The Sevan Podcast - #370 - Khan Porter

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

**Contains conversation about suicide** Khan Porter is a 32-year-old CrossFit athlete from Australia. He is currently training in Iceland with Annie Thorisdottir, Lauren Fisher, and Tola Morakinyo on a team to compete at the 2022 CrossFit Games. Sign up for our email: https://thesevanpodcast.com/ ------------------------- Partners: https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://www.barbelljobs.com/ - WORLD'S #1 JOB BOARD FOR THE CROSSFIT COMMUNITY https://thesevanpodcast.com/ - OUR WEBSITE Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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should be too. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. should be too. Contact a licensed TV insurance advisor to learn more. Bam, we're live. Hector, Devesh, Corey. That's two days in a row where I hit the go live button, but I didn't have my picture up. Just, okay. You need to be Mr. dear con i'm chrome you need to be on chrome so i have this i basically this podcast starts at 7 a.m pacific standard time more or less and uh i'd say 89 of the time and And so what happens is I have this total routine I do. I set my alarm for 6.30. No, sorry, 6 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.

I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I open all the blinds. I try to respond to a bunch of DMs, especially I look for the guests I've invited the day before to see if they've responded. And then at 6.30 a.m pacific standard time i jump in the shower good evening from brisbane cory leonard bruce wayne adam blakesley good morning and then so so then i jump in the shower and i try to get out like quick. I try to make it like, you know, it's not like I wash my ass, my crotch, my armpits. That's it. And I shower before I go to bed. It's just like to wake up. Right.

And so then from there, I come into my office and I turn on the computer and I send the link to the guest. The dog comes outside and he pees while I'm doing that. And from there, I go back inside. And when I come in to turn on my computer and send the link to the guest, I also bring in my show notes and my coffee. And so what I do with my coffee is it's like this is my second cup of coffee for the day. And it has like two shots of espresso down here. And then I fill the rest with hot water, paper street coffee. I think you get 10% off if you use the name Sevan over there and supporting them is like supporting us. You have to know that like it really really really really is it's a great way to support us you pay him and then he's like oh that's a good investment for me to support the

seven podcast and then he keeps paying us and then that lets us pay for all the shit that this this And so then I come back in here, ideally, like at 649, 650. Like it's hopefully like just a quick turnaround, no later than 655. But sometimes I just, I don't know why, but I've been just, I'm pushing the limits further and further. So like just now I rolled in here and exactly at seven. So casual center,ve jake i watched uh mr hiller good morning i watched um uh the the exchange between um bill mauer and uh joe rogan yesterday and you can just see where they've gone so wrong and it's it's where canadians have gone wrong too i saw a funny. I saw a funny video. I saw a funny video this morning of Michelle LaTondra. If you want to watch that CrossFit Games video that they

made of her, she's talking basically about how no one can tell her what to do. Like if you tell her what to do, she'll push the opposite way. But she's wearing a mask in the video it's so absurd it's so absurd it's so absurd it's such a contradiction i'm i'm i was embarrassed for her beautifully shot um but but but bill mauer and joe rogan they basically, in the clip that I saw, the 11-minute clip I saw, they're basically saying that they are still liberals, but the left has changed. And they're totally missing the point. They're totally missing the point.

Mr. Con Porter. Hello. Sorry about that, mate. Dude, not even. The good thing about my mouth is that it will just run. Perfect. Mate, me and you both. Talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles. Not even the good thing about my mouth is that it will just run. Perfect. Mate,

man, you both talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles. Um, is your Instagram this? No, my Instagram is at. I am con Porter. Okay.

Hold on one second. I want it. I want to change. Okay. So I just put the words. I am in front of it. Yes, sir. What about that? Perfect. There we go. I like that. Hey, that's kind of like, there's, there's like, um, the Sevan podcast, the Dave Castro, I am Con Porter. I like this. Yeah. I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly Con Porter is, but we're getting there. I don't know if I'm quite ready for the,

yeah. Right. Right. Are you in a, where, so you're in Iceland, you have been recruited to come there and participate on what arguably is the most experienced group of crossfitters in the world being that you have yami uh katrin and annie there it's it's quite remarkable and i'm sure there's other people there i don't even know who who've been in the game forever um but where so you come from australia where it's sunny and then you go to that's like in this like on this planet australia is down in the bottom of the planet right yes uh it's sunny and then you go to, that's like on this planet, Australia is down in the bottom of the planet, right? Yes, sir. And now you went up to the top of the planet. Yeah, I think it's

about as far as you can travel by plane in kind of like a consistent journey. So we have to fly via either the Middle East or Asia and then usually stop somewhere else in Europe and then come up to Iceland. So it's about as different a climate and about as far away from home as you can get yeah i wonder what the um like the uh the stuff that some people think is bullshit the implications are like like like how the i don't know magnetic poles affect you or do you know what i mean like you're totally different it's a totally different place on the rock yeah yeah dude i know exactly what you mean i've never been one to buy into a lot of that sort of stuff so i have no idea what it's supposed to be like i can tell you though that training and

breathing in the cold sucks yeah yeah it's also real shitty when you want to go out and do bits and pieces uh when it's bucketing down with snow or pissing down with rain outside your window um but that said like you're exactly right the crew that i've got around me here is wild world class uh totally it needs there needs to be a whole show on on the fact that you guys are all there with annie katrin and um and yami it's not yami on the show i have not i i know him i i used to hang with him quite a bit i used to see him everywhere i i need to have him on the show i have not i i know him i i used to hang with him quite a bit i used to see him everywhere i i need to have him on the show i i'm a huge fan huge fan it's phenomenal like one of the smartest dudes you'll ever meet and with everything as well like he's just kind of a

kelly starrett and a ben bergeron and maybe some other dudes all wrapped into one people don't realize that like a philosopher and a kind of just free thinker as well uh doesn't mind a beer which is always it's well too so he like he's all like wait what was that sentence you said was that english he doesn't mind a beaut it doesn't mind a beer oh a beer beer okay okay yes yes yeah and he's like he just yeah his impact on the group here can't be overstated. It's crazy how much influence he has and just how, yeah, like his attention to detail across the board, how that sort of permeates into the culture amongst the people and even how it's kind of influenced my own approach

to everything has been wild in just three months. So, dude, I'm pumped to see kind of how it continues to grow with him at the helm. He really is kind of, I think, the secret weapon. And I say secret weapon because there'd be people that don't even know him, but of this training group for sure. He has crazy pedigree. He's been around forever.

That's what people don't know, also don't understand. I mean, he's like Miko Salo old school. Yeah, dude. I think that's how we even met. I mean, I won't take away from his stories or anything like that, but I think that's how we met Annie, going to the games with Miko. And then, I mean, they've been together, I think, since 2009 maybe. And she's got to be one of the most consistent

and decorated females in the sport, if not the most consistent and decorated. And then you look at BKG as well. Like he's been with the army right right i'm sorry i forgot dude and he's why he's such a stud too and so kind of like overlooked when it comes to a lot of the athletes but his consistency and you know they've both been with the army for forever and that is a huge testament to him i think um bkg bkg is kind of this um europe scott panchik right yeah for sure for sure like he's

just he's the rock yeah yeah yeah just won the quarterfinals then as well like yeah he he's good man and that the training environment with that crew is just it's it's unbelievable is is bkg a bit of a mental monster is he like is his shit like like a trap door like he seems fucking solid yeah right he so he'll kind of be in a workout and he's just got the most stoic face and then every now and again you'll just hear like a and then he'll just go back and i think the first time that we heard that kind of happen in a workout it was very nice to hear that he was human because you just watch the dude and he's just monstering. And then all of a sudden there'll be like a, and then all of a sudden he's back to

just competing as normal. But yeah, dude, I think they're all mental monsters here. Just the mindset amongst everyone is what can you, what can we possibly be doing day in and day out to be getting better in every way, shape form and that decision making process is you can just see how it influences so many things and it's it's really cool to kind of have that rub off on me a little bit have you did you remember you and i ever meeting like shaking hands and meeting yes i actually have a funny story for you about the first time that we met so when i started crossfit in 2012 i was uh studying journalism at university and i was also doing tv and radio presenting at a um performing arts place and so i kind of wanted to do the whole

on-camera journalism that was a thing that i kind of looked into when i came into the crossfit space i was a massive fan of the behind the scenes and i don't know are you familiar with um I'm sure you are familiar with Louis Thoreau the British guy yeah yeah yeah yeah he's amazing he's at it he's amazing well I'm about to pierce in your pocket I kind of saw you as this CrossFit Louis Thoreau with your behind the scenes wow Wow, thank you. And so when I made the games in 2014, I was like, fuck, here we go. You're going to go to the CrossFit games. You're going to get to meet Savan, this CrossFit Louis Theroux.

Maybe you can chat to him about journalism stuff. You'll be able to riff back and forth. And I remember it being clear as day. There was like a circle of us sitting around in 2014, and you came over you had your camera I think you like asked one question ask the next guy a question ask the next guy a question and the camera kind of came to me and just kind of stood up and walked away and my little heart just broke I was like do you know why I probably did that and when you as anxious as i do you then spent the i didn't spend the next year being like fuck why does he have so much why

does this guy fucking hate you like what have you done so horribly rob you you know why i remember that and then i remember chatting say that again you remember what i then i remember chatting to a bit in 2015 and that was all good and where did we chat in 2015 just like what what you were backstage somewhere yeah i want to say that there was like a couple of just things walking up to the um competition arena i was probably shit scared of you at this point thinking that that 2014 thing meant way more than it actually did and i just need to avoid you because you probably hate my guts and everything along those lines but um uh such is the nature of anxiety mate it's a

hell of a trip i'm i'm i'm super intimidated by um uh a beauty like very very intimidated by beauty that's why i struggle to interview uh women i struggle struggle so i was probably crazy intimidated by how good you looked i know that sounds kind of weird but it's but it's it i have to tell you it's like real for me like not it's not i don't i don't dismiss that at all everyone i couldn't interview the girls and i've had to ask my wife to help me interview the women at the crossfit games before when i was doing the behind the scenes crazy intimidated by beauty oh dude so i i can kind of resonate with that like i if i was out and about and i see like a really attractive girl i'm shit there's no way in the world i'm going up to talk to yeah yeah there is no way

in hell i'd be way too intimidated and i'm almost like that around all women like just period like i don't think like like fat girls skinny girls like all girls i i i think are attractive i don't it's like the for me i'm wide open and so i'm uh and they used to joke around about that at hq too they'd be like oh someone has 15 interviews with the dudes. And in a way it's like, Hey, that's what I do. I point my camera at shit that's beautiful all day, but with the women, like, and, and, and there's a sort of a, um, yeah. And so some dudes have would have that effect on me too. You know what I mean?

Like Matt Fraser does not have that effect on me. Uh, but maybe you do do or like rich froney does you know what i mean i mean i thank you i don't even know how to respond well it just is but yeah dude that was that was kind of my first memory and i was like man that's gonna be a funny story because yeah like been a huge fan of yours and the stuff that you were doing since way back in the day and then definitely as a former journalism student and you know fan of that kind of stuff it was it was really really cool and it was cool to see the work that you did when you guys were doing that sort of stuff and now with the podcast as

well it's fucking awesome thanks i'm having fun yeah those those people who um you're with um they are all they were all great to me uh katrin annie yami bkg well they were always so easy i can walk i mean katrin and and annie can handle the camera i mean they were always so welcoming as scary as it was to interview them um they they really know always knew how to like be wide open to me they were really cool it's yeah they're so good when it comes to handling that stuff it's kind of crazy that gym have you ever been to Reykjavik I was there once but I suspect maybe she's moved I I and um when I the first time I went there I got to basically take is I was basically hung out withie for like a week and i got to take so many pictures

of her and film her so much it was man i was so excited it was amazing what a place to come and shoot content is it huge is are they in the same location they've been in for 10 years massive long location and when you walk in it's almost like there's like a viewing platform at the top where you can kind of see out over the whole gym okay i. I walked in on a bottom floor. There was a top floor, but I walked in on a bottom floor. Oh, you might've walked in around the back, but it's really long, like crazy massive space. Yeah. Yes. Massive. Yeah. So it might still be the same place, but it's, it's crazy to see just how popular it is, not just obviously with the members they have there, but you get so many people and they come

and drop in and they're clearly there to just come and watch the girls train like you know like to think that they're there for the team and they're there to see annie and kat train for sure right right crazy they'll come in and there's these glass panels up the top and they'll just stand up the top and they'll just watch film some will come a little bit closer and they just stand there and they're just filming the girls training and it's almost like animals in the zoo yeah so they're so good with it they're so fine with it the way they kind of they'll always kind of go and talk to them afterwards and take a photo and stuff as well and so i'm not surprised to hear that they were kind of easy enough on camera and then like yeah it's a crazy environment too. It's such a cool gym. So that's just known in that country, huh?

Like you could, like you, you can go by a Reykjavik and you can poke your head in and there's a chance you might see these world-class athletes training. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've even seen people just turning up, not going in the gym and getting photos out the front at there's a CrossFit Reykjavik sign to walk in. And I've seen people stopping and getting photos at that. It is, it is a landmark here.

There's some sort of, I don't know what it is. It has some sort of kind of saying that the cab drivers, it's the second most requested place to go in Reykjavik behind, behind the big church. Wow. And, and do the,

Oh yeah. I remember the big church. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. It was very cool. It like there's, there's all these sky. There's it's cool, huh? Yeah, it was very cool. There's like a skylight bubble there on the ground, right,

and like grass growing on it and all that. Yeah. No, I don't think that's still there anymore. At the church? Yeah, like basically part of the church is underground, and so on the top when you walk up to the church, weren't there just tons of skylights that go down to the ground? No. No, I don't think that's the one unless they've taken it away.

They've just changed the door, though, and it's got a bright red door with a symbol very similar to the one on your shirt. It's very cool. Oh, good, good. This is where I got that idea from there. Oh, Norse mythology church. It's not. It's a Catholic church or a Christian church, but I think it's looked very nice and very mythological kind of door. How do you get it?

It's you. And did you know Tola before this? So I knew Tola sort of through Justin, through Kotler and the underdogs crew. And then I got to hang with him at the games last year when we went, we were on the demo team. Okay. Yeah.

Wow. You were on the demo team last year yeah me taller and newbery that was a lot of fun yeah that's the last uh you got the last bit of castro yeah man that's the fucking thing to think about that was yeah dude man it's not gonna be that surely oh man it's not gonna be the same without a demo team of yours that was yeah dude man it's not gonna be that surely oh man it's not gonna be the same without a demo team of yours that was such a cool experience dude to have done the games kind of team and individual and then to have got to do that which now you say that makes it even more kind of crazy to think about getting like the last well let's call it the proper demo team with dave

man fuck that's that makes the experience even more, more, more kind of special. You guys have a, the, the demo team has a very unique relationship with Dave. I don't think people realize it, right? Yeah. You get to see, I mean, I've always really liked Dave and really liked the way that he kind of did things and games, put the tests together and have only had really good experiences with him. So I was excited to go, and games put the tests together and have only had really good experiences with him so i was

excited to go but the level of appreciation i had for him after doing that and getting to see the games almost through his lens and through that kind of demo team oh dude it was it just yeah was even cooler and it really gave such a greater appreciation for the amount of effort that he puts into the tests and just what the games meant to him like as a as an entire thing as an entire concept it is a very cool cool role the you see something like if someone like when people come and see my gym at my house it's on it's on social media a lot and when people come they're always like oh it's so much smaller in person but um the games is the opposite when you get to look behind the behind the curtain you're like holy shit i had no idea right it's bigger than you even could imagine dude it's wild the amount

of work that everyone that's involved is putting in it's yeah you really have to say it to understand it and you don't when you're an you walk, you're in the back room, you warm up, you walk out that little thing past like Madison. Now you go past the fans in that area. You do your workout. You might hear a briefing. Then you kind of walk back and do your own thing.

So you, you, you understand the size of it. And especially having done it in LA as well. But yeah, to kind of say behind the curtain like that. Yeah. It's,

it's, it's wild so there's so many questions fighting to come to come to the front um you've been to the crossfit game six times yes is is this is is this going to be the most unique experience? Is this event, with where you are in your headspace, and we'll get to that, where you are in your headspace, but with where you are in your headspace and being around this team in Iceland,

do you think that this is a new Con Porter? Oh, absolutely. Do you think this is going to be like if every year you've been taking a ferrari to the games this year you're taking a whole new beast yeah a super tesla there we go i couldn't think of anything yeah running on electricity mate yeah honestly the content that's coming out makes it sound like like you're being rebuilt better than ever before. 100%. This is without a doubt and in so many different ways. Like I was very much, I mean, this was kind of the perfect opportunity for where I was at competitively, personally, in every kind of aspect of my life.

And this popped up. It was a very quick yes from me. And I think that was, I think I was last pick and they'd gone through a few people and then it was kind of like getting desperate. Wow. Who the hell can we get to jump in last minute? Because I didn't get the call up until Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and then I was due to go to Waterpalooza two weeks after that. So it was basically a two-week turnaround between me getting the call up

and jumping on a plane. But it was just the right time for me to do something like this. And I kind of knew coming into this season that if I wanted to have another crack either individually or whether I found a team or something along those lines, I was going to have to go, let's call it all in. I was going to have to put in full effort into this season and I was going to have to approach it in a way that I hadn't done before,

maybe except the first year that I kind of made the games in 2014 from 13 to 14. And the issue with that was was Sydney and where I was going to be the best environment for me to do that? And there was a couple of options floated around to kind of go and train elsewhere and to go maybe even to go to vegas with justin kotler because he's a very good friend of mine um and to kind of have an approach like that but i still i was kind of still on the fence about exactly what i was going to do so when this opportunity presented itself it was a very quick yes for me and then it was kind of like

after i'd said yes all the reasons why that was making the best decision, that was the best decision kind of started to fall into place. And yeah, a big part of that was definitely being able to put myself in an environment that was conducive to me getting better and wanting to get better, minimizing distractions, holding myself accountable to another group of people and to a group of people that were levels above. You know, Annie obviously came third last year at the game. She's the benchmark in this team. When you're going into the gym every day, like that's the benchmark.

You can't help but make better decisions, like ongoing make better decisions to kind of move yourself towards that and to keep up with her in that respect. move yourself towards that and to keep up with her in that respect and then yeah man it's been challenging in a lot of ways being here and adjusting to you know a lot of different lifestyle things but again i just think that i was in the right place in my life um personally and i had the right kind of mentally i was ready to take on and I had the right kind of mentally I was ready to take on the responsibility and also the – I can't even think. I can't think of the word. But like to be able to deal with the potential failure of going all in on something like this and then let's say we aren't successful in our role,

to be able to kind of go, okay, I went all in and there was no backup and this was 100 effort and if 100 is not good enough then you process that and move on and i think i'm kind of in a really cool place with that and it's been a really cool adventure you you said that you weren't the first choice it there's part of that since you know that as part of you like can you use that as fuel like okay i'll show you i'll show you why i should have been the first choice motherfucker yeah i mean i've never thought of it like that i kind of just looked at it like i'm very much if something like that comes if someone says that to me i'm very much someone that will kind of go okay well let's

try and think through why that was the case and let's try not to take that personally but yeah i've definitely like i'm aware of it and i'm certainly carry that awareness with me and how i approach training and whilst i still try to make training as enjoyable and keep things lighthearted as much as possible yeah it's certainly like leverage it like let your ego leverage your ego with it manipulate yourself with that yeah yeah for sure there was an element of kind of yeah but not even just in that respect like i think there's so many ways in which i'm constantly trying to prove to myself as well as the rest of the team that i am good enough and that i'm worthy of being here and that i'm

worthy of being in a team that has the goal of trying to win the crossfit games and that I'm worthy of being here and that I'm worthy of being in a team that has the goal of trying to win the CrossFit Games. And that in and of itself is an ongoing journey. And it's one that certainly has its hiccups, but it's, yeah, that definitely feeds into it. What a trip, huh? What a trip. Someone as established as you still has to fight those demons. I mean, I think it's everyone. Yeah, bro. I think that's human nature. I think we all fight them in different ways and we all question ourselves and our self-worth in different respects. But, yeah, I mean, that's been a fundamental part of who I am

since I was a kid. Like I'm constantly questioning myself and that's something I'm really working on. I have been really working on here. And that's the other thing. This environment has been a real opportunity to start to spend a lot of time on my own, spend a lot of time kind of figuring out, yeah, how to kind of have those conversations with myself, how to prove, you know, maybe it's not a matter of proving to myself that I'm good enough, but just accepting who I am. And that's been a big part of this

journey too. I had this guy on last night named Jordan Levitt. He's fighting this Saturday. He's nine and one in the UFC. He's nice. Yeah. And he said, I can't remember who told him this, or if he read it in a book was it was it him who told said this i was so impressed by this um he said you have to stop listening to yourself and talk to yourself yeah and i was like whoa i was like holy shit i've i've read a million self-help books. Like that one fucking. Dude, and fuck, that's crazy. That whole idea of talking to yourself, I'll extend on that with something that came to light for me recently.

I was meditating and every now and again, which you probably wouldn't tell because I've been fidgeting the whole time I'm on this bloody camera. I'm on this bloody camera. But every now and again, I'll just feel called to just sit with myself and put on some music and just kind of like go deep and deep and dark. And sometimes it's all over the place. And I was meditating recently and I was sitting in the corner of the room just over to the side there. And I had this music on and I just was hit with this profound insight. Whilst I was meditating and I was thinking, this is going to sound weird. It was as if my thoughts were me speaking to someone else. It was explaining myself to someone else. It was explaining my thought process. It was very external and it was very externally projected. And I kind of just like, dude, like to the point where I broke down,

it hit me so hard. I don't talk to myself. I don't talk to myself. And I don't have these conversations where I'm not trying to be or do anything for other people where it's purely and simply a conversation with myself. And yeah, I'm good at listening to myself i'm good at listening to that inner critic particularly and yeah i'm good at kind of sitting there and figuring out ways to articulate how i think and how i feel that's processable and that's kind of uh you know articulating being able to articulate that for other people to understand because i think when you kind of go through various mental bits and pieces like mental health bits and pieces you kind of are forced to figure out how to kind of articulate that because you that can be quite a lonely experience if you're not able to share that

with someone else but yes sitting there and being like man I don't talk to myself like where what where's the conversations that I want to have like Like, what do I want? How do I feel? Like, without there being an external, why am I so afraid of sitting and just talking to myself? So that's cool that that was what he said as well. That's, fuck, yeah, might be some truth to it then. Yeah, I really liked it. How old are you, Con? 32.

Getting there. Yeah. 32 getting there yeah i i i i read i read the morning chocolate article you you uh you wrote fantastic article and i watched the interview i think it's mind is rx or mind something yeah mindset rx guys yeah incredible awesome podcast awesome i can't believe it had so few views i mean it you basically talked about it all it was really good it was a good podcast uh when you shared that thing i was like oh i forgot i forgot i even did that i think i was i don't even remember where i was maybe vegas or something i'm like i don't even remember where i was when i did that but yeah he was he was very good the guy tom from mindset i actually

was very good he's a good listener very good listener this is this is the part i struggle with there it i struggle with the labeling of of of certain aspects of mental health. So many people will be like, hey, I'm ADHD or I'm OCD or I'm depressed. And I think a healthy man, and I have my bias, between the age of 20 and like 35, these things that are labeled those things, I think we all all go through i think all healthy men go through yeah i agree to an extent continue sorry no no so um and i i get concerns not the right word maybe defensive is a better word when some of these things are named and given life, but they're just ideas, I get concerned that people will become attached to them and carry them with them their whole life. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, no, I, that's something that I wrestle with a lot and I wrestle with that. And I kind of have two perspectives, one on each side of the equation. And that's kind of I wrestle with a lot. And I wrestle with that. And I kind of have

two perspectives, one on each side of the equation. And that's kind of how I like to look at all of these kinds of questions. The first is with that kind of, I think that all mental health and mental health labels exist on a spectrum. And you're exactly right. I think we can all exhibit characteristics that adhere to, that are in line with those kind of, let's call it diagnoses, if you will, particularly young men as well, like with ADHD, for example. I also think that there is a lot to be said and a lot of research that needs to be done into personality and the way that personality difference can potentially lead itself to exhibiting characteristics that could become pathologized even when they aren't, if that makes sense.

So I find personality psych fascinating. It's my favorite sect of all of psychology. And I was introduced to it when I did one of my early intro to psych subjects. And then I went on to do Jordan Peterson has a really brilliant personality psychology course. It's like a five-hour course and it's phenomenal. And with that, when you learn about the big five personality traits and you start to realize that, I don't know if there's been anything that's had as a profound impact on the way that I view myself,

others in the world as learning about personality psychology and learning about personality differences. And a big part of what I wrestle with, with what you're saying about the labeling is the idea that when you look at someone's personality and you look at how someone's personality is made up, it's certainly easy to see how personality differences, particularly if you've got one person that's doing the diagnosing that's personally quite different to the person that's exhibiting the symptoms and the issues, how that can then lead to over-diagnosis. And that can lead to that over-assignment of labels to what's relatively, let's call it normal behavior or normally abnormal behaviors. so i agree in that respect but the flip side to that then

is does having a label and does that label and what that label can teach you so for example i've always struggled to focus but i never knew until someone said you have adhd that hang on a second i never connected the dots of actually that I needed to do specific things to help improve my focus I was just I had trouble focusing on one thing at a time so I tried to multitask and then I just end up all over the place and getting frustrated at myself and not completing the tasks on time so that's where I see that labels can be beneficial if they're used productively. You're right. If someone just takes a label and they run with that

and they think that's kind of a sentence, because like I said, all these things exist on a spectrum and you can improve the symptoms along the way. If I didn't have that label, if I wasn't given that label of ADHD and I had to kind of just stab in the dark to figure out why and not really even understand that I couldn't focus, then maybe I wouldn't have gone ahead and read a bunch of books on how to focus and figured out kind of processes within my work to make that happen. But I think

it's like with everything, mate, it's how you use the label. It can be a death sentence or it can be a form of liberation. And I think it can be something that's very powerful in allowing people to help themselves or to get help if they use it the right way. And that's something that I'm super big on. And I talk about a lot, like the difference between being vulnerable and playing the victim. And I think that that's something that societally we have a big issue with at the moment

for a lot of different reasons. But more than anything else i think we what we need to be super conscious of is these labels like you said they're just ideas and they're just words and what they should be are tools to help people make better choices improve themselves and improve their lives what they shouldn't be is like a little card that you get given and you get together sorry adhd can't do that or sorry adhd i'll never be able to improve this blah blah blah blah and that's where so much of the conversations around mental health at the moment drive me absolutely bonkers because they are it's too surface level and it's too kind of, yeah, you know,

like, oh, man, like so brave for saying that you have this. I'm like, no, I'm not. It's fucking frustrating having ADHD. It's frustrating not being able to concentrate. Well, let's get rid of the label. It's frustrating not being able to concentrate. It's frustrating not being able to sit still. And it's frustrating getting so anxious that I wake up in the middle

of the night thinking, why did Siobhan take the camera off me? He must hate you. You're a piece of shit human being. Like that's not brave to be those things. It's annoying to be those things. What's brave is actually doing work. What's brave is having the level, like having a level of introspection to realise that these things are work.

Like you can make changes in your life. You can do things to improve your situation no matter what anyone fucking tells you you can you always have the choice to take some action and what's brave is then taking that action and sticking to it as well so yeah i don't know i i get super passionate about conversations around mental health and i think that i don't necessarily i think i piss people off on both sides of the conversation because i don't think that i don't necessarily i think i piss people off on both sides of the conversation because i don't think that i necessarily if people are attached if people are attached to something well first let me see if i understand you correctly you're basically i think we see it the same way it's a let's say yami sees you walk across the room and he says

hey you have an imbalance and he goes and you go what do you mean and he says, Hey, you have an imbalance. And he goes, and you go, what do you mean? And he says, I see your right hip is higher than your left hip, the left side of your hip. And so you start working on it. You start, you start, you, you, you put in a practice of some sort of movements to, to make that adjustment. So if you're, if you, Hey, there are people who there's levels of focus and people who haven't cultivated a lot of focus we call as people with adhd um and so what we're going to do is we're going to give you some practices to help you cultivate focus okay what are some of those practices well one of them is to sit here and look at that light that's on the wall and it's going to move very slowly for the next 60 seconds and you're just going to watch it and cultivate focus that's visual focus and then that that i'm

understanding you right right it's not it's not your limit it's not your it's not who you're just going to watch it and cultivate focus that's visual focus and then that that i'm understanding you right right it's not it's not your limit it's not your it's not who you're not thinking like what's his name uh logan aldridge only has one arm yeah there's no fixing that yeah he has one arm it's a label that it fits him but adhd is something that you could cultivate you could it's to it's to say hey you're out of balance a little bit we can fix that you can cultivate some awareness yeah 100 i think like i said it's not it's it should be a guidepost those labels should be guideposts to be able to go i mean it's broader than just the focus for me like it goes things like i'm doing a dbt course at the moment which is amazing it's for emotional regulation and that that's something- What's DBT?

What's that? Dialectical behavioral therapy. And so it's a form of therapy that's focused around helping manage emotions, emotional, like maladaptive emotional responses to stimuli and stuff like that. We could all improve our emotional regulation. So it's something that everyone could kind of do. Some people, I mean, this is where it goes back to personality. improve our emotional regulation so it's something that everyone could kind of do i mean some people i mean this is where it goes back to personality like there are just different people that are

going to respond more emotionally to situations because they're higher in neuroticism trait neuroticism or whatever it is like that and that's where yeah are these are these labels negative or are these labels guideposts yeah yeah i think you are we're on the right track and i'm just kind of waffling here but saying the same thing i believe they should be guideposts? Yeah. I think we're on the right track and I'm just kind of waffling here, but saying the same thing. I believe they should be guideposts and I believe they should be things that help people. And that's a lot of the conversations I try to have around mental health. A lot of the content I try to put out around mental health is very action-oriented, very kind of use these tools to make positive changes in your life. Don't get bogged down with identifying with whatever the challenges that you are, that you have or face,

because that's how you become stuck. And it's not productive for you. It's not productive for anyone that wants to take part in these conversations around mental health. part in these conversations around mental health um do you remember learning what the word focus um uh meant because because i didn't know uh i had no idea what focus was until i was in my 20s and it was the i did um i did some mdma i did ecstasy and i was in a backyard somewhere and i started focusing and i was like, Oh my goodness. You can start the world around y'all. This is focus. I'm focusing. I'm actually looking at this bird. But you hear adults say that to kids all the time. Focus, focus, focus.

It was said to me a thousand times. I had no idea what it, I didn't even know what it meant. It needed, it should have been defined for me when I was seven. Someone should have played a game with me, like rolled a basketball and been like, follow this ball, done it 10 times. Do you think that that sort of speaks volumes to the way that the schooling systems work? Because that's something I give a lot of thought to as well. Yeah. I didn't have a fucking clue how to focus because it was never taught to us. We're taught how to subtract, which we can do on a calculator. You know, even emotional regulation, now that I'm doing this DBT course, like that's something that I'm like, man,

why aren't they fucking teaching this in schools? This is how you should be educating people to process their emotions, to deal with them so that they don't get bogged down with them later in life and they don't find themselves in situations where they are emotionally ruled particularly these days i think about how many kind of emotionally charged conversations and situations kind of escalate because of poor emotional regulation it's endemic it's huge and we're not taught that as kids really like it's kind of just it doesn't exist same no it's not it's not talked about not not for any bad reason it's just it's just not it's like smell like smelling isn't talked about yeah yeah it's just kind of it's just like assumed oh yeah they'll figure that out yeah

there's a guy i wonder what you think about this so by the way so once i learned to focus i would focus on all my senses i begin and and And to this day, I do it. I cultivate all of them. I cultivate feeling, not the feelings we're talking about, emotional feelings, but feeling. I cultivate listening. I spend time every day focusing just on my ears and listening. I make sure I don't, I listen to the things in my, I listen to it in me. I realize the sounds over, even though I hear the wind chimes over there i focus on inside my ears you know i cultivate smell every i cultivate you know all of them sight so you can cultivate awareness of all your five senses you have specific practices sorry to ask because i'm

super curious do you have specific practices for each of those senses and cultivating them because i think that you're going to probably get people that are going to listen to this like oh i'd love to hear what he's saying about it and like that's i think that's awesome tools that people can take well i mean i'm personally interested as well you have to expect you have you have to go into all of them you have to go into all of them but and i want to but i want to share another idea with you um well the first thing is just to finish to close up the first thing is you have to spend time alone yes you have to spend time alone and even when you start to meditate um whatever that word means you have to realize that you could be meditating for like 10 minutes and then just

realize oh shit i haven't been meditating and then it will just click in and then you'll meditate for like three seconds and then it will go away and then 10 minutes later be like oh shit i haven't been meditating again and then you'll meditate for six three seconds and then it will go away. And then 10 minutes later, like, oh, shit, I haven't been meditating again. And then you'll meditate for six seconds. It's a trippy process. I spoke to, do you know who Dorian is? Fitness Lonnie? Maybe.

Old school. Old school CrossFitter became a monastic monk, vanished for five years. Yeah. Basically sat in a Buddhist monastery all alone for basically five years, more or less. for five years. Yeah. Basically sat in a Buddhist monastery all alone for basically five years, more or less. And then he, he came out recently just to, to, to do a trip to Brazil to sit for another, you know, six months. And I was able to cross paths, paths with him and have him at my house. Fascinating man, Khan. I mean, it sounds fascinating, but I was, I was like, yeah, dude, I was like, sometimes I'll sit for, you sit for you know uh you know an hour and i'll

realize that i wasn't paying attention at all and i'll be like man he goes dude sometimes i'll sit for a month and i'll realize i wasn't listening i was like oh shit yeah what you mean though i'm just like wow so when you read you're reading a book and you read 10 pages you're like the fuck did i just read like did i like I like, where was I just then? And yeah, I love fuck. That would be. Yeah.

And you, you did a podcast with him or you just had him at your house? No, I just, I just was lucky enough to have him at my house. Dude, that's so cool. So,

um, uh, but there's this, there's this, there's this, there's this mathematician and he used, um, named P.D.

P.D. P.D. P.D. P.D. P.D. P.D. The letter P, the letter D,

and then Auspensky, just like it sounds. And he was a turn of the century, 1900 P, D, the letter P, the letter D, and then Ouspensky, just like it sounds. And he was a turn-of-the-century 1900s mathematician. And the paradigm that he used to explain the brain, and this is to connect to what you were saying about emotion, is he says the slowest part of the brain is the intellect, the talking. Oh, you look in the mirror and you hear the voice say, Oh, you have, your hair looks good today, con. Oh, seven, you did a good job spreading the clay around in your head. Oh, thank you. You know, that's the slowest. And you kind of, you have control over that one the most. Then the, then the next fastest is emotion.

And that one's, that one's faster than intellect. and that's why so many people believe it is real because intellect you can kind of catch you can it can say something and you can manipulate it easy um and you could change it because it's slow and everyone usually has enough awareness to i shouldn't say everyone a lot of people have enough awareness to control their intellect but emotion people believe it's real because it shows up and before most people don't have enough awareness that's so powerful yeah they don't have enough awareness to see where it came up from and uh and they get carried away by it yeah so that's and so and so they think it's real they turn into a robot sorry i'm going to give you the floor in one second i just want to go to the

okay sorry i'm sorry sorry i need no no no interrupting is my forte. I love an interrupter. Um, and the third fastest is, um, is the body. And that's why we can't, and the body learns how to ride a bike and it learns how to swim. That's why I can't, you can't be like, okay, Sevan, this is how you're going to ride a bike. I mean, you could tell me, but my intellect will, or my emotion will never be fast enough. The body is the body intelligence is super fast right like someone throws a rock at you and it's like this your emotion your intellect is like like still sleep you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah and afterwards your your emotions like it's so angry someone threw a rock at you and then your intellect gets

a hold of it it's like who the fuck threw that you know it's like yeah. And then by far the fastest are these things that we say are automatic. Breathing, heartbeat. But people who've cultivated enough awareness know that those aren't even automatic. Yeah, right. And that emotion and then body, that emotion and then intellect. The crazy part is the only way to watch all of those things is through stillness. So to see all this crazy storm of movement, but that's his, I don't know if what he's saying is true, but it's an amazing paradigm, right? To look at the unit.

And so he kind of advocates for cultivating awareness at the different, at each different level specifically, like just having that awareness of breathing, your heart beating, kind of advocates for cultivating awareness at the different, at each different level, specifically, like just having that awareness of breathing, your heart beating, and then that being able to feed through into better control. So it's not like automating less of those steps. So that you're not carried away. I forget what the word you use, but I, I, what I think of those things as emotion, like emotional maturity, emotional IQ. It's you start to see these things as you start working on them. Someone flips you off. And before you had this practice, it upsets you. But now you see the upsetness come up and you see it like an alchemist. You let it

transform into something else. You just, it just passes through you. Yeah. You do not own it. You don't have to own every emotion, every thought, every – but this takes cultivating awareness. Kind of what the DBT stuff that I've been doing is very much about. Okay, and that was my question. Yeah, it's allowing that. So it's allowing yourself to feel an emotion, to understand it, to label it and not judge it, to not let it influence. Then you're like you said, just let it pass through to understand that you're not your emotions. If you let it, like you said, and a lot of the time emotional responses will have a physiological response. You'll feel anger and your body will respond physically to that too.

physically to that too and then it's being able to let those things happen and then bring your intellect into the equation when it's finally back online to be able to get back in control so i like that i've never heard of the four like the down down down i really like that kind of i might maybe i have but it's just a nice little reminder it's like we were going back to before, ADHD. It's not so true that you should be attached to it forever, but it is an idea that you can use to help to work on the system. Correct. Right? Yeah, correct. Like really it's just all one whole, but we're breaking it into four pieces so that

maybe you could start tinkering with them like hey it is just one hip but let's break it down and say that there's a right and a left let's use these ideas to to then maybe get them balanced yeah yeah no i like that i really like that yeah it's a very cool way of looking at it fuck yeah i love it and when when um when when the when the ceo of crossfit eric rosa said that he had mental illness it is a it's a very sensitive issue right correct and some people were um hey it's it's so brave of you to come out and talk about mental illness? And my response was, hey, I don't want my airline pilot coming on the air when we're flying over Australia 30,000 feet. Hey, tell me, hey, I got a fucking mental illness. Yeah.

It's probably going to piss some people off, but I tend to agree. And that's from someone that has wrestled with serious mental illness. I don't know his circumstances. And I'm not the way I had serious mental illness too. Yeah. So when you're mentally unwell, the last thing I want to do when I'm mentally unwell is be tasked with making really big decisions. I don't trust myself to do that i don't understand i don't know the circumstances then i'm not going to make a comment on that specifically but what i can speak on is my own experiences with it and that's just i mean that's my two cents on the matter that said i think that there should always be a forum for people to be able to

speak about mental illness and to speak about the experiences they're going through um particularly like i've always said if that's then conducive to like it's a productive conversation that's conducive to action being taken to work on them i would love and and and i'll own being very harsh to him. I'm not a fan for whatever – all on me, personal issues. But I would like to have known – I also think that if I tell you – I believe that if you are in a place to do that where you have mental illness and you state it, you should also then close the door. And by that, I mean I would like to know how he healed himself. I'd like to know the rest of that story. If you're going to use that, I would like – I'm trying to give an example.

If you're going to use that, I would like, I'm trying to give an example. If I, let's say I called you and I told you I was really frustrated. I go, Khan, I'm so frustrated with my wife right now. And I told you this whole story about how we're not getting along. I feel like I owe it to my wife and to you that three days later when we're getting along again and we're holding hands to circle back and close that door. Sure. Yeah, 100%. I feel like I owe that to you. Yeah. A hundred percent. I feel like I owe that to you. Yeah. And I think that comes with the, you know, making sure that conversations around mental health are productive.

Like, yeah, I completely understand what you're saying with that. Yes. I think it's, I don't think it is necessarily anybody's business, but at the same time, bringing it into the public forum. Yeah. I guess that closing of the door is a good analogy um have you ever been suicidal yeah yeah yeah or or let me be specific it's such a broad word have you ever thought about ending your life have you ever thought i wonder what my strategy would be with it yeah and i've gone so far to go to bunnings which is a hardware store in australia and pick up that piping that was like the vacuum pipe to put on the exhaust of the car and put it in the window that's how i was gonna do shit yeah bro yeah i um something i've struggled with over the years

has definitely been i believe it to be more of like suicidal ideation where it's just i become so frustrated and overwhelmed by anxiety and various feelings of helplessness hopelessness all those bits and pieces that it just becomes more of a like like a quick response where it's like a fuck this is the only way and like i said that's kind of man like i can is it because it's so noisy is it because it's so noisy okay it's just so much noise and all of it it's so much noise all the time but there's moments where that noise will all turn dark and it's so much of that dark noise for such a long time that there has been a few and that being obviously kind of the worst where that was yeah like it just it hits like a ton of

bricks man and then it was almost like in doing that i was doing something productive to deal with the noise i'm not saying by any like huge fucking like by any stretch of the word that like encouraging saying that that's productive at all because it's not what going to bunnies and getting the tubing yeah like that's not it's a waste of money it's a waste of money to do it all. Yeah, man. I feel you. I feel you on it.

I feel you on it. I feel you. Yeah. And it's kind of, and I mean, that's why, that's why these conversations are so important to me and being vulnerable, but vulnerability being, uh, talking about something with the intent of closing the door with the intent to close it on it with the intent to move through it with the intent, like closing the door, with the intent to close the door, with the intent to move through it, with the intent to work on it. That's why they're so important to me because there are people

that will unfortunately go the whole way through with it. I mean, like suicide is the number one killer of young men in Australia in particular. I think it's the number one killer of men between 18 and 35. It's a fucking staggering statistic and it's the number one killer of men between 18 and 35 it's fucking staggering statistic and it's because people aren't having the right conversations around it but yeah wait wait explain that to me explain that to me they're not having the right conversations about it and i want to hear the details so sorry sorry i got so excited so you go i kind of don't want to i want

to hear the details of the story but when when i heard that when ricky was doing steroids all it made me want to do is steroids i'm like you know what i mean like if i watch a show like if i watch mad men and they're just smoking and drinking and just fucking like i just want to just like go to the store get a pack of cigarettes whiskey and jump on my wife you know what i mean i'm so easily influenced yeah um uh so but um so i i kind of want to ask you some questions about the the tubing but i don't want i don't want to give anyone any ideas um yeah i think you should put like a i guess i don't know if you have i mean we're a live show now so like a podcast like a warning about sort of suicidal ideation that is a big thing that people should be aware that they're going to listen to if they are talking about it.

Sure. So let me jump to this. I don't think anyone can be as great as me if they didn't go through what I went through. I approached death so fucking closely and survived, and i realized that there is no me i survived i survived my own death and i heard you saying something in that podcast that made me realize that you that and i've heard you hint to it not as strongly as you did in that podcast, but that there is no con porter. And that's what happens when you die and you don't die. But you have to – outside of like you drank too much, I think that there's really something healthy about approaching your own death.

But you've got to survive it. Yeah, I agree. If you don't, but if you don't, but I don't think that there's a path to enlightenment without approaching your own death is where I'm going. Or at least really, really thinking about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To a scary point, you got to scare the shit out of yourself. Yeah. Did you ever get scared? Not, I know, I know the voices. I voices, I know the loudness is scary as fuck,

but I mean, did you ever get, what do you mean by scared? Yeah, I guess to find scared, did I ever feel like that I was losing, like lost control of myself or lose like that kind of a fear or that I would actually go through with it yeah that you'd actually that you were actually going through with it like when you when you got when you were in the hardware store getting that stuff were you starting to have like out-of-body experience yeah dude i was on autopilot the whole fucking thing like from the time that just i remember i was driving and this is something i'll do when i'm exceptionally anxious i'll just drive

and i won't really know what i won't have anywhere that I'm going I'm just kind of driving around and this this this and the noise and this blah blah blah blah and it was just like it was just autopilot like I was there but I wasn't and I was just walk through the store find it go back out and it wasn't until I kind of got home and I was like like what the fuck just happened and that whole like yeah the whole thing like the the driving i was driving around around this kind of loop on this block and it's quite far from my house and then just circled back went there got it went back home then i just went back into the house and put it up in the covers like what the fuck just happened like and you had tubing to hook up to the do you still have that tubing i believe it might still be in the cupboard at my place back home.

I think, I don't know if it's been thrown out yet because I moved my stuff out when I came over here. I moved my stuff into storage and I don't know. I think it may have been thrown out either before that. My ex or my partner at the time, she might have thrown it out while I was away or probably got rid of it. But I don't know if it's still there.

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Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. I was just thinking of something funny you could do with it, like burn it as like a celebration. Or maybe like I was going to say something really dark. Hey, I decided not to kill myself. Who needs this? I could create like a little tubing, one of those.

Just make a little sculpture or something. But, yeah, it fucking a fucking potent experience, I think. How old were you? It wasn't that long ago. It was the same house, I want to say 2019, 2020. Do you think you won or that's there? That's there as in like that will always be something I have to wrestle with? Yeah.

I'm going to ask you even something. Let me hold that thought for a second. Let's say there was a CrossFit gym on the East Coast. let's say there was this, there was a CrossFit gym on the East coast and the guy, everyone loved him in the community. He was the owner of the gym and he was a firefighter and it found out that he was molesting kids in the gym and he killed himself. Like there,

there's some logic to that, right? Whether like he probably wasn't happy with his behavior as much as i as much as i um and it probably happened to him that's why he had that fucking behavior right and then another example might be like soldiers right let's say you go overseas and you kill you kill women and children for your country and then you come home and then you have to live with that right with what you did and you can't face it but there but but but it wasn't like that for you right yeah i think i understand by that i mean you weren't running from something yeah i think what you're trying to ask here is do i think like why why did i get to that point and yeah like what

was that the like i i wasn't running from anything yeah i'm the same like i'm not running from anything except myself and i think yeah yeah what idea of trying to figure out like this is its whole thing because I know logically and objectively I can sit back and look at Kahnport and this is, I mean, maybe this will be like that whole idea of this concept of Kahnport and I can look at the concept of Kahnport and I can see this thing that you could look at and you could think you know and understand and see and that that thing, that concept has no reason to feel

like that there is no logic there is no chain of i'm running from x or this this this being in any way it's it is not justifiable like that but it doesn't and this is where it becomes this fucking and in of itself becomes this own form of push pull where you logically i logically know that and i logically feel that yet this noise will still rise and it will still get dark and it will still make me feel the way that it feels and that feeling is so potent like we spoke about before that it feels. And that feeling is so potent, like we spoke about before, that it will drive me to believe that that is the outcome I need to pursue. And that, the frustration in that is quite, it is difficult to articulate because it is that it's this awareness that what I'm doing is logical, is illogical. I'm not running from anything. I'm

not, there's no driving running from anything. There's no driving reason behind that. It's just that my head- My life should be perfect. What the fuck is going on? Exactly. And that's where it becomes like, there is something that I will always wrestle with. There is a darkness in me that I'll always wrestle with. But this is what I talk about with that conversations of productive mental health. This is where sharing my mental health journey is about empowering people to actually fucking do something about it. Because I know in those moments of logic that I, that that is the wrong decision to make. And I think that it's, this is why I'm, you know, working on the

emotional regulation and all this kind of stuff to allow myself to step back from the noise and to let the noise occur without it being so powerful that it drives me to do that because yeah you're right like it is it isn't something there's no you know i had random shit happen to me when i was young that kind of made me uh you know insecure upset all these kind of things like but that everyone goes through and i understand that and this is where the personality stuff's interesting how we respond to different things is so profoundly different that how it then shapes our thought process when we're older fuck super interesting but yeah like i understand from that kind of pragmatic perspective that that is in fact the way you know that is in fact the way, you know, that is in fact the way that was illogical, that is an illogical kind of thing and that, yeah, this concept,

this Kahn-Porter shouldn't think that and Kahn-Porter shouldn't have that, but then what I'm now doing now is trying to integrate the idea that I'm allowed to have those thoughts and they can come and go. And like you said, like people should think about their own death in some capacity and being able to wrestle with that is a skill in itself. But, yeah, it's being able to let the noise come up, let the darkness kick in, and then being able to kind of ride

through that, sit with that, move through that in a healthy way. Why not just drink yourself to death? Oh, fuck me, mate. It's a whole other topic of conversation i've wrestled with the bottle for years but like oh you have and it's something that i've kind of only just started to talk about my unhealthy relationship with alcohol and back like just you know what i mean just anytime it gets noisy yeah 100 i mean i do that in the smallest uh i used to do that just all the time even just one just one drink uh it's getting it's time it's

getting a little noisy dude 100 and i can resonate just throw down one beer just quite that fucker yeah exactly right but mine was kind of and i mean i even went to therapy to try and get actual help to deal with changing my relationship to alcohol and going from drinking being a means of self-medication yeah in the noise and that was one of the you know it's one of the early experiences you have with that you kind of the you know it's one of the early experiences you have with that you kind of you drink and then you go fuck like i feel all of a sudden it does quiet down for a little bit what quietens down while you're fucking drinking then you wake up the next day and it's noisier than fucking ever that was what it got to more alcohol though

what alcohol i said more alcohol oh exactly exactly day drinking yeah bro but i kind of mean it seriously why why why couldn't you do why couldn't you um because i made a decision that i don't want to that's not the person why didn't you just drink yourself to death okay because that's not the person i want to be because if nothing else i have a point to prove to myself you know you look at what i'm talking about when I say that I'm here at the right time and I'm in the right frame of mind to be here it's because I'm ready to prove to myself that you know you talk about the dark like talk about the noise and the dark thoughts and inevitably they turn pretty self-deprecating and I use self-deprecating

humor a lot as a way of it's almost like a coping mechanism and i think it's a very australian thing so but like that that dark noise is kind of so self-deprecative and so kind of critical that i just feel like it would you know it would be so easy and australian culture is such a big drinking culture as well it's so easy to kind of get bogged down and just to be able to distract yourself with yeah yeah with numbing with mindbing. And don't get me wrong. Bring that shit away. Dude, I still enjoy a beer. I still enjoy a glass of wine. We went out after the quarterfinals.

But even that, like we went out and I had all the tools. I could have gone out and had a big night, and I chose not to because it's just trying to consistently make decisions because it's not like I'm 30 fucking two years old, man. I don't want to be this. Like I want, you know, like I don't't want to be i don't want to numb that because because life is beautiful the world is fucking incredible there is so much that is worth enjoying and savoring and being a part of in existence like fucking existence is phenomenal

and when you touch moments of that pure existence and i'm touching it more and more regularly being so fully present and understanding that the world is fucking beautiful and we're a part of that and that you have to choose to step into that you have to choose to kind of actively work at being a part of that like that's enough for me to go hey like let's not just fucking numb yourself for the rest of your life and float on through so yeah that's why because there's more to life than feeling like shit and you really have to actively want to step into that because it's fucking good when you do and those moments those moments of pure existence let's call it those moments of just feeling so at one with

myself and with the world fuck like you i can cling to those when the noise starts to come back and yeah like it's just and it's a simple equation as well like what is this actually doing how is this benefiting me how is drinking myself stupid three out of four weekends in a row like how is that well to give you it's to give you reprieve it's to give you reprieve right i mean you have to what's the cost that was what i'm gonna say yeah i mean long term there's no end right it's just a slow form of suicide right it really is hey are you up for that sometimes you're like you're gonna fuck your life up in more other ways yeah do you ever think wow i'm up for this i'm up for that? Sometimes you're like, fuck your life up in more other ways.

Yeah. Do you ever think, well, I'm up for this? I'm up for this fucking fight. Do you ever like go the opposite way? Like get really like, instead of like being dark, be like, I'm going to whoop your ass. I got this. Oh, for sure. Absolutely.

I'm totally up for this fight. Yeah. I mean, it's, you look at the things that i love the most about crossfit are the workouts where you just have to fucking go to that place like push yourself to the point where the world's closing in around you and i fucking live for the opportunities to do that because when i walk into a workout like that where i'm like man the only limiting factor here is how dark can i go fuck bring it on and i i live for that and i live for that because yeah i'll channel that and i'll be like this is like let's do this let's fucking push to that brink yeah absolutely it's very empowering sometimes what what about um well i want to talk about girls but first i want to say something else um

in this interview by the way i wish i could remember the name of the interview Well, I want to talk about girls, but first I want to say something else. In this interview, by the way, I wish I could remember the name of the interview. It's very easy to find if you type in Kahn Porter podcast. And MindsetRx. Say it again. MindsetRx. MindsetRx. He articulates some very, very powerful things, especially in the first 30 minutes that will really let you see that he knows what he's talking about. He defines some very, very important words like awareness. I

highly recommend listening to it. It has nothing to do with mental health. It gives you tools to any human being, good or bad, happy or sad, healthy or not healthy, to start to look at themselves. So I highly recommend it. It's fun. The first half hour for sure is fun as shit. You, in that interview, you talk about your mom as being extremely progressive. The,

the kids that I see that have the most progressive parents, I think leads to the most mental health issues. i can say that and let me tell you why well you do you want to tell me why i think first of all and i don't think there's anything wrong with adults being progressive yeah but kids is a different there's a different there's a different creature here a kid is not a small adult. There's something different. Yeah, I think it was more a product of the kind of self-esteem movement at the time and that being kind of touted as the way that you needed to raise your kid was to instill so much self-esteem and make them feel special because the real world, what happened was that was not how my early experiences with the real world were like i was very much the outcast and i was very different like different all that sort of stuff so for me

that was that was where this paradox existed of why is mom saying that everything's good and you're amazing and you're special and then the world saying you're a weirdo why is your nose weird why fat like all this kind of shit like that so i had this weird like me like i didn't really know where i fit and how i was supposed to take both praise and criticism i didn't know how to like what was the criticism was coming from where inside peers okay okay right and i'm telling you oh you're so beautiful and you go to school and they're like you're fat yeah exactly that exactly i just please also say as well, I fucking adore my mother and she's a fucking human being.

Yeah, yeah. And you made that very clear in the podcast too. And what's funny is I thought you were defending in the podcast, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that having progressive parents was wonderful, but go on, I misunderstood. And it's very obvious you love your mom

and cherish your mom, by the way. This is not a dig. I think progressiveness, it depends on what the progressiveness is. I think that they were very open-minded, and I think it gave me a genuine curiosity for the world and a genuine willingness to try and understand people and situations and always, I guess, look for multiple different ways that you can view different situations and be open-minded and accepting of everyone. So I think that they instilled that in us and my brothers, which was really cool. But yeah, that progressiveness in terms of like the, I think the overly, like that coddling, it's a great word.

Have you read the book, The Coddling in the American Mind? I love that word, coddling. No, I should. I should. I like coddling. You'll enjoy it. But yeah but yeah i like dollop too do you like dollop dollop yeah good dollop of cream on there yeah yeah dollop yeah i like coddling too but for some reason i love a dollop but yeah yeah that's kind of it man like i think that that kind of paradox really did play a role in how my anxiety manifested in my own sense, like sense of self kind of.

Can I, I want to, so that anxiety, I'm going to give you my, my two cents on that. Okay. When you give your kids really firm boundaries so um there's no tv um unless it's friday and saturday when the sun's down there can be no light in the sky um you're never to touch my cell phone you never touch the fucking car keys you always put your dirty clothes in the hamper there's no putting your hot wheels on the walls when you give your kid really strict boundaries and they understand

their environment it sets them free they waste no time so i i watch parents every day in jujitsu like they argue with their they too tug and war with the kids this mom's cell phone and the kid and i'm like you're wasting like if your kid had boundaries your kid would be free during that 15 minutes where you fight with them every day to do other shit to catch lizards in the corner to walk around and pick up broken pieces of glass you know just whatever fucking shit kids do right go in the bathroom and push his penis inside of him just whatever you know remember doing that as a little kid? Oh, so it's a weird shit.

Yeah. Isn't the, I forgot all the weird shit I used to do with my penis, but now I have three little boys. I'm like, holy shit. They do the disappearing penis thing. Like they're in the shower and I'm watching them push. I'm like, oh wow, I forgot. I don't do the disappearing penis anymore.

I just soak myself and think about my interview with Con Porter. I need to do more disappearing penis. I like to soak myself and think about my interview with con poor. I need to do more disappearing. I still do a little bit of those kinds of things. Like make sure a toll is not home. Up in the corner. Let's see what I can do now. And, and, and when,

and so that's, that's a huge part if the kid, and then the other thing is the parent is in control. And my friends who let their kids make decisions as they get older, what happens is that the kids become the alpha of the house, and they make all the decisions. And that starts putting – the kid unconsciously starts to take ownership of the happiness of the entire family. So let's say I tell my kid to get in the car and they start and they're doing playing a video game or something. That's it. I take the video game.

I put it away. I can't put him in the car. And the kid might be screaming and throwing a fit. But someone might think you have. What I'm doing is I'm taking the anxiety away from my – the child knows I'm in control. I determine when we go. I determine when we come back. And the decisions they make are in the shower whether they're going to turn their penis inside out.

The decisions they make are when they're out in the backyard which piece of glass they're going to pick up and collect in their kid. But there's other decisions that the parent has to make to control the environment so that the kid doesn't feel responsible for anyone else. And when the kid starts to feel responsible for their parent's happiness and the happiness of the group, that's where the mental illness creeps in as they get older as anxiety. And the other thing is um exploration so there's this you you parents reacting to their kids so i saw a mom drop a kid off the other day and say make sure at jujitsu and say make sure you drink water no you don't you don't tell like

you don't tell your kid that. That's you projecting onto your kid. Your kid's going to have an experience if he gets thirsty that he's going to drink water. And that's a really benign one. But let's say my boy was like, oh my god, I want the Captain America costume so bad. I don't even acknowledge him. Oh my god, I want the Elsa dress so bad. I don't even acknowledge him. Oh my God, I want the Elsa dress so bad. I don't even acknowledge him. But there's parents

who they think that they're being open with their child and they'll be like, oh yes, let's walk over to the computer and get you the Elsa dress. And you start rewarding the child for talking to you, for getting the Elsa dress. And you don't realize that deep, deep, deep down inside what this child wants is to attention from you and love from you and to be fed by you emotionally, intellectually, and actually nurture. And if they can get that by talking about Elsa dresses, but no, I'm a progressive parent and I'm not against my son wearing an Elsa dress. But, but the kid's not even there.

The kid's just trying to find anything to be fed, to get shelter, love, and food. And now you think you were being open to something, but there just flies – do you kind of see what I'm saying? There's a benign negligence that has to be given to kids that are given too much attention. And it's like, you have to give them attention, but it's like, you have to meditate on them. Yeah, I think that takes, man, like, and I think that in of itself probably is the true, a true form of progressive parenting. I mean, fuck, it's hard for me to say i don't have kids i can't i can't tell you how i'm gonna be you're gonna be a great dad by the way you're gonna be an amazing dad thank you that's very kind of you to say i do want to have kids one

day for sure but it just hasn't happened yet but um that i know of but um yeah i i i i admire your first of all the level of introspection that you've obviously done to get to a place where you are so conscious of the way that you are parenting and like being comfortable with what is probably a really uncomfortable thing like that. Like, what did you, was there some sort of negligence? Like a benign negligence. Benign negligence. Yes, you have to meditate on your child not react to your child yeah dude and i just feel like that's just very very impressive and that's something that's kind of very cool it's something i think i've seen through your posts about your parenting and stuff like

that i have always looked at and gone fuck that's really cool and there's a lot of stuff that i think i've seen in you posting about your kids that i've looked at and gone that's like particularly someone that like me who is aware that i can be emotionally reactive against something i'm working on to go fuck that's powerful like yeah being able to sort of sit with the discomfort that comes with not becoming emotionally invested in an emotional outcome that happens with your kid and stuff so yeah whilst i can't speak about being a parent personally, it's, it's, yeah, I, I think I understand what you're saying and I think I tend to agree. And it's, it's, it's, it's unsettling to me to see so many of my dearest friends in the simplest term, I see them, they behave as grandparents, but they're the parents

like the stuff, my parents, my parents do stuff to my kids that I would never do. Like my kids fall down and my mom and dad go over and pick them up and I let them have that experience. But when my kids fall down, you know, the example I like to always use is I go over and make sure that it's a safe environment for them to stand up, but I don't pick them up. I just make sure they're safe. I make sure they're safe because in the end, and you know this more than anyone, con it's only,

you're only going to fix you. Yeah. A hundred percent. Oh, a hundred percent. No one's coming. No one's, no one's coming to fix your mental.

Just like you can't be like, Hey, Annie, go ahead, take the day off. I'm going to do the workouts for you and you're going to get the fitness. It's, it's as absurd as that to think someone's going to help you with your mental

health. Right. For sure. At the end of the day. Yeah. You can work outside by side by Annie. She can push you. She can inspire you. She can have the facility, but at the end of the day, it's all on you. Yeah. And that's where I was just about to draw, uh, like just sort of counter that and say that people can have, people can help, but they're not going to fix it. No. Right no right right and they can believe in you yes which is so fucking powerful belief in and like someone's willingness to understand you and someone's willingness to listen to you can't be understated as tools to helping someone with their

mental health but you cannot fix someone and i've learned that from trying to help people and seeing like you can one of my favorite sayings you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink and it's so profoundly true when it comes to anything you can give someone all the tools in the world but that person still has to press go it's amazing how many times in my life that people brought me to water and i didn't even i didn't see them i didn't see the water i didn't see shit oh mate i've been there i've been there too and you yeah they'll take you to water and you'll be dying of thirst you just turn around start eating the sand yes yes yes yes it's nuts um you um uh uh it took you nine years to reach your goal for a back squat. Yep.

Dude, my fucking squat. And don't ask me what my squat is now. Why does it, is it not your PR squad anymore? I doubt I'd have 200 in me now. It's been, I think I walked into a CrossFit gym and I was like,

right. Squatting 200 was the benchmark that I set myself. 200 kilos. 200 kilos. Which is 440? Okay, okay. Which is by no stretch a huge back squat at that top end of the sport. Like most guys are squatting that for reps.

I mean, I'd assume. I think, I don't know. Totally definitely is. It's a fucking humbling experience lifting with that guy every day. You kind of lose perspective a little bit. Yeah. yeah it took i don't know squats just never been my movement and my all those kind of things have progressed consistently but yeah the squats just always been something that took a long time and it took me doing uh like a 12-week strength program at the back of 2020 into like summer uh doing another strength

program and just a squat specific program to get that 200 and i also ate like shit and put on a bunch of weight and got out of shape but got there do you like squatting no i fucking hate it yeah me too i hate it too this doesn't feel nice on my body at all i i i would rather um i i'm embarrassed to say this but i squat i front squat a lot with a 40 pound med ball like a lot you know yeah i mean a lot for me i i do like 10 sets of 10 with mix with something at least three times a week so so yeah but but i would rather do something with some weight to push me down than air squats even i don't even i don't like air squats i'll probably go the opposite way and so i prefer the air squat yeah yeah i've never found like front squat back squat i just feel like it takes so much out of my body and

yeah we're we're kind of working at the moment yami's been really good again that kind of looking at me squatting and playing around with squat volume at what is what amount at what like percentage work i i'm someone that does not do well with building to a heavy consistently i have to do percentage work percentage work percentage work then build to a heavy and so we've been kind of playing around with the volume and how that kind of looks and it's been good but yeah i don't think i stand to on 200 up at the moment are all of you super different so you where's tola from tola is from boston i think he grew up wow wow speaking of progressive um so so uh so he and then you're from australia and annie's from iceland and lauren's she's based

in diego and i think she's been there for a while yeah and she grew up in stockton california which is a trip yeah that's a trippy place have you ever been there no that's the diaz brothers are there yeah yeah yeah it's nowhere yeah right it's nowhere so is it is it northern california it's like it's like um yeah it it's it's hood it's hard yeah it's hard like like it's like really hard it's like not not hard like city hard it's like country hard like tough like tough like tough guy country guys like it's yeah yeah it's it's it's um it's the real deal man like they're like yeah i think she trained with gabe subri out of there do you remember him old time he was around right back when i was starting i think yeah probably and that was

on the kind of crossfit game scene he was one like you could have like a job and be a crossfitter yeah yeah yeah back you know oh the glory days. Now it's like, job is making sure your knees aren't too sore. Um, is, is, I think of what's Annie, what's, I mean, I mean, I've talked with Annie, I don't know a hundred times, but how would you describe what Annie's like? There's this rich froning type era, era around her. Yeah. I think she's, era around her. Yeah, I think she's so fucking good for starters. She's so good.

She's so good. She's so competitive, but in I think a healthy way, in a way that's just her pushing herself and pushing us to be better. Here's a great story that shows we were doing a workout. it was three

rounds she did a minute of bar facing burpees rested 30 seconds and then it was 12 sets of 30 seconds sprint on the assault bike 15 seconds rest three minutes rest repeat that three times so we all we were all told to pick it was like sprint but controlled sprint on the assault bike with your 30 seconds on, 15 off. We were all told to pick an aggressive, and this was everyone was there that day. It was me, Tola, Fred, Annie, BK, Kat, Lauren. We were all doing it. And we were told to keep an aggressive pace for those sprints.

And then when we hit them, kind of finished the sprints, and the first thing Annie did was come along and look at all of the guys' bikes to see if she beat any of us what our calories were that we got whether what we were holding and that was the benchmark in an assault bike sprinting workout where you're like man that should just be it shouldn't even be like a comparative thing she was there and she was annoyed that she could have gone a bit harder and maybe matched a couple of the guys and that sort of thing so her work like her approach and her mindset like that is unbelievable. And she's very much, I mean, yeah, like she put the team together and everything like that.

So she definitely kind of leads us in that respect. But she's amazing. Like you really can't, you would have to spend time in this environment to really appreciate just how good it is, just how good it would be for anyone to walk into. Did you say it's 12 sets, 30 on, 15 off? Yeah, after your one minute of bar-facing burpees. Do you realize or are you just too fit that like 99% of the world can't make it through half that workout

everyone can make it through the workout probably not holding the paces i don't know i don't know man i don't know dude do you feel okay after you do that that's a no that's that's the other crazy thing about this environment that's gnarly that is a gnarly workout dude but dude that's the crazy thing about being here i've always loved workouts like that and i've always loved doing them but i've done them sparingly it's like you do something that makes you feel that way once every few weeks or maybe even more and i'm like man do i still like this crossfit shit or am i done with this do that workout and then i'll finish and i'll be like proper fucked up and go, okay, no, I still, I still

want to do this. I'm still willing to go there. Put it that way. Do we do that like three, four times a week? It's fucking absurd. What do you do after? Are you after that? Like in 10 minutes after that, are you like, do you not know who you are?

Like if I did that, I would not know who I would have to sit down for an hour. I'm not joking. I would have to be like, okay, something's not right. I'm not even sure who I am. Yeah. You, you get very good at just the absurd places you go and like Yami structures our training really well. He knows when we've got those sessions and not to do anything like it's usually second session and all that sort of stuff. So he does it really well where we're not having to it, but yeah, you go to another place and you're just, but I don't know this is what i mean there's a sense of gratification in that i feel like fucking shit but good after a workout like that and like superman just fought

the hulk like you just fought the hulk and you're like well that was kind of comes back into your body finally and then you're like fuck i got shit done in that session you feel good um do you know that feeling um where you you're sick and it comes on very very quickly like food poisoning or like you drinks and all of a sudden um no you can't do your all your awareness starts focusing on your body yep and you're like you're you're focused on your tongue and maybe your stomach and your anus and and like your hands are tingling and and you it's such a unique um it's the body taking like very serious look at itself inventory the physical body and the brain is like or the awareness is like standing that's kind of what happens when when you do one of those crazy assault bike workouts right all of a sudden all your awareness is like, okay, the whole system is something's wrong. Yeah.

Literally. It's like you do something's wrong and someone's like, do you hear the music? Like you don't fucking hear shit. There is nothing happening. It's just this complete presence in your body. And yeah, it's like, well, my quads are pumped. You don't even realize that your breathing is just going out of control. And yeah, it's like well my quads are pumped you don't even realize that your breathing is just going out of control and yeah it's it's surreal and but it's cool because like what the fuck else

can you do that makes you feel like that like it's it's no i don't know i don't know only being sick yeah like being near vomitous is the only thing i can think of when you're like uh like the outside world kind of vanishes and you're like okay what the fuck is wrong with this thing it's like you're a robot and someone like short-circuited you yeah and your body is just like when you know when you do a really bad thing i think uh there's like certain workouts that i've done and i've finished i've been like holy fucking shit i've done something to my body and i will never get better like i've yeah yeah it's like yep that's it i'm stuck in here now this is i'm in like this is my life for the rest of my life now my body is just lactic acid like you finish a 1k row and you fucking max effort it and you finish you're like

sweet and then you're like no no no no no no no and your body just shuts down and that's like yeah that's wild like that feeling that's it that's another level again where it's that complete max out of your body no yes no not euphoric after you feel euphoric oh no yeah before that it's not euphoric it's not euphoric oh man it's not it's not it's not uh euphoric um so best training environment you've ever been in yeah for sure absolutely and that's to take nothing away from my wonderful friends back home i think the problem with back home and my training environment there is it's recreational for everyone that i train with it's they come in they're happy to kind of throw down when they get bored of that program they want

to go on a different program and then me being me it's just like i would rather do what they want to do because then i've got people to train with even last year once they finished the quarterfinals because a bunch of the boys made that it was kind of they just wanted to float around and it's too easy in that training environment for me as well to be like hey boys it's sunny outside like let's session two today we'll go for surf or hey boys like let's make sure we finish our training on saturday by 12 so we can get to the pump by two so yeah by far and for so many different reasons even the access to like the other members of the team the other members that i'm there with everyone's knowledge the amount of knowledge that they have is so ridiculously good that that in itself is such a cool part of it.

Like Tola, for example, guy fucking knows a lot about lifting and strength and all that kind of training and stuff. He's a brilliant coach too. So I'll be lifting and he'll come over and he'll kind of give me a couple of pointers. Hey man, like I noticed that you did blah, blah, blah did blah blah blah blah why don't you try and do that and it's never done in kind of a egotistical way either it's very much it's an environment where every single person there is completely invested in everyone else getting better in whatever way they can um what about the sun what about the lat the the the you're i'm guessing your exposure to the sun has gone way down.

It's terrible. And that's been one of the hardest things. I mean, I say it's getting better now, but when we first got here. You had 15 minutes of sun today? Not quite sun today, but we had sun yesterday, and it got up to 10 degrees yesterday. I don't know what that is in fahrenheit you guys have stupid stupid measurement systems in america we do we do

get that changed but um it's like yeah that's hard though and when we first got here it was dark when we go to the gym dark by the time we'd finish you might get a half hour in the middle of the day where the sun poked its head out but it was usually or raining and so cold that you didn't want to go outside so that sun exposure or lack thereof has been challenging but it seems to be getting better the it's definitely lighter for longer now so the light stays good until um i mean it's light now until after 9 p.m and it's the birds start fucking having a good go about 4 30 in the morning which is lovely fucking right outside the window um but yeah that not not having the ability to just be outside at your leisure is something that is it's it was

different let's say it's bad but it's just different i mean you know if you have to go to the bathroom you can just go no that's just me oh no no i didn't even notice you were moving i just looked we've been an hour and a half and i always know that like if i have to go to the bathroom i just go so i wanted you to know that yeah thank you very much um you're welcome just progressively pissing myself a little bit more and a little bit more so i'll be able to go um what time is it there right now it's 3 30 p.m 3 36 and are you done training for the day yeah we had monday off after the quarterfinals and then we had yesterday it was kind of just a little bit of zone two uh toller and i went in this morning did a little bit more zone two work and then some bodybuilding and some kind of accessory stuff but we've got

today and then we're back to training tomorrow and the first thing we're doing is the quarter finals it meant two i believe redoing that oh oh interesting i want to ask you about that um what what does zone two mean what is that when you say you did zone two zone two cardio so your heart rates like keeping the heart rate it's like you have your heart rate zones i'm by no means an expert on this as well these are things that i'm learning as i've been here it's been like going back to school for me which has been really fucking cool but it's just keeping your heart rate at a certain level improving your aerobic fitness and i'm sure there's someone that will know a way better okay okay but but but as far as you're can someone will tell you hey um today's zone you need to do zone two training today you say what's that they say keep your heartbeat between x and y and um and and you do yeah it's like effectively

conversational pace for an extended period of time and there's okay myriad of benefits to that just building the aerobic system and i guess improving your body's ability to take blood to the muscles and whatnot and again i'm probably butchering this i'm fine it's good i'm the point you're in the direction of what i need to do and tell me what to do yeah i don't need to know more than that either um and what bodybuilding movements do you do and is that for just is that for fun or is that um like no it was today we did a lot of the athletic truth group stuff which is like that knee health so like the atg split squats uh some stuff for the tibialis raises, calf raises.

What else did we do? We did do some curls at the end. Why not? And is that just for fun? Just like you and Tola, we'll just go over. It's not part of your programming. You'll do some curls or you do bench press or you'll do.

We don't TVA too much from the program. Like zone two stuff we can add in as well. Today was definitely just both he and i feel better after doing something the day before going back to training so i'd had three days of complete nothing i'd feel like shit training tomorrow so i just wanted to move around do these kind of accessory movements that not super heavy not super hard just to get my joints moving so that my body feels good gone are the days where i can just jump into a session savannah and not warm up and have done nothing beforehand yeah the old body the old body needs a little bit of priming um con do you ever do sit-ups with a dumbbell in your

hands i've never done sit-ups oh maybe in the past i can't remember a time that i have i meant to ask rich about that if he still does that when i filmed i'd never seen anyone do this before i guess it makes sense when i filmed with rich in 2009 or 10 at tennessee tech he would him him and darren hunsucker would do sit-ups with a hundred pound dumbbell on their chest jesus i know it's crazy maybe i need to do sit-ups with a uh with a hundred pound dumbbell on my chest i just for me just moving a hundred pound dumbbell around like if i were to take it off the rack and put it back on like yeah i did that yeah yeah it's definitely one that i prop up on both on the shoulder rather than just carry in front it's fucking heavy those bad boys um that event when you guys took 30th is that that's just

bullshit like you guys can you guys could smash that and take first in that too or i don't know if we take first you know we could definitely move quicker than we did we there's so much that went into that we moved too slow that's the simplest way to put it and there was a variety of reasons we were you guys afraid of andrew hiller we were wanting to adhere to the standards like and for yeah like put like what he's doing is working because we definitely were like man like you are we're super conscious of making sure that the standards are held up and that's good that's a positive thing but we would and like knowing that we've put together this team that's a quote-unquote super team so there's going to be kind of probably extra scrutiny on our movement we really oversold the standards on that in a lot of different ways, but we also then just completely overpaced it.

We were just fucking slow, like slow to the ground, slow up, step together, nice little two-foot takeoff. We were waiting for everyone and saying like, go for the runs and stuff like that. And yeah, the other thing we were really conscious of was we were so far behind the line. So there was like that much space between our heads and the line and we kind of interpreted the standards to be that way and to the point where we even stopped the workout midway through because we weren't happy with the

first set of yami wasn't happy oh shit and also that we jumped over the line for the first shuttle runs and told her and i hadn't turned to face the way that we were supposed to run and he said that the girls had gone too quickly so we came back and literally restarted because we wanted the standards to be spot on for that and that's okay i want to hear the details about that so you guys are in the workout and y'all make you and you just hear this stop yeah yeah dude that takes some balls to do that can you imagine saying that to you con porter tola um uh lauren fisher and annie thor's daughter and be like i gotta stop so we also take some fucking cojones well tola and i also called the girls back from their shuttle because we didn't think that they'd waited so what we read in the stems we had to jump all the team members had to

be over the line facing the direction of the shuttles before you could take off on the shuttles. So the idea was we'd finish the burpees and I would call go for the girls to go when we were all over the line facing forward. And I had jumped across. I hadn't said go and they'd taken off. And we're like, come back, come back, come back. And then they ran back and then Yamada was just like, stop, go again. and he was like i think that there was a couple of us that were too close a

couple of the guys were too close to the line he's like the head was over the line as well make sure that we're right behind it and yeah i mean how much rest do you get between doing it and then doing it again i would only done 15 burpees we didn't have too much rest it was probably like three four two three minutes it was kind of just back to the start all right everyone calm let's go again are you is it are people nice to each other but before the start like every like so here's what here was here's why i asked this i i when when i used to run the media team at crossfit all the filmmakers had different processes.

And one of the guys on the team, his whole thing was just to complain the whole fucking time. But I learned that that was just his process. Just to complain. And so it's like you have to know everyone's process to get to point B. And we're learning that my friend yeah we definitely all have very different processes when it comes to everything training uh food nutrition recovery but very much so when it comes to competing and that was certainly on display over the course of the weekend like everyone's nice to each other like we get along fantastically but it's certainly there's certainly times where it's just kind of i'm very much uh tell me when we're going because i'm not

going to warm i'm going to warm up a specific amount of time and then by the end it is like the last workout for example like what time are we going like i said 110 i was like all right cool we went at 145 so i'd warmed up and it was just at the end i was just kind of leaning on a runner like you're good to go i was was like, yep, I'm ready. Like, I'm not going to warm back up again. And so I think we're still kind of feeling that out. I think it will be good when we are doing like the semifinals and we have a set time that we have to go because I think

that that is very much going to be, that will help us tailor that kind of the prep and the process before we get ready. But, yeah, we all certainly do have very different approaches, even just like I'm very much not laissez-faire so much as just a kind of I'll use when I'm nervous, I'll just crack jokes. Whereas when Cole is nervous, he'll just go quite stoic and quiet and it's that kind of different idea of, you know, my nervous energy going into that versus him being very internal

and everything like that and learning to kind of be like he's allowed, like they can say, shut the fuck up, calm, we're annoyed with you now. And I'll be like, cool, that's no worries. I'll go and fucking tell jokes to the wall, that's fine. I'll go and annoy someone else. But, yeah, we're learning that, man. But everyone, it's good. Like everyone is super understanding of those different processes too.

And that's part of coming together as a team. That's a huge part of this whole journey. We put together a team and we have to kind of figure out how to do that. Has anyone on that team had team experience? Yeah, Lauren and Tola. I went team 2019 and we made the games, but we got cut first and we didn't do very well. And Lauren's podiumed on a team before. I believe she came second in 2019 with her team. And that was when it was the super teams, like the super, super teams. You

didn't have to train together or anything. Was that Invictus? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Tola's been on a bunch of teams. i think he's been to the games twice on a team as well so yeah i think lauren once or twice on a team tola definitely at least twice maybe more on a team and then this is annie's first foray into the team's world and then my second time wow yeah so that that's interesting i i hadn't thought about that i mean she is a very unique creature and she yeah what she did taking third place at the games last year i mean part of me i'm part of me wants to say it's equivalent to winning the fucking crossfit games to come back i like like i don't think people can come back I just – I don't think if you take time off this sport, you come back.

But to come back and take third? Yeah. And she had a kid? But, mate, you spent a week here in this training environment and with your mom particularly to say you understand. You understand. You do, okay. Very quickly.

She's built a good team around her. Which is not to diminish the exceptional nature of what she did by right right right at all it's not like it would be easy anyone could do it in this environment because no fucking nobody else like i don't know if anyone else could do it even in this environment but when you spend time with her when you spend time with yami and when you spend time with fred and the rest of the team that are around her all the time, you understand how it happened. You understand how it happened. And, but again, doesn't take away from the spectacular nature of it happening. I don't think a lot of people realize the emotional journey of, of, of physical exhaustion.

So when you have kids, you start to see it really, really quick. So like, I would go to a soccer field and I'd be like, okay, boys, we're going to run five laps. And I would give them each a ball and they would kick a ball. And every lap was different. One lap, they'd be laughing. The next lap, they'd be crying. The next lap, they'd be angry at their brother. The next lap, they'd be like, look how good I am. And then the next lap, they'd be like look how good i am and then the next clap lap they would be quiet and it's it's a whole emotional journey to take yourself and and you'll people who go hiking notice that you know what i mean if you go on a long like 15 mile hike you'll have every emotion to the top and back and so then the four of you from the outside it's just four four people just working out together exactly yeah but it's not

it's a whole it's a whole everyone's to use the female metaphor everyone is going through euphoria to having their period to back to euphoria again every single day there's a whole right cascade of shit that's like just blending yeah like three of us uprooted our lives and moved here and you know toller and i live together and lauren lives next door so there's the three of us are kind of living like let's call it living together cohabit like like co-inhabiting a little place and there's the cultural differences that we're all adjusting to yeah you're all culturally so different boston australia stockton california now Iceland. Those are not – that's why.

That's why. And that's been – that's the whole part of the journey. I think it's been an interesting journey and it's been – it was interesting. We put together the team and our goal was to win the CrossFit Games and very quickly CrossFit and the media outlets ran with this whole us versus mayhem narrative and that's been kind of so heavily pushed. But that's not our goal. Our goal is not just beat mayhem.

It's to try and put together a team that can win the CrossFit Games. And that is so much broader, and that includes, like, there is a journey and there is a story, and there are multiple stories that go into four people coming together from completely different worlds and creating a team there's a story about going from you know some of those guys have been heavily coached before i've never had an in-person coach every day i've never like i've had coaches in crossfit absolutely but i've never worked with a coach face to face i've never trained in an environment with other

people who are genuinely competitive who are trying be, who are taking it as seriously. So these are all adjustments for me, adjustments for the other guys, like living there. You know, Lauren left Raz, her fiance. Like she's here on her own. Like there's so many different things. Oh, he's not there. No, he's not here, man.

That sucks. He's cool as shit. Do you know him? He's a fucking cool dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a legend. Awesome. He's a legend.

Got to spend a bit of time with him when we first came out here he's such a top fella and that's where like there are stories beyond this kind of weird narrative that crossfit's obsessed with with you know us versus mayhem and those are the kind of cool these are the parts of the journey that i'll certainly remember the most and that's the kind of yeah all of this stuff this stuff. Like, fucking hell, I live in Iceland now with three people that were pretty much strangers before this whole experience. You and Annie and Lauren are pretty big names in the sport. How does Tola, and obviously he's eminently capable physically,

is it weird for him? is it different for him is it like you guys are i would put taller and myself in the same category of like knownness in the sport i would say and we kind of we we take the photos of the people that come in for the photos with annie and lauren and oh uh people hand you the can oh that's good that makes me so happy absolutely we did have um sarah was back here for a little while when she was training with this one day and we had two aussies that came in and they came to get a photo because they're here from australia and it got sarah to take the photo and even that though i thought that was very funny and then they lost their shit and they were just like oh my god gave me the phone straight away and it was

switch out let sarah jump in for the photo with them. So, yeah, bro. That's the story of my life, by the way. Getting given a phone to take photos. Story of my life. Bet you nailed the photos, but huh? Say that again? I said, I bet you nailed those photos, but huh? But huh?

But huh? Like just bet you, I bet you nailed those photos. There you go. another cultural difference these poor bastards have had to get used to the fact that every second word i say is a swear word and my australian accent plus i speak quickly can be difficult to understand at the best of times yeah well i've had them they've all dropped the c word it's got i've had it out of all of them. They've all dropped it. No one's immune. That's wow. So you were in the gym when,

when Sarah Sigmund's daughter was there, Katrin David's daughter was there. Annie Thor's daughter was there. BKG was there. Yami was there. Tola was there. And Lauren Fisher. Yeah,

bro. We have like, and there's other people that come. That's nuts. Oh dude. I think like um i think how fun of like that crew and then you also had like soul vague and another girl gucci that's from here as well it's very good too we had and they was like yeah like decent training crew today it's like fuck like there are some serious athletes here and what a fucking like it's good man like everyone's competitive but it's healthy i think and like it's fucking yes it's a vibe dude it's a serious vibe do you do you have

to be um uh so so we uh hunter i i spoke to hunter mcintyre yesterday do you know who that is yes okay and and he went to dallas and he just set the world record he does something called high rocks it's like crossfit but it's just the same event over and over okay that i don't know what it is but i know high rocks exists and it's kind of that race with the 1k run between all these different states yeah exactly and he set the world record yesterday and um where was i going with oh and and so he was talking about these training camps he does where he has a cabin out in the woods and he'll do a training camp and everyone pays money. And then, you know, I don't know, 12 guys show up and they train and they all act like they want to do what he does. Right.

And he says three days in, people start like hemming and hawing. Yeah. Do you. like hemming and hawing yeah do you i know everyone has to take care of their health their physical health right you can't get injured but do you have to be careful that you don't bring the let me give one more example for this my wife that has done this course it's called a vipassana course and you go away for 10 days and you're not allowed to make eye contact or talk to anyone for 10 days yeah and you've heard of it yeah i wanted to do it uh a bunch of times and then things have popped up and i haven't got around to it yet and they give you they give you this set amount of food that you have to eat this is what you eat and and and so

and you know so she will say like on day four you'll see someone getting a banana that no one else gets. And when you see that, you know that like they heard, I have to have a banana. And they went and talked to someone there and they got a banana because the voice is in their head for needing a banana. They're looking for some sort of control, but that's a whole other thing. Do you have to be careful being on the team that you're not psychologically the anchor anchor being the one that's kind of complaining yeah even the tiniest little bit even let's say squeaking like oh yeah squeaky wheel to get yeah gotcha like like like hey i need a day off or hey i'm gonna tap out this last workout

like you're you know you're spoke you really shouldn't do this workout let's say maybe because you're injured but you better do it because you know that if you don't it has a psychological impact on the team or any do you see these conflicts yeah i know exactly what you're saying i think it has more i think that's more of a personal psychological impact that it takes being having to put your hand up and say i want to sit out um and that's fucking hard i've definitely battled with it when i first came here so i flew to miami and james and i had to go this fucking roundabout route because it was too hard to get out of oz then we just started opening up so it was 36 hours to get to miami the day later we started competing competed for three days got on a plane the day after that and then of four days got on a plane the day after that flew here had one day off

then we started training again and my back was playing up big time and i also had this little fucking cough that i couldn't quite shake and i was training and it was good and i was kind of like there were things that i was i knew that i couldn't really do and I shouldn't do and getting comfortable enough to actually speak up and say, hey, I need a couple of days to either fucking let this cough die down. I mean, I went to a bunch of different doctors and to get my back in order, I need to take a step back from what we're doing currently and I need to take a couple of days off.

And I think that was more challenging for me personally and how I then felt that I was being the weak link or the squeaky wheel or the complainer. Yeah. The team necessarily looking negatively on that. I think it's kind of the opposite of the team, it being psychologically difficult for the team. And I think it's more difficult for us as individuals to have to put our hand up and be like, hey, yeah, so I can't do, I'm not going to do this next workout because, and no one hey yeah so i can't i'm not going to

do this next workout because and no one the thing is as well i think there is an understanding that there's no one on this team that's going to cop out there's no one here that's going to not do something because they don't want to do it if you're going to sit something out i think it's pretty obvious from having been around the group now and that's a culture that i think is just is part and parcel of the actual group that we're in and it kind of comes from the top with like your annies your bks cats yami and all that that no one's bitching out no one's sitting a workout out because they just can't be bothered that day because they just don't feel like it so if someone does put their hand up

and say i need a day off or i need an extra rest day or I'm going to come into the gym an hour later than everyone else because I want to get a little bit more sleep today. It's never, I don't think, taken as that kind of, this is like a bad thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think, yeah. So is that trust? You guys trust each other? Yes, absolutely. I think we do trust each other. We trust that everyone is going to put their best efforts in. So far far we haven't had any reason not to like this was i mean it was our first experience on the weekend as a team and yeah we absolutely fucking bombed the second workout for example then on the last workout i bombed the

last workout for us big time like i fucked that up and it fucking stung and i'm sure there will that was the the muscle up when you had to redo one yeah yeah so my thumb you know the grips that have the circles in it my fucking thumb got caught in one of the little holes and i could feel my grip i was like sliding around and getting stuck and on the last one i couldn't quite turn over fast enough came down shook it out jump back up failed again then had to stand there for fucking 10 seconds like an idiot it was still fresh in my mind and then go up and do it again and so that i mean we i don't think we would have won that workout but we would have finished second had i

not fucked that up and that was really shit like that was a shit feeling and everyone else in the team though they know that there was literally that I just fucking failed. And like that was, you know, learn from that. Everyone else was so supportive. But that the culture is such that you demand is that what we demand from ourselves here is so fucking high. And everyone is on that same page. Everyone is on that same page. And it's really fucking cool to hold yourself to a standard like that versus it being something that being a standard that we're necessarily held to by each other i'm sure that that exists i'm sure if one of us did start to slip up that would then become a conversation or people would start to step in and say something but it hasn't happened yet what about this what if what if um what if uh what oh this is good shit here we go i'm ready i should fuck it i shouldn't even say this on the air i should call yami what if what if you what if what if yami did this what if um uh he yami said hey con i want you to um uh call the team and tell them that you're not showing up to practice today and like you make up something that's just bullshit, right? And then you show up 10 minutes late and you're there.

And Yami says, that was a test for you three. Were you mentally strong enough? Did you just start blaming Khan? I think it would be very- Don't worry about anyone fucking else. It's about you. You know what I mean? Like putting some like crazy psychological obstacles

like that one time my wife told me on april fools she said i'm pregnant i got him with i tried to get him in an april fools actually pretty similar to that but yeah and then for 30 minutes dude i just thought about my fucking life was that before it was like before yeah way before i had kids yeah way way before like i was like i was like i didn't have kids till I had kids. Yeah, way, way before. Like I was like, I was like, I didn't have kids. I was 43. This is like when I was 33. And I remember saying to her, she told me she was pregnant. And I remember, I think I was having to call with Lauren Glassman, Greg's wife, to try to like get some project passed through.

And she said, and I said, hey, do you think now is a good time to tell me that? And as I said that, I'm like, this fucking girl just told me she's pregnant with my baby. And that's my response. And it was just 30 minutes of chaos. And then she told me April Fool's, and I was like, wow, that's amazing. I got to live in, like, a fantasy land for 30 minutes. Well, yeah, fuck. How good is April Fool's?

How good is April Fool's? And so there's almost like some shit you could do that, to head fuck the team to prepare from some psychological hurdles like you come in there and say you're hurt or Annie says she's hurt and she can't train for the next month and she lets you guys think think about what that's going to be like for an hour and then Yami say no that's not true but how did you guys handle that you know what I mean just yeah seal shit I feel like if I did it everyone would just be like shut the fuck up you're being annoying i tried to get him this april fools i told them that i'd like had a house back in australia i had to go back to australia but i had a house back there and

that i sold it and the only way to get the sale through was for me to go home and sign the papers and it was like if i didn't go back there it'd all be fucked up and then apparently like lauren or apparently annie had seen it and she started saying to f back there, it would all be fucked up. And then apparently like Lauren or apparently Annie had seen it and she started saying to Fred, there's no fucking way he's going back here. But Yami was in there fucking quick and he was just like, happy April Fool's to you too. And I was like, get fucked. Oh, nice, nice.

I nailed it, but Hay was well on top of it. Do you have a girlfriend? I don't. Do you have a boyfriend? I don't have a boyfriend either. I think, either. I think you asked that exact question in 2015. Oh, because I think you're so beautiful. It's because I think it was so beautiful. You were like, and I think that my answer was, you asked, did I have a girlfriend? And I said, no. And you're like, do you have a boyfriend? And I was like, was that the question that you

wanted to ask originally? You kind behind the the girlfriend question but i just want to ask why why don't you at 32 years old um uh why don't you have a um a relationship that you an intimate uh emotional physical intellectual relationship you're you're cultivating nurturing i was i was in one uh and we split last year she's fantastic girl just uh kind of i felt disconnected for a variety of different reasons. And then I think, fuck, I don't even know, man. Like I think that I'm still trying to figure out how to be what I believe to be the best partner and make myself available. Like, you know, we split and then I make other fantastic, like I feel like I just keep pushing away these fantastic girls

because I feel like I don't know how to be a good partner. And it's something that I need to work on. It's something that I need to figure out exactly what I want in that respect. So I'm like I definitely, yeah, dude, like it's a, that's, I feel like this is this weird transient period that I'm in now for the next sort of six months. But, yeah, it's a good question, mate, and one that I'm still trying to the next sort of six months but yeah it's a it's a good question mate

and one that i'm still trying to figure out the answer to myself um when you say push away you mean like sabotage yeah i think what but just like find reasons why it's not the right time oh yeah shit kind of stuff and overthink it man overthink Yeah. Don't do that. Um, or do you have any, um, uh, concerns about being emotionally hurt myself? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's kind of why this DBT stuff too, like dealing with, why do you care though about being emotionally hurt? Still feel hurt. Like, right. I don't like, and that's what I'm trying to get better at. You work out and feel pain. You work out. You're not afraid to do i mean that you that that that's all right workout yeah i can deal with i can deal with physical pain fine i'm still trying to figure out how to

deal with emotional pain better that's what i'm like that is my number one thing that i'm working on at the moment mate and it's because i don't like i don't like that feeling i don't like, I don't like that feeling. I don't like being scared to go all in on relationship with some fantastic person because I'm afraid of getting hurt. Cause it's a shitty thing and it's a shitty fucking cycle to be in. And it's a shitty, you know, not even just when it comes to relationships, when it comes to like, even putting myself out there, when it comes to, no, I'm not. No, no, no, no. I really like emotional pain. Yes. See, but that's, I think that's just different strokes for different folks. Maybe, maybe likes not the right word.

I could see. I love it. It makes me feel alive. Do you, do you have a creative outlet? Do you play guitar or anything? You're right. Yeah. I write a lot, man. I write a lot. Yeah, that's definitely my creative outlet. It's how I try to process emotions. It's how I try to process what I write about them in a wide length. Get into a relationship. Let someone break your heart and then put out a bestseller.

Yeah, man. That's definitely a creative outlet for me. I think in some respects i see fitness as a creative outlet i see um but i think you need a different one yeah yeah like writing's good yeah i i um writing's good what about right have you ever written any songs no i haven't written a song oh maybe back at the end of high school me and my buddy wrote a few songs and they were all fucking dark. Can you make yourself cry? No.

No. Maybe. You can't imagine your mom dying and then you start crying? Maybe. Yeah, I don't know if I could do it like, I don't know. I feel like if I like. After we get off, I want you to turn your penis inside out and write an incredible song about it my penis disappeared

oh yeah fuck me i'm not even gonna go right now but yeah dude i i know but i will cry very easily like i'll cry in movies and i'll cry i almost cried when we were talking before and it got pretty deep and heavy and i'm an emotional dude and that's just well you know like like you said i could say i'm an emotional dude but like i said i'm working on it man like i'm trying to get better at processing those emotions and being less emotionally reactive um don't don't you um well um so many so many i had this guy on patrick bet david and as a um um young man he he told himself he was going to abstain from sex until he made a million dollars and it took him 17 months. Do you ever, do you ever experiment with stuff like that? Um, for yourself? Like, Hey, I want to ejaculate for two months or like, do you ever like impose, um, those type of controls on yourself? Yeah, not, I haven't used ejaculation as a means of self-control before

but or experimentation or yeah i'm an experimented punny mate don't you worry but yeah i not that like i'll do things with like um uh for me getting into sort of habits. So I'm only allowed to do X once I've done Y and I'll sort of do stuff like that. Like you treat yourself like a, I do that too. Treat yourself like a dog. Like there's treats for you sit down, then you give yourself a treat. Yeah. But I'm like, I think that there's huge benefits to that. I mean, in that way too.

I love it. It's like, you kind of go, okay, I'm going to be great. First thing I do in the morning when I get up and i go is i go and i have my shake with the stuff that i'm supposed to have it in and that's something that's a habit that i've got into from here and it's like these things then kind of flow on it's like all right when i sit down to do work i start i have a list of the things i'm gonna do and i do that and then i do that and then i'm allowed to kind of if i have certain tasks that i need to do like i have my tasks that I need to do I have to tick them off before I'm allowed to just go and read random articles about weird fucking philosophy shit or go down some

YouTube rabbit hole watching weird videos and all that sort of stuff and then I'm allowed to do that because it's still somewhat productive and I'm kind of learning I feel like enriching myself in various ways but I have to do this certain things first and I'm getting of learning. I feel like enriching myself in various ways, but I have to do the certain things first. And I'm getting a lot better at creating those kind of forms of discipline for myself. Oh, yeah. I really like that. What did I write down here?

This was fucking nuts. One time when you went to bed, you made 42 or 48 trips to the bathroom yes yeah let's talk about my bladder we've reached the point in this conversation where my bladder is the topic let's go so i have this thing where okay um at night i check all the doors i have three doors okay and then um and then maybe like i'll plug my phone in and then i'll be like okay i check the doors i have three doors okay and then um and then maybe like i'll plug my phone in and then i'll be like okay i check the doors but i'm gonna check them again and then i check them again and then maybe then i go over and i turn off like all the air cleaners in the house or anything that's humming because i don't want to hear that when i'm when i'm uh lying down and then i'll be like

ah i'm gonna go check the doors again and then i check the doors again and it seems like it's and the worst thing is is sometimes when i'm when i when i i guess i think i'm on the third check one of the doors will be unlocked okay and that and that will set off a whole like like who knows what happened like one of my kids got up or my wife got up or i didn't really check it but now there's a major problem yeah now it's like now it's like that that that now i'm gonna have to check it five more times before i go to fucking bed because like i don't trust the process yeah it's so fucked up and sometimes i'll go to bed and i'll be like don't check the doors don't check the door and i'm like oh fuck i gotta check the door dude it's

exactly the same thing just like don't think about you needing to pee don't think you need to pee it's like i think it's something to do with i think in my head i've got to relax now and go to sleep it's like oh you might need to pee those yeah i'm thinking about i might need to pee so i'll go cut a little fuck and it it's genuinely pretty kind of proportional to how anxious i am at that point in time is to how many times i'll go to the bathroom before i fall asleep um and then yeah it'll fuck like i'll be like fuck don't think about it don't think about it. Don't think about it.

I'm like, all right, cool. I'm going to get straight in bed and I'm not going to go to the toilet once. I lay there and I'm like, I start to get like fidgety. My legs start to go. I'm starting to go. A couple of drops come out. I'm like, you fucking idiot. Why did you go?

You didn't even need to go to the toilet. And then that's how it kind of exactly the same as your locks, but it's me going to take a piss. How old were you when that started i can't remember i feel like it's been a long time though too i i feel i've always had these weird little things when it came to going to bed that i remember from being a kid like i remember in my teens and like late early teens and like late being a kid things that i had to do to be able to fall asleep like just certain little rituals and if i didn't do them i would become fixated

on them it's like one was super duper fucking weird and i mean fuck i've been talking for two hours and 11 minutes mate let's go down this rabbit let's go down some rabbit holes yeah yeah i had to have a pair of undies over my under shorts, but my undies, I had to have my dick and balls hanging out of the undies with the boxer shorts then over the top. But I had to have the undies on down below. Couldn't have like just boxer shorts on. And if I didn't do that, all I thought about was like that was weird and I just felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't fall asleep but i get in bed and i do things like i'd lay in bed and i try to force myself to not wear my undies with everything going on yeah you're trying to fix the problem you're like hey i don't want to have this i don't want to be attached to this you're gonna lay this and so even like falling asleep on my back i can't fall asleep on my back

unless i'm dead tired to the world and every now and again when i was younger and in my teens i'd be like right you're gonna try fucking laying there and i'm like don't do it don't do it or like crossing my toes so i used to have to cross it was that that's kind of the first it's not the first it's one of crossing your toes yeah so like like my big toe here like like you can see look you can see the divot in my whole my sock right now yeah with my toes crossed this is weird which one goes on top oh the big one goes on top that's how it goes oh yeah dude i used to remember that i used to say to mom i have to get shoes where i can cross my toes she's like why i was like if i don't cross my toes i don't like it like i would i would all i would think if i couldn't cross my toes in my shoes i'd become

fixated on the fact that i couldn't cross my toes. And that's all I could think about to the point where I would almost give myself a panic attack. I'd start shaking. My legs would get restless. I'd become so agitated. And that used to be, that was a big one that I'd do when I'd try to go to sleep. I'd be laying in bed and I'd be like, don't cross your toes. Don't cross your toes. Or if I'm sitting on a plane or somewhere where I have to relax, it's typically in environments where I have to relax that it becomes more of a problem. And I'd be like, just don't fucking cross your toes.

Like you're going to sit here and you are not going to cross your toes. Fuck my legs. You start to go, I'd start to get agitated. I say, yeah, there's a couple of little things like that when it comes to sleeping. And that's,

that's one of them. There's this, there's this story that I, that I tell myself that I don't want to take my shirt off at the beach, but, but when I talk about it on the podcast, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm not, I'm embarrassed about my body. And so I don't take my shirt off, but, but it's a story that I keep alive. I keep that story alive. Yeah. I've made, I've made that story alive yeah i've made i've made that story real that that that's not that's not real that's not real like this mouse

that's that's that story is just a thought well thank you don't worry mate i've been trying to do the same sort of thing with all this shit it's it's so it's so it's so tricky it's so interesting um it's so interesting have you ever i wonder god what do they say the cure is for that like when you're like hey i gotta have my toes crossed all the time what's the cure i think gradual exposure therapy is like one thing that i do recommend so it's like cool like if you like run through the gym naked exposure well i mean a lot more to rake of it can run for me as a thought than laying in bed with my toes on the cross let me tell you that much for free so long fuck no i think like it's practicing just like you said cultivating that awareness of hey like every now and again like

oh i was just sitting there for a period of time and i didn't know my toes crossed look at me i can do that and like becoming more aware and then practicing periods where it's like okay maybe i'm nervous and it's like well i'm sitting down waiting and i'm not going to cross my toes before that calm yeah it doesn't make me any fucking stronger either so it's not just clinging on to life by dear for dear life with my hook grip toes in bed, clinging on to sanity. But yeah, it's, I think just practicing it. And honestly, like in this game of things that I need to put attention and time into fixing and working on crossing and uncrossing my toes is pretty low down the priority list.

It's interesting because yours is like real there's like by that i mean there's like something physically happening mine's just like just bullshit well plenty of those all those stories yeah just mine's just like a story like and like that i'm attached to like like get over it's it's all it's it's all ego it's like like get over yourself like yeah if it wasn't with seven would, what are you worried about putting a shirt on him for? You're at the beach, mate. How do you go for a swim at the beach?

If you've got your shirt on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's crazy. Oh,

con. Um, when, when I'm around my kids, I go the opposite of all my insecurities. So the second I get to the beach, I immediately take my shirt off because I don't want them picking up on any of it. Cause I don't want to pass it on to them interesting yeah you

know what i mean i don't want yeah so so i'm just like hey it's not it's not about you dipshit yeah right that's not about you shut the fuck up maybe when and then i'm gonna stop crossing my toes pissing 48 times and i'll be i'll be right as rain um when did girls start liking you how old what grade were you in that the girls took notice of you i want to say like year 10 10 for for me i'm kindergarten through seventh grade girls loved me and then in seventh grade, girls loved me. And then in seventh grade, something happened. Like I just became a dork. Like I just started like playing Dungeons and Dragons and I would go to the library and like, you know, and then they just didn't like me ever again after that. But so mine was kind of like the flip flop of you.

That must have been really exciting. That's a good time for girls to start liking you you must have been like holy shit there is a god yeah particularly because i've been like i've been the opposite you know like it was almost uh embarrassing i didn't exist to the opposite sexually or like you know my attempts to be noticed by the opposite sex were laughed at or fucking ridiculed or whatever yeah kind of just just like honestly out of nowhere and i remember your testicles dropped yeah all of a sudden i was you know i went from a boy to a man overnight yeah it was it was it was cool but it was like everything for me you know the way i am because the double-edged sword that was probably a few years later i love this crowd i love this crowd

yeah that that must have been so that that must have been so fun those must have been some really fun years yeah i feel like yeah they were but but I think that they're, like I said. Discovering girls is like the greatest thing about being a dude. It really, there's this book, Stranger in a Strange Land, and it's a guy who comes from another universe and he's enlightened. And he says that basically all the other creatures in the universe that are enlightened they they don't mate they they and we're the only creatures in the universe that have the ability to be enlightened but also mate and i and he explains it so well in the book but we squabble it we fuck it all up because of like jealousy and just just all this shit we just fuck it up we have this great gift

that we can be enlightened sort of transcend our our humanness our sex but we also get the fucking bone and roll around naked so he's he's not saying i haven't read this book he's not saying that they are enlightened because they abstain from sex they're just no no no no he's just saying that that's one of the evolutionary things and it make it makes sense to me like when you sort of when you transcend all there would be no you would just be this in in in sort of this eternity but um that's good i thought you were going to tell me to stop joking off again no no no no no no that's only to experiment with that's nothing dogmatic but but but but it is a very powerful um tool for uh for to to examine for control or um it's funny you say that i have a friend a good friend of mine and he i know will do that like regularly just like abstain from jerking off or having sex for periods of time.

Yeah, he says exactly that. I don't know if he's read anything on it or it's just in his head. He was like that was the ultimate way for him to kind of practice self-control. It's crazy. The first time I did it, I was in college, and I kept these two 20-pound dumbbells by my bed. Because you can't leave your hands alone with your dick you just can't you cannot and so um that you're just like dude um so uh anytime i would like wake up in the middle of the night i would just just grab the dumbbells

and just do a set of 20 and then go back like and the my theory was is to pull the blood out of my i would do a set of shoulder press 20 you know yeah to get the blood out of my shoulder press, 20, to get the blood out of my penis. I'm no fucking biologist, but that was my thought. I'll bring the blood to my shoulders. I have all these fucking fans of yours that are now going to bring dumbbells home. They're going to be like, what the fuck's going on? Just get up in the middle of the night and do that.

And I told my poor dad that I was doing that and that I had gone two months without ejaculating and he goes listen boy and i go what he goes if you don't use it you'll lose it i was like i thought my dad knew what he's talking about oh my god that's great that's phenomenal just jump down and do some push-ups between i'll get a hundred pound then maybe that's what i do i get my hundred-pound dumbbell. Next time I get those, just start doing my crunches. My shoulders started looking really nice.

There you go. And then all of a sudden, the guns didn't notice, and then there's the temptation. It's a double-edged sword, mate. It's funny. You wouldn't think this, but this is just proof of this. I've talked about this before. When normally when I have a guest, I have two pages of notes.

And the more pages I have, the more nervous I'm, I am about the conversation. I have five pages of notes for you. That's how nervous I was about, about talking to you today. Dude, it makes me feel a bit better saying that. Cause, and you could probably tell the way I was speaking as I was shitting myself. And I think because of that, like I had this kind of like initial kind of like, you know, Oh man, like Siobhan and the, the, the CrossFit Louis Thoreau and that initial experience was like, I didn't know how this was going to be. And yeah, dude, I was just as nervous. So don't you worry. Yeah. Okay. Good. All right. Um, I, I would, I would love to, I would love to stay, stay in touch. I love what, what a fun conversation. Um, two hours and 20 minutes just blew by.

Yeah, mate. We've covered some topics. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, thank you very much. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, um, comporter, uh, I, like I said, I would go listen to the mind. Porter. Like I said, I would go listen to the MindsetRx podcast and we will be watching. And no matter how much you tell us that it's not between you and Mayhem, we will not believe you. All righty. I'll let you have your little narrative there. That's all good.