're in, if you're trying to actively and mindfully slow your breathing down when you're in the shit, that's good practice too, you know, in whatever way, even if you're just doubling, one of the easiest ones just to double your exhale. So you
Starting point is 00:11:08 inhale for four seconds, you exhale for eight. That's a very easy way to extend that, that exhale. And that's parasympathetic, the exhale, you know, Rob Wilson was, was out at on it from art of breath. And he, he co-founded that with Brian McKenzie and it's a beautiful system. And they take a Pachinko method and Wim Hof and a number of other modalities and kind of piece them together in a way where you can learn to breathe differently throughout the entire day consciously. And that's for performance, for recovery, for meditation, you name it. There's, you know, like many paths up the mountain with that too, just in itself. When you were fighting, did you ever get in a situation where you know you're mixing it up with somebody uh they took you down you took them down so on and now you're like oh shit i need to breathe is that something that helped calm you down is it something to help you recover
Starting point is 00:11:59 yeah there's positions in fighting where you know if you get taken down you can panic and and try to just go out to get up. Jiu Jitsu, right? I mean, a guy's laying on top of you or digging his knee into your chest or whatever it might be, right? Exactly. And you just, but you just remember, Hey, slow the breathing down. And then that one thought, it's not like I'm going to keep thinking that I got to think positionally, uh, risk control, how am I get back to my feet, wherever the situation calls for. But if my first thought is a slow, my breathing down, that's a good thought to have.
Starting point is 00:12:25 If a guy's pressing me up against the cage and I'm panicked, hey, slow my breathing down. Now dig the underhook. Now get out of the spot. You know, those kind of things. First thing when you get back, if you ever watch, ah, shit, Greg Jackson from Jackson's MMA. When they record him and he's mic'd up in the corner,
Starting point is 00:12:42 the first thing he tells his fighter to do when he gets back is usually five deep breaths or 60 breaths and that, and he'll count for him, you know, and he, that's all he cares about because he knows once he's reset his breath, now he can hear him. Now he can listen and pay attention to whatever adjustments need to be made.
Starting point is 00:12:58 And he's one of the best dudes in MMA for making corrections in between rounds. You know, you look at all the great fighters that he's coached over the years. They make a lot of adjustments. And that's one of the things, though. You're not receptive to any new information when you're huffing and puffing and you're fucking panicked. You know, you got to slow that down.
Starting point is 00:13:17 Now you can take in information and really receive that. What the fuck did you say 10 seconds ago? I just got punched in the face. I'm dying here. That makes a big difference, too. You know, you have a coach, you're used to their cadence, used to the way they speak. And sometimes you see some of those corners or, you know, people are like, what the fuck did you, you know, you messed up, you're behind, right? And now they're probably causing almost more, more problems for the guy rather than, uh, giving him assistance.
Starting point is 00:13:46 Uh, you know, in powerlifting, you know, we'll, we'll turn the music up. It gets a little crazy. Um, the Russian lifters have a different perspective on some of that. They don't, you know, they're pretty, uh, stoic when they lift. Put on Tchaikovsky. Yeah. It's a nutcracker. And they go out there and rip 950 pounds off the ground or whatever it is.
Starting point is 00:14:02 But, uh, you know, people will yell and scream, let's go, you know, smashed away all these different things that you hear. And a lot of times, depending on the lifter, but most of the time I'll kind of creep up to the monolift and I'll just, I'll kind of talk the person through the lift a little bit and I'll tell them, yeah, breathe. Don't forget to focus on taking air into your stomach, push against your belt. I'll say, you know how to squat. Let's, you know, that now it't forget to focus on taking air into your stomach. Push against your belt. I'll say, you know how to squat. Let's, you know, now it's time to do it. They're just almost like words of encouragement rather than like, let's go, motherfucker.
Starting point is 00:14:34 Yeah. I mean, there's time and place for all of it, I think. But, you know, here at Super Training, I think it's always helped us. Have you gotten coaching like that before? Or you got, you know, because you're getting people punching you and kicking you and stuff? Yeah, and I've had it on both sides. You know, the first time I won fight of the night was out in Austin, Texas. And my coach who passed away, Weetzie, you know, we were going to the third round.
Starting point is 00:14:56 And I thought I'd won both rounds, but it was still close. And all he said was, how about you want it? And if you rewatch that fight on Fight Pass, you hear Rogan listens to him saying that and he just, how bad you want it? How bad you want it? Over and over again, laughing about it. But that was it. That's what I needed at that time. You know, and I went out and I won, you know, I won that round, but, um, there is a time and a place for encouragement. There's a time and a place for, Hey, just slow down, relax. You got this. And let's, let's work on some of these these more um technical aspects of the game you know but but yeah like you know power lifting as well jesse burdick breathe into the belt you know
Starting point is 00:15:31 breathe deeply don't chest breathe breathe expand the belt as far as you can and push into that thing i mean that raises the spine that's when you're really going to get the most core strength and stability in whatever lift you're doing even even on bench press. So there there's, I've certainly gravitated more towards the technical side of things and being relaxed because if you're getting punched in the face or if you've got, you know, heavy weight on your back, I don't need words of encouragement. Like I know what's at stake when I start walking that out or, you know, when they take the monolift off and you got all the weight on your back, like, yeah, I'm in the moment I'm locked in. I don't need it a little extra, but some people do. Right.
Starting point is 00:16:06 Yeah. Everybody, everyone's a little bit, a little bit different. Back to the breathing. You're saying kind of breathe into the, into the stomach. How do you teach yourself how to do something like that? Well, I think that's, that's one of the beautiful things the Art of Breath guys are doing is that they, they have, you know, mobility tools.
Starting point is 00:16:22 Like if anybody has ever used Kelly Sturette's balls on the stomach, that's not fun, but you breathe into that and you can open up the psoas. He's got his butt plug. Yeah. Supernova and breathe into the butt plug. Yeah. Breathe into it. But, um, you know, you open those things up and then you find you can actually take a deeper breath into the belly and you're not trying to see your belly go out. If you think about a fake weight belt being all the way around your body, that's what you're trying to expand into all the way through the back, the obliques and everything you want that to go in all directions. And you can do a little thing where you just kind of hold your hands over your obliques, you know, just above the hips and breathe into that and try to expand your, your hands out.
Starting point is 00:17:02 Push your fingers outward. Yeah. Just feel that open up, you know, with your thumb and your forefinger around your obliques. So that's something you can do just for relaxation purposes. Yeah. You can do it driving. Just put it on cruise control and let God steer the wheel for you. Like you can do it anywhere. Maybe not driving, but you can, you can do it damn near anywhere and really feel what
Starting point is 00:17:20 that feels like. And then again, like it's easier once you've kind of greased the groove on that pathway to know like, oh, am I breathing into this? Let me check. And it's all repetition. Consistency is King with everything in life. It's no different when the breath, with the breath work and the more you get into that state and the more you breathe properly and work on those mechanics, then it becomes thoughtless. Right. How, how different are you as a person from like 10 years ago? Cause I'd imagine like when you were fighting, I mean, there's, I know some fighters are like more technical and they get into it cause they used to wrestle or whatever. And every fighter I ever, ever had on the show, they all lie and try to claim that
Starting point is 00:17:52 they're not maniacs. But, uh, there's gotta be a side to you as a fighter. That's like, you know what? I want to fucking punch this guy in the face. I want to punch people in the face. This is what I, this is what I like to do. And I'd like to test my skill against another man one-on-one. Right. So what is, you know, how have you changed from that mindset to being a more understanding person, being a person who is a lot more enlightened? And the second part of that question, uh, yeah, the second part of that question is, would you be able to still fight the way that you are today?
Starting point is 00:18:26 Versus the way you were then. I like that fucking question. Nobody's asked me that post-fight career. Well, let's see. When I got into fighting, I very much was angry. I hadn't done any personal work. At me? No, not you.
Starting point is 00:18:39 Oh, okay. But I just wanted to fucking destroy someone. I'm glad it's not me. You know in Fight Club when he beats the shit out of Jared Leto? Yeah. And he's like, what the fuck's wrong with you, man? And he goes, I just wanted to destroy something beautiful. Like, I had that.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Like, I just wanted... I didn't give a fuck if I got hit in the face. I wanted to hurt someone. That's a great scene. And, you know, moving through the career, it shifted to I wanted to be the best version of myself. And it didn't matter. Like, I wanted to win, for sure. But I didn't care if I hurt the guy or if I just won with a rear naked choke and he didn't have a bruise on him. I just wanted to win. I want to be the best version of
Starting point is 00:19:11 myself. You know, I got, I had a shoulder injury, started getting into the plant medicines and, um, I think ayahuasca specifically. And at a certain point in time, it just, it didn't matter anymore. So in my last fight, I realized in the fight, this is the last time I'm going to fight. And I still wanted to win, but there was a lack of aggression, even in the locker room. I remember hitting mitts and just feeling like it's not there today. And I wasn't sure what it was, but in the fight, it was like, oh, this is it. It wasn't important anymore. Yeah, there's a big difference between throwing your jabs and your hooks and stuff with technique versus like I'm picturing smashing somebody's skull.
Starting point is 00:19:49 Yeah, there's a little oomph. There's a little bit extra on top, right? Especially on fight day. It does sound savage, but it is a fight, right? You can't be in there losing sight of that. Yeah. You can't be in there losing... I'm sure there's a lot of technique that you're
Starting point is 00:20:06 always thinking about. And there's a lot of things that go into it. But, uh, I, sometimes when I'm watching UFC, I'll kind of look at the fighters going back and forth and you can kind of sometimes see occasionally somebody will lose sight of the fact that it's a fight. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:20 Yeah. And so going into the second part, like, could I still fight today? Not, not as a professional, you know, there's no doubt that final fight I had proved that to me that it's not, it's not as important as it should be. This is what I'm going to do professionally. Um, and a lot of other factors, you know, fighters pay everything that we talked about before it goes into that. But, um, you know, can I defend myself?
Starting point is 00:20:42 Yeah. You know, I was still working. I was still working at a, at a titty bar when I was fighting in the UFC. And, uh, when I retired, I continued working there for a couple more years and, you know, you gotta, you gotta throw people out of the bar, that kind of thing. And there was times where I'd get challenged and, and especially it would especially bring me back to that level of, of, of, I will destroy you when someone recognized me and still said, like, make me get out of the bar, you know, like something like that. Then it was just like,
Starting point is 00:21:09 all right, everything just comes back, push kick to the nuts, guillotine, lift them off the ground, carry them out, you know, those kinds of things. So that's still in me. And, and I like keeping the short or the short Sean Connery short. I like even the sword, uh, sharp when I'm doing anything in life, you know, like I haven't done a lot of striking, but I'm, I'm down to get back into Muay Thai and certainly with jujitsu and things like that, like that kind of scratches the itch of human interaction and martial arts. And in a way that's, that's humbling, but at the same time, it services that desire to, to grab ahold of somebody and strangle them. Like that's still there too, you know, but, but it's different now.
Starting point is 00:21:50 Yeah. You got different goals. And, and, uh, when you're younger, you're, you have a lot more like quote unquote fight in you. I think, uh, you know, every, I think almost everybody goes through that when they're, when they're a kid, uh, you go through this period of time where you're just kind of angry. You're just kind of like, who the hell knows why? Um, I certainly didn't have any reason to be angry. I have great parents. I grew up in a nice area, but, uh, whatever reason you're, you're going through, uh, hormonal changes and whatever else is going on in your body when you're a kid and you're pissed off, you're kind of angry. And as you get older, a lot of that changes. And then your goals change a lot of financially things are different for you now. Um, and, uh, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:30 working at a bar, like, and just surrounding you're, you're not surrounded by the greatest people. Yeah. That's certainly the atmosphere. And, and now, now you're surrounded by some of the best people in the world that are, that are, uh, experts in different, in different fields. And you can kind of pick and choose, oh, I want to learn about this. I want to go over here and I want to learn about that. How did this job with Onnit come about? Because it seems like a perfect marriage between you and Aubrey Marcus and the Onnit Academy. How'd it come to be? Let's see well you know i i was a fan of aubrey's for years going back listening on the joe rogan podcast and um i went out to paleo effects uh last year just to meet people you know and ended up meeting aubrey we hit it off at dinner and um we shared the same
Starting point is 00:23:18 flight back to vegas from uh austin and i sat with him and John Wolf and we really had, you know, like three plus hours to kill just going down the rabbit hole on everything from training to fasting to supplements and nootropics to, um, you know, plant medicines. Yeah. We, I mean, it was really, it was really awesome. And he, you know, he offered me a job. He said, I got a spot for you here and on it. And everything ended up working out, um, with that. Uh, you have to go through like an interview process or anything like that or. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he wanted to interview me. He also wanted to, you know, when I got there, he didn't want to target me on my back. He didn't want me walking around like I was hot shit taking over. And, um, he, he really
Starting point is 00:23:59 coached me on how to, how to come into that situation. Cause I didn't have a ton. That was my first fucking desk job ever, you know? And, um, not that I walk around like I'm hot shit on a daily anyways, but like there were, it made a lot of sense looking back, you know? Right. Um, well, yeah, you don't want the people that have been working there for quite some time to be thinking like this new guy is going to come in shouting orders. They don't know your background. They don't know if you had a previous desk job or if you were an executive somewhere, they don't really know. Right. Yeah. Well, and I'm not a doctor, so, if you're an executive somewhere, they don't really know. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:26 Well, and I'm not a doctor. So, you know, to, to know the things that I know, people like, how do you know all this shit? Well, I mean, I'm fascinated by it. That's really what drives me to learn. Yeah. That's like I'm a black belt, but, um, you know, especially when it comes to, to diet, nutrition, health, and wellness and supplements for that matter. It's a, it's been a passion of mine since I've been young, you know? So, uh, you know, the same goes for, for a guy like Paul check, Paul check quit school. I think as a freshman, same with Einstein, he's in good company, but you know, he's one of the
Starting point is 00:24:54 most educated, well-thought well-spoken people I've ever met in my life. And that's because he didn't fit into the school system, but he was hungry and he's still hungry to learn, you know? And, and I, I like to keep that hunger inside me. He's changed a lot. Yeah. Big time. You know, he was, uh, so much of what came from him was he was talking about lifting
Starting point is 00:25:14 quite a bit and embracing yourself. And obviously he still practices all those things. Um, and he still teaches and coaches some of those things, but now he's like totally transition is almost like a Shaolin monk or something. Yeah. He's, he's, he's, he's definitely warrior and, and, uh, spiritual gangster all at the same time. You went and hung out with him.
Starting point is 00:25:34 He's down in, he's still in San Diego. Is that right? Yeah. We get to hang out. Aubrey came out there, my wife, Dr. Dan Engel, and, uh, we did some stone stacking and different meditation and a lot of cool things. Uh, he taught me a lot. You know, he's still continues to this day to teach me a lot.
Starting point is 00:25:47 I just saw him out in Sedona last week. Isn't it cool to learn all these things? I mean, things that you would immediately rule out years ago. Like if your elbow hurt, right? If I was like, oh, take off your shoes, I'm going to work on your foot. Nowadays, you wouldn't be like, this fucking guy's an idiot. I told him my elbow hurts why is he working on my foot but now you know we're seeing with guys like paul i mean it's
Starting point is 00:26:10 just a weird example but we're seeing with guys like paul check and we're seeing with some of these people that do body work some of these people that believe in uh spiritual uh aspects of uh training and healing the body we're starting to see more and more people be more open-minded towards, yeah, there's a possibility everything's connected. So who knows? Maybe there is something in my foot that's messing up my elbow. Look no further than when Paul Quinn came in here and dug that, that, that, uh, pen right into your index finger and you can open up and get behind a squat bar.
Starting point is 00:26:37 Yeah. That's still boggles my mind. Yeah. And that's just something, I mean, the problem, I think the issue is for people, especially, you know, guys that listen, guys and girls that listen to your podcast and on a podcast, there is an issue when you explain it to fucking woo woo. Right. And if you just say like, listen, it's all the fascial lines are connected.
Starting point is 00:26:54 The nervous system is connected. And if I can hit your index finger, it's going to open all that up. And then you're like, all right, well, let's give it a go. And then it works. You're like, oh shit. All right. Yeah. I guess you know something.
Starting point is 00:27:04 And Poliquin obviously knows a lot, too. He's one of the guys that's strength sensei. He's definitely in the category of elite coaches when it comes to all the things and the way everything is tied together. He knows a lot more than most people. But I think that the proof's in the pudding. And if you give them something that's usable, that's really that's all that needs to matter, really. Does it work or not, you know, from a supplement perspective, uh, not just, uh, you know, the style of supplements from something like the on it or from on it, but, uh, more like, um,
Starting point is 00:27:37 I guess just, uh, like herbs and some different things you have access to, uh, have you noticed anything making like a big difference in, in training and recovery? Um, I guess more along the lines of like vitamins, uh, apple cider vinegar, like just things of that nature. Yeah, that's loaded too. Uh, well, first let me just say, you know, I work in product development. I guess that's the, if I have two babies that on it, one's the podcast and one's product development. And, um, you know, we're working on new supplements, but I can't tell you anything that we're going to do supplements all the time, right? Yeah. So like, that's something that's ongoing. Um, we've got a
Starting point is 00:28:11 couple that are getting ready to come to market right now, but I can't mention them, what they are, what they do pre or post or any other time like that. Cause they can't give away the good news. They're top secret, top secret shit. Right. So that's, that's unfortunate, but, um, you know, everything works for the right people, right? Now, I can talk about apple cider vinegar. If you're getting sick, there's three things I recommend. Apple cider vinegar, first thing in the morning, empty stomach. Take a full shot glass full.
Starting point is 00:28:40 Tall glass of the sea salt water with lemon to chase it down. Black cumin seed oil. Black seed oil. It's phenomenal. And oil of oregano. Get those three things, you're going to knock it down. Black cumin seed oil, black seed oil. It's phenomenal. And oil of oregano. Get those three things, you're going to knock it out. But really that comes down to why did you get sick in the first place? It's not from the little kid at the supermarket who sneezed on you. It's because you ran yourself into the fucking ground. You're likely overtraining, undersleeping, eating the wrong foods, overstressed from the job, from the
Starting point is 00:29:02 wife, from whatever, fill in the blank. It's all stress. All stress is not, not compartmentalized. The body doesn't categorize boss stress, wife stress, food stress. It's all one stress in the body and your immune system. It really takes a hit from that, you know? So when, when stuff's going around, it's, it's without much more important. You take care of yourself. You go to bed on time, you eat the right food, you stay hydrated.
Starting point is 00:29:23 You don't overdo the training or overdo the work or overdo anything. You have a lot of different ways of mitigating stress and of just trying to optimize your body. What are some ways that you like to start out your day? Yeah, you know, I like to do breath of fire, which is fairly simple. It's about, you know, your stomach's half full of air and it's just really quick exhales. Some people do the really quick exhale inhale, which I like to focus on. Some people focus on just the exhale and let the air come back in naturally, but it sounds kind of like, let me, let me, don't snot on this really nice microphone, but almost like you're hyper
Starting point is 00:30:03 ventilating, huh? Yeah yeah three to five minutes then hold on the exhale hold on an inhale you can do a second round if you want but that's really cool because it'll it'll energize you when you want the energy it'll also de-stress the body if you're really stressed out and you want to relax so i mean a lot of the things that i'm looking at now are time sensitive you know we i think we were talking before the show about people don't want to devote an hour to meditation and that's fine, you know, but if you give them a piece of it and they feel different, then maybe they will start to, to want more, you know? So, you know, tell, telling somebody to go for a 10 minute walk each day and in nature, they feel better from that. And then, okay, maybe I can make that a 20 or a 30 and maybe I can go for a jog now. And then maybe I can lift weights a couple of days a week. You know, it's so hard to tell
Starting point is 00:30:48 people like, Hey, this, you know, uh, like it's hard to sit somebody down and say, um, Hey man, I got a really long story to tell you, you know, about nutrition and about health. And it's going to take me about 365 days or so to explain most of it to you. And then we still won't even be halfway through anything. It's really difficult to even sometimes recommend something, you know? So like I'll say, you know, do a 10 minute walk. I'd really like to see people do like three every day. But if I start out by telling you three, you'll probably do zero. And so it's like, you need to give people stuff that they can actually practice.
Starting point is 00:31:23 And I think something that has occurred to me more recently, it's the things that were there's abstaining from certain things is probably almost more powerful than the things that we actually do sometimes. And when it comes to food, I feel that way because sometimes you'll talk to someone who's a vegan and they swear up and down that they feel great and they might be in great shape. They might perform well. Uh, so in some, in some respects, they may be correct. And you have someone over here who's on the carnivore diet and they're saying, they're saying the same thing. They feel great. They're performing great. Um, and, and they're doing really well, uh, in a lot of aspects of their life and they're, they feel healthy. Right. What I think is the common denominator there is that it's what they're it's what they're avoiding, not so much what they're eating. Now, what they're eating obviously provides a certain level of nutrition. But I think in today's world, avoiding shit is is is more of the key.
Starting point is 00:32:21 Avoiding getting into that habit of checking your phone too often, avoiding that habit of having that be the first thing that you do in the morning, rather than kiss your wife. You know, I just think that there's things that if we were more conscious and we were just paying attention a little bit more, we could be that much healthier and that much further ahead. Yeah, it's massive. I mean, it's all refinement, right? And that's something that you touched on is like, it's not necessarily that I'm going to add it. So many people have this idea with supplements too. And I do the Facebook lives every other week through on it. And we get so many questions on if I'm going to take one on it supplement, what should be, or what's the best
Starting point is 00:32:57 on it supplement or what's the best vitamin mineral or what's the best this or that. And it's like, you're, you're, that's like we were talking about, that's being in the state of searching and wanting like this thing. I need to be healthy, this thing that I need to be my best self. And it's more about refining, you know, you remove the shit that's messing you up because there's, you know, there's no fucking nootropic on earth that will fix poor sleep or a shit diet. You know, those things will mess with cognitive function far more than any nootropic lifts you, you know, but if you get those dialed in and then you want the nootropic for the podcast or for the big interview or the presentation or the big game, like, yeah, there's a time and a
Starting point is 00:33:34 place for those things. And, and really prioritizing what's most important. You know, if you have a little bit of time to reflect on what's going on in your life and say, Hey, you know, I'm doing really well in these areas, but I need to work on this, work on the thing, you know, elevate that to the top of the list, make that a priority, and then start to refine that, you know, remove the things that are no longer serving you. That's the important piece, you know, and then from there, if you want to add in a thing or two that that that's important too, but really it's about taking away the things that are hindering you. Yeah. There's a lot of, I mean, you've just, uh, we were talking earlier about sugar and there's obviously some benefits to sugar, you know, it's not all bad. And if you listen
Starting point is 00:34:15 to somebody like, have you ever listened to Ray Pete? No. If you listen to somebody like Ray Pete, Ray Pete says the, almost the exact opposite of what everybody else says. Now, you got to keep in mind, Dr. Atkins, who came along in about the 60s, 70s, he did the same thing. He came along and spoke the exact opposite of what everybody else said. Ray Peet has said that they have cured, and I'm just going off what he said, but he has said that they have cured diabetes. They have cured things with starches and with carbohydrates in the past. And I don't know exactly, I'd never heard him actually elaborate on that, but there's, there's a lot of different, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of different ways to get up
Starting point is 00:34:54 that mountain, right? There's a lot of different ways to, to, to get the same result. But if we're not, we know that if we're not sleeping and we know that if we continue to make bad food choices, it's going to end up leading to something shitty for us. And I, the, the, the podcast that Joe Rogan did with Michael Walker talking about the dreams and talking about memory and talking about the importance of sleep, that was just, uh, mind boggling. I mean, really the, the information that was on there and the percentages that he was giving out of how detrimental it is to even miss a night of sleep was just fucking crazy. Yeah, what blew my mind, too, and I think Rogan's was, and I'm about three quarters of the way through his book, Why We Sleep. I think it's probably the most important book I've read in the last five years, is that there's a physical performance decline.
Starting point is 00:35:47 is that there's a physical performance decline, not just in balance and things that you might, proprioception, things that you might figure like, all right, I'm a little shaky today, nervous system's a little fried, but also endurance and strength in everything. It matters, memory, creativity, problem solving. It all has to do with sleep. It's, it's, it's incredible. I mean, even missing, uh, uh, missing a night of sleep can affect your insulin sensitivity. Uh-huh. Exactly. And that's, that's another thing, you know, you're getting back to this. There's so many genetic factors that come in and that guy could be right on starches, fixing diabetes, because you take somebody off a standard American diet, which is garbage.
Starting point is 00:36:21 And you start giving them sweet potatoes and yams. Like, yeah, you're going to see benefit there. Uh, I think a lot of people, if you have type two diabetes would do great on a ketogenic diet, but there's, there's, there's so much more into that. You know, like, do you have ancestors from the Northern hemisphere that are close to the poles? Do you have ancestors that are close to the equator? That all plays a factor, right? And if we don't know that the only way that we can really find some answers is to experiment. Just try some different stuff. Yeah. Genetic testing will be there eventually.
Starting point is 00:36:50 Not quite there yet. So don't think your ancestry.com is going to tell you what foods to eat accurately. But yeah, you know, experiment, play, and then have that idea like, what is this doing for me? Do I feel better? And give it an honest go. You know, like I have so many people write me and I'm sure the same with you. Like, Oh, I did this keto diet for eight days and I feel like shit. Like, Oh, you're, you're, you're almost there. Keep going.
Starting point is 00:37:13 You know, you want eight weeks, you know? Right. Uh, a guy wrote me, a guy wrote me on social media saying, uh, I tried to, I tried meditation, uh, for a day and I didn't feel anything. What am I doing wrong? And I was like, oh, that's, the part of me would be like, are you fucking serious? You tried it once? Yeah. You know, but then the other part of me was like, this guy's asking the question. We talked about earlier perspective.
Starting point is 00:37:35 Like that guy's new. Let's not bark at him. It's not going to be positive. Let me give you, yeah, exactly. It solves nothing to chew his ass for trying it once and not getting it. Like it took me years to figure it out. I've had people ask me, back when the bench shirts and stuff were more popular, I'd have newer lifters, it'd be their first time in a bench shirt, and they'd go,
Starting point is 00:37:57 man, I was handling more weight today. I mean, I swear to God, I just wanted to knock them the fuck out right there on the spot they'd just be rubbing their forearm like you ever get pain in your forearms from like you know handling heavier weight in the bench shirt i'm just thinking dude like i fucking handled 900 pounds for six weeks in a row what the fuck do you think you know our bones are shifting and cracking as we're you know as as i'm going through the movement. But people don't know. They don't know what they haven't tried. And they certainly don't know what they haven't learned yet.
Starting point is 00:38:33 Yeah. And I mean, the point is just give it an honest go. Don't stick your feet in the shallow and say, hey, the water, I didn't like the water. Dive in. Spend some time in the water. Get comfortable. Get used to it. Learn how to tread. learn how to swim, then come back out, you know, and, and I'm not a guy that's, I mean, I love the keto diet. I'm not a guy that thinks
Starting point is 00:38:52 you should be on it year round, like carbohydrates are seasonally available to many people on earth. You should maybe switch things up. I think metabolic flexibility is the key, right? And there's certainly, uh, you know, there's a lot with, I think it's Louis Villasenor, you know, targeted keto. Yeah. If you know people are, it's not this black and white thing. You know, everybody's talking about a lot of CrossFitters, MMA guys, people that are in a high intensity intervals that need the glycolytic system to run. Right. You know, you can do a little bit of carbohydrate timing for the workouts and
Starting point is 00:39:25 get away with that and still produce ketones, you know, nutritionally, not with just only exogenous ketones and MCTs, but carbohydrate timing and playing with different things like that. Unfortunately, the word keto is, uh, it's, you know, the medical in terms of medical, uh, what they're talking about is using being usually you have a reading of over 0.5 millimolars of ketones in your system, which already, even just that one statement, already gets way too scientific for people. And I think that my experience has been that, at least in what my goals have been, and I always think it's, it's important to say, to say what desired result have I been looking for. And for me, for now, it's been losing weight and it's not performance. Um, I don't feel that any time during this last year or so that I've lost, you know, 70 pounds, I don't think it's ever really been that important to actually be in ketosis. I don't
Starting point is 00:40:22 think it's really made a huge difference. Now, Now, if I was to really sit down and think about it and think about like mental clarity, and there could be a couple of things, maybe energy was a tiny bit better when I was actually producing, you know, a 1.0 amount of ketones or whatever it was. But in general, again, abstaining from excess amounts of carbohydrates, getting rid of carbohydrates and not even caring. Like if something has eight grams of carbs, I'm not worried about it. Yeah. I fucking work out. I work out every day as hard as I possibly can. So I'm not concerned about a little tick tack of, of some carbohydrates here and there. Um, even eating something like a perfect foods bar, which has like 20 grams of sugar. I don't mind throwing something like that down because I'm,
Starting point is 00:41:09 I'm in it for the long haul and I'm going to stay on the plan for a long period of time. So even, even now, as I adjusted to the diet, but on a diet much longer, sweet potatoes, rice, fruit are thrown into the mix. Yeah. And I, it's, it's important to have, to give yourself flexibility. But, you know, as you're getting into that, like I'm sure when you were around that one millimolar range for ketones. Right. You were probably dialed pretty tight.
Starting point is 00:41:33 Yeah. You know, and I think it's important for people first starting out. Yeah. Be strict for the first eight to 12 weeks. And then after that play, have some wiggle room. You know, and then also know what is your goal? The why, right? The why.
Starting point is 00:41:44 If you're just in it to lose weight and your pounds just keep coming off and your muscles still there and your strength's going up, that's cool. You can do it that way. If your goal is to heal the brain or you're a child with, you know, drug resistant epilepsy, that's going to look way different for you. Right. So there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of play when it comes to that, but. So you think it's important to get like locked in because like, if you. To start for sure. Yeah. Usually what I recommend to people is I'll say, Hey, you know what?
Starting point is 00:42:09 For the first two weeks, let's just have you get used to the food. I don't care how much I want you to actually eat a lot. I want you to not worry about the scale. I don't want you to fast because I don't think that right out of the gate, it's a good idea to go keto and to go all out in the gym like a fucking madman out of nowhere, right? One meal a day 80% fat. It was a little bit hard. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't make sense to go crazy and to go all in like that. Take it kind of
Starting point is 00:42:39 one step at a time as you feel you're more comfortable with it, which sometimes takes a month by the way. It doesn't take three days or seven days. It takes a while. Once you get used to that, tighten shit up, start to think about, Hmm, maybe I should eat a little less food. Like maybe that eight egg omelet in the morning is a little, a little excess of food, right? And start to cut back and start to make changes and start to make it more optimal as you go through it. Yeah. That's just, that's the refinement, right? Maybe I don't need breakfast.
Starting point is 00:43:11 Maybe I can just eat two or three times a day, but it's all between 12 and 8 PM. How asinine did this sound to you, uh, two years ago? I think two years ago I was into it, but yeah, like five years ago, asinine. Yeah. No question. There's, there's, there's no question. Yeah. Kyle, it's going to make you healthier if you just don't eat. Here's your meal prep.
Starting point is 00:43:27 Don't prep anything. And I can get stronger, right? So, I mean, that's kind of the rub when you think about that stuff is, am I still getting the gains that I want? Am I still able to get stronger? Am I still able to move better? Am I still able to think appropriately and be sharp when I need it? If that's all there, then I'm moving in the right direction. And it doesn't matter if that is
Starting point is 00:43:51 switching to all starches or eliminating all starches and all carbohydrate. It doesn't matter. It's what's working for you, but you never know unless you give it a go. Have you ever had any problems with food in terms of like, I don't know, like I think you've always been fairly thin. Yeah. Have you ever had any problems where you just like i don't know you just love to eat like sweets or you know you get like food addiction yeah well you know when i played when i played football at asu i was trying to gain weight asu here we go you ready andrew i played the coach house stories all over again here we go house from the sack oh shit get some pictures where you at where you at son yeah where you at son yo grizz two inches deeper what the hell's wrong with that
Starting point is 00:44:31 guy yeah he's the best he's a maniac but yeah you know like i was trying to gain weight and i didn't realize i was gluten intolerant so i'd polish like two pizzas and a 12 pack of krispy kreme donuts at night i mean anything i was eating I was eating McDonald's three days a week, you know, just fucking up my body from the inside out. And I was swole, but literally swole. I was swole from. Like swollen. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:51 Like swollen, like my liver and kidneys aren't processing things correctly. Everything's just, I mean, water weight through the roof. You were like 260? 268. And my biggest going into senior year and that balanced out to about 255.
Starting point is 00:45:04 Andrew, you got to try to look at pictures. I want to see what a bloated Kyle Kingsbury is like. Just look on the bench. That's where the photos will be. I only can find half-naked photos, so I'm not upset. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Does he have the ability to throw them up on the screen here? Oh, there we go.
Starting point is 00:45:20 That's the new shit. That's me getting into archery at Arby's house. You're so fat that your stomach has lumps on it. Yeah, it's weird. Almost looks like abs. That's a rainbow Speedo that's behind the fanny pack there. Did Aubrey buy that for you? Is that a true story?
Starting point is 00:45:36 No, my wife bought it for me. She knows my style. Yeah. Shit, she knows what's up. Yeah. That's amazing. That's a good photo. I like that one.
Starting point is 00:45:43 Are you guys just chilling in his backyard or where you at? Yeah, he's got a sweet backyard, volleyball court, giant trampoline. He's got a spot to throw axes and knives. He's got a little 20-yard setup for shooting bows. It's a beautiful house. You know, I think the Joe Rogan podcast has had such a huge influence on so many people. And I think you're just seeing more and more people, more and more men, I should say, not to exclude the ladies. Sorry if I feel like I'm excluding you.
Starting point is 00:46:15 But I think he's done a great job of having so many diverse people on the podcast. He's almost like reteaching men, what it means to be men. And you know, like his, his, uh, his facility that you, that you go to, you know, where he does his podcast. Now he's got a gym. It's the ultimate like man cave. He's got a spot for archery. He has that virtual hunting thing going on. He's got all these, uh, tools and all these types of things. And you're starting to see more and more of that aubrey marcus seems to be of the same uh mindset there seems to be uh something associated with uh some of this quote-unquote manly stuff uh and on the side on the side of all that is just setting up fun shit that's just games and stuff for you to like, um, pal around, I guess is the only,
Starting point is 00:47:06 it's the only way to really put it, you know, like that picture. That's it. That's a really cool picture. I mean, it's just a guy with a bow, right?
Starting point is 00:47:13 But it's, it's you guys hanging out and having an experience. Yeah. The speedo really adds to it, but it's, you guys having experiences together, which is just, it's just incredibly important.
Starting point is 00:47:23 We can't, we can't be isolated. We can't be living by ourselves. And it's no way to go through life. You mentioned when you were younger that you're angry. I'm sure just in general, you probably feel a lot fucking happier with your life now. Oh, no doubt. Even though getting the UFC was, remember we were talking earlier about chasing down a thing.
Starting point is 00:47:41 And you said you wanted to be careful about like that actually being something, because when you actually get there, it never is what you thought it was like, oh, I'm in the UFC. Well, okay. Well now you got to fight against the best fighters in the world. Good luck with that motherfucker. Yeah. Right. And that's the same thing, you know, like you're chasing the belt, you're chasing the
Starting point is 00:48:00 belt and that's all good. But do you love doing it? Do you love what you're doing each day? And, you know, for a long time I did, you know, and then in the end with the amount of lumps I was taking for the sparse amount of pay I was getting and the fighter treatment and everything like that, it wasn't worth it anymore. But I mean, you look at that with anything in life. I mean, a lot of people listen to this are not professional fighters and this applies to everyone. I think I am. Like, do you love it?
Starting point is 00:48:26 You had some decent moves in the jiu-jitsu, Matt. Yeah, it was fun. You just got to work on that quad flexibility. You had a little bit of trouble getting underneath that Japanese table we got for dinner at the house. Wasn't that terrible? That was brutal. But I feel like you now with this fucked up knee.
Starting point is 00:48:37 I got to limp down. I know. What happened to the knee? I can't get it to half load. What's going on? Andrew just put you in your place when you walked in the door today? Sidekick to the knee. Hey, how you doing?
Starting point is 00:48:48 I was like, hey, go check out the target over there for archery. Wham. And then, yep, laced it. Yeah. Fuck me up. Sabotage. No, I was doing jujitsu. Who is this guy?
Starting point is 00:48:59 His name's Alex. Does he pay this guy a visit? No, he's a good guy. I'm learning a lot from him. And then I just get totally fucked up. I'm like, hey, man, you beat my buddy up. And he just puts me in a fucking arm lock, and I got a broken arm, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:12 Yeah. It's one of those deals where I was rolling with a guy. Oh, there we go. We got the video. You look thinner now than there. Still dropping the pounds. Yeah. Yeah, that was a good day but i was i was
Starting point is 00:49:26 rolling on those mats with the guy got put in a side knee bar and didn't tap because it didn't hurt and my ego was was much bigger than than my knee joint and so um you know kept rolling that day no issues that night couldn't walk and uh it just got worse and worse so i got the mri torn meniscus they say i won't need surgery but we're gonna do stem cells and some cool shit so wifey just shaking her head at you like just like yeah right pretty much she gave you that i was i was so you know she gave you the look though she's bummed because she knows like i love to fucking move i love to do yoga i love to train i love to move and it's my outlet and I feel better when I move. I feel better when I, when I get the lead out, you know, so not being able to do that, being somewhat handicapped, um, I'm not the best version of myself because of that.
Starting point is 00:50:14 Right. So that's, that's been a hard thing to let go of and forgive myself for, but ultimately the lesson is in humility. Like it's very fucking humbling to have to sit on the bench for three to six months because I made a mistake and error in judgment. And the error was my ego didn't want to tap to the smaller guy, you know, and that's something you learn pretty quickly as a white belt. Uh, some of those guys don't come back. The ones who do learn that, you know, and I got my black belt a couple of years ago, but it had been a while since I was on the mat. And some of that,
Starting point is 00:50:43 you know, a little bit more fire than is necessary was there. And, um, now I pay for that, right? You got to pay for that. So, uh, the payment will be a few thousand dollars worth of stem cells and the time off, which is really the most trying piece of the equation, you know, but that is humbling. And now I've, that's my, my not-gentle reminder when I come back to remember, tap early and often, and then you can get back on the mat and just have no – there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Starting point is 00:51:12 Really just know it's okay if I tap. I can get to roll and try to tap the guy next time, but if I don't tap, I'm not going to get to roll for months. These kind of things, I always like to look at the parallels to life. Sometimes you're overreaching or, like you you said you kind of had an ego about it like i don't hurt that bad but you you knew you were in a compromising position and you and you and you still didn't do what you're supposed to do and so if you just look at that like in your everyday life there's there's these kind of corners and opportunities we have in each and every day to to make the wrong move which is
Starting point is 00:51:44 clearly wrong and goes against your moral code, goes against your values, maybe goes against the values of the company you work for, or there's a number of things. It just goes against the diet that you're on. Going to bed too late goes against the principle of you convincing yourself that you need this eight hour or nine hour or whatever that amount of hour time slot is, we just consistently and constantly are talking ourselves out of doing things that we know are positive for ourselves. But I think when something like this happens, I think that's a reminder of like, hey, you know what? Let's get back down to the basics. Let's almost reboot, restart. Maybe at this period of time in your life maybe
Starting point is 00:52:26 maybe your diet is a little wishy-washy or maybe something else was going on and so now that you're on the mend and you can't move maybe it's like all right well tighten up the diet maybe i'll read more or whatever it is for your situation yeah i get to meditate more i mean life will push pause for you at different times right right? And in that, that's a time, a great time for reflection. It's a great time for refinement and to really focus on the things I can do. I can meditate. I can hike still somewhat, thankfully, right? So I can get out in nature more. There's positions where I can still play with my son. I can sit on my ass with my legs spread and let him come tackle me. You know, there's a thousand things I can do. And those are the things that I will do while I'm recovering. How has that changed your life? Having a kid? Insane, right? It's such a mind fuck. Like there's no preparation, you know, and everyone tells you, you know, no instruction, sleep now. It's like, no bitch, it doesn't work that way way there's no sleep deposit i'm making for later right um i mean he just turned three and it still feels like i'm recovering from the sleep loss like it really does and same with my wife but um yeah i feel some you ever feel sometimes i i
Starting point is 00:53:39 i think every parent goes through this especially people that are psychotic like ourselves i think uh you ever feel like sometimes you have conversations and I know he's only three, but you ever feel like you have conversations or sometimes you're, uh, trying to shove him into a direction that's like too adult. You ever feel that way? Like, dude, I had to sit down and like, I can, I can picture you having him like this conversation with how he needs to be enlightened, how he needs to open up. Like, I guess I would, Like, you know, we will, we will sit him in his room and I'll lecture him. Cause I recall that being worse than my father spanking me. Oh yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:12 You say, stand here at the edge of the bed. And he would talk to my sister and I for 45 fucking minutes. And I'd be like, can you just spank me and get it over with? Like, and I'm standing in play and you know how hard it is for a kid to stand in place for like 45 minutes. I mean, brutal. Right. So I try to mimic that with him like 45 minutes. I mean, brutal. Right. So I try to mimic that with him knowing that was the worst punishment that I'd get.
Starting point is 00:54:29 And, um, what I realized, obviously he just turned three. He would repeat the same words back to me. So like bear, we don't hit mommy in the face. And he would just look at me and he'd say, bear, we don't hit mommy in the face. You know, and literally just repeat whatever I was saying. Cause he knew the, as fast, he just learned this as fast as he would repeat what I said, he would get to go out of the room again. And I was like, damn, he's not even comprehending what I'm saying.
Starting point is 00:54:56 He's literally just figured out that if he repeats back to me, what I say, he'll get to get out of the room quicker. This kid's a genius. Yeah. And then I'm like, bear, do you understand what I'm saying right now? Do you understand what I'm saying right now? Write back to me. And I'm like, fuck, it's not working.
Starting point is 00:55:09 So yeah, I mean, it's, he's my greatest teacher. There's no doubt. I did that so much with my son. I would ask him, and this is as he got older. It wasn't when he was, he wasn't three. He was probably more like six and eight and even 10. And we don't have those conversations anymore because he's, he's 14 and he's, he's doing really well.
Starting point is 00:55:28 But, you know, I remember when I was asking him, like, does this make sense to you? Do you understand why you're in trouble? You understand? Like, I don't want to yell. I don't want this house to really, I don't want this house to be like that at all. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't even think it helps for me to like yell at you across the room. Like I need to, I'd rather have a conversation with you rather than yell and scream at you
Starting point is 00:55:49 or have your mom get all upset and have everybody's blood pressure go up and everybody all pissed off, which I just don't think is a great way to live. And so I'd try to explain all these things to him. I'd try to explain what I thought he did wrong or whatever, and I'd be like, you understand? And he'd say no. And I'd go through it I'd go through, I'd go through it again and I'd try to go from a different angle. What I learned from that was, I mean, sometimes he's doing it just to be a dick, right? Like just some, you're sometimes you're a kid, you're just, you know, you're just trying
Starting point is 00:56:18 to push your parents' buttons. You're trying to force the issue a little bit. But I learned from that was reprimanding him or, or however you want to call it, whatever you want to call it. Uh, it worked a lot better if I did it later. So if I said, Hey, you know, you got to go to your room. Well, if I just sent him to his room and then if I immediately went into his room and try to talk to him about it, it didn't work. But if I just gave it some time, if I gave it like an hour or two and then talk to him about it at that time, Hey, you can't hit your sister. You understand you can't hit your sister, right? You're not supposed to, why aren't you supposed to hit your sister? And then you'd say, cause you,
Starting point is 00:56:51 you told me not to hit girls, you know, and stuff, stuff like that. And then it would seem to sink in a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. And that works for arguments with the wife that works for anything. Really? You take, take the break, let the emotions calm down, and then come back to communicate in a space where you're not on the razor's edge of your emotions. Just being able to settle down for a minute. And that's really where some of the tools like breath work or just calming the mind and nature, going for a quick walk to shift things and think about it and really fine tune what is the best way to communicate this. That small moment of reflection allows you to fine tune and come back best way to communicate this. Right. You know, that small moment of reflection allows you to fine tune and come back from a better place. We're plowing through a lot of stuff here. Let's, let's go back for a second here and just talk about keto. Uh, let's talk
Starting point is 00:57:35 about, you know, what is a ketogenic diet? I know we repeat that a million times on this show, but I always like to pretend this is the first time somebody's watching this show. I always like to pretend this is the first time somebody's watching this show. We're here with Kyle Kingsbury, former UFC fighter. Why have you chosen to utilize the ketogenic diet? And, you know, what spawned your interest of it? I think I first heard Dominic D'Agostino on the Tim Ferriss Show and Dr. Peter Attia, both talking about it on Ferriss. Those guys are both great.
Starting point is 00:58:02 They're savages. You know, they have a wealth of knowledge. And really what intrigued me was the cognitive function, these supposed claims that it could help you think more clearly, retain more information, and lower systemic inflammation. And coming out of fighting in 2014, knowing I had taken my lumps, I've had my left eye blown out twice, left eyebrow fractured, jaw broken in two places, among all the other body injuries. You still look great. Just my head.
Starting point is 00:58:30 Yeah. Thank you, brother. You know, all those things played a factor, but really it was, it was about the brain, you know? And I think giving it a real go the first time, the first time I really got into nutritional ketosis, I just, I could retain everything. I mean, I was flying through books, still, still reading, but at much faster pace and really able to retain the information. That was the telltale sign that drew me in and made me want to learn more. And, um, you know, type two diabetes runs on my mom's side of the family, type three diabetes, Alzheimer's runs on my father's side. And, uh, you know, reading grain brain from Dr. David Perlmutter helped cement that, you know, really the, the chronic elevation
Starting point is 00:59:10 of blood sugar and how it contributes to a myriad of diseases. And that was kind of the nail in the coffin for me to want to continue to learn about it and really fine tune what works. Uh, since that point, you know, getting back into jujitsu and high intensity intervals and, you know, powerlifting with Jesse Burdick, things like that. There has been a time and a place where I needed carbohydrates for performance. And I think what's beautiful now in books like the Keto Reset Diabetic Mark Sisson and the Ketogenic Bible, there's a place for targeted keto. There's a place for carb cycling or carbohydrate backloading. And, um, certainly after you become keto adapted, where your body's able to produce its own ketones
Starting point is 00:59:49 at a, at a high enough level where you can feel it. Um, that's been, that's been excellent because I can, you know, for lack of a better term, have my cake and eat it too. You know, I can have my, my, my natural production of ketones going, right. I can boost that with MCT oil or exogenous ketones. And then when it's necessary, you know, on a max effort day or a hard day on the mats, I can have a little bit of carbohydrates in moderation to help sustain that practice where I can have the tool fuel systems burning, you know, do you, uh, do you occasionally just not diet? Yeah. Uh, when I'm on vacation, you know, I was just out in Sedona and I didn't eat like shit. I don't like going completely off the wagon.
Starting point is 01:00:29 Makes you feel, it makes you not feel great. All the old injuries resurface. That's the deal. Everything starts to hurt, huh? Knee pain comes back. Neck pain comes back. I can't think for shit. I mean, just fucking brain fog like you wouldn't believe.
Starting point is 01:00:42 And I feel, you know, like I'm definitely my worst. There we go. There's, that's 2012 in nottingham damn your eyes jimmy manawa shut my eye and uh that's going into the third round they stopped the fight thankfully i wanted to continue but um that's just the dumb fighter in me wanted to continue it was smart because that thing was crushed that was uh so you can see the eyebrow right there in the eyebrow what are we talking about recovery from something like that three months i think they do a six month suspension um you know it it heals up fairly quick i mean when you're in that shape and everything takes like 10 12 days though for it to it's that swelling to come out oh yeah i feel better right yeah it was funny too because you know the british
Starting point is 01:01:25 were so proper and we had three days in london after that fight but everyone fucking stares i had an old guy just stop and point at my face and i turned around and i was dying laughing i was like i was elbowing natasha she's there with me i'm like fucking look dude the guy's pointing at my face like right in front of me it's like like, like you saw Quasimodo in real life. Does any of that stuff, when you look back, does it almost kind of like frighten you, scare you a little bit? Like, like, damn dude, like I did some, I did some crazy shit. I did.
Starting point is 01:01:56 You know, it's funny. I don't often look back on those things, but the first year when I retired, I really still had the itch, you know, and it didn't, I went out losing four fights in a row. Nobody wants to fucking go out that way. You know, I've thought about coming back and, uh, what it would take to do that. And every time I, he's tough, man, you can lose any fight. I mean, yeah, you really can. And that was kind of the, the, the real deal with that was like, I was, you know, when I lost to Glover to share, it was like, you know, I knew how good he was. He went on to fight for the title and lost to Jones and, um, you know, still in the top
Starting point is 01:02:29 five. Phenomenal dude. Like, all right. I can, I can say yes to that. Yeah. Jimmy Manowar is in the top 10 now and different things like that. But you know, you lose to other guys that are just, they're just better than you at something, you know, Patrick Cummins, he's not in the top 10, but he's, he might beat
Starting point is 01:02:44 me 99 times out of a hundred. Yeah. He's a, he's not in the top 10, but he's, he might beat me 99 times out of a hundred. Yeah. He's a, he's a fucking division one, all American wrestler. Demoralizing. Like it might be, yeah, that might just happen every time we fight. He just takes me down and beats the fuck out of me. So like there's, and knowing he's not even in the top 10 and making shit money and all
Starting point is 01:03:00 those things, it's like, maybe I don't come back, but anytime I wanted to come back, I'd pull up that photo. I would look at the Nottingham fight and be like, nah, it's not worth it. Knowing that can happen and knowing if someone's hitting me hard enough to break bones in my face, that's hurting my brain. There's long-term damage. There's long-term repercussions for that. It's hard to accept. You know, like if we were, if we were given, uh, you know, sheets that had math on it,
Starting point is 01:03:22 like 20 questions, right. And we, and we were to time it. I mean, it's easier to accept, like, all right, well, I don't know, maybe Kyle's is better at math than me. I'd be able to kind of just, but if we go to shoot hoops or something, or you go to fight, especially fighting, and then especially the amount of training that goes into it, it's almost hard to comprehend.
Starting point is 01:03:47 You're like, how is this guy better than me? You almost want to think he got lucky or, hey, if I didn't go for that leg and if he didn't knee me at that moment, these other five things wouldn't have happened. Yeah, there's certainly fights. So frustrating. There's certainly fights
Starting point is 01:04:02 that are more in line with that. Like, if I just didn't do this one thing or like, you know, Manawa kicked me in the face square when the shin. And it's like, if I didn't think he was kicking me in the gut and lower my hands to protect my gut, I wouldn't have been kicked square across the eyes. You watch it in slow motion. It makes so much sense, right?
Starting point is 01:04:18 It does, you know, but, but that's the deal. And ultimately you have to accept those things and learn from them and move on to get better. You know, I think, um, uh And ultimately you have to accept those things and learn from them and move on to get better. You know, I think, what's the name's guy who owns CSA? Kieran Fitzgibbons. Yeah, Kieran. He wrote a great post, I think, on Joanna after her last loss, you know, saying like, if you accept the loss, that allows you to move forward.
Starting point is 01:04:42 That allows you to make the changes necessary. If you believe you shouldn't have lost or you're making excuses on why it happened, that keeps you stuck in that position. It doesn't allow you to grow, you know? So, and I think the same can be said for in life, you lose your job, you get fired. You look at the guy or the gal who's. Smoking, pay attention to this part. Never should have lost my job.
Starting point is 01:05:03 That was bullshit. They fired me or blah, blah, blah. And you start making excuses. That's not the kind of person that goes on to get a better job. The kind of person that goes on to get the better job accepts why they were fired, makes changes to themselves personally, and then learns from that experience to grow and become better moving forward. And then they get the better job moving forward. So we have to accept some of these things and take ownership over that in order to really grow from it.
Starting point is 01:05:26 And that's empowering, right? When we're responsible for our own fucking actions and our own outcome, that's empowering. Otherwise you're the fucking victim. If you're always the victim, you're disempowered. I don't think too many things reflect that better than fighting. Cause it's like, it, it is one-on-one, right? And it's, it's a one-on-one fight and you're uh you're both accepting of the rules you understand the rules right and hopefully the fight is uh fair but if
Starting point is 01:05:52 you lost you gotta just be like well you know it sucks but the other person was better than me yeah even if you just admit they were better that day that's okay too right you know he was the better man that day that's okay too we see it with lifting a lot. You know, somebody is like, ah, you know, my, my, my form broke down. It's like, well, your form broke down because it's too heavy. You need to use lighter weight. Yeah. I couldn't, I mean, I get my hips kicked back when I was coming out of the hole. Yeah. Yeah. Of course they did. Cause you're, you're not strong enough. I get a lot of, you know, people will send me, uh, messages with, with their lift and, Hey, can you check this out? What do you think's wrong?
Starting point is 01:06:26 And I'll just say almost every single time use less weight, you know, add a couple reps in there. Cause they're always sending me videos of them, you know, trying their maximum. And, um, that's not, we don't really train that way. You know, you know, with Jesse, like we, we are, we are scratching the surface of that sometimes. And every once in a while you want one that really kicks the shit out of you but in general we're not going uh 99 or even 95 percent that often when you fight what what's the training like for that i mean uh you you can't really you can't
Starting point is 01:06:55 really fight well the you know it's it's a weird deal uh especially at aka different camps i'm sure yeah different camps um you know the guys at the old... My pecs are really sore, by the way, Smokey. Yeah, you guys bang out the... Look at that. You got like triple Ds, son. Damn. I don't even know what we were talking about just now.
Starting point is 01:07:14 Look at that. I could get in between that. Yeah, go ahead. Remove the fanny pack. I could get in there. I got excited. I really just lost my train of thought. Yeah, my fanny pack moved up a couple inches.
Starting point is 01:07:29 Max effort. Oh, max effort, yeah. So fighting back in the day, they used to, you know, they were actual fucking fights. You know, no headgear. You know, Vanderlei and Shogun at Shoot-A-Box, they would just go for it. No gloves? No, they'd have gloves on and taped up and mouth taped up, but in mouthpieces, but you know, AKA we'd, we'd spar three days a week.
Starting point is 01:07:48 We'd have big gloves and headgear most of us, but we were going all out too. And if we weren't that, we weren't, may not necessarily start that way, but by round two and round three, yeah, it's, it's a fight with big gloves. Yeah. Right. And you see that that's not a sustainable practice, right? You've got, not just from a longevity standpoint. It is, uh, as, as a fan, it's cool to watch, you know, I've seen some of the training and
Starting point is 01:08:08 stuff and just as a, as a fan of the sport, it's, you know, you're, you're watching them and there's like some pitter patter going, they're feeling each other out. And, uh, in, you only get to really see that in the practice mode and you know, those two guys hang out all the time. Yeah. They see each other every day. Yeah. And, and then somebody starts going a little harder and then you see it escalate and you're
Starting point is 01:08:27 like, oh shit, that's, that's what this pro fighting stuff looks like. Yeah. So it's all out. Example of it. But even from a performance standpoint, that's not sustainable. Right. So those guys have learned, um, you know, to scale back, to go hard with the big gloves once a week, hard with the small or, the small or lighter, but more technical with the small gloves once a week
Starting point is 01:08:46 and really have variety in the training and guaranteed rest days and a lot more recovery and body work and different things that we were talking about. All these tools that help get you back on the mat faster. So all of those things, the education of MMA because it's young is coming up. And as we see that,
Starting point is 01:09:04 people treat this more like you would an NFL player, you know, like when does an NFL player play like they do on game day? Only on fucking game day. There is no practice during the week where they go fucking all out. There is none. They might have drills and different things where, you know,
Starting point is 01:09:20 they're going to, they're going to go hard, but game day is game day. Right. And I think in fighting, it's a little different because as people are coming up in the game, you want to weed out the people that can't take that before they get in there, hopefully. There's just a lot of old school mentality when it comes to that. If you look at boxing
Starting point is 01:09:39 with the great boxers, like I was talking to Howard Davis Jr. before he passed, he was an Olympic gold medalist, he might spar a few times in a training camp all out, but most of it was working on the technical side, getting in shape, and then seeing stuff coming at him, working on his defense, working on footwork, and all the other variables that go into the fight. It wasn't that I'm going to fucking make sure I'm tough enough. Like, he fucking knew that, right? And I think as MMA progresses,
Starting point is 01:10:08 you'll know. Kane's tough enough. He doesn't need to go all out during training camp. He needs to focus on his cardio and his technique and whatever the game plan is and work around that. Yeah, it seemed like just from an outsider looking in with the training that goes into boxing, it seems like a lot of those guys are a little less likely to overtrain it seems like the old school mentality of wrestling especially collegiate style wrestling and just having a lot of friends that wrestle in high school and stuff seem like they they really like like like to overdo it it's almost uh like a badge
Starting point is 01:10:41 that's kind of a part of the culture too though you know badge of courage i think anyone that's wrestled in high school had a coach that said, we're going to be, you know, we might lose on technique, but we're not going to lose because we got tired. We're going to be the most conditioned team in this state. You know, like anybody who's ever wrestled in high school, like, yeah, my coach said that. You know, like that's kind of the deal, right? So that's impregnated in, into the culture. But it's, and a lot of collegiate wrestlers have gone through that too.
Starting point is 01:11:07 You know, I'm good buddies with Kane and Bader and CB Dalloway and those guys. And, and, uh, that was certainly the case for them in college. So, you know, train until you're throwing up multiple times through the, through the, through the training. And it's, uh.
Starting point is 01:11:21 Probably do need that here and there though. Right. I mean, you need to. Yeah. So you need something. I think in Hell Week, you know, to see I mean, you need to. Yeah. So you need something, right? I think in Hell Week, you know, to see who's in shape, to see who wants to be on the team, those kinds of things, it's there, but that's more of the weeding out process. That's not preparation.
Starting point is 01:11:33 Right. Right. Um, and you know, just looking, I mean, everything's getting smarter. That's all there is. And I think the, one of the reasons boxing doesn't have that as, as often still there's overtraining in any sport, but I think the, perhaps the reason boxing doesn't have that is because it often still there's over-training in any sport, but I think the, perhaps the reason boxing doesn't have that is because it's just been around longer. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:11:48 You know, they've been able to fine tune, they've learned from their mistakes and they know like, this is how we can peak for the fight. They use a lot of drills and they, and a lot of running, right. It's just like, go run. Yeah. Baseline aerobics is something people forget about. You don't see that as much in MMA or you don't hear about it as much. Like they, I always see, like, I see videos of them training in the gym, uh, with weights. forget about you don't see that as much in mma or you don't hear about it as much like they i always
Starting point is 01:12:05 see like i see videos of them training in the gym uh with weights um obviously you see jiu-jitsu being practiced and muay thai and all these different things but you don't really see a lot of like running although you think back to those old images of like tyson he's always doing road work kane does it you know dc does it there's a lot of guys that do it. A lot of guys at Jackson's camp will go run hills at that altitude. If you do it much in your career? Yeah. There's an important piece of that equation.
Starting point is 01:12:33 You can't leave aerobic capacity off the table. I think you were talking about this with Dr. Andy Galpin, you know, like how much that influences not only your performance, how you can resettle the heart rate, resettle your breath work in between sets when you're lifting weights, but also your recovery process. If your aerobic capacity is better, you're not dipping into anaerobic as quickly, right? So you're kind of postponing that anaerobic
Starting point is 01:12:53 dip where you're really working on lactate threshold and things like that because you've built an aerobic base. That's important in all things. The issue with MMA is there's so many damn things to learn. Yeah. You got your Muay Thai coach pulling you one way, wrestling, jujitsu, put the gi on, okay, no gi, and whatever the case is, sparring, then a strength coach telling you to lift weights and high intensity intervals, right? All very important. There's a reason for all those things, but that nice, easy distance run is still an important piece too. It's just maybe not as necessary. It's not something where you got to get your mileage up because you're not running fucking distance when you're fighting. Do you sometimes miss, uh, pushing yourself to that level or are there things that you still do today that, that push you maybe, maybe just, uh, working for Aubrey,
Starting point is 01:13:37 maybe there's some things that you challenge yourself with to try to get done or, or something that's similar to when you used to fight. I don't crave pushing myself in the office the way I do pushing myself physically. Right. There's no itch to scratch there. I gotta get that spreadsheet done. All these tasks on Asana have built up. There's, there's something with, um, you know, there's, uh, Ed Onnett specifically there, uh, it's feast and famine.
Starting point is 01:14:02 You know, like when we had paleo effects, I had three talks on the first day of Paleo FX, five podcasts in the week leading up to it, five podcasts in the week leading after that, and then a few more after that before making it out to Sedona. Great deal of activity. Yeah. There was a fuck ton of work in a two-week span. It was mind-blowing. And now I kind of get to unplug and chill out with you and my family out here in the Bay Area.
Starting point is 01:14:23 And it's nice to unwind before I head back and restart that process. Right. But in terms of the body, you know, where I want to push myself now is in things that, that kind of have this two pronged approach to performance and longevity. So I've been pushing myself. I'm talking about dildos, right? Prong, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:14:38 Both holes. I'm going, I'm going for cold, you know? So I got, you know, Kelly Chred and, um, Matt Vincent or buddies. They're telling me about building that standalone chest freezer. You fill with water. So I got a rig like that in the garage. What a bunch of fucking lunatics. It is.
Starting point is 01:14:55 It is. But it's, it's amazing. So we'll drop that down to like 35 degrees and I'll see if I can do five minutes in 35. If it's in the thirties, I'll shoot for five. If it's in the forties, I'll shoot for 10. If it's in the fifties, I'll shoot for 15 to 20. And, and I don't always get it. That's the thing. You just submerge yourself all the way in. Like I'm up to, I'm up to my chin in the water in 30 degree. It's 22 cubic feet. People ask about this. Got it at homedepot.com free shipping. It's about 550 bucks. Um, you got to change the water out every month or so.
Starting point is 01:15:24 And, uh, I'll sit in that to my chin. And then when I'm getting ready to get out, I'll dunk, hold my breath as long as I can in the water and get out. And, uh, that's one of those things where you have to slow your breathing down. People think like, Oh, it's Wim Hof. I'm going to get in there, huff and puff. And the more you breathe, the faster you breathe, the more that water moves around, the colder you get. Right. Yeah. And that's not the goal to panic breathe in the face of adversity. The goal is to slow it down. And if I can breathe into that parasympathetic rest and digest space, we were talking about earlier in the face of stress, because your body thinks it's dying, right?
Starting point is 01:15:57 You know, that that's something I try to illustrate to people. You can do goblet squats with a kettlebell and get some gains, but if you really want to build muscle, do some back squats with a barbell, right? Your body is concerned it will die if it can't stand up with that weight. So it has the greatest physiological adaptation because of that. Right. Right. Same thing with the cold. If I go in a 60 degree pool and I stay in for an hour, it's going to have some benefit to me.
Starting point is 01:16:21 There's no doubt from a fat burning perspective to shift in dopamine and neurotransmitters, there's a response. But if it's damn near freezing and I get in for three to five minutes, it's going to have a greater response. So working on all those variables and how I quiet the mind in that kind of adversity, that's shit that get extrapolated out into the real world. You know, when I'm comfortable in that discomfort, that parallels into everything in life. Right. And that's why jujitsu is such a beautiful thing. You know, when I got Mark Bell sweating on me, laying on me, huffing and puffing.
Starting point is 01:16:52 It's kind of gross. You end up sweating right on top of each other. Right into my mouth. Yeah. Drop a sweat. If I can feel comfortable with you on top of me, I can feel comfortable in traffic. I can feel comfortable getting yelled at. Right.
Starting point is 01:17:03 You know, like that,, like that shit translates everywhere. It's really important that we are able to put ourselves in uncomfortable positions that strengthen us, not just the body, but the mind, the spirit, all of it. Why the fuck would you get yourself into that cold of water? What's it doing? It's doing a lot. Lowering systemic inflammation. We talked about dopamine going up.
Starting point is 01:17:22 Adrenaline goes up. There's an immune response. Longevity purposes, you know, cold shock protein, some people call it heat shock protein still, but a lot of science coming out. Dr. Rhonda Patrick's been big on that. Wim Hof is being studied at Harvard now. A lot of science done in the Netherlands before, but you know, there's just so much more to it. And that's what I'm saying when I talk two-pronged, there's a performance aspect that's going to help me burn fat and, you know, recover quicker from workouts, but the longevity aspect, you know, I, like I said, I'm not, I'm not trying to live to 200, but I would like to
Starting point is 01:17:53 live to a hundred and healthy. Right. And I think that's one of the ways we do that is with temperature extreme. And if I have an hour in the sauna or 10 minutes in the ice bath, I'm going to choose, choose the ice bath just because I want to be sensitive with my time. I want to understand like, there's really, I don't even train for an hour anymore unless I'm doing jujitsu. If I'm lifting weights,
Starting point is 01:18:12 it's probably, I might be in the gym for an hour with mobility, warming up, cooling down. Dicking around. Yeah, those kinds of things. But that's the whole thing. That's with 15 minutes of sauna, with the mobility,
Starting point is 01:18:23 with opening up the body and warming up. That's a one hour door to door deal. Does know, there's a cold tub, uh, help with recovery to just muscle soreness, big time, you know, and there's some talk about timing, you know, people that are like, Oh, can I, can I lift weights and jump right in the cold? Cause you know, if you piggyback the sauna, there's science now that's showing if you get in a sauna right after you lift weights, cause you're already hot, that it's, there's almost an EPO like response from the body. So you can kill two birds with one stone. That'll help you with, uh, DOMS, you know, getting in there with the muscle soreness, but it doesn't lower your training effect. Whereas cold, we know will lower the training
Starting point is 01:18:56 effect. So if I get in a cold tub right before I lift or immediately after that will mitigate some of the work I put in the gym. So giving some space for that, you know, at least a few hours I think is necessary, but you can do it on the same day. Just give yourself a few hour window to, to come back to normal beforehand or after. Um, yeah, it's just, it's brutal to get into that cold of a water. Is there any, any dangers to it? Yeah. Don't hold your breath underwater for an extremely long time without a spotter, right? You know, have somebody nearby, have someone nearby that's watching. Um, I certainly don't play with that, but there's something that's, that's, I mean, I don't play in terms of I'll do it, but I'm not trying to go for a record. You know, I don't have a stopwatch going, seeing how long I can go. It's really just about getting my core temperature to drop even further. So there's a greater, uh, training
Starting point is 01:19:42 effect from it. Um, but the mammalian dive reflex allows us in cold water when we close our eyes and go under to actually stay under longer. So some people have died doing that. Wow. You know, especially if you're doing a Wim Hof technique breathing prior and you can hold your breath longer, you black out under the water, you're going to fucking die. That's all there is to it. So you need someone there if you're going to try to push the envelope with that. And that's happened in free diving as well. Not as common, I think, as people, you know, like,
Starting point is 01:20:11 oh, I just learned the Wim Hof technique and I got myself a cold tub and nobody's here to watch me do this. That can be an issue. But, you know, I think you have a level of respect for anything you do in life. You know, if you're going to squat heavy, you got a guy there supporting you. You got somebody there watching your back and spotting you and making sure that you're going to come up with the weight. No different.
Starting point is 01:20:29 Right. What does a sauna do for you? Well, I think if you really want to dive deep, go into foundmyfitness.com where Dr. Ronna Patrick has posted a shit ton of studies. A lot of it has, you know, I think the coolest stuff that's coming out is the lowering of all cause mortality, like any way you can die outside of a car wreck, you know, like, you know, whether that's Alzheimer's or stroke or cancer, it's all those things get lowered. And the more often you do it and the longer you do it, the better. So they're finding an hour a day, seven
Starting point is 01:21:02 days a week is a 60% drop in all-course mortality. And you can still get a 20% doing a few days a week. So when you look at benefits like that, you're seeing something where there's a cascade effect throughout the entire body. In any possible way you can die outside of accident, there's going to be a benefit there. I think things like that are really important. Is it, um, the heat and the cold, are they working well because of like homeostasis when you get out of that environment, your body's trying to get back or, or is it the actual act of like being fucking freezing? Well, I think it's, I think it's, it's creating an adaptive response. Like your body naturally, we had to deal with these stressors. You know, everyone can argue over
Starting point is 01:21:44 what paleo man ate, if there was grains in the mix, how much carbohydrate was there, those kind of things. But no one can argue they didn't have a fucking refrigerator and he didn't have air conditioning, right? Like we go from the climate controlled house, the climate controlled car, to the climate controlled office and back every single day. And we're at this beautiful 72 degrees year round. That's not what we're designed to do. We're designed to experience a cold winter and a hot summer, unless you're from the equator, then you're dealing with heat consistently. Right. So, but you're still dealing with heat. You're not in an air conditioned home and you know, on your, or in your yacht or whatever the case may be, like you're still dealing with some form of the elements and the body does respond
Starting point is 01:22:22 to that positively in a number of ways. And I think it's important that it's such an easy fix. You know, it's such an easy fix to say, I'm going to give myself five minutes a day to go to this. And, and that goes into circadian rhythm. Like you sleep better at night, like a number of benefits happen from doing something like that. And really from the mind, the mental, emotional standpoint, like knowing, all right, I'm going to push myself five minutes more here and breathe through it and slow everything down like that. That's a big deal. It can't be overlooked. I know, uh, Michael Walker talking about, you know, the importance of sleep. Um, and he just hammered it over and over again. You know, you need that like eight hour time slot. Um, he was saying there was like, you know, 1% of the population or something can sleep a
Starting point is 01:23:06 little bit less, but everybody else is screwed. They got to, uh, you know, match it with those eight hours. How do people, you know, a lot of people just don't think they have time. A lot of people, uh, like to wake up early and get things going. How do you, how do you get eight hours of sleep? Like what are some tips that people can utilize to have a more restful sleep, to have a better sleep? Well, there's a couple of things. Obviously, Walker gets into biphasic sleeping. A lot of cultures still have siesta. That's a big one.
Starting point is 01:23:37 Not a lot of offices allow you to take naps at work. Obviously, I can on it, which is huge. Google is doing that. They have nap pods and stations and places where people can go meditate. That's huge. I think culturally we'll see that shift going forward. Not always the case, especially if you're in a blue collar job, definitely not the case. So having that one block is really important. And you know, there are, there are, what's a nap? How long do you nap for? You could nap, you could do a power nap in 30 minutes. You could do a full nap in 90.
Starting point is 01:24:06 Sleep by Nick Little-Hales is a great book. He talks quite a bit about sleep hygiene in that. So, you know, unplugging, disconnecting from all electronics. I'm not a fan of wearing blue blocker glasses, but we've got some yellow light bulbs that don't emit blue light for the nighttime. My phone and the iPad are always on night shift mode 24-7, so I'm not taking that in. And once it gets dark, because I'll forget to switch it over, those kind of things.
Starting point is 01:24:28 So, I mean, there's little things you can do to unplug from the electronics, but really unplugging mentally, you know? I mean, for a lot of people, that's the only time of day they get to watch TV. So they want to watch the scary movie with their wife right before they go to bed and think that it doesn't have an impact. It's bullshit. It fucking impacts you, right? So maybe you watch the comedy special instead and, you know, or maybe you, you watch something. Something less disturbing. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:24:51 Watch something earlier and then read before you go to bed or have a nice conversation or go for a walk. Just do something to really reset yourself and unplug and then make sure that whatever went down that day, I think the biggest tip for me has been to reflect upon the day as it ends. So when the sun's setting to really think back to what went wrong, what went right, what do I want to change going forward? That way when I lay down in bed and I have that first, for a lot of people, that's their first time to unplug.
Starting point is 01:25:21 It's the first time they're alone with themselves, especially if you don't have a meditation practice, right? Well, what happens then? All the shit that went wrong starts racing through your mind. That's why you can't fall asleep. You're thinking about all the shit.
Starting point is 01:25:31 It's all coming to you because you've distracted yourself with music and TV and conversation and all these other things. And then it hits you. So if there's a point in the day, even for just five minutes where you can reflect for a bit prior to bedtime, that can unpack quite a bit of that.
Starting point is 01:25:46 So when you do lay down, there's no worry. And if there's no worry, you're going to dip into sleep much faster. It's interesting because like that's something that you tend to do with children. You know, like I remember when my kids were little, you know, we always tried to just make sure that they weren't getting like overstimulated before they went to bed. Whether it be a video game or a TV show or whatever it was. And they do that in school too. When kids take naps, uh, you know, they give them a bunch of shitty food, which automatically makes you drowsy. Um, but they also like they'll turn the lights off, uh, they'll put the shade down. Right. And, and things like that. And so I think it's just a really simple practice of, it's just time to take it down a notch,
Starting point is 01:26:28 maybe a hot bath or something like that too. Yeah. Michael Walker was talking about that. When you, when you have the hot bath and this has been an important piece, you know, kids like routine, adults like fucking routine too, you know, and if you have that routine of taking the hot bath, the brain actually has to cool down before you will actually fall asleep. So when your body comes out of the hot bath and you brain actually has to cool down before you will actually fall asleep. So when your body comes out of the hot bath and you tell off and you're dumping heat,
Starting point is 01:26:48 there's that yo-yo effect where it will dip, it'll continue to dip and you can actually fall asleep quicker. And so those are, those are great practices. Bear, he's, he's got a bath every single night before bed. It's one of the ways we unwind and, um, you know, just set the tone while he's in the bath with me, Tosh will go around and shut every blind in the house and in his room. So when he comes back out, even if the sun's still up, he knows the sun's going down, it's darker inside, right. And we can start to set that tone of what it looks like pre-bed.
Starting point is 01:27:16 And you have to tell them, you know, like I remember that with my kids, like I got to tell them, Hey, about an hour, two hours, you know, in a little bit, you're going to take a bath. And it's almost like a lot of mental prep just to go to sleep. I feel I need the same thing. I need, I need like a whole ritual, you know, to occur, to go to sleep. I think if you look at some of the most successful people in the world, and it's one of the reasons that Ferris will ask so many people similar questions, he's trying to extrapolate what are the tools that you have? What does the morning routine look like? What are the things, the ways that all these great thinkers are doing to get shit done? And there's a morning routine for a lot of them. There's a nighttime routine
Starting point is 01:27:53 for a lot of them. So really seeing what works for you and what makes sense and then having something that you can go to and rely on, that's important. That works. What about whacking off? Whacking off. Is it too stimulating? That could be a part of the routine. It doesn't take me long, so it's not that stimulating. I mean, one or two minutes and I'm good to go. You were mentioning before the podcast, you were talking about somebody who had really big balls. Aaron Alexander. Massive balls. He might have an issue. Why are his balls so big? Well, I think he practices, it might be genetic, but I think he practices tantric sex, so he doesn't always ejaculate.
Starting point is 01:28:26 He said maybe once or twice a month. I thought you said he didn't at all. No. Well, I mean, that's the thing. Like if you never ejaculated as a man, that would happen in the middle of the night. Like that's a wet dream. Like you're supposed to release at some point. We're such perverts.
Starting point is 01:28:41 We just fucking start squirting all over the place. Out with the old and in with the new. Yeah, you wake up with the sheet stuck to yourself. That's what that is? That's what that is. Your body needs to release. Those spines don't live forever. It's been happening to me for the last 30 years.
Starting point is 01:28:54 They don't live forever. You got to have some new blood in there, some new guys. So, yeah, he's got giant balls. I think that's the moral of the story is that his balls are bigger than anyone's I've ever seen. I got to see him in Sedona. You know those kids toys that you can bounce on? It's got the handle in the middle. Is it kind of like that? Just like in South Park. We were talking about that.
Starting point is 01:29:14 They're trying to give themselves nut cancer so they can go get medical marijuana in Colorado. Is tantric sex a thing? What is that? Why does he do that? What's wrong with this guy? I haven't experienced tantric sex. I've read what is that? Why does he do that? I haven't experienced. What's wrong with this guy? I haven't experienced tantric sex. I've read about it in practices with Kundalini
Starting point is 01:29:29 and Osho is big on that. I guess, you know, you'd have an orgasm internally. You know, a lot of guys are shaking their head right now. I'm happy you waited to get into this fucking after we've already gotten some good stuff to the listeners before they turn it off. But, you know, there's, there's, there's, it, that's like anything in life. There's, there's, um, a number of ways you can have sex,
Starting point is 01:29:51 right? Right. One positive, you know, women can have multiple orgasms. Men cannot by design. Right. So if the guy doesn't, doesn't finish, he's always ready. There's some women listening to this right now. They're like, what? I can? Multiple orgasms. I've never had one. A lot of women probably. But, um, you know, if the guy doesn't, doesn't ejaculate, he's always on call, you know, he's good to go, you know? And I've, I've played with that at times. Um, ultimately not making it as long. We got the video here. we got the video here holy shit his balls are like up to his chin
Starting point is 01:30:28 look at his hair oh it's so great it's such a classic episode I remember my my brother he was in in the hospital
Starting point is 01:30:35 I think it was like when he had like his hips done or whatever and he like I was trying to help him like out of bed
Starting point is 01:30:40 and his gown fucking shifted over and his balls were just so massive because he was, he had like a Dima. He had like a Dima. In his sack.
Starting point is 01:30:48 In his sack. So yeah. Oh, that's amazing. He got a wheelbarrow, a wheelbarrow full of nutsack. Oh, it's such a good episode. Yeah. God damn, we should just watch this the whole time. I didn't mean to derail you guys.
Starting point is 01:31:03 Keep it on. It'll be good background stuff Aubrey Marcus talks a lot about sex so does Paul Cech they talk about sex and love they talk about things you just don't hear people openly speak about, especially men you don't really hear people speaking about it that much
Starting point is 01:31:18 and then Aubrey I think has an open marriage right? Yeah some of that stuff is just, it's fascinating and to other people people that are like, what? It doesn't make any sense, but these things have been around for a long time, right? They have. And I think a great book is sex at dawn by, uh, Chris Ryan. You know, if people don't want to get into that, if you're in a relationship and you order that book and she happens to look that title up and sees that it's about open relationship, prepare to get slapped. That's a fair warning.
Starting point is 01:31:48 But maybe just have the Kindle version on your phone, that kind of thing. But, you know, it's just this idea that there is, there's, you know, when we wake up, they talk about this in four agreements. You know, the domestication of man. And what does that mean, right? Like we're born, we know that red means stop at a red light and green means go.
Starting point is 01:32:12 That's a cultural agreement we've all made as a society and we still agree to in this country, right? In the US. And it's different in other countries. You drive on the other side of the road, the steering wheel's on the opposite side, those kind of things. Still an agreement, right? Still a part of the domestication of man. We all have agreed in large part religion, to be monogamous.
Starting point is 01:32:27 And there's some science that shows tribes chose monogamy. Some science that shows tribes chose polygamy. Some polyamorous. There's many different ways to do that. And I think there's beauty in all things. And certainly with, it's difficult no matter what. Like Aub certainly with, um, it's difficult no matter what, you know, like Aubrey, he'll tell you it's difficult no matter what. It's difficult to remain, um, committed in a monogamous relationship, especially as a married person for the rest
Starting point is 01:32:57 of your life to not cheat. Um, it's difficult to have a partner who you love and commit to and decide you're going to also be able to be physical with other people. Right. Because that brings up a lot of shit and it's in your face constantly, you know, and that, but I think for Aubrey, uh, and I can't speak too much on, on his arrangement, but, uh, he welcomes the challenge, you know, and the challenge, the stressor, that's what brings growth, right? You know, you squat with the bar every day, you're not going to get stronger. You start adding weight on that brings new challenges, new dynamics, and a lot of new growth from that. Right. So he welcomes the challenge and he's grown a lot from it. I think some of it's just fear. You know, I think people are, are, they're scared that they're going to end up being alone. You know, and I think that's part of it. You know, people don't want to, you know, you get sick or whatever happens to you later in life.
Starting point is 01:33:48 I think that people want to have somebody kind of there with them. Yeah. You know, so I think that's a, a big aspect of it. But yeah, I mean, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever you can make, uh, work, work for you is, you know, going to be different for me. Right. Yeah. And that's the whole thing. Even among people who, who are polyamorous, everyone, there's no one right way to do it. Same thing
Starting point is 01:34:09 with parenting. There's, there's a thousand books on how to parent and what to feed your kid and all that shit, but you don't know until you go through it. It looks different for everyone. Not everyone parents the same. My sister and I don't parent the same. We come from the same parents, right? We have our own way to do it. Right. And everyone that's doing open relationship has their own method for doing it. And that's based on the things they agree upon and continue to fine tune over time as with anything. How do you have your kid eat? How does bear eat? Um, you know, he, I think he's foraging for berries and stuff. Yeah. He's out the backyard because he's bears eating salmon. Yeah. Well, bears eat berries too. But, you know, he eats a lot, you know. He eats a lot of different things, but pretty paleo for the most part.
Starting point is 01:34:53 He has some gluten-free toast every morning. Again, I want him having carbs too. He doesn't like sweet potatoes or yams yet, but those things take time. We've gotten him into some different greens over time, eating broccolini and things like that. So we try to give him variety, but he's got his favorites for sure. There's no doubt about that. When we were at your house, it's definitely just part of you and your wife's lifestyle, just eating healthy. We had a salad, which, by the way, tasted fucking amazing.
Starting point is 01:35:19 I was like, damn, I need to figure out how to make a salad like this. That's the second time we've talked about it on the podcast. I know. It's so good. It was really good. Like, damn, I need to figure out how to make a salad like this. That's the second time we've talked about it on the podcast. I know, I know. It's so good. It was really good. But, you know, having it just be part of your lifestyle and having your children, you know, at least take on some of the things that you're doing in regards like health and nutrition without really shoving anything on them. It's just, it's what's in your house.
Starting point is 01:35:42 It's just what you guys are doing. Yeah. And healthy snacks too. You know, like he'll eat, he'll eat chips on occasion, but with a boatload of good guacamole and everything's organic, you know, so is that paleo? Fuck no. But I'm just trying to make the best possible choice. Yeah. And, and mitigate the damage, you know, like I don't want to meet in genetically modified food with pesticides and herbicides and shit like that. So there's, there's some ways I can make those shifts where he can still participate in being a kid, but it's not going to have the same ramifications as, you know, eating complete
Starting point is 01:36:11 trash. Never been to McDonald's. I'm sure he will at some point when he's older, that's okay. Let me show you what a really good grass fed cheeseburger tastes like. And then you can make that decision going forward. Right. So giving people the options of these are all the same foods you're going to eat out there, but see how this makes you feel and see how that makes you feel.
Starting point is 01:36:31 Only from Kyle Kingsbury are you going to get a giant ass burger, grass fed burger that's between two mushrooms. I believe that's what it was. That's right. That was a. It was really good. Yeah, that was good. It was fantastic.
Starting point is 01:36:44 Portobello buns. That was badass. Yeah, I was like, what is this? That's right. That was, uh, it was really good. Yeah, that was good. It was fantastic. Portobello buns. That was badass. I was like, what is this? He's like, it's mushrooms. Then I started seeing things and I was fucking a goat. Yep.
Starting point is 01:36:53 Well, that was just me with the goat mask on. Oh, okay. Yeah. I looked like a real goat, man. I didn't,
Starting point is 01:36:59 I didn't know what was going on. Did it feel like a real goat? Felt real warm. Yeah. I might've just been the blood. Anyway. That just took it way down a notch. I love it.
Starting point is 01:37:15 Hey, you got to go all in with this show, right? You know, as we were talking earlier about the ketogenic style diet, there's some things that you can do to make a ketogenic diet, in my opinion, make it even more effective. And I think fasting goes along with a ketogenic style diet really well. I've never tried fasting, uh, you know, while previously being on a different diet, but I feel that, uh, in the presence of ketones, I think that fasting actually helps you promote ketones. Correct? No doubt. And that's the thing, you know, really well together. If we, if we, if we fast and we're not in a ketogenic diet, it's much harder to fast, you know, because our headaches and our body has to start learning how to break down fat
Starting point is 01:37:56 for fuel again and create ketones. But if we're already keto adapted, it's already mastered that piece of the equation. Right. Then you're able to go without food. And they talked about this in keto clarity with Jimmy Moore. Uh, you know. If you were to space out what the first three weeks looked like, and you could delay this too, but if you were just to look at the first three weeks, the first week you'd have three squares a day with snacks, all ketogenic food. The second week you'd eliminate one meal and go to two meals a day with snacks in the feeding window from 12 to eight. And then the
Starting point is 01:38:23 third week you might have a couple of snacks, but you're only going to have one large meal at night. So you kind of can, you know, almost like coach house, you do the tier system, strength training tier system, keto dieting with fasting, uh, spaced out. And I think there's a lot of benefit to that. There's a lot of benefit to intermittent fasting, even if you're not in a state of ketosis. Um, and really for a lot of people, they're not hungry in the morning, you know, so it's pretty easy to skip that meal and just really hydrate. And I find that the more I do, my wife and I both do intermittent fasting for about 15, 16 hours a day. We typically will finish eating between 5 and 6 PM and we'll start at 9 AM with usually like an optimized coffee, similar to Bulletproof,
Starting point is 01:39:05 you know, good fats, that kind of thing, maybe a little collagen. And that breaks the fast. So I got to count that as a part of the deal. But given that space, I mean, what happens when I'm up at six with Bear and I've got three hours to kill and I'm feeling tired, if I start adding sea salt to the water and pounding water, that hydration picks me up a notch. I feel so awake and alive prior to that coffee that by the time the coffee kicks in, I really feel coffee again. It's not like I'm doing coffee just to pull myself up to baseline, right? So many people are dehydrated. If you have a window for that to actually focus on hydrating, to kill your appetite and give yourself energy, it's a beautiful time to front load, to rehydrate the body and then start to work on adding in caffeine or food or whatever it is you choose. I was just hearing the other day, they're talking about putting salt under your tongue.
Starting point is 01:39:51 Have you heard about some of this? I've done some of that. I don't know how big of a difference it makes, but they said it's different blood supply, I guess, under your tongue versus. That's sublingual, right? Yeah. Kind of gets into your bloodstream, gets in your system a little faster maybe. You said you did how long of a fast?
Starting point is 01:40:07 10 days, five days? I've done two five-day water fasts, water only. Really messes with the sleep, you know? Yeah. Like you're not going to, I mean, first couple of days are fine. And then after that, your body's like, hey, you know, if you think about this from hunter-gatherer standpoint, you're not going to sleep for eight hours perfect. Your body's like, hey, we're, we're starving. Let's go find food in the middle of the night.
Starting point is 01:40:27 Let's go forage. Maybe you don't have time to sleep. You got to go fucking get some food time to go eat. Right. Yeah. You're not going to get the perfect sleep and just try to hack it out during the daytime. Cause clearly that's failed the past two days, you know? So I think there for a lot of people, uh, it might be easier to try to work on 24 hour
Starting point is 01:40:43 fasts initially, but certainly there's a lot of benefit and scientifically a lot of people, it might be easier to try to work on 24-hour fasts initially, but certainly there's a lot of benefit and scientifically a lot of benefit to doing an extended fast of four days. We're talking about the science that they did at Stanford University when it comes to autophagy and cell death, where you're actually removing cancer cells and old cells. and old cells. And an analogy I like to use, especially when it comes to immune function, if you've got a hundred thousand soldiers and 50% of them are old turds that just don't retire, you can help force that retirement process. And then when you refeed with good food, you get 50,000 brand new guys that come in and they're hungry and they're ready to go. So, you know, you keep the working forces within your body, young and fresh. That's really important for, for all things. Does that work with the shorter fast as well? You know, over time, right? It's, it's over time. So, you know, doing a intermittent fasting in a
Starting point is 01:41:35 day, it's not going to have the same effect as doing a 24 hour fast. It's not going to have the same effect as doing a four day water only fast. But if you were to do intermittent fasting for a year, it's probably going to look pretty darn similar. Oh, okay. I didn't know. I didn't know what that ended up looking like. Do you, do you end up cheating on your diet or, you know, how do you, when you're on a ketogenic style diet, do you allow for, you know, some pizza or something like that here and there? Yeah. I mean, I was at, when I was out in Sedona recently, I had a gluten-free chocolate cake. They got this place, Chocolate Tree, that has some really dope sweets that are made with honey and things like that. Again, no, it's still carbohydrates. It's still sugar at the end of the day, but, um, you know, I have a gluten intolerance, so no gluten and no, uh, no refined sugar. And those are kind of two things that I don't necessarily budge on for the most part. But still, it's a fucking cheat meal at the end of the day. You're not going to drink a Coke. Yeah, I'm not drinking a Coke.
Starting point is 01:42:32 That's for damn sure. So there's some play there when it comes to that. And I was really strict for about six months. I like to be strict keto during the winter months when carbs weren't seasonally available and then allow some flexibility during the warmer months when we'd have berries naturally available that aren't necessarily flying in from Mexico and bananas coming from Panama year round, you know, shipping changed a lot of things on this planet, but that's true. Yeah. I think it's a, it's, it's a good mindset to, to be in that your worst meal will still be a lot better than your average person's worst meal. Right. Like, I think it's just a, you don't, I mean, most of us don't want to just be
Starting point is 01:43:13 like middle of the road. We want to be better at stuff. We want to be able to perform better. We want to be able to lift better, do jujitsu better. Uh, we want to be able to think better, right. And you want everything to be better. If you want everything to be better, a great place to start is with your food. Yeah, 100%. People often think this idea of it's all weight related when it comes to food. Like, hey, if I eat this cheat meal, I talked about this at Paleo FX, if I eat this cheat meal, I've lost 20 pounds so I'm going to have a cheat meal, which becomes a cheat day and a cheat weekend, right? So I gained 5 or 10 pounds back and they only think about the pounds that they gained and lost,
Starting point is 01:43:47 but they really don't think that 90%, 80 to 90% of our neurotransmitters are made in the gut by the microbiome. And that cheat meal, if it's bad enough is actually fucking up the bacteria. That's going to create serotonin dopamine and all these feel good neurotransmitters. It can lead to mental fatigue and brain fog. If you eat a shitty lunch, you fall flat on your face in the afternoon, right? Like that's by design, that's not a good thing. So even eating shitty, uh, types of fats and stuff there, recent research shows that it becomes part of your body for up to like three months or something like that. I mean, finally got rid of trans fat and hydrogenated oils after how long that was in our fries.
Starting point is 01:44:26 Right. You know, like in every French fry, every fried food, you're getting trans fat. It's in fucking kid's peanut butter. It's everywhere. Right. And how many more things go left unchecked, like aspartame and artificial sweetener? That's a lot of things. I mean, there's all these things exist and our government is not looking out for our
Starting point is 01:44:42 best interest with that. They're looking out for what's going to pay. So that's really the deal is just kind of figuring that out for yourself. And believe me, watch Food, Inc. It's a great documentary on Netflix. We vote with our dollar, but that's an eye-opener for a lot of people. Well, a lot of things are controlled by finances. Years ago, I think it was the 80s or maybe early 90s,
Starting point is 01:45:03 they used to use coconut oil for popcorn at the movie theater. They, they got rid of the, uh, the, the coconut oil and they, or coconut butter, whatever the hell it was they were using. Uh, but the coconut oil is able to take on more heat. And so therefore there wasn't any trans fats. So instead they use canola oil and then we created trans fats like, Oh, well, that was a great job. But that's just because somebody was getting paid for it. You know, that that's, that's how a lot of these things get started. And, uh, unfortunately there's, there's almost nowadays, there's almost too many foods to even think of the, think of, uh, how many foods we, we need to avoid and not just avoid, uh, you know, from day to day, but avoid for the rest of our lives.
Starting point is 01:45:45 It sounds like a drastic statement, but really there's, there's not a, not a great place for some of these foods in our lives. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think a good, an easy take home is, you know, like the cheat clean slogan from quest nutrition, amazing slogan, but make your own cheat meal. Right. If you're using your own ingredients, you know, what's going in there.
Starting point is 01:46:04 Right. That's a great first step. And then two, figure out which local spots in town actually have healthy food to eat. Right. You know, that way when you want to go out and people are saying, Hey, you know, I got friends in town and obviously at Onnit, we got a lot of guests. I got to take people out to eat. Like, let's go somewhere that's decent.
Starting point is 01:46:20 You know, like I know the places now we're going to go eat at this restaurant. They use organic when it's available and they have grass fed beef or whatever the case is, but I know it's an acceptable go out to eat meal, right? Things like that, or, or against the grain pizza. I can have that in the freezer. And if I'm craving pizza and my son's craving pizza, we can eat that. And it's grain free. It'd be less problematic for us because we've got issues with that, right? If you don't have issues with it, maybe it's not a problem, but figuring out what the problems are through an elimination diet. And then from there, making conscious decisions on what you're going to put in your body. When it comes to, you know, we mentioned kind of earlier in the podcast, I believe, or maybe it was even before we went on
Starting point is 01:46:57 the air. Um, we talked briefly about, uh, some psychedelic drugs and how they can kind of take you to a certain place that maybe you can't get to otherwise. But you were mentioning that there are some other ways of getting there. You know, people have all different kinds of feelings and all different kinds of ways they can get to some of these situations. When I was on Aubrey Marcus's podcast, he mentioned, and I don't remember all the names of these different kinds of drugs, but he mentioned having a program that he has set up that are for people that are sexually abused and they utilize a specific drug. Can you talk about that a little bit? I think he's referring to psychosis therapy MDMA.
Starting point is 01:47:41 Right. Yeah. That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a lot of the science that Rick Doblin is doing with maps. They've passed phase three trials. They've received all the funding they need to go through phase three trials. The FDA is fully supporting this. It's got breakthrough drug status, which is extremely hard to get. So we'll see this hopefully legal by 2022. And for all the super conservative people out there that are thinking you're going to be able to go to your local Walgreens and grab your prescription molly and head home or head to the club it's not going to look that way um they have a protocol set up for and a lot of soldiers are doing this too veterans and things of that nature where you get therapy for a number of treatments
Starting point is 01:48:18 and then you would have uh it's spaced out over the course of a year, maybe three sessions, one dose at a time. Um, and in that you're able to talk through as things and feelings come up, but again, you have this new perspective and you're able to relive the experience with your heart open with new eyes. And it's, it's maybe a little bit less painful. And as you talk about that, it feels good to be able to say things that you don't feel comfortable talking about. And as you talk about that, it feels good to be able to say things that you don't feel comfortable talking about. And that's why we see with, with drug resistant PTSD, like a lot of great changes happening where people have lowered PTSD symptoms sometimes completely from one dose or from two doses, you know, and, and that's not the beauty in that medicine is it's not something where you're going to take this pill the rest of your life. Fuck that model. Fuck that model.
Starting point is 01:49:04 Right. We're trying to get away from that. And, um, I think there is a lot of hope and a lot of, a lot of science supporting that movement to where we can actually see healing and with people that we haven't seen that before, you know? So there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of good that's coming from that same thing with ketamine for depression. Um, there's clinics that's that, that is available at now. One of my first coaches in mixed martial arts was on a number of SSRIs and depression pills and different things for his anxiety. And he's come off of 90% of his medication with just three single dose treatments of ketamine. What is that?
Starting point is 01:49:41 Originally, it was used as an anesthesia for horses and dogs and cats. And, um, uh, they call it a disassociative. So it kind of pulls you back a ways in your own psyche. So you can kind of review things as an observer rather than in the emotion itself. I think a great book is the ketamine papers. They sell that on maps.org. Um, and there's just, that just shows all the science that has come out across with ketamine. But, you know, for people that are looking into this stuff and don't know where to start, I think the Psychedelic Explorers Guide by Jim Fadiman is an excellent book. There's an old podcast that Tim Ferriss did with him a ways back that can show you, you
Starting point is 01:50:19 know, the right way and the wrong way. Michael Pollan just had a great book come out on psychedelics. That's a phenomenal book. And he's mentioned, he's just on the Ferris podcast as well, mentioned that he's not an advocate, but he's an advocate for the science. And there's quite a bit of science that's showing that this shift in perspective and these mystical experiences are achievable. And it's not just something that's for the guy that likes to go down the rabbit hole like myself. It's something that can be found across the board. It's repeatable.
Starting point is 01:50:46 Well, it can be, it could be recreational because you just, you know, I mean, let's face it, an escape from reality feels good, right? And being high on something feels good. But also it can be just beneficial period just to take yourself through something that maybe otherwise you wouldn't be able to get through. Right? It's about as simple as that. A hundred percent. You've done some of these, you know, I don't even know what to call them, but I guess you'd say like rituals and you've done some stuff with like Paul Cech. Obviously you've done some stuff with Aubrey Marcus.
Starting point is 01:51:18 These, what are the ceremonies called, Andrew? Yeah. Well, I think he's talking about like when you do ayahuasca and you have a shaman. Yeah. Things like that. Like what, what are the things like that do for you? Yeah. You know, I've had, uh, well I'll tell, I'll tell, I've known, I've told this before. Um, my first ayahuasca ceremony was, uh, you know, it's, it's purgative. You can puke, you can shit your pants. Um, it's, it's very hard. It's not something, it's not something, it's not necessarily a fun experience, you know, like you would never do this in a club or listening to dance music or, you know, there, there's, there's a right way and a wrong way to do anything. But even when you do this correctly, it's fucking difficult.
Starting point is 01:51:57 And, um, you know, I knew that going into it, still sign up for it, knew it could be transformative. And, uh, you can have visions that where you basically like enter into a dream state and you live the thing, whatever you're seeing. It's not, you know, when people talk about hallucinations, it's often thought of as this thing that doesn't exist that you see like puff the magic dragon fucking flies by. And it's like, oh, that was meaningless.
Starting point is 01:52:17 In my experience, everything has had meaning and it's been very personal. And the first experience I had i became my wife who was my girlfriend at the time and we as her relived every argument we had ever had up to that point and every word that was coming out of my mouth as natasha yelling at kyle was in a way that kyle would understand and when i came out of that i just just fucking flooded. I mean, I was crying for a very long time. And I understood with that perspective, it was love. It wasn't you're nagging at me because I want to get drunk with my friends. It was you're deeply concerned because you love me.
Starting point is 01:52:54 You know, there was so much, so much taken from that. And not long after that, I became my mother and watched my belly grow. You keep turning into women. With Kyle. Maybe there's something there, Freudian. I watched my belly grow with this baby Kyle growing inside it. And I felt nervous as a mom, about to be a mom for the first time with this child,
Starting point is 01:53:15 with this life growing inside me. That's fucking crazy. And I knew I loved this kid, but I felt so fucking nervous about doing it right and being the best version of myself for this child. And my husband, Rick, Kyle's father came over. Was this before you had Bear? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:53:30 Yeah. This was long before Bear. So even a way different perspective. Way different. You know, your parents would always tell you like, you'll never know how much I love you till you have kids of your own. You're like, whatever, asshole. I fucking got it.
Starting point is 01:53:40 I got it right there. I knew right there, like how much she cared. And it kind of, it set the table with our relationship. You know, we were going through some stuff and it there like how much she cared and it kind of it set the table with our relationship you know we're going through some stuff and it was like oh i get it i get it now like there's there's nothing i can do where you're not going to love me i could fucking be an axe murderer and there's still a piece of you that's going to love me because i'm your boy right you know and that's that's pretty powerful to have those experiences and that's you know two out of a thousand and i've i've've done it, uh, 22 times now, which is more than most, but not as much as, you know, a shaman or
Starting point is 01:54:10 somebody who lives in the Amazon have done it, uh, far more times than that. But the truth is I keep learning from those experiences and that's what draws me back to them. And they may only be, you know, two or three times a year, but they're powerful. They don't need to be often, you know, it's not like, it's not like cocaine where you're like, Oh, give me more. That was great. Give me more. You know, it's like, no, I'm good. I feel full. I'm satisfied. I can take this and let me work with these lessons. Maybe even is almost too much to, to hand. It sounds like it's pretty powerful. Yeah. And it lasts, you know, it lasts a long time and it shifts you. And, and, uh, certainly when you're doing things correctly with being mindful of how it's done, having an intention of why you want to be there and journaling and giving yourself space to unpack everything you learn, to put things into practice, all that matters. And I think that the more ceremonies I've done, the better I've gotten at doing that, at really putting things into place and kind of grounding the experience into reality. That's all important too. You know, a lot of people show up, they look
Starting point is 01:55:09 the same, they haven't changed. They're still in the same area they were, and they come out of the experience, oh, that was fucking amazing, you know, and I can't wait to do it again. And, you know, they show up and they're the same fucking person because they're not doing the work, right? It doesn't matter what you're doing. You know, when you start getting messages, wherever they come from, from meditation or from just life throwing shit at you reflection is the time where you get to ground that reflection is the time where you can start to put this stuff into practice by actually taking a look at it rather than staying with your focus on something else from one tv channel to the next to the talk radio in your car to the conversations with other people there
Starting point is 01:55:43 there needs to be a time and a place for inward thinking and reflection. Are you able to get the same benefits out of psilocybin mushrooms or even DMT? I think a great place to listen about the difference between DMT and ayahuasca is Dorian Yates on the Joe Rogan Experience. DMT is so fast, it's hard to really take that and put it into play. With psilocybin at the higher doses you know what Terrence McKenna would call a heroic dose of 5 grams and up
Starting point is 01:56:09 and Don you know in a quiet a quiet place it is challenging you know so having a sitter or a guide and Jim Fadiman talks about this in the Psychedelic Explorers Guide but you know having somebody there who can answer the door if someone knocks at the door, um, having someone there, if you, you know, that has
Starting point is 01:56:28 been through it before too. So if you say, I'm seeing this thing and it's fucking with me, they can kind of guide you through it and talk you back to us. You're in a safe place, you know, I'm watching you, everything's, you know, everything's okay. They can really shift that when it starts to struggle. Um, but that is, you know, certainly a tougher deal. And it's, it's, I think it's more important for people to experience lighter doses before they get to that stage. So they have some familiarity with it rather than just, man, I heard Kingsbury talking about this awesome vision he had, and I want to go do jump both feet in and swan dive into that deep end. It's like, no, I mean, have some respect for what you're working with and know why you're
Starting point is 01:57:03 working with it. Like what's the reason to go this deep? So you want people to know there's no shortcuts. Yeah. And I do, but I do find like when you're prepared for it, when you're guided well, and when you're ready for that, it can be a beautiful experience that is on par with ayahuasca. I mean, no doubt in my mind that the heavier mushroom experiences has been on par with anything I've done. So asking for a friend, where's a good start? Well, I think in the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, he talks about when you look for the correct sitter, it's somebody who has experience with the medicine.
Starting point is 01:57:34 It's not your mom. It's not somebody who's like, oh my God, I don't know what to do. They have to have navigated those waters before and know like, hey, you're safe. Or maybe it's a good time for you to have water., Hey, let's change the song or take you outdoors or all those, all there's so many factors that come into that. And what are the right tools to shift that state of consciousness into a better place as you struggle going through the work, but also to welcome the work, you know, like people talk about bad trips. I interviewed Rick Doblin. He said, really, there are no bad trips. There are harder experiences, but if you're being shown something it's, it's on purpose,
Starting point is 01:58:09 you know, maybe you relive, uh, being molested as a child. That's a fucking difficult experience, but you're being shown that to help you heal from it, to unpack it. And in those experiences, if you do that correctly, it can leave you feeling more whole. It can leave you healing and able to deal with those memories better. If you are not prepared for that, that can fuck you up just as bad as the first time it happened. Right? So it's, it's, it's not cut and dry. There's a lot of gray area, but I think, you know, if it is something people are interested in reading as much as possible, learning, and then, you know, starting in the shallow end is a, is a great way. I think in general, um, you know, people just, they don't tend to reflect or think enough or be mindful enough of, of what they're doing, you know, throughout the day.
Starting point is 01:58:56 And I think it's just, it's an, it's an important thing to try to slow yourself down, you know, slow down when you're going fast because you have to move fast. You have to move quick. Otherwise you're, you're going to get, get run over basically. But you do need to think about what it is you're doing. Think about the foods that you're taking in. Think about, um, I've, I've talked about this before on the podcast. Think about, uh, is it possible that I drink too much coffee? Is it possible, uh, that I don't get enough sleep? Is it possible I'm neglecting my wife and my kids? Just have these conversations with yourself here and there to kind of run through a checklist of what is it that you're doing?
Starting point is 01:59:34 And what are, you know, screwing up because your time is, is, uh, situated too much over, uh, you know, working Instagram, whatever, whatever it might be, just be open to the fact that, oh, you know what? I, yeah, I, I could, it probably makes sense if I took the day off or got out of work early and spend time with the kids or spend time with my wife. It probably makes sense if, you know, I'm having 10 cups of coffee every day. It probably makes sense if I switched to decaf or had one or two small cups of coffee, you know, just be mindful of the different things that you're doing on a daily basis. Yeah. And that's massive. You brought up a great point. I was reading this book,
Starting point is 02:00:20 I forget the name, but he was talking about how we have concentration in one box, which most of us in the West are in most often. And we have meditation, which more people are getting in tune with. But in between that, we have contemplation. And it's truly a forgotten art where you would set the table as you would in meditation. It's going to be quiet, maybe some instrumental music, those kind of things. But then to contemplate what's going on, to be reflective, you know, and that's so important because if you create the space for that, you can see things from new angles that you can actually start to have a plan and a course of action on how to improve your life and fix some of these areas that you need to fix and really decide where you want to go moving forward.
Starting point is 02:00:59 You know, but, but if you're always in distraction mode or go, go, go, you don't have that. Distraction mode and, uh and like an impulse mode. I'm hungry. So, boom, you stop at McDonald's and you just you eat while you drive and you ate three Big Macs and you're you're on a 15 minute drive and you go to reach for another one. And there's not another one there because you ate them all. You even forgot. You're not mindful of the food that you're about to, about to eat rather than it's totally different principle of, uh, you calm everything down. It's dinner time. You set the
Starting point is 02:01:32 table like at my house. Um, the kids will help with some of that. It's not real organized. I mean, we're not, uh, we're not sitting there getting into some weird chanting or anything like that, but we, we, we take our time, serve the food. It's, you know, one course at a time and we're thankful for it. We're grateful for it. And in my opinion, when you do stuff like that, you'd be a lot less likely to really think that that Big Mac's going to be all that good. You'd probably be disgusted by it. If you actually just sat there and thought about where that food came from, what it's made out of, what's it going to do to your body. And so my advice all the time is just for people just to, just to slow down a tiny bit and just
Starting point is 02:02:11 think a little bit, think, think about what you're about to do. Think about, uh, the pros and the cons. How does this help? How does this hurt? Anytime you want to go off your diet, anytime you want to fall into a bad habit, how does it help? How does it hurt? And try your best to be dedicated to yourself. Try to be, try your best to be dedicated to the, I know, I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, but you have these conversations with yourself about how you want to be better or do better at a certain thing. You want to lift more weight. You want to make more money. You want your business to impact people in a different way. Whatever these things are, no matter how big the scale is or how small the scale is, I think we have a tendency to talk ourselves out of it.
Starting point is 02:02:54 And if you can slow shit down a little bit, you can make more sense of it. You can be narrow and you can focus in on the things that are going to make you better. How does it help? How does it hurt? 100% brother. Fucking pump those brakes. Yeah. Got some questions coming in over there? No, we're pretty slow today, but I had a question going back to like UFC fights and MMA and whatnot.
Starting point is 02:03:19 Are you able to enjoy those watching them now? Like since you've been through it, or do you kind of tense up and get a little like... I only get tense when I watch my old teammates, Luke, DC, Kane, they're all still fighting Bader. Um,
Starting point is 02:03:31 I don't get tense watching fights. I certainly, as I'm still a giant fan. So like, I've never stopped watching. I've always loved watching the fights. I still get my heart rate up. I'm still cheering for certain guys,
Starting point is 02:03:43 especially if I know them personally. But it's not something where I feel like panic necessarily, unless it's a teammate and I see them in trouble, then I'm like, ugh, because I know everything they're going through. I know who they're training with, how hard they're working, everything they put into that. There's just a connection there.
Starting point is 02:04:01 So it's different watching those guys. I bet. How long have you been shooting the bow? Today was my third day. And I had plugged, I plugged, I knocked the arm off the Mark Bell piece right there. Look at that. Look at that. Marky move.
Starting point is 02:04:15 Yep, Marky move. I had to put one through your skull too. I know. I'm very offended. We had John Dudley in town for on it. And he was just coming off Rogan's. And he taught me, he gave me like 48 hours for the private lessons oh she told me a custom bow and gave it to me for my birthday it
Starting point is 02:04:31 was my birthday while i was doing it yeah and that's really cool something i wanted to get into it for a very long time it's a beautiful practice just in in the practicing of it because it's you know like there's there's a zen in the art of archery great book and it's a it's an active form of meditation like you can't think about anything else while you're doing it. You have to be 100% tuned in that fucking moment. And you, you, it's a way to hack flow state. Yeah. So it's incredibly addicting. And, um, you know, I want to get into bow hunting. It's something I want to do. I went on an elk hunt last year with rifles, but there's something primal about that. You know, we're talking about that. There is,
Starting point is 02:05:01 in an Elkhart last year with rifles, but there's something primal about that. You know, we're talking about that. There is, there's a lot to it, you know, and being in nature and being with people that you love and care about and going for your own food, you know, the way we've done for eons prior to. Yeah, killing something with a stick.
Starting point is 02:05:19 But it's cool. I mean, it's, it's, it's something, it's, it's highly addicting and I absolutely love it and I definitely want to, I want to get one of those little targets that you got, because I can set that up on the side of my house. It's a little bit easier than making my way 45 minutes up to North Austin to go to the range. So if I got that on the side of the yard,
Starting point is 02:05:35 that's definitely something I'll be able to do more often. You went for a pretty long run a couple years back, I think. You went like 30 miles or something like that, right? Yeah, just over 50K out in Zion, Utah. You got any tips for me? You going to do it? Running's hard. I don't think, you know, I don't know, like, I don't think I...
Starting point is 02:05:54 I wouldn't do an ultra. I would do, and I won't do one again. I think half marathons are good. It was nice to torture myself, especially in Zion, where it's just incredibly beautiful. You know, Kelly's book, Ready to Run, was excellent because it showed different end ranges for mobility that you should be able to do. I went back to super training with Mel Siff and Fricka Chansky, just doing depth jumps
Starting point is 02:06:20 and things like that that really worked on spring and plyometrics as my body was strong enough and mobile enough to get in those positions. Jumping down from something, basically? Jumping down from something on top of something else or jumping down from something as far as I could go. Right. And they say only to start that once you can squat double your body weight. I was right around there, not much over that,
Starting point is 02:06:39 but it's a powerful tool. And as you create that extra spring in your legs, the chances of you getting hurt from running are greatly diminished. So people often used to think like mileage, mileage, mileage. And then Primal Endurance came out with Mark Sisson, another great book that talked about combining endurance running with the ketogenic diet and all the science behind that. But lifting weights for running, for distance running is really important. And it's not, you know, I'm going to lift weights for running for distance running is really important. Yeah. And it's not, you know, I'm going to lift weights for an hour straight.
Starting point is 02:07:06 It's still working on max effort stuff and the doubles and the triples and things like that, that pays dividends, uh, maybe shortening, shortening your, your rest periods in between, but all those things play a factor.
Starting point is 02:07:17 How strong you are determines, you know, where you're going to fail. It's a big factor in every factor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um,
Starting point is 02:07:24 was there a, you know, in messing with running, did you get banged up at all, like your knees and stuff? I mean, because you weigh, what, 215, 220? 230 right now. I was 238 when I ran. You know, no injuries at all. I was a bit dehydrated and had some candida and parasites, so I had to learn about the gut, and that's cool
Starting point is 02:07:44 because, you know, in reflection, that taught me about gut health right and uh so everything with a with a purpose but um you know as far as injuries no none whatsoever and you run on flat surface or hills or both no it's fucking all mountains mountains mountains on utah's a lot of mountains you know like hiking straight up you know but just in training and stuff and just in prep did or did you not prep for you just ran i ran i you know i did we were out here in in california so i was running in los altos at rancho san antonio and it's you know it's it's not super steep at any one particular point but i mean in the training i never ran more than a 10k okay so that was one of the beauties, you know, in a lot, as a lot of this stuff comes out
Starting point is 02:08:28 as you don't necessarily have to put in the mileage, if you're running hard and you're still putting in decent mileage and then you're lifting and you're doing plyometrics and you're working on mobility, it's going to carry over, right? It's more about form and strength and, and the ability to have snap in your legs than it is necessarily about just constantly putting yourself through the meat grinder, especially as a guy my size, right? And your size. How come nobody at your house ever has clothes on?
Starting point is 02:08:50 Well, I don't. What has happened? I don't think they're necessary. It's hot in Texas. We don't need clothes. Come on. It does get pretty warm in there. Your wife is, you said she's learning right now,
Starting point is 02:09:01 teaching yoga? Yeah, she's doing yoga teacher training right now. It's her second hundred hours and being tested on it as she goes. She had to do a Sanskrit test with 108 words of Sanskrit with the definitions and got a 90% on it. So she's doing really well. She might start calling out positions in sex that are in Sanskrit. So like, uh, some naked twister, uh, might have to start learning some of the lingo, but, um, you know, she, she has a great teacher there, Jen Pru, uh, breathed Los Gatos and it's a, it's an amazing facility. I've had some of the best times I've ever done yoga. I've been there. So, uh, she's really excited. You know, when she finishes the 200 hours, she can start teaching, but she'd like to get the 500 hours before she actually starts teaching at a studio. And, um,
Starting point is 02:09:43 there's places in Costa Rica where we can go, I'll take bear and we'll just hit the beach all day long with some coconuts while she's learning and getting her extra hundred hours in at a time. So we're really excited for that. Awesome. Is, is your, uh, job with the Onnit Academy, is it like, uh, you have to like punch in certain times or is it more, is it more, uh, relaxed than that? Is there like a specific.
Starting point is 02:10:03 It's fucking relaxed, you know, unlimited PTO. It's definitely set up like a lot of the millennial tech companies. And yeah, you know, I'm not on salary. I'm not on the pay clock. Get your shit done. Yeah, exactly. Get your shit done. They do want us there nine to five.
Starting point is 02:10:19 Obviously, that would create a riff among employees if somebody was coming in at noon every day and leaving at three. So, you know, just for the team aspect of it, you know, we're there nine to five, but everyone's encouraged to lift weights while they're on the clock, while they're there, you know, you can go hit a class, you can go get in the sauna. They do 50% off, you know, copay massages while you're working. Got a meditation room. Oftentimes I'm outside doing Tai Chi with my shirt off and shoes off in the grass. So it's, it's an amazing experience. It's a different, uh, style of, of gym, you know, like, um, you know, obviously Ana has supplements and that's a huge part of their business, but the, the gym model is awesome. You know, it's really cool. They got a lot of different, uh, varieties of
Starting point is 02:10:58 things that you can learn there. And they got, they got a lot of classes where you can learn kettlebells and all kinds of different things. What are some things they're working towards now? Because I think you guys, when I was there last, maybe you're expanding some stuff or maybe you're setting up athlete training. Yeah, we've been working with a lot of pro athletes with the partnership with Exos. I think some ridiculously large number, like 80-something of the guys that went in the pro draft this year in the NFL, we're working with Exos. A lot of them are coming into Onnit.
Starting point is 02:11:28 We're looking to expand the Onnit gyms. I think they're going to have the next location out in Vegas and then maybe somewhere in California. Down south, no competition, don't worry. And then cafes, obviously. You love the cafe. We're going to roll those out too. We've seen that with Bulletproof and some different places. But being able to go on and get yourself like a great keto smoothie and optimized coffee and whatever, like we should have those in a lot of places. So there's a lot of things that are growing and I don't have my hand in everything, just a lot of things. So I get to kind of be a part of most of what's going on. And, um, you
Starting point is 02:12:00 know, online training now with the on at six program is really cool for people that just want to learn how to move body weight training, you know, and, and this is stuff John Wolf design that kicked my ass as a guy who was powerlifting and doing MMA and shit like that. So it works for everyone. And, um, I helped with a lot of the dietary protocols for that. Aubrey on the motivational, inspirational side, live Langdon with, uh, recipes and how to cook.
Starting point is 02:12:24 And it's just a complete guide to how to take control of your body and everything that goes into it. It's pretty cool. You have all those resources. You can go and learn from each different person. You can mess with the clubs or you can mess with the kettlebells. Yeah. I've been, I've been playing a lot with the steel mace and what's beautiful about that is it just opens up the subscap, you know, and just gets the shoulders moving, right? Like anytime you're under tension while you're moving through a different motor pattern, you're actually increasing flexibility, but it's, it's with the nervous system engaged. It's a lot better than passively stretching. Right. And I found, you know, from all the years of benching
Starting point is 02:12:57 and having my shoulders forward and fighting and jujitsu, it's really important that I open that back up. So some of these tools have been tremendous for me personally. And then there's jujitsu there. There's, you got the 10th planet, right? You mentioned jujitsu being like man yoga. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you put yourself in these weird positions and a lot of good schools, not all schools are created equal, but certainly with the 10th planet system, which Eddie Bravo created, who was big into yoga.
Starting point is 02:13:23 You can get in a full lotus, you know, inverted upside down without touching his feet. You know, you can just throw himself in a full lotus, like fucking Dalsim from street fighter. You know, like it's, there's an element to that where you're going to open the body in weird ways. And that's on purpose to warm you up before you have to do that with, you know, Mark Bell on top of you. Right. So all with a purpose, but, um, it's great to get on the ground and actually move around like an animal and open up the body. And there's a lot of translation to that. I feel my best when I'm doing that. That's one of the reasons I keep wanting to do that, you know, truly, um, it just helps me move better. But then that goes back
Starting point is 02:13:59 into putting myself in challenging positions and things like that, you know, we're getting into, you know, super cool, my man, it was awesome having you on here. And, uh, is there anything new or what, what, what do you have coming up next? Well, uh, you know, listen to the on it podcast. We've got some great guys coming up, but check out my man, Aubrey Marcus's book on the day, which is made New York times bestseller list. It's how to master every moment in the 24 hour cycle. And if you own the day, you own your life. You can repeat that pattern, right? And they don't leave anything off the table. They talk about the morning routine from hydration to breath work to cold therapy to how to optimize your sex life, the best time to work out.
Starting point is 02:14:36 You name it, it's all included. That's cool. Yeah, phenomenal book. It's doing great right now with sales, but, you know, truly a transformative book. And that's about it, man. We're going to unplug a bit. It's been really a hard push lately. Yeah, you guys are kind of on vacation, right?
Starting point is 02:14:52 Yeah, and now it's a time to take a deep breath and unwind a little bit before getting back at it. Awesome, man. Always good having you on here. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. See you later. Awesome, my man. A lot of fun.
Starting point is 02:15:05 Hell yeah.

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