Transforming Law Enforcement Wellness with Adam Boyd

Discover the transformative journey of Adam Boyd, a former SWAT officer turned holistic wellness trainer, and how his experiences have shaped his unique approach to resilience and wellness. Adam, the passionate owner of Soleful Training, explores the pivotal moments that led him from frontline law enforcement to embracing practices like the Wim Hof Method.  

This episode challenges conventional fitness norms, demonstrating that efficient wellness practices don't require lengthy gym sessions. Learn from Adam as he shares the resilience-building benefits of holistic methods and their profound impact on performance under stress and how law enforcement leaders can use these techniques to significantly help the well being of their officers. 

We also celebrate Adam's dedication to leading with courage and purpose, highlighting his mission to improve health within law enforcement and beyond. Tune in for an enlightening conversation that not only offers practical wellness strategies but also inspires a purpose-driven approach to leadership and life.

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Transcript

Intro/Outro: 0:02

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates: 0:11

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you decided to join us today and I am excited about today's guest. Today's guest is Adam Boyd. He's a former law enforcement officer that included SWAT operations. He's the current owner of Soleful Training that specializes in resilience for frontline workers. His trainings include physical fitness, nutrition, sleep, breathwork, stress management, cold water therapy, communication skills and leadership, and Adam is an absolute expert in holistic wellness practices, and that includes he's a certified trainer for the Wim Hof Method and a resilience instructor for the FBIN A.

Travis Yates: 0:55

Adam Boyd, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. How are you, man? It's so awesome to have you on. I met you a few weeks ago and I was super excited when you told me you were into some of this holistic stuff when it comes to stress and resilience and all of this in law enforcement. And I guess, before we get into that, just kind of tell me, man, how did you end up where you are today? You were in law enforcement for a little over a decade, your wife was as well, and now you are doing some phenomenal things through your business. Just kind of, how did you get here? What was your journey like?

Adam Boyd: 1:25

Well, you know, I've always been kind of into my own health and wellness. I've been an ultra runner for the last 15 years or so 20 years, and if you would have asked me 15 years ago what I thought about health and wellness, I would have pointed directly to physical fitness and nutrition. Right? I think that's where most of us really feel like health comes in at. It's the baseline, starting point. So when I got onto our SWAT team, my commander found out I was an ultra runner and asked me to start training some of our guys. And I was like, well, I don't really know anything about training anybody, I just like to run far distances. So that propelled me into getting a strength and conditioning sir and just kind of snowballed from there.

Adam Boyd: 2:08

And then, a couple years after that, I had a buddy of mine who was like hey, have you heard of this? This whim, hot whim something guy? And I was like, yeah, like my, you know, my wife showed me a video on on. My thought it was kind of a this cool novelty type thing. And he's like well, I'm going to this class, would you like to go with me? And I was like, well, yeah, you know, I'm always up for trying new stuff and I went to the class and I left there like, oh my God, is this how normal people feel? Like I didn't even realize I felt bad. And then I started practicing the method and after about six months I'm like I need to teach this to other people, especially law enforcement, fire, ems, because it's probably one of the most powerful wellness modalities that I've come across, because it encompasses mind, body and soul, and I think that's where, like, a lot of wellness practices get missed. It's one thing or the other and we really have to look at our well-being as a holistic point of view.

Travis Yates: 3:05

Yeah. So we're going to get into that in further detail, but I will tell you that obviously you've you've caught something. You found something that most people don't ever find and I think that is an outlier. I mean traditional law enforcement training for those people that don't understand when it comes. It's, it's straight fitness, it's straight gym equipment, big muscles, very little cardio, right, and so you can look like you're in really good shape, but you could be very unhealthy in many other areas.

Travis Yates: 3:35

I've known more than one of my friends that had big muscles because they were throwing weights all day in the gym and they had a cardiac event and it sort of woke them up to what's going on Of course we all are familiar with. And it sort of woke them up to what's going on Of course we all are familiar with. It's the third leading cause of death in this profession, which is cardiac events, and it's one of the leading causes of death in general in society. So that's the biggest risk. So did you have a wake up moment to where you went? I thought fitness was this. I was completely wrong about it. Now it's this and I feel completely different.

Adam Boyd: 4:08

Was that a moment that you had that when you said I've got to send this message and give this to other officers in the profession? Yeah, I had a situation where I was dealing with one of our regulars and he had started a run for me and I called out his name and he came back very compliant. He's never been combative before and I knew him very well. So I'd of like put him up against my car to do a you know a little pat down and as I'm doing the pat down he turns around and hits me in the face and I was able to grab him and I pulled him on top of me and I pulled the um, an Americana maneuver got on, so I got into the mount position and we were just throwing blows.

Adam Boyd: 4:43

But in the moment that I got hit I realized how important not only my mindset was but the ability to control my breath and my demeanor in a very stressful situation. And that was one of the things that drew me to the Wim Hof method, because mindset's one of the three pillars and then learning how to control your breath is part of the breathwork technique that they teach. And there was a pretty considerable gap in between when I went through that incident until I found the Wim Hof method, but there was almost an immediate bridge for me.

Travis Yates: 5:14

Talk about resilience in law enforcement. What does that mean to you and how do you train that?

Adam Boyd: 5:20

Resilience to me is I mean almost by its definition it's the ability to recover from adversity and to do it quickly. And the way I train it is to make sure I do something that stresses me out every day, whether it's physical activity, and I don't mean stress is out like I got into a fight with my wife, I mean like I do something that makes me uncomfortable, like even if it's as simple as like folding the laundry or going for the run that I didn't want to do, and it's basically just continuously training that thought process to do the hard thing anyway. And what I found in my own life, and it's, you know, I still have the human experience, right, I still experience stress, anxiety, irritation, you know all the gamut of emotions that go with being a person. But I'm trying to lessen or shorten that duration. I go through them.

Travis Yates: 6:09

I think it's so important. I wrote an article one time called Do Hard Things. We'll link that down below. But every year I try to figure out something very hard to learn right. One year it was guitar, one year it was jujitsu. And of course you find out you can't do that in a year. You have to keep doing that. But I think there's something to that of comfort kills right. Comfort can be very dangerous and in law enforcement what I see, I'll tell you my observation is it's easy to get very comfortable in a lot of areas. Maybe you go through the ranks, you get to where you want to do, you get to the assignment you want and then you think, well, I'll just rest on.

Adam Boyd: 6:49

Well, I heard this quote a while ago and it kind of stuck with me and it said champions don't do things until they get it right. They do it till they can't get it wrong. And I feel like, as a profession as a whole, we're doing things till we get it right. I've seen it in training, whether it be firearms, dt, traffic, it doesn't matter. We go through the motions, they say you got the training and then they just put you out in the world and expect you to be amazing at it.

Adam Boyd: 7:14

Um, in a in a perfect world, I believe that we should be training for at least 25 percent of our week on the things that we do every day to make us more proficient at it. Um, and in order, we have to do the same thing for our health. We need to make sure that we're training our health to be able to handle the foot pursuits, to handle, handle the fights, to handle the combative subjects, because you never know when that fight for your life is going to be. I was involved in an officer-involved shooting in 2015. It was a welfare check. I never expected to be drawing my gun, let alone firing it, in that situation and, as all law enforcement officers know we have to be ready on any given day for anything and we have to prepare our bodies and our minds to do those things.

Travis Yates: 8:01

Yeah, I'm really pleased with the transition we're seeing in overall law enforcement wellness. I mean we went from just straight up gym equipment. I remember about a decade ago I brought the first CrossFit gym to my agency in the state but I saw the resistance which that's not that big of a deal today, but it was back then. You've taken it to the next level. The holistic method is the answer. We've been trained to just listen to whatever a doctor says. No matter what Doesn't mean every doctor is bad. But just because someone says I'm a doctor, do this.

Travis Yates: 8:32

They don't always understand true wellness. In fact, when you talk to doctors, they'll tell you in medical school they get about eight hours of nutrition in medical school, that's it. They don't really get to study that. That's why I love the functional doctor method that really aligns with what you're doing. Have you seen a resistance when you talk to people in your class or talk to other officers about the moralistic approach to this, that not everything needs a prescription, not everything needs to go to a doctor, all the time that we need to take care of yourself. So you actually don't go to a doctor.

Adam Boyd: 9:03

Yeah, I mean, I think people are definitely receptive to it. Usually the pushback you get is either budget from the agency or the officers be like I don't have time from the agency, or you know, the officers be like I don't have time which I've developed a practice and a routine for myself that I do 20 minutes a day, no matter what. So, as busy as my day might be, I get something in for 20 minutes, and it could be split. I may do five minutes of breath work in the morning, five minutes of something at night and 10 minutes of just straight burpees in the afternoon. But, like I always make sure I get 20 minutes of self-improvement and wellness training in my my every day.

Travis Yates: 9:42

You know it's interesting. You say that because we do. We are training our brain, that you got to get for an hour in the gym and you got to run this long. But you're right. Breaking it up into segments do the same thing. The research says that and I hate to say this, but I learned this from Bill Clinton, former president. Bill Clinton because he had a sort of a weight issue going to the White House, and I remember listening to an interview from his trainer where the trainer said if I catch him for five minutes, we do something, and then maybe a couple hours later, I get him for another five minutes and then another five minutes. By the end of the day we've done 30 minutes right and it works. And so, yeah, we think of the whole package. But you're right, of course we have time in the day. You can't afford to not have time in the day. Think of all the time wasted doing all the things that we all waste our time on, because what you're talking about, holistically, it doesn't take a lot to do. You just need the right focus. And of course, you're training the Wim Hof method and explain to people.

Travis Yates: 10:40

I think today more than ever, people are familiar with code therapy and ice baths and things like that, explain how the Wim Hof method probably kicked that off and the value and the power of that, because I am familiar with that. I'm familiar with the code therapies and the cryogenic stuff going on. It's pretty amazing People don't know this. Getting in the code plunge literally sends off endorphins equal to cocaine, so to speak. People that do it are hooked. They're addicted. It changes their life for a reason. Dana White, the head of UFC, doesn't travel without one. He can afford to do that, I can't, but that's how much power it does. Of course you've got to wrap your head around doing it, but once you do it, the stories are pretty outstanding. Had you done any code plunders before the Wim Hof Method? Did you show up at the training and went? I had no idea.

Travis Yates: 11:30

This is what this was.

Adam Boyd: 11:33

I mean I knew what I was getting into but I had never done one before I went to the initial class and I was just like a lot of people, I was hooked. I mean I can tell you anecdotal, study after study. I know at least five people that it's safe from suicide. I know people that have managed diseases such as Parkinson's, ms, degenerative disc disease, all through this method and I'm not going out there saying it's going to cure everything and it's the you know the answer to all your prayers. But I can tell you from my own personal practice and seeing and this is other instructors a lot of this is coming from. It has saved a lot of people's lives and improved their quality.

Travis Yates: 12:10

Yeah, you know, adam, it's so interesting that you talk about. We have this idea in our mind that we need an hour in the gym and we need an extended period of time to work out. But you're so right. All the research says that's not the case. You need a cumulative time and I hate to admit this, but I learned this from former President Bill Clinton.

Travis Yates: 12:27

I remember in the White House there was a bunch of news stories about him trying to lose weight and they talked to, I think, a trainer of his, and the trainer said hey, if I get him for five minutes, we do this, and then maybe a couple hours later I give him another five minutes. We do this by the end of the day for 30, 40 minutes. He's done something and obviously it worked, and I think we think this traditional method of we need an hour or two hours and then we just don't do it because we don't think we have enough time. So obviously you do have enough time and that's what's beautiful about what you talk about, adam, is a lot of these holistic methods doesn't take a long time.

Travis Yates: 12:59

I mean, this show isn't about me but, briefly, my routine baseline is grounding and red light therapy, but I can tell you, just like you and the cold plunge experience you had I was talking to myself before I did it well, there's no way this would work Really Like red light and feet on the ground. Obviously, it doesn't take very long to do, but when you do it, like you said, you go. It's the aha moment, and you have already experienced this. You're trying to get this message to others and dial in specifically to what the Wim Hof method can do, because it's more than just cold plunge, right, and we all understand that. Dial in on exactly the power in that method that you're such an expert at.

Adam Boyd: 13:42

So I want to touch on the cold plunge first. I see it all the time on Instagram. There is a specific way to do cold plunging that's going to be beneficial to you and the goal is to not go in and suffer through the cold, which I see countless times on Instagram. The goal is to go in and learn how to control your physiology with an external stressor and what's that? And our brain likes patterns of behavior, right. So when I get stressed out, if I'm already teaching my body through the cold that this is how I relax during stress, what are we going to do when we encounter stress at work? We're going to immediately go into that pattern of behavior that we're now creating through the cold and the other two things. That's always forgotten, because cold plunge is the cool, sexy thing to do on social media. It's mindset and breath work and the mindset portion.

Adam Boyd: 14:32

In the class that I teach, we go over at least five different techniques of how to improve your mindset, so it's not just talking about doing it and why it's beneficial, because I left a lot of classes going well, how Okay. I understand that it's good, I need to eat this way or that I need to think this way, but how do I do it? So I want to leave my students with applicable skills and techniques they can actually leave the class with. That's very, very simple to do, and I'll give you one of them for everybody who's listening right now. I do the power of three, and my technique is at the end of the night, I think about three things that happened to me that were positive throughout the day, and what that forces my brain to do is scan the day for good things instead of reflecting on all the stressful things. And over time it just becomes a habit that my brain starts searching for the positive in situations in the days, and then it just over months, weeks and years, it leaves me thinking a completely different way than I did when I started.

Adam Boyd: 15:34

And then the last technique, or the middle technique, is going to be the breathwork, the cyclical hyperventilation technique. That goes along with the Wim Hof method. We're actually teaching our bodies how to stress ourselves out, and then we're going to learn how to control it with our mindset. And that again goes in couples with the cold exposure, because now I'm learning how my body feels in a stressful state. I'm learning that I can amp it up and slow it down using my breath and using my mindset, and when you combine all three of those techniques, you have a really powerful wellness modality.

Travis Yates: 16:08

Yeah, man, you know the military has grabbed onto this. Pro athletes have been doing this. What's the path you see in law enforcement to get here because I think no one can argue the benefits of what you just talked about and to train your body to perform under stress when the stress happens. In this profession, you're doing your part. But let's talk about leaders. I can pretty much tell a great leader in a few minutes If I find out they have put programs like this forward for their organization. Man, I can pretty much tell you everything else is right. That's the foundation. So a leader cares about this and they're thinking outside the box and they're not just checking the box. I call that check the box training. Oh, we're going to do whatever this organization does. We're going to sign a pledge. We're just going to make it seem like we're doing something. I don't have any use for those leaders, but the leaders that are truly diving in and figuring out, man, this is going to help the overall wellness of my employees. That will then help the way they perform their jobs, keep them safe. That will then help my community that they engage with.

Travis Yates: 17:18

Sheriff Mark Lamb's a prime example. He, of course I had Paige on doing the yoga stuff and Lamb was. I immediately said well, you need to talk to Mark Lamb's a prime example. He, of course I had Paige on doing the yoga stuff and Lamb was. I immediately said well, you need to talk to Mark Lamb, she goes, he's already on board, we're already doing work with him. So I already knew Mark was a great leader before that. What have the discussions been like? When you speak to the leaders, ie decision makers inside the agencies, I mean budget's not an excuse to probably hear that, but are they receptive? Are you seeing a trend where they're moving more towards this for their employees?

Adam Boyd: 17:46

Well, I realized I had to become very careful with my verbiage because when I mentioned the Wim Hof method it sounds very hokey. Nobody, a lot of people, don't know what it is and I initially didn't get a lot of reception to it because of that. And, and it really turned around for me, I got a call from a friend one day and he's like hey, I have somebody who wants to talk to you. And this guy gets on the phone. He says hey, my name is Master Sergeant so-and-so for the United States Air Force. I'm having this problem, can you help with this? And I said yeah, I can teach this this, this and this.

Adam Boyd: 18:27

And I went through all the steps of the Wim Hof method and he said Can you sell it to my command in a different way? They're never going to sign off on this. And I said what about stress management? He was like perfect, that's the way to do it. So now the Wim Hof method is has been brought into the United States Air Force for the security forces to use, to utilize. And I learned that if I verbalize it in a different way and spin what it actually is, that people are more receptive to it. I think, as from a leader standpoint. You just need to be more open to different healing modalities. I know yoga for a long time was a bad word when it came to law enforcement officers. It was this kind of hippy-dippy practice. And what we're seeing with yoga now it's become more accepted. It's amazing for its officers and I think if you put that in conjunction with the Wim Hof Method, that would be probably like your perfect wellness program.

Travis Yates: 19:21

Yeah, and ultimately, adam, it's the case studies, it's the people you've helped. I mean, they have to be your biggest champions, right? So an officer inside an agency, a leader, may not listen to Adam who they don't know, but if an officer inside their agency sees the benefit of this, they've got to be your biggest champion, right?

Adam Boyd: 19:40

Oh, absolutely, because I can't even think of an instance where somebody hasn't left there and been like I loved it. That was great. How do we do more of this? Can we get this in here? Can we get this in there? Which is why I offer free demonstrations. I feel like feeling it is much more powerful than me just telling you it has all these benefits. I'll come into your agency, put your training staff through a class for free, because I believe that much in it that you're going to buy into the method.

Travis Yates: 20:08

So let's say I'm an individual, I listen to this podcast, but I mean, we think, man, I don't have a code plunge, I don't have this or that. This is something that they could actually implement without a whole lot of things. What would it take to just get started tomorrow If people go? Man, I think I need that and let me just encourage people that is listening to this and they think this is hokey. This is that you need to try this, just like me in some of the foundational stuff I do. I thought it was crazy.

Travis Yates: 20:33

I did it once and it changed me. In fact, I traveled. Today. I used to get off a plane, find something to eat, go to the hotel and just hang out for the next day and I would fight jet lag and fight fatigue the entire week because of that. Today I get off a plane, I ground, I get in the sun, hit the gym for 15, 20 minutes is about it, and it's changed the way I travel, it's changed my life, and so you have to try this. Leadership's about thinking, like you said new ideas, new concepts. Not everything stays the same. Change can be hard, but change can change lives and leaders have got to get outside their head, and that's not about rank. So if there's a straight line officer listening to this, leadership is this. Have an open mind to it. Don't immediately discount it because you may be missing out like you thought you were on the greatest thing ever. So it's very, very important.

Adam Boyd: 21:22

Yeah, and we don't realize like the mindset portion of it is the basis for everything. It's a basis for fitness, nutrition, the job, self-improvement, your family. Like your mindset goes in the entire quality of your life. And that alone, even if you're like you know what, I think the cold plunge is hokey. I don't think the breath work works, which we know it does. Mindset, we know, can affect quality of life and affect longevity and affect your overall well-being.

Travis Yates: 21:53

Let's get back to the cold plunge, because I think that's something that if people would try that it would just be phenomenal. But you don't need a fancy cold plunge, you don't even need to buy anything to do it. I mean because the temperature doesn't have to be as low as you see. As you said on social media, what's the temperature range? Can you get there from a cold shower? Is that a great way to start and work your way up? Talk to us about that.

Adam Boyd: 22:16

A cold shower is a great way to start. You're right, it doesn't have to be freezing temperatures. It has to be around 60 degrees Fahrenheit or a little colder for you to start seeing the benefits and, just like any practice, we want to make it a positive experience. So, unless you live in Phoenix, which I know, the water is really difficult to get cold there sometimes through a shower, but it's still going to be cold enough. It just needs to be uncomfortable that you kind of want to get out and it's not like comforting to stay in and then just relax your breath and relax your body in the cold shower for 30 seconds to start, build up to a minute or two and then just go about your day.

Travis Yates: 22:56

Yeah, you know, adam, I say this often. That's why I love talking to people like you. I wish I would have found this stuff years ago, but I found it now that there are people listening that are in the middle of their career, the beginning of their career, that gets really changed the course of their career. If three people are listening and they want to get ahold of you, they want to get a piece of this, how do they do that?

Adam Boyd: 23:14

You can find me on my website. It's www. solefultraining. com and it's soulful like the sole of your foot, like S-O-L-E-F-U-L trainingcom. I came up with the name because I'm paying homage to my running background, and if you want to find more information, yeah, go to my website. Feel free to contact me there. My email is also solefultraining(at) gmail. com. I'm open to talk to anybody about this stuff gmailcom.

Travis Yates: 23:42

I'm open to talk to anybody about this stuff. So if an agency is out of state, agency's out of state, do you offer this online? Online consulting? How do they access you? Do you travel there?

Adam Boyd: 23:52

How do they access your training? Everything's done in-house, so I will travel. I have to go to Maine, Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, it doesn't matter If you want to bring the method in. It's not something that I feel is really good to do online. I feel like in person again, feeling is kind of experiencing. You need to be immersed in the method for the class and I feel like a lot of people are going to really get benefit out of it and truly be inspired to continue to do more for their wellness.

Travis Yates: 24:21

Adam Boyd, you found your purpose. Sir. What an incredible benefit for the profession. I can't thank you enough for what you do. I can't thank you enough for being here on the show. Thanks so much, and just let us know what we can do, because you have found something that can change lives. Thank you a lot.

Adam Boyd: 24:36

Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.

Travis Yates: 24:40

And if you've been listening, thank you for listening, thank you for watching and just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

Intro/Outro: 24:51

Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.