E52 Aaron Reed (WWE & Pro Bodybuilder) Hard Work Beats Talent, The Rise of an Underdog

E52 The Full Spectrum Warriors Podcast w/ Guest Aaron Reed

WWE athlete Aaron Reid joins us to share his journey from overcoming childhood health challenges to becoming a colossal figure in the fitness industry. From high school football struggles to the rites of passage that shape manhood, we dive into the transformative power of challenges and resilience. Highlighting the need for tough love and direct feedback, our conversation explores societal impacts, personal growth, and the psychological aspects of bodybuilding. The episode wraps up with valuable insights into personal development through reading and goal-setting, emphasizing that continuous self-improvement is the cornerstone of a warrior's lifestyle. Tune in for a packed episode filled with wisdom and inspiration to fuel your pursuit of excellence.

Learn more about Aaron Reed by following him here on Instagram @aaronw.reed or check out his company page for his book and other products here!

This episode is sponsored by Safariland Group, a company with a rich heritage in the law enforcement and sporting markets, that encompasses a group of recognized and well-respected brands known for their innovation and quality. They are committed to focusing on their customer first in all they do. Their mission statement, Together, We Save Lives, is much more than a statement; it is a creed they live by.
Check them out and use code CADREGRAHAM for discounts on your orders! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

The world can be a very dangerous place and we never know when an emergency is going to unfold. But if one does, will you know how to handle yourself? If you're not sure, you're already behind the power curve, and that is why I created Full Spectrum Warriors. Hey guys, welcome to the Full Spectrum Warriors podcast. My name is Rich Graham and today we are joined by WWE athlete, entrepreneur, bodybuilder, actor, aaron Reid. In this episode, aaron's going to talk to us about the nuance in our health and diet and how we can use those properly to maximize our gains, and, as a huge bodybuilder, he has got a lot to share in this. It's a very good episode with some really cool information that I think is going to help you guys in your health and wellness journey. So stay tuned, and this episode is brought to you by Safariland Group. Together, we save lives. All right, aaron, welcome to the Full Spectrum Warriors podcast. It's great to have you back.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Thanks, rich, happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Very cool. So you got a lot of stuff you're working on, huh.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Yeah, a lot of projects right now.

Speaker 1: 1:28

So when we were, when you were out here last time and we were doing some shooting and whatnot, you had I forget if you were just about to or you had just finished up doing- that movie where you're like the body double, wow, yeah, that's been.

Speaker 2: 1:45

It's been a while since I've been out here. Yeah, I did. Uh, free guy actually filmed it in 2019, but because of covid and everything and the theater's being closed, they didn't release it until 2021 no way, yeah that was actually the movie that brought people back to the theaters, because nobody really was cool with going to the theater. And then, you know, ryan did a great job of making these promotions and stuff to really get people to go to the theater. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Which I don't know about you, man, but I love going to the theater. Yeah, like, if I'm going to watch a movie, I want to watch it at home. It's not the same. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Yeah, I want the loud noises and the big screen and all that.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Yeah, just something about going, getting dressed up. I know you've got to spend, you know, like $15 on a bucket of popcorn, which is ridiculous, but, like you know, it's like something about going. I don't know. I like to go to the theater, you know.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Has it been that long already? I mean, that's been man all right. So I heard that you're working on another movie now.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Yes.

Speaker 1: 2:43

I don't know if we're allowed to talk about that.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Yeah, I definitely worked on a movie, but unfortunately I can't talk about it.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Okay, so we'll just have to stay tuned and see. So well, we got Aaron here and if you're not familiar with Aaron or you haven't been following his page, aaron is a monster. He's absolutely gargantuous. He's absolutely gargantuous and it's just really cool what he's been able to accomplish in the personal fitness and the health industry and now moving on to doing some cool things with movies and then getting into some entrepreneurship where he's got some companies he started, he wrote a book. There's a lot going on and one of the things is obviously he's living by what he's preaching. And I'm excited to have him on today because obviously, when we talk about the full spectrum warrior lifestyle and being warriors, being fighters or anything like that, fitness and strength and health is such a key component, you know. So I'm excited to basically, you know, get into some different things with him today that I think you guys will be interested in. I know I'm interested in as well, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:59

So to start, because maybe not everyone's familiar with your background, let's kind of just go back to how did you wind up getting into the fitness industry and everything like that bodybuilding? You want the quick version. Well, we got time. We got time, let's hear it. I know that you had some health issues when you were a child?

Speaker 2: 4:19

Yeah, okay, I'll start with a quick version if we want to go deeper. So as a kid uh, I come from a family of athletes my dad was like a six, five, um, you know, 300 pound dude and in high school he was like super decorated at 13 scholarships for football. As a fullback he was like the lead scorer on the basketball team, had records and stuff and he's a pitcher on the baseball team, so like dude is just like stud, you know, and like he's also the fastest guy on this football team and he was like 6'5, 220, damn. So that's like kind of had the golden ticket, you know. So growing up, obviously he expected a lot out of his boys.

Speaker 2: 5:01

You know, I have an older brother and there was me. He had had cancer when I was four. Having cancer just kind of like slowed down some things and I think he looked at me as like kind of like fragile and he didn't like that or know how to act with that. And as a kid I didn't want to be fragile. So I just grew up trying to always like prove myself. Especially have an older brother that was like a great athlete and really good at stuff. I was two years younger than him so, uh, I was always trying to find my thing and, uh, I saw arnold schwarzenegger and conan the barbarian and, like I told my dad I thought he was a big guy and my dad was like the biggest person I'd ever seen. You know, he's like no son, he's like that's seven time, mr olympia. Arnold schwarzenegger, he's huge, and so I remember being like looked at arnold and conan with new eyes, I was like that is what I want for my life.

Speaker 2: 5:58

You know, I was like eight years old, you know that's wild and so, uh, by age 12, you know, I did like four years of like chemo and shit. Um, in and out of the hospital, spent a lot of time in hospital beds, a lot of shit, lost all my hair, all the stuff like you see kids go through, you know. And um, everybody always treated me like like soft. You know I was like bubble boy dude, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:23

And so, like you know, I was like bubble boy dude, you know, and so like you know, as a man, even a young man, like a young boy, you don't want to be treated that way, like I didn't like it. I wanted to be treated like everybody else. We like to be treated differently, you know, and so I was always looking for my thing. I got to it would be my own, you know. And um, I had a childhood mentor that was like 18. He was like stud on the football team. His dad was friends with my dad, so, like he kind of took me under his wing a little bit and brought me to the gym and he was doing sets, deadlifting with like 300 pounds. I said I think I can do that and he was like, well, then, go ahead and try, you know. And so I picked it up and I deadlifted 300 pounds. I was 12 years old. And he was up and I deadlifted 300 pounds. I was 12 years old, and he's like, oh shit, you know. And I'm like, show me how to work out.

Speaker 2: 7:09

And like, right away, within a couple of weeks, I was able to like, uh, bench 115 pounds. And you know, my, my deadlift was right there at like three. And uh, I asked my older brother that he could do it. He was like, yeah, I could do about that. I was like lies, you know. And so in that moment I was like, yeah, I could do about that. I was like lies, you know. And so in that moment I was like this is what I'm going to do with myself, figure out what I'm good at.

Speaker 1: 7:29

How big were you at 12?

Speaker 2: 7:31

I was a good-sized kid, you know I wasn't small, but I wasn't, I don't think, anything abnormal. I kind of had big hands, big feet, big ears, you know, yep, so I think years, you know, yeah, um, so I think, you know, see, maybe I was going to grow, but there was nothing, I think, about me that was super stand out, you know. So, all right, you know. So that that was it kind of kind of I leaned into, um, uh, weightlifting and I wanted to be good at sports like my dad, so I used it to make me better at sports and by the time I graduated high school I was like all, state football we took second in state and basketball as a starting center, and then we got like, voted most muscles, you know, in high school.

Speaker 2: 8:13

And so I, you know, and so I had left, like all of the I mean I don't know, I guess labels behind you know. And so then, after that man, I just started bodybuilding as soon as I could, I was 19. Did the Teen Colorado Bodybuilding Competition. It was the first one I ever did. I won that. And the same day I took third as a novice in heavyweight class. There was eight guys and then I competed in the open and I should have got placed a little better, because there was guys that beat me, that had more size but they weren't in shape.

Speaker 2: 8:50

But, you know, I guess they didn't want to give it to a teen at the time, you know, because I wasn't big but I was ripped, you know, yeah. So anyway, so I kind of they always told me I was too tall to be a bodybuilder. So I feel like you tell me I can't do something. I prefer that, I prefer somebody tell me I can't do something versus, you know, pet me on the butt and tell me I'm great, you know.

Speaker 2: 9:12

And so, you know, I just went at it with bodybuilding and it took me a long time to get size on me like real size, you know. I mean I hit like 300 pounds of body weight when I was 25. I was a little heavy, you know, like it wasn't, wasn't all muscle, you know. And then um kind of hung around there for a while didn't really know what I was doing. I was getting in a lot of trouble and shit, um being ornery um in Colorado and eventually moved after having too many, like you know, at some point you kind of like I don't know about you, Rich, but like for me it's like I know that I wanted to bodybuild and I knew that was going to get me there, but like there's a lot that goes on with life other than your goals, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:57

And so, you know, I was always competing, doing well, like I won the first three competitions I entered, you know, and people try to say I was too tall to be a bodybuilder but yet I was having success, you know, and so I, eventually, it was just honorary shit, I was just like my dad was like an honorary dude, so it was almost like I don't know, maybe the apple didn't fall far from the tree and so, like man, I was like always in fucking trouble.

Speaker 2: 10:20

But you know, like I look back, man, I was like always in fucking trouble. But you know, like I look back like I don't know maybe I grew up in an aggressive era, an aggressive area, you know, because, like you know, just because you finish a fight and hurt somebody, doesn't mean it was your fault, you know what.

Speaker 2: 10:36

I mean, yeah, I was out there looking for shit. I mean I might have leaned into some shit that maybe I shouldn't have because, you know, it was like that. But like that was kind of what everybody was doing at the time.

Speaker 1: 10:45

Yeah, I know, for me personally, I was like the opposite of you from physique standpoint. When I was 12 years old and going into high school around 14, I was probably like 135 pounds, but same thing. I just had a lot of fight in me and, yeah, I loved being the underdog and tell me I couldn't do something and like, okay, well, I'm ready to prove you wrong, and that was kind of one of the things that led me into the seal teams. The more people that told me that I wouldn't be able to do it because I was too small, it was like, okay, one more reason, one more reason to prove everyone wrong, you know but I was I was kind of like a uh, like an adrenaline junkie.

Speaker 1: 11:33

You know what I mean most of you guys are.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Most of you, yeah, most of you seals are. Most of you guys are. That's like.

Speaker 1: 11:39

That's one thing I figured out for sure so I wound up getting into a lot of trouble, but a lot of it was just like just out of boredom or just you know, um, just trying to push the envelope. You know, for things that were were exciting, you know what I mean. And at some point I was actually in the navy and I was on my way to becoming a seal and and had made it through Hell Week at this point. And I was like a little bit later in Bud's and I broke into a local skate park at night to go BMXing in the skate park and the cops showed up and it was on the edge of the water and it was like I could try to run. You know what I mean, um.

Speaker 1: 12:27

But I was like it'd probably be worse if I run. You know what I mean. And I I mean, I'm in here with my bike you know, and that was that was a thing, but but that was the, the officer. Basically, when he saw my id and he saw that I had, like the, the naval special warfare sticker on my id, which, and he saw that I had the Naval Special Warfare sticker on my ID which indicated that I was in buds to get onto the training command.

Speaker 2: 12:49

You definitely had your shit together. That's what that sticker meant. Yeah, yeah, that's what it said to him, you know.

Speaker 1: 12:55

But that's what he was like have you made it through Hell Week already? And I said yeah. And he's like if I arrest you, you're going to get kicked out of the program. He's like do you realize how stupid it is? Like you've. You've already achieved more at this point than most people dream of making it through. How weak and all I gotta do is arrest you right now. And you're getting kicked out of the program. You're giving up your whole dream of being a seal because you want to climb over the fence and ride your bmx bike at 12 o'clock at night. Like, like dude, what are you doing? And I'm like. He's like, I don't know. I just wanted to have fun and we work during the day, so this was the only time I could go, and it's closed at night. And he's like I'm going to let you off this time. He's like but, dude, you got to make better decisions.

Speaker 2: 13:43

You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 13:43

Like you're throwing your dream away and thankfully he let me off and he didn't arrest me.

Speaker 2: 13:49

But it was.

Speaker 1: 13:50

I was like 18 or 19. You know what I mean and um, but that was like a that. For me that was a big wake up call. It was like, dude, I almost just lost it. You know everything that I had told everyone I was going to do and you know the whole thing was being an underdog and all that stuff, and I almost just gave up or gave it away for making a stupid decision, for something that was just like, uh, short-term gratification.

Speaker 2: 14:19

You know what I mean well I, when I hear that story, I hear a couple things like number one, you weren't being malicious. Number two, you had enough character to face the issue head on instead of trying to run, and you knew that like in deep down you weren't trying to fucking fuck nothing up and you were trying to have fun. And so I think you thought maybe this guy is going to be a human, yeah, and understand that.

Speaker 2: 14:44

Like, yeah, dude, I did just go through hell week, and so I think you thought maybe this guy is gonna be a human, yeah, and understand that. Like, yeah, dude, I did just go through hell week and maybe I just want to have some fucking fun. Dude, I'm like, yeah, I got it. Maybe I could have fucked everything up and shit, but like I need this right now, bro, that's why I'm here, you know.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Like maybe you know yeah, thankfully, thankfully, he wasn't like a douchebag about it yeah, and I think that he probably had respect for you, just by the way that you were just like yeah, you got, I got it and you're right and it probably was a great wake-up call, but at the same time, like that's why you're a navy seal, because you're that guy, that's like gonna do things based on what you want to do needs to be done, versus fear or telling you can't and shit, it's kind of like.

Speaker 2: 15:30

It's kind of like kind of fits yeah yeah, I mean, I don't expect you guys to like follow all the rules, you know. Yeah, I mean it's like if you pick a superhero team, you get a bunch of guys that are like incredibly powerful and you just try to get them to have the same goal. Yeah, you don't really control them, you just kind of get them focused on the same goal, you know, because I mean, how do you control somebody? That is a fucking savage. How do you do that? It's hard, you know, and if you need to go, if I could do something a little crazier.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Once I got a friend of mine that's navy seal. His name is tom and he at like 58 or nine. He might be, you know, he's 60 now, but he at 58 or nine. I hit him up every once in a while. He's like hauling ass on an electric skateboard, going 35 miles an hour down the street, no helmet, helmet and shit. You know he's like I'm 60. I'm like you could do, I'm not doing. I'm not doing that, like I'm not doing that. And he's like yeah, I know the wife tells me I shouldn't be doing this shit and then, right after that.

Speaker 2: 16:35

He's like ski instructor all summer. He just checks out, turns his phone off. You don't hear from.

Speaker 3: 16:49

He's like if I don't do something makes my butthole pucker every once in a while.

Speaker 2: 16:50

I just don't feel alive you know and I get it. I'm guessing you're like that. I think a lot of you guys are like that I get it. You know, it's great to have you guys on our team because I think I heard travis pastrani. You know travis pastrani, know who he is yeah, okay he said it best. He said that um the thrill he gets from what he does with his acrobatics, with his jumping um dirt bikes and whatever he says. It's that point of control and no control. Oh.

Speaker 2: 17:24

Oh yeah, it is exciting. Yeah, he's like I like to ride right on that and like so there's a type of person that's an adrenaline junkie, that's like where. That's where it is, it's right there. And so you know, I say it myself all the time to people I'm like, well it's, if it's not a little scary.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Yeah, that's true. That's funny you mention him. He actually jumped into the. We were out on the range one day. We were actually building the mid-range shooting platform that big deck that looks over the lake for the precision rifle stuff. That's pretty cool. We were building that and we saw Travis Pastrata and all those guys come skydiving into the ranch and apparently they were doing some Xbox commercial. Yeah, they were jumping out and they were imitating playing xbox in the air, you know.

Speaker 2: 18:09

So I guess they could do it with a parachute this time.

Speaker 1: 18:11

Yeah, yeah but I guess they couldn't. They couldn't skydive and jump out with like a tv or whatever it was that they were doing over the town, right. So they came and do it over the middle of the woods and then they landed into the uh to the neighbors, you know private runway over there. So it was pretty funny.

Speaker 2: 18:29

He was like oh no, the nitro circus is in town you know what I grew up with that shit and like I love it, like that's the one that is probably. That is definitely the one sport that I am only a fan of. Like, usually I just want to do everything.

Speaker 2: 18:45

I'm honestly not a big football, basketball, baseball fan Like I'm a. I'm a competition fan. You know, when I see a good game I like to watch it. You know I can be like a player fan, you know more than like a team, but like some people, just die hard fans.

Speaker 2: 19:00

you know, they're like that. My team needs me. You know, I'm like, I'm just not that person, you know. But, motherfucker, I will watch these guys jump their dirt bikes and do all this crazy shit and, like, tell everyone about it later. I mean, you see that. You see, I mean because it's your balls have to cling the tricks are getting so crazy.

Speaker 2: 19:19

Yeah, dude, I've seen a guy do a quadruple back flip on a fucking mountain bike just the other day. I'm like you're flipping so hard that, like he's just helping he lands it because there's no like time in the land. It's just flip four times and hope you make it or you eat shit.

Speaker 2: 19:35

There's no yeah you know, because I, when, when travis was strong, did the the double backflip in competition, he went over it and told everyone this was the point where I feel like I had it, but if I didn't have it I was gonna bail here. All right, when you're doing like four flips, there's no time to bail. Yeah. So these guys, now I've taken what he started and built and it just went so far, you know, and it's like it's crazy.

Speaker 1: 20:01

I remember um racing BMX bikes as a kid and then you know, some dudes on the street bikes did like a tail whip and it was like what was that? Oh my God, like he did a tail whip. That's where you like kick there. You're on the bike and you kick the frame out.

Speaker 2: 20:19

Oh, I know what it is it goes around the front and comes back. Oh, all the way around. All the goes around the front and comes back. Oh, all the way around, yeah, all the way around. Oh, that's like old school, like 80s shit.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Yeah, that's the 80s, yeah so now it was like you needed like the biggest jump in the world to do a tail whip or like some giant half pipe. And now dudes are like just jumping off a curb, just doing a bunny hop and throwing a tail whip, and you know they're doing back flips with tail whips and all sorts of crazy stuff.

Speaker 2: 20:46

Yeah, no, handed like Superman seat grabs and shit you know like back flip.

Speaker 1: 20:52

It's crazy how, as much as like we were talking about how the younger generation seems to be taking a step back in some senses with the, the phones and the, the psychology and all this kind of stuff, I feel like extreme sports just keep getting you know more and more, gnarly though it's an interesting concept, the extreme sports haven't skipped a fucking beat no, they just keep getting more and more savage. Meanwhile, the other areas kind of keep getting like way weaker and weaker people, oh yeah, people are crying.

Speaker 1: 21:25

They need a safe space yeah, yeah, but not extreme sports.

Speaker 1: 21:29

Extreme sports is full throttle yeah, the fucking extreme sports are just like fuck you, sissy so, coming back, um, so you were playing all sorts of sports you're playing basketball and football, yeah, and all that and then moved on to your to start the bodybuilding career. Yeah, how did you? How did you feel, um, psychologically, you know, or even still working in the, the bodybuilding, uh, arena? I know I've spoke to other people who've become like obsessive over, you know, their body, or or, and it's really like played into their self-esteem, you know, as far as, um, you know, just being super hard on themselves, or or you get what I'm saying like, like I don't want to say eating disorders, because you're on like we'll talk about diet in a minute but just walk us through the psychology side of living in the bodybuilding world.

Speaker 2: 22:32

You're on the right track in my opinion. So this is what I've learned just inside. Looking out Every person almost I'll say almost every person that is great in fitness, in bodybuilding in particular, it is due to deep-rooted insecurity. That's typically what would make you starve yourself, what would make you eat plain chicken every day, what would make you train until you pass out or throw up every day Like what? What could possibly motivate you to want to do this to yourself most of the time, without the idea of making money? Most of the time, it's just to look a certain way and be a certain thing. You know, and so I know. For me personally, I hated being weak when I was a kid and I hated people treating me like I was weak. It's like, like you know, I had a conversation with my mom. I was like 12 years old and she was telling somebody that I just met and she said you know, you know Aaron, you know Aaron had leukemia. So you know, it's been really tough.

Speaker 2: 23:52

And then right away the person would look and this would happen every time. The person would look and go, oh I'm really sorry to hear that, and like, touch me with the soft hand. And I told my mom. I said, mom, you know I love you and all I said, but you got to quit doing that and she was like well, I said I'm standing right here and I said now they're fucking treating me weird. I'm like this is me, Like I'm, this is my life. I know that you were there for me and you went through it and it was really hard for you because I'm your baby. You worried about me the whole time, but like I can't leave it behind if you don't let me, so like you can no longer talk about this with anyone. Okay, I'm like I'm over it, like I don't ever want to hear about it again and so like in my own mind, I was on a mission to become so big and strong that nobody would ever think that I was weak and there was something wrong with me that's a powerful statement.

Speaker 1: 24:51

I mean, you can only imagine how many there's a. There's a lot of people. Not that it wouldn't happen with a father in the home right, but but you can imagine it's probably more likely to happen in a single family home. You know where you're being raised by just a mom, because you don't have that offset. Or maybe you have a dad who's also pandering to that same thing as well.

Speaker 2: 25:15

Well, here was the thing. So my dad was like he just dismissed me.

Speaker 1: 25:25

He just dismissed me Like he like put the attention on your older brother. Yeah, Because he was capable.

Speaker 2: 25:33

And he's like yeah, I just like didn't exist. He didn't show up for my birthdays. I didn't hear from him on my birthdays. I was born a day after him.

Speaker 1: 25:39

Were your parents divorced.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Yeah, but we lived in the same little town, you know.

Speaker 1: 25:44

Okay.

Speaker 2: 25:44

His birthday was September 11th, mine's the 12th, you know, gotcha, he has then mine, you know, and, like I would, I would rarely hear from when I was a kid like lucky if I heard from you know, and then like a week later or two, he'd, you know, come around, or a couple days later you come around and say, you know, you know, sorry, happy birthday, or whatever, and I just always felt like he can give a you know, and I think there was a lot of them that was like he didn't know what to do with with. Yeah, you know, and so he just kind of focused on my older brother and that was his fuel. That just made everything worse Because, you know, I just wanted validation from him all the time. So it was like I'm going to be so big and so fucking bad, like I'll show you, you know, I'm going to outdo my brother, I'm going to outdo you, I'm going to outdo everybody.

Speaker 2: 26:30

It was just like in my head. I was just like you know, my own monster, you know, was like just you know, on me. I remember I went through a growth spurt from the ninth grade to my sophomore year and the funny thing is my parents have split up like three times. They divorced three times each other, three times. Okay, so like it was pretty crazy in the household, like the house was crazy, it's like we're getting the band back together.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Yeah, oh man, it's splitting, like you know.

Speaker 2: 26:59

One more tour you know, when I was younger, I always thought, you know, like you know, it was just my dad being an asshole. But then, as I got a little bit older, I realized that, you know, my mom was kind of like drama, so it was like fire and gasoline, you know, yeah, you know, it is what it was, you know. And so, um, they broke up, they, they split. The second, no, the third time, the third time they finally split. My mom went to colorado and she did that. Um, I had stayed with some friends. She was like you're coming with me, I know, I'm staying here, like you don't know what you're doing. Woman, like I think I know, you think you have a plan. Like you don't have a plan, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:37

I was like 12, I'm gonna stay here where there's people that I know I go to school Called one of my friends guys do you like? Sure, yeah, I'll catch up with you in the summer, or something. Mom, like good luck, you know, like I'm not going, you know. And then, uh, my dad, you know, says all right, son, you know, summer comes, all right, now school's over, we're gonna go see your mother. So, like, my dad's trying to get back in, you know. And so he's like we're gonna go see mom, and he takes me up there. That that was a fucking disaster, holy shit, he got thrown in jail, so now he's going to go home. So then I said, all right, dad, let me grab my stuff, I'll come with you. Nope, nope, son, you're staying here. I'm like what? He's like? Yeah, I got no place for you back home, you're going to have to stay here with your mother. I'm like no, no, no, no, no, I was just coming up here to visit. That wasn't the plan, dad.

Speaker 2: 28:42

So then I was like stuck up there in this new town and I was, um, you said it's colorado, yeah, montrose, colorado. I was like 13 turning 14 and no one knew me and, like the school I was going to was eighth and ninth grade only and I was as old as an eighth grader. But I was eighth and ninth grade only. And I was as old as an eighth grader but I was in the ninth grade because I started early, so, like. So the ninth graders were like ruling the eighth and ninth grade school, you know. So I'm going to this new place. I don't know anybody. I'm there three weeks.

Speaker 2: 29:05

I got in a fight with like three skaters rolling down the street. One of them called me like a fucking pussy or something. I said fuck you. And he came back and said say it again Next thing. You know, we're fighting. I'm basically getting beat up, but I'm just like trying to handle one of them. And then I had a buddy with me. I thought I was going to help out. He took off and then I'm sitting here on the ground and I saw his buddies trying to hit me with their skateboards Dude and at dude, and at that moment I was defeated, like I thought he was on top of me and so I just held on to him so I could block my head with his body. You know, like 13 dude, and he was like you know me 14 you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 29:40

whatever his friends were probably same age, 13, 14, you know and uh, but I'm like didn't really know how to fight anyone other than my brother, you know. So I mean, but some guy came out of nowhere, jumped out of his fucking car and grabbed that kid and fucking threw him off me, dude, like a rag doll dude, and he was like you, bunch of fucking pussies. He was like you're going to hit him with a fucking skateboard. He's like there's three of you. He was like you want to fight him? Why don't you just fucking square off with him, you know? And so I get up, you know, and the dude's staring at me. I was like scared, shitless. But I remember thinking he flanches, let me hit this motherfucker. He didn't do nothing, you know. And then like fucking back down. They said whatever. I stared at everybody and I grabbed my bike and I left. I told my friend you're a fucking pussy. I'm like we're not friends anymore, you know, but then I went to school it was like one of the greatest.

Speaker 2: 30:30

I already got that one right out the way, him and his two buddies. So then, like I didn't get fucked with at school at all, you know. So like I had to like really grow in this period of my life, like I was in this town, I fucking didn't like it. I didn't really make any friends. It was like tough. You know, I was going through a growth spurt. You know, I grew five and a half inches that year. Like I just fucking grown. That was the year I was growing, you know. And so I played football, played on the football team. I didn't make the basketball team, didn't make the basketball team.

Speaker 1: 30:56

How tall are you at this point?

Speaker 2: 30:58

I was fucking. I was 5'9" in the quarter, or 5'9" when I started school that year and then my sophomore year I was 6'2 1⁄2" oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 31:07

So I was losing my coordination you know daily. You know what I mean. And I didn't make the basketball team, but I did well in football and scored a couple points. I played like a half-pack position and then I came up with a fucking plan, rich, I was like all right, I fucking hate it here. And I know my dad loves football and so, like I said, pop man, I'm up here playing football. Man, like Mom doesn't even care, doesn't even care, she can go to the games If she does. She's just like talking to everybody, she's not paying attention. You know, like all I'm going to do is like be good at football and shit, and like you know, like you're not going to see me play up here, you're just trying to talk your dad's love language Totally did.

Speaker 2: 31:50

It was working him and he was like, well, you know what, son, he was like? Oh, you know what, now that I think of it, you need to be here. You need to be here in Minko playing football. That's what you need to do. This is the place for you. You know, I'm going to get it figured out. I'm sleeping in the laundry room, that's fine. It's fine, I didn't care, you know.

Speaker 2: 32:18

And then, uh, after about two or three months of that, it didn't work out and we both were at my grandparents' house. So I'm like, all, right, now I'm here, you know what I mean? Like it's a little more permanent. But then, as football rolled around, man, I was uncoordinated rich. So like fuck, I was like I ran a 5'4", 40, super slow, 165 pounds he's 2 1⁄2. Still had big feet and big ears and shit, you know. And he was like real hard on me, told me I was a disgrace to the family and shit that I should like not even get the suit up, shouldn't get a jersey, you shouldn't be on the field. Like just fucking tore into me, you know.

Speaker 2: 32:52

And I remember being like I'm like I was so mad, but at the same time he was right, I wasn't any good you know I was like I knew I wasn't good, you know, but I also was like so I made up my mind in that moment to like go as hard as I could my junior year and see how it went, and if it went well, then. If it went well, then if it went well, I'll do it. And if football, as everybody said it was, I'll be like okay, cool, this is great. If it's not, I wasn't wasting my time. My senior year I was going to say fuck him, I'm going to be a bodybuilder, I'm going to be jacked, I'm going to give a shit. I did nothing but squats. I put 100 pounds on my squat in one summer and I got my 40 time down to a five flat. Still not fast, but whatever, I wasn't slow.

Speaker 3: 33:38

Now I'm just kind of like in the but you're big. Now I was kind of in the well not really I was 175 pounds.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Now I'm 6'4" skinny.

Speaker 1: 33:45

Oh, okay, so you're just tall and lanky, just tall, and lanky but whatever, was a little stronger.

Speaker 2: 33:50

And I remember going as hard as I could to try to make it happen. And Coach started me as kill man on the kickoff team. He was like I don't know what got into you from last year to this year, he's like, but you're the most intense player I have and your skills aren't necessarily there, but I can use you on the kickoff team, he's like, so we're going to put you right here next to the kicker and you're just going to go kill the man with the ball. You know I'm like you got it. So that was like my first starting position right away and so like it's kind of history from there.

Speaker 2: 34:19

Next thing, you know, I started starting this defensive end and stuff, you know, and it went well. And then I kicked ass and my senior year was even better and, you know, made it all state and it literally was awesome, went good, but it was all from like a mindset of I'm gonna go hard as I can. You know it doesn't work, but I'm over it. So like at the time I was like man, my dad was such a fucking dick. But like as I've gotten older, I'm like this is exactly what I needed to hear yeah, it might have been painful, but fuck it, I was a little fucking bitch.

Speaker 2: 34:51

I needed to fucking buck up, you know, and fucking go way harder. Like you can go harder, you know what I mean. And like I didn't even, I wouldn't even. This was the best thing to happen to me, and so, you know, you'll kind of see a lot of that with, like my social media. I'm like a very stern, very um aggressive, masculine, like kind of dad type, delivering information, because some people just need to be told like don't be a fucking sissy, you know, fucking do it.

Speaker 1: 35:16

I think the right people hear that message and it's a call to action. And if the people who hear those messages take offense to it, they're going to get defeated by something else, like they're not going to be able to take on until they get to maturity to be able to accept the fact of I am where I am and I need to make a change and I need to do something about it. It's they they take offense to those messages. But people who are fighters in nature, right, or like warrior spirited, they're gonna hear that and they're going to be like all right.

Speaker 1: 35:53

That's one of the things that like when I go to church I have a hard time resonating with some of these newer pastors where they're kind of like cry talking and they're like whining almost throughout the sermon and it's like dude, tell me what I need to do, tell me what God says, call me out on my shit. And when I walk out of here, I want to walk away with something that I can change tomorrow in my life to better my relationship, to better my walk. Whatever it is Like I want you to call me out. Stop, you know sissy footing around what it is you're trying to say. You know, just say it and um and like. For me personally, like the, the way you deliver those videos, I'm like okay like that's just.

Speaker 1: 36:54

I just just say how it is and let me work with it.

Speaker 2: 36:57

You know what I mean I think that's how men talk to each other yeah I think that's what it is yeah, and and that's it.

Speaker 1: 37:04

It's interesting to hear your part of the story because so many times, or the way society is shifting, they think that we need to, um, make everything soft in in the delivery and, you know, not try to hurt anyone's feelings and be people pleasers on the stuff, but what guys truly need is they need direction and they need a challenge.

Speaker 1: 37:30

You know what I mean and one of the things that I think is missing from a lot of young men currently is that like that, like rite of passage and maybe you found that in football, maybe you found that in bodybuilding, maybe it has nothing to do with sports in general, but I think there's a, there's a missing piece to the puzzle for boys becoming men.

Speaker 1: 37:53

When you have people go to high school, then they move on to college, then college extends into master's degrees and this and that getting out of the university, but you might not find a job in your field and you're supposed to be getting like married or being able to provide for a woman or something. But how can you do that when you have all this debt and the prices of everything you're going up. You know what I mean. So you don't feel like a man, you don't feel like you're in a position where you're leading anything, where you have authority over anything. You know I mean because you're in debt you're leading anything or you have authority over anything. You know what I mean Because you're in debt, you're living at home or you can barely get by. You know, and you've never had that like rite of passage. But older cultures had a rite of passage in some form, to where it's like yesterday you were a boy, today you're a man, you still got a lot of shit to learn, but you deserve to be sitting at the table.

Speaker 2: 38:54

Okay, yeah, I agree, you're a man. You still got a lot of shit to learn, but you deserve to be sitting at the table. Okay, yeah, I agree. I think that with that, to be a man, at some point a stronger man has to come to you and say you're not good enough yeah you're not.

Speaker 2: 39:10

You're a little bitch I'll fucking crush you Like. And that should bother that little that young man, because he should want to be that stronger older man. It should be in there, and if it's not, then that that person needs to be harder on you and harder on you, and harder on you, and harder on you until it comes out. Yeah, Because the rite of passage is actually earning it and becoming a man. Because a lot of times I say okay, you were a boy yesterday, you're a man today. Well, now, this is what is required of you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:41

That's how it works. So you don't get to act like a kid anymore. Now you act like all of us, you know, and so I think the best way to prepare a kid is by being hard on them. I think the best way to prepare a kid is by being hard on them. So my dad told me I'm not good enough. Over and over and over again. Eventually it fucking worked, and I was like I'll show you, motherfucker.

Speaker 2: 40:02

You know, I remember being like I thought about him all the time. I thought about my older brother all the time. I'm just like no, like this is me, like I'm going to fucking go so hard. You're going to know I'm on the field, I don't give a shit if you're faster, I don't care if you're stronger, I don't give a shit. Like I can go harder than you. I can go harder, every down than you. I can go harder than you. I can never stop. You know, and it's like I. I felt like I'll make up for talent with work. That was it. I'll just go harder. So then, when it was baseball season, and shit, I'm lifting weights Hard, hard, I'm wanting to pass out and shit, because I knew the harder I was on myself, the better I was going to be.

Speaker 2: 40:47

I was preparing and it's like what does it take to get somebody there? What I do with my videos, you know you get a little dose of it. You know, cause I'm coming here and saying like what the fuck man? You know I finished all the time so they don't be a sissy, you know, and I fucking throw a little wink cause it's my way of being. Like you know you need to hear this. Uh, you know, and you know I mean I can be an asshole, I can. You know what I mean, like I seen me do it. You know what I mean, but like do I want to be? No, am I asshole all the time? No, you know. But like, I can be an asshole, you know. And I just think that sometimes, when I'm talking about things that seem pretty simple, or at least the perspective I have I try to keep it simple, you know, and it's a man's perspective, you know. And if you don't like it, that's fine. You know I'm not saying anything, but I'm blown away by how many people respond to what I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 41:44

I mean all the time. Like I was at the beach Saturday and I was out in the water and I was having a beer, getting some sun, and these two guys come out and say, hey, man, they're like you're Aaron Reed, right, I said sure am, and they're like I don't want to bother you, but is there a way to get a photo? Man, I'm like okay, sure, you know, that's not uncommon, you know. But then right after that, he's like dude, I just love the way you like put out your information, dude, from the bull and shit. He's like I dig it, dude. He's like I think it's rad, you know, and I'm like blowing away. Somebody wants to tell me that.

Speaker 2: 42:18

And so I think, yeah, we're trying to fucking bubble wrap everything nowadays and make safe spaces for all the little fucking sissies out there in the world. But there's men out there craving, all right, yes, some fucking masculinity where somebody's gonna come in and say, no, you're not good enough, you're fucking stupid, that's fucking dumb. Like that's bullshit, like that is not. Nobody likes that. Like duh, you know. Like there needs to be a man doing that because everybody's afraid now. So I basically have a platform by just saying what's on my mind. That's really why I have a platform. How fucked up is that? I mean, you had me in the 90s. Everybody had a fucking opinion like me, yeah. But you come now I'm the only one to say everybody's worried about getting canceled and shit. I mean I've literally had my agent reach out to me before and she was like how are you not canceled? She was like Aaron, you know, and I'm like I don't know.

Speaker 1: 43:19

I guess sometimes people like the villain yeah, it's crazy, dude, I almost lost one of my business biggest sponsors because I held a faith-based men's leadership and because of the faith aspect, but more so because it was only for men, I was not being inclusive. I was, I was not being inclusive and I just said I said to them I saved the sponsorship. But I simply said to them okay, you guys mainly sponsor me for for shooting drills, for for firearms content, right, and it's like if I run a precision rifle class, does that mean I'm anti-pistol? No, we're just gonna focus on precision rifle because that is the target focus of what it is we're trying to teach. I'm like if I'm teaching a men's leadership, that doesn't mean I'm anti-woman.

Speaker 2: 44:15

That's crazy.

Speaker 1: 44:16

You had to explain this.

Speaker 1: 44:17

All I'm saying is we're doing leadership for fathers, for husbands, for men who want to lead right, and our target focus for this stuff and we're giving men an opportunity to come together to share and grow and challenge themselves in an environment that's just men, so they can be an open, an open forum kind of thing where you can talk about different stuff that maybe you'd feel uncomfortable if there's, like your buddy's wife sitting right there next to you.

Speaker 1: 44:46

You know what I mean. So for us to have. But we've done. We've done all women's training before or hosted events that were women's. You know, events where all the students are women and we have women coaches or whatever. And I'm just facilitate and might come kind of like what just happened with that that, uh, the kicker for the Kansas city chiefs or whatever you know he goes and talks at a, at a college graduation speech, saying that like you know, he hopes the, the ladies who just graduated, one day, you know, find someone special and have, you know, a marriage and and raise a happy family or whatever Anyone freaked out on them.

Speaker 1: 45:38

You know what I mean why. Because he's promoting traditional marriages and, you know, saying that women's the number. One thing a woman can do is, you know, is be a good mother and have a have a family, and now that everyone's trying to cancel them.

Speaker 2: 45:55

But what do they think is better than that?

Speaker 1: 45:58

Yeah, I, it's a great question. I don't know, you know what I mean, but the funny thing with that was is, like you know, there's there's 50 other athletes who've, you know, beat the crap out of women in the past year and all been arrested, but no one wants to talk about that.

Speaker 1: 46:13

Beat the crap out of women in the past year and they've all been arrested, but no one wants to talk about that. This dude says hey, you know a traditional marriage and being a mother although a college degree is great, you know, that thing that's made my wife and I the most happy is being parents, and everyone's like attacking him for that, for his faith or whatever but, but again, it's just.

Speaker 1: 46:27

It's just interesting. Because of stuff like that, I think many people have been squashed. A lot of companies are so afraid of the cancel culture that they buy into all this bullshit, and I think a lot of people are just starving for the truth. My wife's from Bulgaria.

Speaker 2: 46:51

Okay, right, okay. So that's a very masculine Eastern Europe part. For the truth, my wife's from Bulgaria. Okay, right, okay. That's a very masculine Eastern Europe part of the world.

Speaker 1: 46:58

Yeah, they're old school.

Speaker 2: 46:59

Yeah, hungary's over there, right, yep, yep.

Speaker 1: 47:02

And one of the things with that was, you know, she was asking me, why is everyone so obsessed with Donald Trump? And one of the things I was explaining to her I was like it's not even that they really like Donald Trump per se, but he was saying what the majority of America was thinking and everyone else was too afraid to say it because there were a bunch of politics or a bunch of politicians and everything has to be like politically correct and he just walks out and says what everyone's thinking and, because he's not, one owns him. You know what I mean. And then everyone was like it resonated with people, you know, and I think the way you're delivering that information, I think it's something similar where there there is, people are just thirsty for that kind of information and, you know, I think hopefully we start making a shift culturally, that everyone starts walking away, uh, and creating space from all of this.

Speaker 1: 47:59

you know, politically correct, super sensitive, you know, uh, and really we're prioritizing the wrong shit you know what I mean um, I know like my wife follows some of these channels and she's just like looking at what people are saying in the comments or whatever, and people are like shaming others for trying to eat healthy. You know what I mean. Like, if you want to eat healthy, like I don't, I don't understand, like it just doesn't make sense to me, but there's some kind of like shame or ridicule, for we'll think about it.

Speaker 2: 48:32

Dude, like if you're a fat pile of shit you don't want to be told you're a fat pile of shit. You know, not today. I mean even when I was. You know my whole life as a bodybuilder, you know I've been doing. I've been competing since I was 19. I stopped competing when I was 37. So I put almost 20 years in competitions.

Speaker 2: 48:56

You, I bring my meals with me and stuff, and people are like, oh, look at you, you know, why don't you just eat a piece of pizza and shit? And I'm like, well, let me see your abs. You know, oh, you don't, you don't have any. Oh, come on, I have a keg. You know, you got six, I got a keg. I'm like I don't want a keg, I want a six pack. Gotta work for this. Nobody's working for that. Yeah, you know it's. My whole life was. I've been used to that. So now we're on the internet. But the thing you got to watch out for on the internet is there's actually people will say it's a conspiracy theory, but there's actually bots that are programmed to attack people and say things. So their job is to create these comments, because people are such fucking lemmings that you know they might not have an opinion, but if they see in the comments, I think that's I think you're ridiculous yeah, I think you're ridiculous too.

Speaker 2: 49:42

so then they, you know. And then, at the same time, if there's somebody that's going, yeah, man, it's great, you know, tighten up, man, you know, be fit for life, you know quality, not quantity, you know. And then if, then if the bot comes in and is like, oh, you're such a male, chauvinistic and da-da-da-da-da, it's racism, and they start throwing all this crazy shit, they go so curveball, they bring all this shit in. Then somebody else says, yeah, it is. And then there's real people joining with the bullshit. So I'm actually looking into getting my own bots to fight their bots, so that it's a little bot war on the internet Because people think it's not a real thing. It's a real thing If you think artificial intelligence is only being used for chat, gpt and how to fucking write e-books and get you ideas and shit like that.

Speaker 2: 50:24

No, no, it's being used full force in social media and there's people they used to have rooms of people that would do this. There'd be rooms of people that get paid to fucking like, either make praise somebody, because, like, um, social recognition is a great way for sales and marketing. You know, like you know, when people say they love my product or something. I will take that, you know, a little caption, and then I'll put it on my story, you know, and where they saying like oh man, I love this, uh, inflate, it makes me feel so jacked and so pumped. You know it's crazy, you know, da, da, da, da. So I'll put that and I'll put a picture of my inflate and I'll put a link, you know, because people are such lemmings that they need to hear someone else say that it's good before they just come to their own conclusions. So, you know, there's like psychology involved, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:11

If you take it real far you got like psyops. You know what I mean. But if you just use a little psychology, you know that's how sales work, yeah, so you know. When you see all that and you think how could somebody be saying that it could have started from the fucking bot?

Speaker 2: 51:26

That is true, that is true and so, and you're thinking that everyone's thinking that way, and so now there's all this conflict going on, and right now there's people in the government that want us to divide. Real bad. We've been the number one gun. You know what was it? When did we make the atom bomb? When did we have the first nuclear weapon? What year was that?

Speaker 1: 51:52

Well, the first time we used it was in the end of World War II, right.

Speaker 2: 51:55

Okay.

Speaker 1: 51:55

Against Japan. Okay, all right, so that was in the 40s.

Speaker 2: 52:00

And let's think about this for a second. All right, we were the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. We could have took over the whole world.

Speaker 2: 52:08

We could have made every motherfucker out there carry a red, white and blue fucking flag, you know, and say the Pledge of Allegiance, or we were going to nuke their entire fucking culture. And we could have fucking did it, and we didn't. And we didn't. We chose the high road. We said let's help rebuild the world, you know. And then, it wasn't long after that, united Nations got together and the whole fucking thing. But we took a position of power instead of fucking dominating everyone, which we might as well should have, because now we're sitting in a spot where we're being destroyed from the inside out, from exterior forces, because people are greedy and money hungry.

Speaker 1: 52:49

Not saying that didn't happen. Then we're being dismantled by the United Nations. I'm not saying that didn't happen. Then we're being dismantled by the United Nations and we funded and built up the United Nations. You know what I mean. Like, america pays more money to the UN than any other country Probably all the other countries combined, yeah, and they're purposely trying to through the stuff that they've. It's on their website.

Speaker 2: 53:19

Well, you know, I don't like to get you know political anymore, because I learned after 2020 that you can have 100 people and you can take that 100 people and you can say you know there could be a problem. And then somebody can rise up and say like this is the problem, the only way it's going to get fixed is if we do something, and then you'll get 60%, maybe 70%. They'll say yeah you're right, you know.

Speaker 2: 53:50

And then that person's like, all right, we're going to fucking do this and you know, we're going to fucking storm the beach and get the fucking beach back. Everybody's like, yeah, let's go, and out of those 60 people there might be 15 that actually do. It might be less than that. So on a larger scale, you know, there's less people.

Speaker 2: 54:10

So the point of trying to commit to anyone, if anything, yeah, politically on the internet is like I'm not doing it like yeah, there's no point like I'll sit here and think to myself like that's not good, I see this and I see that, and like I'll be keeping one ear to the ground on this one.

Speaker 2: 54:28

You know. But I don't talk to anybody about it anymore because you know I learned so much through covid that, like there's a lot of people, man, that anytime you introduce fear into an equation, most people don't know how to handle fear. You know, and you know, when you don't know how to handle fear, it's like a cancer and it makes people do the craziest shit ever. It will make them completely turn their back on their values, their friends, their family, all kinds of stuff, just because fear, and they'll justify those fears in all kinds of ways. So for me, I don't get political anymore at all with people because I'm like if you're scared enough, you ain't going to do shit. You're saying I seen it, I seen it, I did, I did a lot and eventually just decided to move away from the bullshit and move to fucking Florida, the weather, the storm, you know, people told me, like a lot of things, that your career is going to be over and all these things.

Speaker 2: 55:31

And da, da, da, da. And I disagreed then for one simple reason if you are always trying to add value to every circle you step into, you're valuable. If you're just trying to do something to gain, people see through that shit yep but if you genuinely think, man, I like it here and I want to do this, let me just add value. Let me just add value and see if I fit in here adding value, the right people will notice and you can go really far with that attitude, you know.

Speaker 1: 56:07

But definitely doesn't get you very far trying to tell everybody what to think and shit, because soon as fear is introduced, yeah, I think that's a great point and I think, from a standpoint to like looking at parenting, you know, and stuff like that now, obviously, you met my daughter. She's eight months old, so we've got a ways to go before this is really an issue. But it's one of those things where the the way the world is and the way all the things are shifting and everything's going, really the only thing you can hope is that you can live by an example that people would want to replicate or emulate and uh, and you can educate someone enough that they're able to discern and make their own decisions, because you can't make decisions for other people. People are going to do what they're going to do enough education on the way up that they're in a mental or in their head space to where they can look at stuff and see through the bullshit and be able to identify what truth actually is and, with that, be able to make their own decisions and then run with those decisions, hopefully in a good way.

Speaker 1: 57:38

But I think that is really a really good point about coming into a circle and bringing value. And if you're building up other people and you're adding value, then you always have value right, and there is a lot of that, which is the opposite. It's funny because I'm working on a book right now and one of the things I was actually writing about today is how, when people want to quit something or when people have a negative attitude, they usually cling to other people to try to justify their shortcomings. And one of the things you'd see when we're going through the SEAL training is it'd be very rare that anyone quit by themselves. Normally dudes would quit in like a group and they would sit there and they'd be like dude.

Speaker 1: 58:29

You know this, this instructor, he's such a douchebag, you know this, this is so uncalled for, you know? Don't you agree? You know what I mean. And then he'd be like, yeah man, like dude, like they're doing personal, like they would start, you know, instead of just going you know what this isn't for me and just walking out, they'd start like talking to other people and then trying to get those people to agree with them to justify the fact that they want to quit. And you know what, if I can get two or three people to agree with me, well, now we're all in agreement that this is stupid and we'll just quit together, you know what? And it will feel like a reason, not an excuse. Exactly, we don't need this shit. You know what I mean? Like, this is, this is fucking shit. You know what I mean. This is fucking stupid. You know what I mean. They actually had a log that, if you got in trouble, the log had inscribed in it misery loves company, oh, wow. So they know this?

Speaker 1: 59:27

Yeah, it was so true, it was one of those things where it's like dude, if there's people who have a bad attitude, if someone has a negative attitude, create space, or you got to overpower their negativity with the right mindset, because otherwise it's like a cancer that's going to spread through your boat crew or your team, through your, your boat crew or your team, and that one person will literally take out an entire boat crew or a team of seven dudes. You know, just by that, just poisoning the. Well, you know what I mean. And um, that's a real thing.

Speaker 1: 1:00:07

Yeah, so you can either be the dude who's adding value or the person who's not adding value, but normally what happens is the person who's not adding value like they don't. They don't settle for just them being turds. They want everyone else to be turds with them. You know what I mean, and that probably goes straight into the thing of what you're talking about before, where you're talking about like the abs or this or that. You know what I mean. Like those guys will want, uh, like if you're there eating your meal and that dude is having his pizza, he's gonna have want to have other people eat pizza with him, so that you look like the oddball, not him.

Speaker 1: 1:00:50

You know what I mean and that's exactly right and he gets that, uh, he gets that reassurance through other people participating in bad activity, even though it's wrong, right? That's. The other thing that's going on like culturally right now is just because everyone's doing something the wrong way doesn't make it right, yeah yeah, like, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:11

Like you know, I guess, I always say if you got a group of people, who's the most valuable person in any group? And the answer is the person adding the most valuable or most value. So if that's the most valuable person, who's the least valuable person in the group? And if I ask people this a lot of times, they'll say the person adding the least amount of value. I say no, that person's still adding value, it's the person that's taking away, and that's what you're talking about. And so cut those motherfuckers yeah this ain't, this ain't for you.

Speaker 2: 1:01:53

figure something else out where you shine. Because this ain't it? Yep, because your mind is eaten alive with your excuses that you now have justified into reasons. Yep.

Speaker 2: 1:02:02

You've convinced yourself. These are good reasons. And my buddy, judah, that I'm partnering with with Monarch doing so much he says you know he's like reasons and excuses are the same thing. He's like one, just excuses are the same thing he was like one just sounds nicer. Yeah, and it's true. Yeah. People say why did you do this? And they give you a reason. Well, the reason is I think you can replace that word with the excuse is yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:02:25

Any excuse will do and you will build an entire empire and storyline around that one thing and instead of focusing on all the reasons why you should, you'll pick every single reason why you shouldn't and it takes the both. Take the same amount of mental energy.

Speaker 2: 1:02:44

Yeah, that's the thing you know what I mean Like I, when I was, when I was 25, I told you, you know, I had to quit being Henri. You know, I learned that Henri is an American word that.

Speaker 2: 1:02:54

Europeans don't understand. Like I'd say, oh, when I was younger I was Henri, and they'd say what does that mean? I'm like okay. I guess the best way to describe Henri would be like bold, aggressive, hard on shit. You know, kind of likes to ruckus a little bit, you know kind of like just more fired up, ornery, like hard on shit. People like, oh, okay, like so. It's funny, it's an american word, like you know. But uh, you know, I was very ornery. I was about 25 and then, when I was 25, I moved. I moved to las vegas and I'd actually been in enough trouble where I decided I didn't want to be in trouble anymore and I just made a deal with God Get me out of this, I'll leave and we'll come back.

Speaker 2: 1:03:41

Yeah, and I landed in Las Vegas, I had $232 in my pocket and I had a blanket and a pillow in my car and I was like I'm going to shift gears from bodybuilding into wrestling and I'm going to shift gears from bodybuilding into wrestling and I'm going to get a contract to wrestle for the WWE and I'm not leaving here until I get that. So I started reading books and I bought suits and I wore a suit every day at some point. What kind of books were you reading? I read the first book I read. I think I read the Art of War from Sun Tzu Okay. And then I read Rich Dad, poor Dad. I read the Art of War from Sun Tzu Okay, and then I read Rich Dad, poor Dad.

Speaker 2: 1:04:16

I read Nutrient Timing. I read as a man Thinketh. I read a book on Lincoln. I read a book on Washington. I read a couple books on Einstein. I was just reading books on great people, great people that accomplished a whole lot, because I realized something. So I come from a really small town in Oklahoma, like 1 people, great people that accomplished a whole lot because I realized something. So I come from a really small town in oklahoma, like 1400 people, you know, um, graduating class of 52 and we were like huge class, like the classes in front of us. I think had 17 class in front of us oh wow, I mean, so we were like yeah, we had one cafeteria for like the elementary school, the middle school and high school we all shared.

Speaker 2: 1:04:54

So the cool thing about that is like when you're a fucking rock star and football and stuff, like the young kids love you. So you get kind of used to this rock star feeling like coming through. You know, when you had a class and you walk into the cafeteria and the sixth graders are in there and they were at Friday Night Lights, you know, watching you, you know kick ass and smear the other team all over the field and hear your name over the intercom, they said, oh, that's Aaron. You know, hey, they'd be shouting and shit. So at a young age I was like, hey, what's up, you know what's up. So, even though it's like this, really, you know, small school, this community, I think it uh was the greatest place I could ever grow up.

Speaker 2: 1:05:33

Personally, you know, I would want to change any of that. But, um, you know, I knew that there was two things that were going to change my life. There were one the people you meet. Number two, the books you read. Those are the two things where you actually download information into your brain and change your programming because someone can walk into your life and be there one day and hit you with something that you needed to hear and get your mindset on something and change you forever. You know, um, but I knew from that I never liked reading. When I was younger I never liked it. But then when I was 25, I worked a lot of front doors at, you know, different clubs in Las Vegas and sometimes when it was slow, or you know it was a slow season or whatnot I'd have my book out there and I'd be reading. You know.

Speaker 1: 1:06:19

That freaked people out, didn't it?

Speaker 2: 1:06:20

Yeah, because I'm like this huge guy in a fucking suit, I'm just fucking reading, you know, like what are you doing? I'm like I'm just educating myself. And they're like, for what Are you going to? That you go into school and I'm like no, I'm just trying to be smarter. You know, it's not like I was just, and the funny thing is I learned later on apparently your brain, in the male brain, doesn't fully develop till 25 really okay, so make the frontal lobe, yeah, finally, like does the thing?

Speaker 2: 1:06:46

and people say to me all the time like you know, actually, when I, you know actually when I you know Judah, he's 25 and he asked me he was like when do you feel like you were became the person you are? I said 25. That's why I could clearly say clear as day, because I had made it a point, like I was writing things down, like I'm real big on writing my goals down and vision boards and all kinds of stuff. You know I like to put it, put my stuff out there and I like to look at it all the time, you know, and I put like you know I'm a professional businessman. You know I'm a successful entrepreneur. You know I just wrote all these things down. You know I make this much money, you know, and just all these different things.

Speaker 1: 1:07:40

I got a out of the military and I didn't know what I was going to do next and I got teamed up with some business guys. It was a network marketing company and I didn't know what I was going to do. So I jumped in the gym and I was personal training, just till I figured out what I was going to do outside of the Navy. And these guys were like, hey, dude, you know, we recommend you read some of these books. And I'm like, yeah, I don't have time for that shit, you know. And they're like all right.

Speaker 1: 1:08:07

you know you can stay broke and you know, kind of like the same way you were talking about like challenging people, they challenged me in the same way, just basically being like dude, you can be right or you can be effective. You know what I mean. And I did the same thing, dude, at 25 years old At 25.

Speaker 1: 1:08:28

I dove in, I turned the radio off, I stopped listening to music for nearly seven years and I just the radio off, I stopped listening to music for nearly seven years and I just read and read and then, if I was in the car, I was listening to audio books or more so, like speeches and lectures from businessmen and um, and just resetting my brain and it would wig people out because you know, I'm this like now. I didn't have the same persona because I'm not a big dude, right, but people would be like, oh, dude, that's that navy seal guy, you know, and, and you know, I'm not a big guy, I was like 170 pounds you know, but the they respected the title and and whatnot.

Speaker 1: 1:09:06

But then they see me reading books and stuff and the other trainers would be like, dude, what are you reading? And I'm like, oh, I'm reading. This time I was reading like, let's say, it's like how to Win Friends and Influence People.

Speaker 2: 1:09:18

Oh, bro, that's another book. I've read that book twice, yeah, by Andrew Carnegie or Dale Carnegie. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:09:23

That's a great book. Or like Think and Grow Rich I read that book too by Napoleon Hill.

Speaker 2: 1:09:29

Exactly. I also read Outwitting the Devil.

Speaker 1: 1:09:31

Outwitting the Devil is awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:09:32

I didn't finish it, but I got the gist of it.

Speaker 1: 1:09:35

You got the gist of it.

Speaker 2: 1:09:36

Yeah, yeah. But so like it's so funny when you talk to people who read the same books as you.

Speaker 1: 1:09:40

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:09:41

It's a funny thing.

Speaker 1: 1:09:43

And the dudes at the gym are like why are you reading that? And I'm like because if you ever want to be the business owner, you need to understand this. Once your clients figure out how to do their pushups or how to use the machines, if they don't need you anymore, right then what has them coming back? If you can only communicate to someone who is your similar personality or someone you click with, if you can't figure out how to communicate with each one of these unique personalities that are walking through the door of the gym, you're basically taking your client pool and making it to the super narrow field. You guys are thinking sports physiology when you're not thinking about the bigger picture of how do you become an effective communicator of teaching sports physiology. You know what I mean. And how do you go past being the dude working at the gym versus the guy owning the gym or or owning the business? You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:10:46

Whatever that is and it was it was amazing to to see the the difference in a lot of the people who are college educated, who were the other trainers who had these. You know big degrees. You know like college degrees in sports, medicine and all this stuff. Right, there was no problem with them reading books for school. But to read, you know, like self-help or business development or leadership books, it was like, oh dude, you're reading that stuff and it's like yeah, man. But I mean that that was for me also like one of the pivotal shifts in my personal development of going from just going out of what we learned in school versus things that you can apply in life.

Speaker 2: 1:11:44

I mean honestly. I think that is the path of a great man, a real man I always looked up to, like the Greek philosophers. Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:11:55

These were guys that were in great shape and they would sit there and philosophize. You know, they come up with things like uh, they came up with a pragmatic philosophy, they came up with dualism. You know, they came up with all these things. They were just thinking, but they're also in top shape. Yeah, in top shape, yeah, so they're able to think clearly because they're eating good, they're training hard and they can feel their bodies and they were like very centered. You know, um.

Speaker 2: 1:12:19

I think that um einstein said it is rare to see a man's curiosity outlast his formal education, curiosity outlast his formal education. Think about that. That's what you just said. All these people, they've been schooled up but they stopped. And school's right for some people but it's not right for everybody. It's actually only right for this many people. Truth be told, I never planned on going to college. I ended up gone for a couple years. The first time I was, I went. This is how I went. First time I went it was in mesa state, grad junction, colorado. My mom I'm on shows I had moved out of the house. When I was 17, a friend of mine went into the navy and he ended up being a diver. But when he went to the navy. There's three of us that were hanging out it was me, mark and Toby and like we were just three aggressive dudes, you know, and like we always had fun, you know we had like we had the best toys, the hottest girls, the best parties, all the cool shit.

Speaker 2: 1:13:28

You know what I mean. And like when he left me, toby were like man, she's moved to denver. We're like fuck this, you know. So we moved to denver, so I go to denver. Next thing, you know, there's five of us living in a two-bedroom house. I'm trying to figure it out. I got a job, waiting tables, you know, at a red lobster and stuff. Make it happen, got a little taste of freedom. Things kind of fell apart eventually. And then I came back, I told my mom, I said I just need to hang at the house for a couple months, get on my feet and then you know, I'm out. You know I was like 18 and she's like yeah, that's fine, so I'm back at the house.

Speaker 2: 1:14:00

She was a she was a deputy sheriff at the jail working at the jail and you know I like to smoke weed, you know so, like not all the time, but like sometimes nowadays, like to eat it more than anything, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:14:11

But oh man, I was like outside, I was at the house and I was just like fucking burning one dude, and like her husband at the time was like freaking out. She comes outside, she's yelling at me, she kicks me out of the house. She said you gotta go. So I'm like shit. So I called up a friend of mine that was in grand junction, colorado, and I said hey, bro, I need a place to stay. I got nowhere to go. You know, I got a job, I got money, whatever. But you know he's like all right, man, I got a room with your name on it, bro, but we're all going to college up here, dude. So you got to go to college. If you come, you know I'm like sign me up. That was, that was how I went, that's how I got into college, started playing rugby a little bit and stuff. Oh, no way, that's funny. Yeah. And then, uh, right away I was like wait a minute, wait a minute.

Speaker 2: 1:15:00

Bill clinton said any kid wanted to go to school can. And I'm like what does that mean? They're like well, you'll qualify for loans. I'm like they'll give me money. I'm like I'll qualify to get money like you got to pay it back. I'm like I got it but like get money Like you got to pay it back. I'm like I got it but like I can get the money. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm like, okay, cool. So like I did that, I was there for the first semester.

Speaker 2: 1:15:21

It went great, it was crushing it, it was going good. And then I got my eyes set on winning the Teen Colorado Bodybuilding Championship. So then I took as much money as I could and I totally like blew off the school and I was like I just want to go win this competition. And that's what I did. I won, you know, and everything was kind of set after that and it went good and I started bodybuilding and I got, you know, certified to be a personal trainer, started making like 40 bucks an hour and stuff not bad consider, most of these guys aren't making that with their fucking little degrees and shit.

Speaker 2: 1:15:51

You know what?

Speaker 2: 1:15:52

I mean. So I was crushing it. And then I went back to college after operating heavy machinery one winter in Colorado, I was like this is shit, I don't want to be doing this. Maybe if I go back to school I'll get a business degree, maybe I'll get in medical sales or something like that. I was like that could probably be something I'd do. I'd started a clothing line at the time called alpha male industries and so I was selling t-shirts and shit and like I'd been in a lot of trouble for stuff. And this is before I moved to vegas, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:16:23

But I um started, uh, doing that and I had a teacher, an economics teacher, hold me after class and say, hey, big guy. He's like why are you here? I'm like I'm just trying to learn. You know economics and stuff. He's like you're trying to balance a t-chart, you try to figure that out. I'm like, yeah, I mean that and everything else I don't know. And he was like what do you think you're gonna learn in here? And I was like fucking business, bro. That's why I'm here. He's like that shirt what is that? What? That's my clothing brand, you know's like. I know it is. I see everybody wearing those shirts all over campus.

Speaker 2: 1:16:54

I'm like yeah, he's like I can't do that. I can't even teach you how to do that. And I was like okay. And he's like so why are you here? And I'm like dude. He was like I think you're wasting your time. He was like the you are. You know, I'm looking at you. You got a lot of stuff going. People respond to you. He's like what you want to get a job, work for somebody, what you want to do? I mean not really. I mean he's like you're gonna work for yourself. You're already doing it. He's like just keep doing that. He was like this is just advice. If you can do that, do that. Otherwise I would, but I t I can't.

Speaker 2: 1:17:27

So I teach and I was like oh, so I fucking just stopped and quit right then. And there, like I'd just been going home, that's a great teacher, yeah, he was cool and you know, he was right, you know, and so, yeah, so that was like I decided that was the end of that. And the funny thing, like the irony to all of this, is after I wrestled and things, I tore my acl. And when I tore my acl, they did some tests on me and they're like oh, you have a strain of hepatitis that you know, we think you got it from when your blood transfusion is, when you're a kid with leukemia, and that's how it was. And they're like we can't insure you, like if you can get that to go away, like it's not going to change your life, it's not a contagious thing, it's not, but we can't assure you because we can't assure you, so we can't, we can't pull you. So that was like that, was it so?

Speaker 1: 1:18:19

then is that, is that what stopped your wrestling career?

Speaker 2: 1:18:21

yeah, and so and so that point I was like well, I found out that delivery generates itself and like, if you eat really good, sometimes people reverse hepatitis, and so my goal was to just eat, perfect, you know. So I didn't cheat on my diet for like 15 months, like I was just going in and trying to do everything right, and that's when I came up with the principles for my book, because I realized if I ate things at certain times, you know, I was able to just use food and get shredded and I was still strong and I won. I won a big show in the NPC. I did three competitions back to back three weeks in a row. Nobody in the NPC competes three weeks in a row.

Speaker 2: 1:18:54

Yeah that's wild, because you've got to carb up and carb down. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18:57

And there's usually a lot of drugs involved and stuff that I learned about later and figured out how to do, but at the time I was just the natural guy doing it and the first one I won. I won my division, won the overall, the whole fucking thing. Dude, I was a natural guy and I won mr gainesville. Mr gainesville, it's funny because you talk about gains, you know, I'm saying like, I was mr gainesville in 2010. And then the next weekend I did the florida state and, as a super heavyweight, I won my division and I beat one of tim gardner's guys, who's a judge, and I beat one of his guys and so when I, when I won that my division, it qualified me for nationals. So a week later I was in houston doing junior usas and, like dude, I got ninth bro, uh, you know, um, as a super heavyweight and I was trying to get top five was the goal. I knew I wasn't gonna win, you know, but I pull a ninth place. Yeah, I looked good, you know. They said they wanted more of me, you know. Know, that was the kind of thing. So after that, I was trying to sell my book and I was struggling selling my book and I just, I would always personal train somebody on the side. I was always staying in the gym. I was always working out Well.

Speaker 2: 1:20:02

Eventually I met these guys. I was trying to get a job. I was like I need a job like where I make more money, because, like, I want to sell the buck but I need to have secure money. I didn't know. I was kind of in this limbo spot.

Speaker 2: 1:20:13

So I reached out to a buddy that used to wrestle that I knew and I said hey, man, I'm looking for a job. Do you know anyone? He's like dude, you can have my job. I said what? I'm like, what are you doing? He was like I'm working in medical sales. I'm like what, my own territory, and if you take my job, you can take over my territory here and then you're in. I'm like well, don't you have to have like a degree and stuff? He's like yeah, man, but I think if you meet the owner, you know you wrote a book, right. I was like, yeah, so I meet the guy, you know he reads the book, he meets me, it goes good. He was like you know what to a doctor, I'm confident, you know. He was like you got a big personality and stuff. You're a good looking kid, I want to give you a shot. So, like the thing, I thought I was fucking going to college for that I would potentially do later that I needed a fucking degree for.

Speaker 1: 1:21:04

You wound up doing it anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:21:06

With the fucking book that I wrote.

Speaker 1: 1:21:08

That's so funny. So tell me about the book a little bit funny. So tell me, tell me about the book a little bit. This is, this is really interesting. Um, I didn't realize that you wrote the book healing yourself from that it's. I did a kettlebell series which was after my recovery from some back injuries and rehabbing myself, utilizing kettlebells in a specific way, and it's always cool when you make a product like that, to where it's like. You are the testimonial of. You know and you do the trial and error on yourself and figure out you know what works and what doesn't. But you understand why there's been so many diets and I know that a lot of people get really frustrated, including me.

Speaker 1: 1:21:48

You know where I remember you know, one of the things that's annoying with the fitness world and the health and wellness industry in general is they keep changing their mind every it's. It's like to sell a new product. They change their mind every few years. So in fitness it's like oh, you got to do muscle confusion. Then it's like low intensity, you know high, high repetitions. And then or, and then it's no, no, you got to do hits workouts. Then it's like you know, no, dude, static lifting is the way. Then it's you know you need to do yoga or whatever. You know what I mean like. And then in the health world they're like eggs are bad no eggs are good oh yeah, butter is bad.

Speaker 1: 1:22:31

No, butter is good. Canola oil is the best thing in the world.

Speaker 2: 1:22:33

Canola oil is poisoning you you know, saturated fats are bad, saturated fats are good.

Speaker 1: 1:22:39

Yeah and I remember, like cholesterol is bad, cholesterol is good. Dude, I I gave the and I know a lot of people swear about by this, but again it's like bits and pieces of information. You know around like 2015, 2016, everyone was like pushing me on this keto diet and it was a company that wanted me to work with them. They were launching and they they saw my following and whatnot and they and they wanted to sponsor me as like an athlete and to work with me a little bit, and they were doing like a adaptogenic ketones and basically like supplementing ketones. So you know, while you're trying to get into ketosis or if you were in ketosis, you would take this and it basically would be like fuel and I'm like, yeah, I'm like I'll try it.

Speaker 1: 1:23:30

I'm'm a skinny dude, though you don't need that. How does this work? I'll give it a shot. But, man, I gave this thing a shot for a little over two years and my health went. It just tanked, my energy tanked and it was the first time. So I've done all sorts of things. Obviously, going through the SEAL training is super hard and you need to be physically fit.

Speaker 2: 1:23:56

I was a.

Speaker 1: 1:23:56

Thai boxer and I rode a bicycle across country and did triathlons and all sorts of stuff. When I was on the ketogenic diet I did the New York City triathlon and when I got to the run I had to walk like the last three miles and I never like got to the run. I had to walk like the last three miles and I never like got to that point. Dude, I almost couldn't walk to the finish line like I almost collapsed, um, and not like setting a record-breaking time like it was collapsed, like it was. I just had nothing left.

Speaker 1: 1:24:26

But I remember everyone was just like dude, you just gotta, you're not getting enough fats and oils, like and I remember I'm down there in the kitchen taking like spoonfuls of, uh, like canola oil and sunflower oil and safflower, all these seed oils, and now they're like seed oils are bad, and like apparently I'm down in the kitchen poisoning myself, you know um. But there's all these diets and and the diets come and go and there's lots of controversy and I know there's people listening who are going to say, like dude, I did the ketogenic diet and I lost fucking 50 pounds on it, but when you're skinny already, maybe that's not the best thing. So it's very interesting for me personally not just for everyone else listening of how did you get your diet to work for you, and I know you speak a lot about insulin levels and glucose and the not only that but the timing of it, and I don't want you to give away all the intricacies of your book.

Speaker 2: 1:25:27

I'll give it all away, but I think, but I think it's really important for for people to understand generally.

Speaker 2: 1:25:33

Okay, first of all, the key okay, not everyone can run on fats the same. There's some people that do great on fats. You see this a lot with competitors. Sometimes competitors, you know they do great with carbs and not so good with fats, you know. So not everyone does great. The other thing is this like I don't care who you are unless you're like a typical, like endomorph type where you look, you can gain weight from salads Like there's. I had a roommate when I wrestled. He was like similar height as me, great shape. This motherfucker had to eat like salad and like chicken to come down to what I was eating 5,500 calories to come up to and I was shredded and so like. But I had to eat those calories to maintain my size and he's barely eaten nothing to like keep his size down. Like that dude's gained 22 pounds in a weekend before eating. Oh, wow, you know, and I'm like I can't do that Like.

Speaker 2: 1:26:34

I that dude's gained 22 pounds in a weekend before eating. Oh wow, you know, and I'm like I can't do that Like I was just you know, and he this was like.

Speaker 2: 1:26:38

So I'm just bringing this up to be like. Everybody handles carbs and fats the same. But what I have learned is I've had friends of mine that are real strict. They did keto and everything. Do it. But if you ever feel like your performance is failing, it ain't right for you. You know, some people can do it and it's fine, but then a lot of those people that are doing never perform or never need to perform. So the guy that lost 50 pounds, that's an office guy.

Speaker 2: 1:27:03

He's not doing a fucking triathlon like you did yeah he's not going to the gym and he's trying to lose 600 pounds for reps like me, right? That's not. You know you have to. Your body builds up ATP, right? And ATP it burns up quickly when you contract your muscles and the best way to get more of it quickly is by breaking a sugar molecule. So when you have glycogen stored in your muscle, if you're working chest, you know that glycogen is going to be used up first because it's most closely available to where it needs to go. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:27:38

If you're on keto and you don't have glycogen stores built up and you're slimmer and smaller and sleeker and there's not this glycogen, well, what does your body reach for when it doesn't have it? Ketones Everybody doesn't fucking love running on ketones. It'll do it if it has to, but when it comes to performance, like you need energy, carbs are great for energy right now, yeah. And if you don't, if you don't need energy right now, then you probably don't need carbs just in the office all day. So I take what I.

Speaker 2: 1:28:07

When I wrote my book, you know, first of all, obviously, I came up with my principles with in order to heal myself, okay, I and and for the record, I didn't heal myself, okay, but I came up with a pretty killer way to eat and my health has been great ever since. You know, um, but it didn't change anything. You know, I thought that it was going to. I believed that it was going to for a long time, but it didn't. Um, but I thought of it this way. I thought, number one I just need to have some rules to follow. So, number one eat whole foods. I think we can all agree with that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:28:36

All right. Number two. I say don't mix your sugars and fats. You know, people are like hmm, I've never really heard this before. This plays into nutrient timing, you know, and grouping your foods together. And and then the last one is you know, nutrient timing, time your nutrients. So I basically give you your food choices, how to group them together and when to eat them. People are like.

Speaker 2: 1:29:01

Well what does that matter? Don't you just have to hit your macros and shit? I'm like, yeah, there's people out there that can just hit their macros and be fine, but like we're all different. Like if I'm really lean, hitting my macros isn't going to get me the workout that I want. I need to have carbs before I work out and if I've done everything right, I'm going to have my carbs after. When I wrote my book okay, there was several firsts that I came up with right. Number one I was the only guy telling people to eat carbs around their workout. That was the first one. There's nobody else out there doing it, to my knowledge, because everyone I talked to that was winning. You know, bodybuilding shows was just like starving themselves and then running a bunch of gear.

Speaker 2: 1:29:39

You know, it was just like you know, and for me, I'm like I was natural, you know, and I was like, okay, I'm trying to fucking compete. Natural, I'm gonna beat these guys. Natural. I think that if I manipulate, you know, my, my insulin spike, it's gonna give me enough shuttling of the nutrients, it's going to give me enough glycogen stored and I'm going to get it to overflow a little bit by some things I'm going to do. I think I can get a little bit, a little bit of an edge, and so I can keep my muscle because as a big guy and being, you know, so tall and lanky, if I don't have good glycogen stores, I just look like a fucking fitness guy. You know it's already hard for me to be exaggerated, you know, at 310 pounds. You know what I mean. Yeah, like it is, it's much harder for me than a dude that's like 5, 8, 220 pounds. He can look just as jacked as me and I'm 100 pounds heavier than him, you know. And so I have to have full muscle belly. So, like keto is never going to be that. Keto is never going to allow me to do that. I can get shredded as fuck I can, can do it, but I'm not going to be able to perform. I'm not going to have extra glycogen stores, I'm not going to grow ample amounts of muscle. It's just like it's not working for me.

Speaker 2: 1:30:40

So you know, I said have your carbs during your workout. No one was listening to me. Nobody would listen to me like oh, da, da da, like no, I'm listening and I'm like no, this is the best way because you eat to perform, eat to recover. The rest of the time I'm going to do fat, so I'm going to keep my calories high as fuck, but I need those carbs so I can get a good workout and I can recover. You know, because, like what I wasn't doing for years and this is what I learned from reading that book Nut and I figured out that if you spike your insulin post-workout, you know that means with sugar, simple sugar what happens is whatever cortisol was released from your workout gets stopped and you instantly start storing and you'll store whatever's available when you spike your insulin. So I would have sugar and protein, no fat, because I want to put glycogen back into my muscle. You know people will say, oh, you shouldn't do protein shakes because you know they actually spike your insulin and shit. Well, I actually want that to happen post-workout.

Speaker 2: 1:31:39

I want that to happen. You know, and you know. I know for a long time I knew bodybuilders would take insulin and do different things like that. I've experimented with myself and so I understand that if you take insulin post-workout and you hammer carbohydrates, you're going to be bigger than you ever been in your life. Everyone thinks that steroids is it, growth hormone is it.

Speaker 2: 1:32:02

Insulin is a game changer and it's not safe in the wrong hands. So it's not something you ever tell somebody. But I took that little piece of knowledge and I thought well, how can I do this with foods and then potentially supplements to get a fraction of that? If I can get a little bit of an edge with with doing foods and supplements, then it'd be safe and I can do this all the time. You know. Beyond on to something.

Speaker 2: 1:32:28

Well, that became a big part of of how I that's what put the super in the supernatural lifestyle was the way I do my sugars post-workout, and so what I figured out is, if you do take natural insulin memetics, which are compounds that mimic insulin, so I call it insulin. Medics, cinnamon, alpha poke acid, chromium, vandal, sulfate, bitter melon, biotin all these things have an effect on dropping blood sugar and controlling how much insulin your body releases of that. They all work different ways. I stacked them all together. I did this for years and then I would take dextrose sugar post-workout deal my diet, like I was supposed to. I would have simple dextrose sugar post -workout and then I'm taking these compounds with it and I'm able to sometimes metabolize 70, 80 grams of sugar. Oh, wow, yeah, that's a lot and I'm not getting fat.

Speaker 1: 1:33:17

But it's going. Are you doing that through a supplement? Are you doing that through food?

Speaker 2: 1:33:21

You can get dextrose sugar for a number of different things. I have a product now called Postros which is dextrose sugar in there, and then I have now my insulin medic. So instead of I used to tell people, buy these different supplements and you can go buy them, and then you got to take them all on, pill them out and separate them, it's like, or you can just buy my insulin medic, you know, and now I've learned that berberine stacks really well with it too, and so this is something that they work, they tend to work really well together. That they work. They tend to work really well together.

Speaker 2: 1:33:48

And so I take these post-workout and I'm I'm metabolizing, you know, when I want to be really big and things like that, I can metabolize sometimes as much as 75 grams of sugar, 80 grams of sugar for a period of time, which is if I'm nailing my diet, which is crazy, because with insulin usually you do 10 grams of carbohydrate per per international unit. So if guys take, you know, 10 IUs post-workout, you're doing like 80 to 110 grams of sugar, depending on what you're trying to do. So now I'm kind of hitting these numbers without insulin that are very similar to insulin, you know. Interesting, and so this is something I've come up with, and like people that are keto like, oh, you can't do that, or whatever. Well, here's the thing. So if I have my carbs around my workout, like, I know that carbs release insulin, so why don't I just make it as powerful as possible so I get as much out of it as possible?

Speaker 2: 1:34:31

and people like, yeah, but if you're spiking insulin all the time, you're gonna be a diabetic. I'm like, shut the fuck up. I'm doing it one time in my day and my body wants the sugar because I just burned it out, treating my fucking balls off like try not being a fat pile of shit and get on my program and try it. You're going to love that and you're going to have heightened insulin sensitivity for the rest of your fucking day because you you worked with your body. So many people think that like oh.

Speaker 2: 1:35:00

I had this workout in, you know, and I worked hard and stuff. The last thing I want to do is, like, give my body any carbs. I want burn fat okay, you can do that, but your body's gonna make do. And people are like, what do you mean? I'm like your body will make you. This machine is fucking amazing, dude. You can feed a dog shit, dude, and it'll survive, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:35:17

And so like that would be like, if I'm thirsty and I go to the water fountain, I'm not gonna grab a coffee straw when I'm really thirsty and drink my water through a coffee straw. If you do that, you're going to try and try and try and eventually be like I got enough. Even though you didn't. You're going to be like that's enough. You're going to pound water if you're thirsty. Right, that's a good point. So when it comes to sugar, you don't want to go with something that has a ton of fiber in it. You know people argue this. It was so funny Like I was doing a TikTok for a while and you know all these little fucking nerds on the internet and some dorky fucking doctor was trying to talk shit and say like, oh, the meta-analysis and you know, and the data says this fucking pounds, I'm literally like three times your size, like I.

Speaker 2: 1:36:08

I don't, I can't even hear what you're saying. Like you know what I mean. Like you're gonna sit here and say that what I'm telling you doesn't work. But I'm sitting here saying, like is there a study that says water is wet? Is it out there can you google that?

Speaker 2: 1:36:23

can we find out? Is there a study that says water is wet? Can we google that? Because sometimes things are what they are.

Speaker 2: 1:36:28

Yeah, you can say whatever the fuck you want and you can make any little test and all this shit we learned from covid. You can do a whole lot with testing to really fuck things up. You can really fuck things up, you know, and so like there's this whole thing and people are going back and forth. They were attacking me and that's where I learned about the bots, because he had a whole bunch of bots that he was like trying to hit me with and stuff. And you know, I just, yeah, I let it happen because it actually sends me to the algorithm. So the more comments and where they go to the algorithm. So even if you hate me, you know there's going to be a lot of people out there that agree with me. So I get more, I get more following, more money, you know, more purchases, more everything. So fast forward.

Speaker 2: 1:37:03

Alex Huberman, you know, you know with, like, you know, biohacking labs or whatever comes out, and he's like, yeah, there's actually a lot of evidence that supports that spiking. You know that. Actually, you know, consuming a simple sugar. Post-workout has a lot of benefit in doing this within a time frame is actually incredibly beneficial. And it's like oh, we're back on, you know, we're back on, I'm back on, I'm back on, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:37:25

And so then I reach back out to those guys and I'm like hey, I tagged you in this video and I made a video of you telling you you're a fucking idiot. I'm like why don't you go ahead and tell me I'm wrong? Tell Alex Huberman he's wrong too. While you're at it, crickets, crickets. Now everybody disappears. This is the problem with the fitness industry. I don't claim to know everything you know, but the way that I do things work and I have a track record of getting to work for other people you know that certain things just make sense, like if your car runs out of gas, you put more gas in your car, you don't add oil.

Speaker 1: 1:38:00

Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 2: 1:38:01

It needs oil. People are like, oh, you don't like fats. I'm like I fucking love fats, but that's not what my body's fucking running on. When I'm in there, fucking trained, insane, trying to fucking like black out and fucking have my head pop off my shoulders, I'm squeezing so hard like fat ain't getting it done. Sugar does you know. And people say, oh, you don't even need carbs, you can live off of fats. Yeah, you're right, but your body needs carbs. Your brain needs it so fucking bad that it will turn fucking fats into glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. So you have fucking blood sugar. You have to have sugar in your blood. So is this a uh, efficient process? If you're fucking training, train hard? No, it's not. What's the answer? God gave us fruits for a fucking reason, and these are where your simple sugars come in, you know, yeah no, I've.

Speaker 1: 1:38:48

I've heard so many people say like don't eat any fruits except for berries. Cut out all the sugars, cut out the carbs. All you need is protein, fats. You know this and that. Who's this for?

Speaker 2: 1:39:03

who's that? What person? Who's that? What?

Speaker 1: 1:39:05

everyone yeah, everyone. And that's like do I sprinters?

Speaker 2: 1:39:09

Olympic sprinters, don't ever eat a fucking banana guy, it's gonna make you fat.

Speaker 1: 1:39:13

I was like I don't. I was like I don't know, man. I mean, I rode a bicycle across country and every morning I'd wake up my perfect breakfast was french toast, scrambled eggs and bacon, and I felt great the days I ate that, you know. But um, I don't know. I'll give this a try. Maybe maybe I've just been plowing through and maybe I'm the anomaly, let me try.

Speaker 1: 1:39:41

And I just had a horrible experience with it and I've gone back to basically just eating, trying to eat as much whole foods as possible, eating a well-rounded diet. But one of the things that, when I saw your posts and I've been watching what you've been saying, one of the things that I've never really focused on other than what are the ingredients was the timing of it right, and grouping certain foods at certain times is just like, yeah, man, I'm just eating good whole foods, I'm just going to do that. But what you're saying is that if I take the good whole foods but do it strategically and break those up into certain categories and pair them and eat them at certain times, it'll maximize everything that I'm already doing, because I'm giving the body what it needs at the appropriate time okay, here's the here.

Speaker 2: 1:40:37

You go on to it. Okay. So now what we're doing is if you give your body everything it needs when it needs it, now, instead of forcing your body to be in a certain type of shape with a caloric deficit, now you're allowing your body to get into shape because you give it everything it needs.

Speaker 2: 1:40:57

Like your body's not working against you it's not trying to fuck you up, it's not trying to be a fat pile of shit. If you feed it right and you train hard to grow muscle, you know you feed it right and you go sprinting and shit, you're going to have the muscle to sprint and you're not going to carry a lot of fat because your body's not going to want the fat while you're sprinting, you know. So it's like okay. So now here's this train of thought. So now with my book, the whole thing was I was a natural guy competing in the NPC early on and I was like the only way I'm going to compete with these guys is if I figure out how to do these foods in a better sequence, because what else am I fucking working with and what else am I working with? What do I got? I got nothing. You just got food. Creatine, yeah, and there's the best time to take creatine, you know. You know people say before, people say after your workout, but there's the best fucking time. You're not taking it before bed, thinking I'm going to get a great workout tomorrow, like nutrient timing is a fucking thing and when people act like it's not, I'm like dude, that's like 20th century. We're in the 21st fucking century. I can't wait until AI comes out and proves all the shit I'm saying right, and they're going to be like, yeah, is have this at this time, this time, at this time and this time, and then you know what's going to happen. It's going to elevate your metabolism, you're going to be able to eat more calories and you're going to be bigger, stronger and leaner, with more energy, and you're going to sleep better and everything, and you're going to eat more than you ever ate because you're eating everything.

Speaker 2: 1:42:33

When you say it, I mean, doesn't it make sense? Like I don't feel like I'm talking about something that's like, you know, never eat this type of grain again, never eat this again, never eat that. I don't do that. I'm like I don't do that. I'm like whole foods all right, like whole foods. Like your vegetables are not killing you people. Like vegetables are not fucking killing you, dude, like I'm not a fucking rabbit, I'm not trying to eat a ton of fucking vegetables, but sometimes I like some vegetables in the morning for like some fiber and some you know some different things. I'm doing Like I like a shake in the morning that has like, in the morning I always start my day off the same egg whites, oatmeal, I try to get a carrot in there, I try to get celery in there, I almost always have spinach and then I have a mixture of fruits.

Speaker 2: 1:43:07

I do fucking strawberries, blueberries, bananas, sometimes orange, you know, and I know how much sugar I can have from the fruits, so I just rotate those. Sometimes raspberries, you know, some nice papaya from my fucking garden, you know Like, this is what I do every day and then I use that fuel to go work out and I crush it in the gym. So I eat that and go straight to the gym. Now, the days that I don't go to the gym I have eggs.

Speaker 2: 1:43:34

You know if I, you know if you want I'm not big on pork, you know but you want bacon, you have your eggs and bacon or whatever. But usually what I'll do is I'll wake up and I'll just do my treadmill and then I'll eat eggs because I don't need carbs, because I'm not performing. What am I doing? I'm just sitting at the house meal prepping. Gonna be in the pool and be hanging out and shit. Like I know that, like I eat for like a purpose, so like I don't have a workout, so I don't eat my carbs or I'm a workout. Now, depending how lean I am will depend if I'm gonna eat carbs that day or not. This is how I am. That's how I stay lean. All the time I stay here around I'm. I'm never having weird cravings I don't have a hard time sleeping.

Speaker 2: 1:44:08

I don't run out of fucking energy. Dude, strongest I've ever been in my life, last monday deadlifted 685 pounds how old are you?

Speaker 2: 1:44:17

42. The week before I hit a pr I did 675 pounds and I also hit like three other fucking prs and like so you know what I'm saying? Yeah, and I'm lean as fuck. I'm 311 pound, 0.8 pounds. You know, I took I dida, I did some posing the other day my shirt off so people see what I look like. I'm like this is just me every fucking day. And guess what? I drink beers the fucking weekend before I drink beers fucking this last weekend, fucking day. And guess what? I drink beers the fucking weekend before I drink beers fucking this last weekend.

Speaker 2: 1:44:50

Do you think you should do that? No, I don't, but like, I believe that like there's a quality of life. You know, every once in a while I smoke a little fucking weed. Sometimes I eat it. You know I should probably do it more than I do. I honestly believe I should have it in me more than I do because, like I know, sometimes I can be aggressive and a little bit of an asshole and and that is like a fucking thing. That like helps and people say, oh, yeah, but if you always go to something like that, I mean she can just learn how to cope with it. I'm like, okay, I wake up in the morning, I'm tired, I can not have coffee and I can get around and I can force myself to do this. You know it's fine we do these other things. I like coffee, I'm going to drink the fucking coffee.

Speaker 2: 1:45:27

It makes my morning go easier. I like it. I like black coffee in the morning and people say, oh well, if you do this it's going to fucking rob your body of adenine and later on you're going to crash and you're not going to be able to fucking produce the right type of energy. I never crash from coffee. You know what makes you crash from coffee sugar that you're putting in that motherfucker. You know. You go down to fucking starbucks and you get yourself a super fruit loop trans. You know fantastic flipping whipped cream, fucking chocolate mousse, fucking coffee dude. You just got yourself like 900 calories and it's all sugar. Like you don't want coffee, you want sugar.

Speaker 1: 1:46:04

Yeah, I was gonna say that yeah, don't, even not craving the coffee. You're craving the coffee. You're craving the sugar.

Speaker 2: 1:46:08

No, and like people that drink Starbucks all the time anyway are like I can't even deal with those people Like I, just they're not my people. Like I just wake up in the morning, I got coffee in the machine, make it as strong as I want, drink it black. I usually have the coffee and I'm sitting there Usually pound water. One day I pound water, make the coffee, you know, and then when the coffee comes up, I have my coffee and I think I just want to sit here. It's so nice. I'm going to relax and I drink the coffee. I'm tired. I can't see shit as well. I'm like, because I'm not five minutes into it. I'm like, and then about five minutes into it, I'm like you know I better get going, because I got to call this guy today and then I got to follow up with this and I got to check my numbers with work and you know inventory. Fuck, what time is it? You got to get your ass to the gym, fuck. Here we go Every day. A million things are going. You know what I mean, and that coffee is my thing. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 1:47:09

Yeah, so I was never like I could wake up in the morning if I need to. A lot of you military guys are fucking awesome about getting up in the morning and shit. For me it was always a struggle. I could do it For years I got up at 5 am and went to the gym and did my thing or whatever. But yeah, so I like it. I like it. So like when people you know, when I talk about, like you know, a little marijuana in my life, I'm like it's not hurting, hurting me. There's a lot of people should not do it. Yeah, a lot of people. Kids shouldn't do it. Obviously, you know it should be mature enough to you know. But like it's like almost like for the right person, like it doesn't just helps my attitude like for days. For days it's almost like I'm here and then it just brings me to a better spot for days interesting.

Speaker 1: 1:47:53

So if you're looking at the timing of your food, have you found that there is a a difference in the timing of the day that you work out?

Speaker 2: 1:48:03

what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 1:48:04

so, like you say, okay, you get up in the morning. Now you've just essentially you know, another big thing in the industry is intermittent fasting. So now you've been fasting all night. You wake up in the morning there was people talking about again, in contradiction to what you just said. Like you never eat anything, you want to train on an empty stomach. Lions hunt hungry, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:48:28

Yeah, lions eat a lot of fucking mangoes and bananas and shit, but that's in the carnivore diet.

Speaker 1: 1:48:33

So yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:48:33

I mean figure that one out, right so do you find that there's a difference if you wake up in the morning, you have a simple meal like you were just talking about some sugars, some protein, go to the gym, workout first thing in the morning and then you get on with your day and do whatever the other activities are going to do, eat whatever you're going to eat throughout the rest of the day. Or is it different? Does your morning start different if you're working in the afternoon, and do you see a difference in the timing of your workouts?

Speaker 2: 1:49:08

Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, so, like I said earlier, if I'm not going straight to the gym, anyone can eat fats, protein and fats in the morning. You won't feel sluggish. Yeah. Anyone. As soon as you eat you know protein and fats with sugar slows you down. I don't eat my sugars and fats together. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:49:28

The reason I don't do that is because your body is always going to take the path of least resistance. All right, now carbs and fats are where we get all of our energy. We don't really get it from protein. We can, but it's not a prime source Like carbs and fats. That's where we get our energy, but it's like an engine that runs on gasoline and diesel. They're similar but they're not the same. But they're different. Yeah, they're very different.

Speaker 2: 1:49:50

So, like when you eat carbs, your body decides right now I'm going to either use this energy or store it as fat. With fats, you know your body's like well, if you need the energy, it's here, because I can provide it for a little bit, for a long period of time. So what's that good for? So it's good for different things. So if I'm going to work out, let's say, at like 1 or 2 pm, which I did for a long time well, you know, depending on where you are with your diet like you're really just trying to lose and you want to be sharp as possible you'd wake up and have protein and fats, you know, maybe 7 o'clock, and then protein and fats again at like 10 o'clock, and when you get closer to one, then you would have your carbs. So you could have chicken and rice, you know, maybe even an apple, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:50:33

Or maybe you could have, um, if you wanted some really lean beef, you know what I mean, you know, have your rice. I don't mix my sugars and fats. I usually go like chicken or like a fish. I'll do my rice. Um, you could have that. Now you can have all this energy to go work out. You, you're going to be good, and then you still have the carbs after and then after that, if you want to be really lean, then you just eat fats and protein the rest of the day. Where a lot of people have a hard time are guys that work out really late, like 8 pm at night. I'm like you need to have your carbs before you work out and carbs after, and they're like well, 10 o'clock, should I be eating carbs that late?

Speaker 2: 1:51:04

I'm like, yeah, your body still needs it to recover yeah, but you don't get to eat, nothing else, you know, because you need to go to bed. So, like, you need it to recover. That's like it's like your car running out of gas. You don't say, oh well, I'm not gonna put gas in it. You know what I mean? Like, no, it needs gas, it's gonna run out, so you gotta put it back. And that's how your body recovers. People, people just getting this idea that less is more because we've just been taught to restrict, because they disregard nutrient timing yeah when you think about nutrient timing.

Speaker 2: 1:51:31

Body has specific needs at specific times and so if you just roll with it, your body will thank you and you'll watch the composition of your body change. So the weight might not change right away, but you'll notice that you don't have as much fat, you know. You're stronger and you feel fuller, you feel tighter and then eventually you come down, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:51:48

But so another question for you.

Speaker 1: 1:51:49

So I kind of think I know the answer, uh, but I still think it's good for me to ask and for people to hear okay, so my, my body has been like legitimately a crash test dummy, sure, and I've gotten so many injuries and surgeries and broken bones and all sorts of shit.

Speaker 1: 1:52:10

And now, at you know, 42 years old we're the same age when I wake up in the morning and I've tried different beds and different pillows Like, when I wake up in the morning, my body is so stiff and in so much pain and everyone no one would imagine that because they see me doing like the obstacle course and all this crazy combat, mobility stuff or whatever. But when I first wake up in the morning, my, it takes my body a while to like relax, into, um, into getting moving, like it like my, my legs are so tight up, my like achilles tendons and stuff, my feet hurt and my back hurts, my joints hurt. There could be other things going on there, one of the things that I have. I don't know if this is part of that, but I do know right now I got some blood work done recently and I'm like toxic levels of lead exposure, so I have to start going through that whole thing, which could be a whole other animal.

Speaker 2: 1:53:06

That's a whole other animal. That's a whole other animal.

Speaker 1: 1:53:08

Yeah, so I gotta start doing that stuff where they're gonna start drain, like sifting through my blood and and removing the lead from my system, like a dialysis yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:53:17

So I gotta start going in and doing these like three hour iv circulation things. But outside of that a reason I bring this up because I saw one of your videos where you were talking about guys if you're going to go lift today, stop running. If you're going to go run one day, go run. But if you're going to lift, go lift. Like I got to do some kind of cardio at a low intensity for a little while just to even get to where, like if I'm gonna work out in the morning, I got to go like light cycle for 20-30 minutes or go for a light jog for three miles, just to where my body starts, like being able to move again.

Speaker 1: 1:54:07

You know what I mean if I go straight into trying to do like deadlifts or whatever, like my hamstrings are just too tight to even basically like touch my knees, you know. So for the guys who are in that position, we're like, oh dude, my body's not what it used to be and whatnot. What do you recommend for for that, or for people who just, you know they feel fine and they're going to go work out at whatever time of day, but it's one of those things to where it's like they're used to doing cardio and lifting in the same workout. What are your thoughts on those?

Speaker 2: 1:54:39

Okay, well, first thing you need to do get blood work done First of all. Like we're in our 40s, get some blood work done. If people are not familiar with your hormone panels, try to get familiar with them. Um, for anyone that has kids, if I ever had a kid, I would get blood work done on that kid every year, at the same time every year, so that by the time he's 30, I'm like I got 30 years of like what your body's doing on the inside yeah because most of us don't have this?

Speaker 2: 1:55:05

because doctors haven't been trained in two things. They haven't been trained in nutrition and they haven't been trained in endocrinology. That's a good point.

Speaker 2: 1:55:16

So they don't know hormones and they don't know food, so they're not very useful. They're really not very useful. Most doctors are not very useful, like there are things that they can do really well because certain things, like when it comes to an allergic reaction, they know they have a steroid for that. They can work. When there's a type of bacterial infection, they have a antibiotic for that to work. They're great for that. Doctors are phenomenal with surgeries. Put this back together. You know, like I had a great doctor fix me up. Yeah, a lot of places you know. But so I would say, get blood work first of all. Second, growth hormone is amazing. For dudes in their 40s, therapeutic dose of growth hormone are like hard to get, like prescribed, but you can get analogs. I work with a company called Summit Rejuvenation. You can get analogs. I work with a company called Summit Rejuvenation. One of the partners there is Ian Smith.

Speaker 1: 1:56:13

Are you familiar with him? Yeah, he was on the podcast last month. Oh fantastic.

Speaker 2: 1:56:18

That's great. It was in Scott. I don't know if you've talked with him at all. Not yet.

Speaker 2: 1:56:22

But Scott, you know, is like the main owner of the. I've been fortunate enough to work with these guys or whatever, so I send everyone to them. So you should definitely get your blood work done with them so they can go over it with you and, you know, talk about it from there. But you can get analogs and different things that will make your body produce more growth hormone and for the average person that's going to be a game changer, especially if you have a lot of cricks and a lot of tightness and a lot of pain. Like growth hormone is one of those things that make you feel like a kid again and it's something that drops off from 25, like a certain percentage every year, you know. So we by 10, you get to 40.

Speaker 2: 1:56:56

Also the way we live nowadays, there's a lot of endocrine disruptors out there that will affect your estrogen. They increase estrogen. The body's natural, natural position for a man is high testosterone and lower estrogen. When too much estrogen is introduced to the body whether it's from an internal issue or it's external, from like cosmetics and plastics, and you know shampoos and deodorants and you know foods and soy and all these things that raise estrogen your body thinks there's too much of a conversion from testosterone to estrogen through aromatase. So what happens is your body will drop its testosterone trying to drop its estrogen.

Speaker 2: 1:57:36

Now you're stuck with elevated estrogen and low testosterone, and this is because of the conventional world we live in. This has been this is what it is.

Speaker 1: 1:57:46

I've been trying to naturally keep my testosterone levels higher. Um, in the blood work I think they were like 480 ish. Yeah, so it's not that good yeah like the one time, like it was like 480, the highest I've seen. It was like 500, right. But I was literally like looking through all the foods that we're eating and that's when I started really paying attention to how many things have soy in it and how many things have um ingredients that lower your testosterone levels?

Speaker 1: 1:58:22

yeah it's by design it's crazy, dude, if you start trying to look like, if you go into the grocery store and go I don't want things that have soy and I don't want things that have seed oils. Or high fructose corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, right or being bioengineered, there's like nothing left in the grocery store you can eat.

Speaker 2: 1:58:42

You got to move to Greece or Italy.

Speaker 1: 1:58:44

It's crazy. That's where you got to go. It's absolutely insane.

Speaker 2: 1:58:48

I've been there, I've eaten it, I've eaten it and I've drank a bottle of wine every day that I was there and I ate the gelatos and the breads and everything and you don't really gain weight.

Speaker 1: 1:58:56

Yeah, that's wild. Ingredients are so much different.

Speaker 2: 1:59:01

It's because you actually get food, you actually get nutrients. There's a big double. There's a lot going on. So when I say the conventional world we live in has created the situation for us, it's bad. And the only answer for most men is to just supplement testosterone. Because, dude, when I was competing and I was natural, I was getting my blood work done I had a 590. I was 29 years old. I had a 590. That's not bad. I had a really high free testosterone score. So that meant for what I had available or what my body was producing, I had a lot available. So that kind of made sense, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:59:34

But I can always tell how my, your sex drive, my sex drive, like as a man, when your sex drive is high, everything is good. Your sex drive goes away, something's wrong, like if we're not waking up and want to fuck the world in the ass every day, trying to go out there and get what's ours like, something's off. Like we're men, this is what we do, you know. And so, like I would say, get your blood work done first of all. All right, moving past that, second thing I would say is I warm up, I warm up, I prefer a stair mill. I have one in my house that I do on the weekends, but when I'm at the gym I like a stair mill, if I can get to it. You know, the gym I go to doesn't always have one available. Sometimes I use a bike, sometimes I walk, but I just warm up as soon as I start sweating. That's enough for me.

Speaker 2: 2:00:17

Then I stretch. So I warm up, then I stretch. I don't stretch cold, like I warm up, stretch warm, and then I do my sit-ups. And after I do my sit-ups and everything and whatnot, then I go to my first exercise. Now I do warm-up sets for my first exercise, if it's back day. Every other week I do deadlifts, strongest I've ever been in my life. It was last Monday. I start with one plate, two plate, three plate, you know, get up for wherever I'm going, but I warm up. So I would suggest that. So if you have found something that allows you to work out we all have different goals. So if your body hurts and then you're running and stuff for it to stop hurting, well, keep doing that, keep doing that. But if your goal is to grow muscle and be as big as possible you know what I'm saying Then you want to limit that as much as you can, because you want to use those glycogen stores.

Speaker 1: 2:01:09

Because the sugar that you're trying to store up through your proper diet and timing, you're basically stealing from that for for your lifting gains.

Speaker 2: 2:01:14

Yeah so you can't. You don't have as much atp, so you can't do as much muscle tearing as you want.

Speaker 2: 2:01:18

So that's really the reason why I say that because, that's why I like a warm-up but I don't do cardio before. Uh, you know in if. If you can find ways to warm up and not have to do all that and then get your workout in, you're going to be able to notice that you're going to get, be stronger and get better workouts. And especially if you have your carbs like if you start, you know I have to send you some stuff and when you start doing, you know my dextrose sugar post-workout with my insulin medic yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it out, I'm gonna give a test.

Speaker 2: 2:01:45

You'll feel different.

Speaker 1: 2:01:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:01:47

You'll feel it and everyone feels it. When you feel it it's like game changer, he's like whoa. So the harder you train, the better it works. And then you got to figure out how much. Like I had a girl I was training one time on 50 grams of sugar post-workout oh, wow, yeah and. And she was lean but it made everything grow and stick out because the glycogen was going to the right spot. This person also does really well with carbohydrates. This person does really well. Fats don't do the same. You give her fats she kind of looks like softer and not as full. But you give her carbs full, like full, hard, crispy, crazy. So you know everyone's a little different, but everyone's a little different, but it almost works. It works on just about everyone, like the simple sure you see if you're how much. So you don't get gift. You know too heavy. That's why I make that.

Speaker 2: 2:02:33

Take the insulin medic. So let's say I can metabolize 50 grams of sugar. If I take the insulin medic, I'm guaranteed to metabolize that. Now maybe I can metabolize 60 or 70. He's 75, yeah. So there's this cushion. So you're not, you're not going to store any of that sugar and fat.

Speaker 2: 2:02:50

So when I read that book Nutrient Timing Dr Portman and Robert Ivey, I believe, are authors of that. They figured out that if you do a simple sugar like dextrose post-workout, if you do it, they said, within two hours, you know. But the closer you do it to your exercise, like, your insulin sensitivity can raise for up to six hours. So just by having that sugar post workout now, your insulin sensitivity is raised for six hours. So that means the areas that you trained and sent sugar to it's going to keep trying to get it.

Speaker 2: 2:03:27

This is important because if you don't do this, if you train and you don't feed your body sugar when it needs it, your body's like gimme, gimme, gimme, nope, okay, we're going to make do. And then it just stops and then tries to figure out how it can replenish these glycogen stores. A lot of times, six to eight hours later, you have cravings. You're like so hungry and then you'll eat the sugar now or the carbs now, because you get this unbearable hunger, because you have this hole in these cells that you never filled with sugar. You never put the glycogen back, so it's still there. You're probably still trying to get it, but now you're so hungry. Problem is your insulin sensitivity is down. So when you eat those carbs, a lot of those carbs aren't going to get to the cells as efficiently as they would have if you did it early on, and so then you're going to be carrying some fat Interesting.

Speaker 1: 2:04:15

I'm excited to try this out. Like I said, I'm I'm I'm open to the idea. It seems like it makes sense.

Speaker 2: 2:04:21

Yeah, just got to find the amounts yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:04:23

It's just, it's a different. I'll ask you about your, your lifting strategy as well. It's just different, like when, going back to when we were talking about like your goal was to get as big as possible. I was small and I remember my brother brought me, uh, introduced me, to Thai boxing when I was like 14 years old. Cause he's like dude, you're 135 pounds, you're getting ready to go to high school. You're going to get your ass kicked cause you're getting ready to go to high school. You're gonna get your ass kicked because you're too small. So you gotta learn how to fight because everyone's gonna fuck with you. And I'm like, okay, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 2:04:53

So I get thrown in this basement with a bunch of like grown-ups and I'm learning how to tie box and my whole thing basically became I want to be able to fight, like I'm gonna be the scrappiest, nastiest dude I can be. And all of my fitness training wasn't about size, it was about supporting a fighting lifestyle, like a fighter's lifestyle, sure. So it's like if I'm gonna be 155 pounds, I'm gonna be the nastiest 155 pounds, you know. So it was. It's interesting. It's more of like a mma style of training, to where it wasn't uncommon for us to train for four hours a day. I'd go play lacrosse for two, two and a half hours at lacrosse practice, go get some food and then I'd head over to the Thai boxing gym and go train for another two hours. You know what I mean, and I was doing this five days a week. And then when I wasn't doing that I was bmx bikes and stuff, and then you go into the navy and the navy was like a similar type of tempo you're all ready for it.

Speaker 1: 2:05:53

You're ready, you're geared, yeah, but now I'm not training four hours a day anymore, you know what I mean like that's not. That's not what I'm doing, but what the, the type of training I was doing and the way I had a diet and all that stuff. I never got over like all the way through the time in the seal teams. I never got over 173 pounds after. When I worked at the gym and I was lifting more, heavier, heavier weight, doing some kettlebell stuff, I was still training like two, two times times a day. I was probably over-training, honestly, and at that I got to like one 77. Right now I'm in like the one nineties, but like um.

Speaker 1: 2:06:36

But things have slowed down. I've been working on the book. We just had the baby my. My tempo hasn't been nearly as high as it as it was Um, but it's just interesting to to uh the different types of diet with the training regiments you know. So that was obviously like high intensity, low, lower weight, you know, calisthenics and all that kind of stuff, right, um, so I never really put on mass. I've had some other watch, some other uh trainers not to call anyone out by name, but like there's another trainer out there, jay Vincent, and he's very adamant on not going into the diet stuff, huge proponent for super slow movements and like high intensity. But you know, focus on one muscle, do it super slow, maximum weight, put maximum load on the muscle that you're training. You know what I mean. And he doesn't like doing the calisthenics or any of these other types of stuff because he's like you're, you're, you're hitting too many muscles at one time. Pick a muscle.

Speaker 2: 2:07:50

If you want to be bigger, I agree with that.

Speaker 1: 2:07:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:07:53

So again he's a bodybuilder as well, of course he is.

Speaker 1: 2:07:57

That's a bodybuilding mentality.

Speaker 2: 2:07:58

Yep, that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 2:08:02

So what are your training regiments like? Because I know I've talked to other bodybuilders and what they'll say is, like you'd be surprised, guys my size aren't actually lifting the most weight in the gym. What we'll do is we'll target a muscle group and we'll do. You know, jay wants to do just a few reps, super, super slow. I've talked to other guys who are also big bodybuilders and they're like we'll do a medium weight but we might do 30 to 50 reps, but you're talking about lifting 600 freaking pounds. That was it was. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 2:08:43

Yeah, so but you're not competing and bodybuilding at this point, are you?

Speaker 2: 2:08:46

But still, that actually made my back grow, but go ahead yeah yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:08:51

So just out of curiosity, you're doing professional wrestling, You're playing professional sports, You're also doing college sports or whatever right, but I mean damn near a professional athlete. If you're doing WWE stuff, you know what I mean. I mean damn near a professional athlete, if you're doing WWE stuff, you know what I mean. Coming into bodybuilding, what is the style of lifting regimen do you do to basically support your?

Speaker 2: 2:09:21

physique. Okay. So for the longest time, when I first started bodybuilding, I would do a six day split. I was trying to train my legs twice a week and I was throwing shoulders in with legs. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. And then I stumbled on a workout split that I saw a kid at the gym. He said you only train one muscle group um a day, once a week. And I thought, man, it didn't seem like enough, you know, and I moved to a five-day split from six. I gained like 17 pounds in like two months. So I was like, oh, I was working way too hard to actually grow muscle. So then I did a five-day split for years. I did it until I was probably 28 or so. So this is after my wrestling career 29, maybe 29.

Speaker 2: 2:10:10

So when I went back to fitness after wrestling, I was training with a two-time uh figure champion, aaron stern, but she hadn't won yet uh in. She liked to do track, you know, and you know she was training really hard and she had to train hard. She was strong, like train legs hard and stuff, you know. And so I was like we. Just I was like what do you think? Like you know, I was natural at the time, you know. So I was like, okay, so I'm natural and I'm trying to grow and she's like I just think, like the the more you can train, the more you're gonna grow, you know. So, if you need one bigger leg stream twice a week, you, you know, at least you know. So I'm like I went back to train legs twice a week. I did that and I made progress, you know. But as a natural guy, I only went so far, you know, I made progress and you know the farthest I got natural, I got to 275, I looked pretty good, but I couldn't be on stage at that weight. I looked pretty damn good, like lean, you know, and I was eating a ton of fucking food and like I was happy about it.

Speaker 2: 2:11:11

Um, but then, you know so. So things are different. Whether you're training naturally, you're not not training, you're training enhanced, you know. And so if your testosterone levels are high, you know like you can get more out of everything. You know what I'm saying. But then it becomes do you train too much? Are you training too much, not allowing your body to recover? You know? So I was training in a high volume for a really long time doing six days a week, I think. For like 12 years I trained legs twice a week. You know I gave up my Saturdays forever and my legs were fucking grew like fucking weeds. You know um pretty strong. You know a lot of reps, high reps, a lot of high reps, a lot of volume. I built my shoulders with volume. I do about five, four to five hundred reps of workout on my shoulders. So I built my shoulders doing volume and that's no heavier than a 30 pound dumbbell ever. It just is real light pumping up legs was a pretty good amount of weight.

Speaker 2: 2:12:05

Um, sometimes you get real heavy and have a few heavy sets, but then it was volume.

Speaker 2: 2:12:09

So I was doing a lot of volume stuff. But then I shifted gears. I had a friend of mine, ifbb Pro Russ Allen, who was actually a friend of mine since I was 18. I was the bodybuilder in the group. He went to one of my shows and said I want to do this. A year later he was like I want to be a bodybuilder. And I'm like sure. I was like whatever he didn't take, fuck, everybody wants to be a fucking bodybuilder. He's like no man. I'm serious. I didn't see him for two years. He put 100 pounds on next time I seen him.

Speaker 2: 2:12:33

He went from 175 to 275. He was like fucking big. He's like man, this bodybuilding stuff's tough. And I'm like, bro, you're impressive, big like you impress this shit out of me. I'm like, but you ain't no bodybuilder until you walk your little bare feet out there on stage and go fucking beat somebody. So until then you're just a big guy at the gym. You know, he was like next thing. You know, dude, this motherfucker turned pro.

Speaker 1: 2:12:55

I'm gonna tell you what my dad would have told me. Yeah, yeah right.

Speaker 2: 2:13:00

And so next thing, you know, man, he, uh, he turned pro as a one of the smallest super heavyweights he was. The cutoff is 225 and up. He was 227 pounds. But he got fourth place at nationals and I thought he was going to win. Looked awesome. I was there for that. I went to watch him and then he went. I think he won North Americans and he won the whole thing, turned pro.

Speaker 2: 2:13:20

And then this motherfucker is like in Orlando, his girl was like wrestling or something. And I'm lando, his girl was like wrestling or something. And I'm like, bro, you're in town, you're near. He's like, yeah, I'm like, well, dude, meet up, let's train. I was in tampa, you know. I'm like, let's train. He's like all right, so we train one time and then he leaves. And then a fucking week later he's like bro, can I stay with you? I'm like what's going on me? The girl broke up. I'm like I'm like, oh shit. He's like dude. I'm like'm like, yeah, I actually have a two-bedroom. I got a room for you, no problem, man, so he moves in with me.

Speaker 2: 2:13:50

So now this guy that's always been one of my best friends. We've been through a ton of crazy shit together, my ornery days, me and him. A lot of bonding there. What do they call that? A lot of trauma bonding. So anyway, now he's staying with me and he's getting ready for his very first pro show in tampa to do the tampa pro. He's living with me after I told him like yeah, like basically you're never going to be a bodybuilder, and now he's living with me getting ready to do his very first pro show ever. He's living with me, you know, and I'm like let's fucking talk about foot in my mouth and the whole thing.

Speaker 2: 2:14:28

But I had all this respect for him. He's my friend and he just transitioned. I didn't ever think he was going to become this person, you know, and he did. And I said you know what? I'm just going to support you. I'm so fucking proud of the person you are and how you are. I'm just going to do whatever you're doing. Yeah, I'm going to fucking diet with you, train with you, the whole thing, man, just to help out. I know your girl broke up. It's a tough spot for you right now, so I'm just gonna try to help as much as I can. Don't worry about rent or nothing, dude, just let's focus on this show.

Speaker 2: 2:14:55

Dude, you know, he's like all right, man, you know. So I like we. I'm like okay, so what are we doing? So we drive to the gym. He like hands me the fucking pipe. He's like hit this. I'm like you smoke weed before the gym. I'm like fuck, all right. All right, like I would never. I would never. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 2:15:13

So then we're in there and we hit it a little bit, we're going hard, and he's like all right, let's go, we're good. I'm like I'm like bro, like you want to do some more? He's like no, we're good, bro, that's good. Yeah, I'm like uh, all right man, right man, I'm. This ain't going to work for me, but I told you I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna fucking do it. So we started doing rest, pause sets and we started doing low volume, high intensity stuff and our workouts were like 40 minutes. We'd go in there and then just leave, you know. And I remember thinking like I'm so used to all this volume, like I'm not even tired. You know, two weeks later I'm like I was like what the fuck? And he was like bro, you're growing, bro? And I'm like I am growing dude. Like what the fuck? It's like I'm cheating. It's like I'm cheating. This is like cheating. I'm like is that you got so big so fast? He's like it's part of it.

Speaker 1: 2:16:01

You know, I'm like so, like next thing. You know, that's exactly what that dude, jay, was saying that they would do. He's like you only need to work out two or three times a week for 45 minutes dude.

Speaker 2: 2:16:12

So then I switched to low volume, high intensity and I became really big proponent of it and I got now I have all these programs I've written and stuff that I do and, um, I fucking got bigger and leaner than I've ever been and stronger. Okay, so that is how I've been training and then that turned into like six days. It was still six days a week, but then I was only doing I would do like a big drop set. So I would pick a machine and I would just do like a big drop set to all that failure. Then I'd go to another machine and I would do drops at all that failure, I'd do another one, that'd be done.

Speaker 2: 2:16:47

So I started my short workout circuit real short, just hard, intense and over, you know, and I did that. I've done that almost the entire time until like this last six months after I got back from Europe. I've increased my volume a little bit. Nothing like I used to do. I've increased my volume. So instead of just in one set, where I do one set, I'm always saying, now I'm doing like one and a half or two you know, and I'm strong as fuck.

Speaker 2: 2:17:14

I'm lean and so I'm like at this spot right now, but now I'm hitting PRs and shit, so I needed some more volume. So there's like this game, all right, you know where you got to find your spot and it can change over time. You know because I spot and it can change over time. You know, because I always thought forever he'd always ask me still doing low volume, and I'm like, yeah, he's like it's crazy, it's still working for you, man. You know, he's like usually that's like something you throw in or do for a while, you know, and so it's like it worked for me for a long time. So then I, you know, grew. So that was basically how I trained and I still train like that. I have programs, I help people train that way. But now, now when I increase volume, it's not as much near as much volume as it used to be.

Speaker 2: 2:17:50

And, man, I'm stronger than I've ever been. I'm lean at 310 pounds, 311 pounds, like shredded. You know, I can be. I can be. I can be as lean as I want. If I just nail the diet, you know, and don't have like a tight weekend, I mean I could. I could be ready for a show in six weeks. Easy, that's so interesting.

Speaker 1: 2:18:10

And again it seems so counterintuitive. You know what I mean and I've had those conversations with Jay before. You know, we're at a mutual friend's house at a barbecue and we were talking about it and he was explaining you know how he approaches it and I was like that just seems like it's too simple you gotta try it every once in a while yeah, you know one of the things that I did um, when I was done filming, I was just lean, I was eating, I was.

Speaker 2: 2:18:42

I was to the point where I was super lean and then, um, I wanted to like. It's hard because you gotta stay in a spot. You stay in a certain leanness all the time. You want to be super lean, or like, just how?

Speaker 1: 2:18:53

how would you balance that like, let's say, you were still doing the wrestling?

Speaker 2: 2:18:59

so wrestling is hard, hard to balance because you party a lot and travel a lot and you know they drug test you now. Okay, so maybe that's a bad example.

Speaker 1: 2:19:07

So let's say someone who's who's still an active athlete. So when we talk about rest days and and maybe I don't need to train as much and we need to do more rest days, and that's when your body can recover, recover and grow the grow the muscle. Um, but what if you're still an active athlete? How do you balance the, the weight training and recovery if you're trying to put on a little bit of size but you're still actively playing, whatever sport it is? Would you go back to the other method or would you still just use your, your weight training time to do?

Speaker 2: 2:19:41

I think, I think if I'm training in a sport that low volume, high intensity is going to work even better now, because the only because now you're just stimulating growth, like Mike Mincer was real big on it, you know. Like he was real big on like going to ultimate failure, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:19:57

And he was real big on like training, the negative you know what I mean which is really important and then static, like holding things and stuff. If I was trying to be you things and stuff, um, if I was trying to be, you know, an athlete and train, how would I do it? Well, you, on it depends. When I do high volume on my legs, I'm strong and I'm agile.

Speaker 2: 2:20:20

When I say high volume, I've been here on this kick lately. I've been using like 265 pounds getting like 100 reps of squat and I try to do it in five sets, so it's at the 20. And you know it makes me strong, but it's also affecting my deadlift and I think that's why I hit a better deadlift than I've ever hit, because I've never done four weeks in a row or five where I'm at right now with 265 for 100 reps on my squat. I used to use like two plates, um, and I'm doing 265 right now, and the first time was real hard, second time was hard, last time still hard, but like I wasn't sore as long yeah and so now I'm stronger and so, like I don't know, tighter and'm tighter.

Speaker 2: 2:21:08

And so I would say, if you're trying to be an athlete, you still want to get your volume in with your legs. You'd want to get your volume in with your shoulders. You know, and I would do a couple, I would still. It depends on what sport too, Like if you're football important, but at the same time deadlifts can make you sore and shit. So you gotta know what you do with your deadlifts. You know, I think deadlifts are great. Personally, I didn't. I did them early on and then I came away from them because everyone's like you're a bodybuilder, you don't need a deadlift.

Speaker 2: 2:21:38

I went back to deadlifting and I got fucking big Like dude, like I have no doubt in my mind. If I wanted to keep deadlifting I could go far, but I'm just trying to ride this out. I mean, it's nice to get a little stronger. I didn't plan on breaking PRs recently, so it just happened.

Speaker 2: 2:22:01

That's awesome though. Actually the way it happened was the way it happened initially. This is a fucking true story. So I take my inflate, my pre-workout. It gets me pumped. I love it. It's like a powdered version of Viagra. There's no stimulant in there, so you just get pumped and baby and just feels awesome. You know, it has no artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners, preservatives, nothing. You know, I just use Stevia to sweeten up. There's citrulline in there. It kind of tastes like lemonade with the stevia in there. So it's like kind of a win. I only got one flavor and it's naturally flavored, you know. But on the days after training really hard and I feel tired if I take yohimbi, yohimbi what's that?

Speaker 2: 2:22:40

it's a stimulant but a blood flow mechanism and people also claim it raises testosterone. I don't believe that it does that. Like clinically it might increase your free testosterone or something you know, but it won't increase your testosterone. But your henby's been around forever. Apparently, back in the day, I think aborigines used to chew on this tree bark and it would get them all fired up and then they would go to war and like rape and pillage and shit with, like their fucking opponents, you know, and like yeah I think that's how kind of how it was like originated, because it's a tree bark.

Speaker 2: 2:23:11

So, um, I know that when I was younger and I told you I had a childhood mentor, he would always take yo him being these drops and he'd put it in his mouth and becky ever and take this, we're gonna go work out. Well, this shit is great. But I figured out if I take that with with some aspirin and a little caffeine and some nootropics, and then I threw some cayenne pepper in there and some niacin, like I'm fucking on, so I can go from waking up feeling like my nervous system is shot, from going hard the day before, take that shit, and my nervous system is like better than it was the day before so now.

Speaker 2: 2:23:53

So now I'm getting an extra day of training right. The first three times I took that I hit four prs. Oh wow, really, that's a true story. And so that's when I was like what the know? Like what is going on, you know? So that's why I said it was an accident and you're hitting all these PRs. Like I wasn't, but I felt so good, like I know, when I'm deadlifting, if I pull six plates off the ground, it comes right up. I'm like strong that day, like because I can always get it. But sometimes it's like it feels like I'm pulling it off the ground, but if I just pick it up, I'm like, oh, so that's what happens. I did seven plates that day for the first time ever in my life. You know, I put another one on there, but I got this. I got it on video too. It's cool. I was super fired up.

Speaker 2: 2:24:40

Hitting PRs is one of the most exhilarating feelings, because your body couldn't do this thing physically and now you can. You just feel powerful. You know, like for me it's one of the best feelings. It's like knocking somebody out. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like obviously done a lot of tying stuff, like that's the other time I feel awesome. You put, knock someone clean the fuck out, like that and like prs, you know, I don't know if anything compares to that. Winning big competitions and stuff is cool, like anyway. So that was, that was an accident, like with the. So this product I have coming out, though I'm working on it. So the reason I made it is because I have a non-stim pre-workout and so I have a stimulant pre-workout. Now you can take them together and just be just like. People are like it's crazy, you made two instead of one and I'm like I'm doing this for me. I'm making products I want to take. I don't always want to be geeked out, I just want to be pumped.

Speaker 1: 2:25:42

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because because I've watched some videos of people getting ready to go to the gym and I've always been pretty, pretty natural.

Speaker 1: 2:25:50

I mean the uh like up until recently you know, one of the guys who left a bottle from um, uh, from some products from the Protector Summit. One of the sponsors had brought some stuff and left it and I was trying it out. One of them was like a creatine, but even through all the years, like I haven't even really used creatine or anything like that. Really, yeah, I love creatine, I love it. Well, going through things change right. But like going through the SEAL training, uh, you weren't allowed to have creatine, protein powders, any type of sports nutrition product like you weren't allowed to use it. Once you got to the team, some guys would start using stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 2:26:38

But again, at the time you know this is back in the early 2000s the rumor was that if you're doing like a ton of cardio stuff and high intensity, like endurance stuff like we were a lot of times, we're dehydrated or whatever. There was that we were told. I don't know if this is accurate at all, but like, yeah, dude, you don't want to be using creatine, you're going to have heart failure, you know this and that. So, so the the it was very strict on on what you could and couldn't use. And then getting out of it, it's like, dude, I've accomplished all this so far without using any sports nutrition stuff, like I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because it's gotten me pretty far to this point.

Speaker 2: 2:27:17

So, wait a minute, you're waking up in the morning without coffee.

Speaker 1: 2:27:20

No, I have coffee. Yeah, yeah, I have a coffee. Because, like.

Speaker 1: 2:27:28

What you're talking about is that? You know what I mean? Yeah, and I'll drink some monsters and stuff like that, but I didn't start drinking monsters or energy drinks until probably 2014 or so or 2000,. Whatever, it was later on. You know what I mean and I'd already done all this other stuff. You know, um, and I'd already done all this other stuff. You know so, uh, but I I'll watch people, you know, going to the gym, on Instagram or whatever, and they're just like they're not even mixing it with 16 ounces of water, they're just taking pre workout and just like dump it in their mouth and chugging like an energy drink behind it.

Speaker 1: 2:28:04

You know what are your. What are your thoughts on all these different? I know you have yours, but you can explain. If yours is different, right? What's your thoughts on all these? You know, uh, pre-workouts and post-workouts and all the the. There's so much stuff that the sports nutrition industry puts around working out for the cheat code. You know what I mean. What are your thoughts, the pros and cons on these types of supplements, and is your stuff any different?

Speaker 2: 2:28:35

Okay, my stuff is different in the way that I don't put no bullshit. It's an artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, preservatives, things like that. The new thing right now is caffeine has always been a thing, caffeine is in all of these products.

Speaker 2: 2:28:50

Yeah, caffeine still is king, you know, I mean. But now nootropics are a new thing, nootropics. And so now they're going deeper and so you'll see, like a lot of these energy drinks and a lot of these products will have caffeine, and then they'll have l-theanine, because theanine can help calm jitters and help you be focused, and then so now they're using, sometimes like l-tyrosine, l-theanine because theanine can help calm jitters and help you be focused, and then so now they're using sometimes like L-tyrosine. L-tyrosine can help you be more focused and it kind of amplifies with the caffeine. Like these things start working together. So you're going to start seeing all these different things. With the product that I'm using with stimulant has nootropics in it and but it also has has it basically the. The original stack that got people results to be shredded and feel awesome was ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin. Ephedrine got banned eventually because it's amphetamine. So people I think were cutting up um drugs with it and buying it in large amounts and shit and doing that, and so they got rid of that.

Speaker 2: 2:29:46

So there's similar versions of it now they have different off versions of it, you know, but I just totally replaced that with yohimbi, so I have yohimbi if I got you got you yohimbi, caffeine, aspirin, yeah, and so I don't think I don't want to take it every day because it's like, you know, but on the days when I'm like I trained so hard yesterday, my body just feels like it's just not waking up to do it, and then I'm like yeah, you know like, and then I crush it, you know. And the other thing is I'm like really productive for about eight hours with work and I'm very much focused in on task, and when I say focused, I really struggle with being distracted. As an entrepreneur, I got so many you know hats that I wear and my plate is very full. So I have lots of things to work on. But for some reason, when I take this product and has these different nootropics and everything, it's like I want to be more organized and just attack and get shit done and I just move better. I'm just better. And so a lot of these pre-workouts have stuff like that in them.

Speaker 2: 2:30:53

So pre-workouts have come a long way, but you know, there's so many different things, different directions they can go. I still think some of the old stuff works. So I take some of the old stuff with some of the new stuff and that's where I'm at, you know, but some guys just want all the new stuff. You know what I mean. So it kind of depends. You got to try different things. You know um with the energy drink. You know we got our own energy drink coming up. You know monarch energy is on the way. We uh, we had some uh samples made recently. With um, uh, we did some flavor testing and whatnot. Honestly, it was a home run. I didn't expect for it to be to taste awesome. I made this on the fly with a company that allows you to kind of customize some things, but it's not a full custom recipe. Everything I do with my supplements I want to my own formula.

Speaker 2: 2:31:37

I want it to be what I want in there yeah and so I you know, I've got that process started last week, and so I'm in process of working on exactly what we want and we're going to do some things with this energy drink. We're going to have energy and there's going to be a lot of benefits to what's going on in there. I can't talk about it yet because I don't want to release it until the time, but I am strategically putting things in there so that you're not going to want to drink that anymore. You're going to want to drink mine Because you're going to have the same feeling, but then you're going to have all these health benefits, and so I'm putting strategic things in there for that, and so that's really exciting, because I think we're at a place now where everyone is looking at everything and even if you're not the one, you'll hear a video about something Like you know, like there was a type of B12. There's a synthetic version of B12 called cyanocobalamin, and apparently it's got like a cyanide molecule in there.

Speaker 1: 2:32:43

Really.

Speaker 2: 2:32:44

So, like you know, we're pretty close to it, so there's been all this controversy about it, so obviously I'm going to go with the different versions. I'm going to go with methyl cobalamin so I'm not using that, you know. But like this, these are the things that we're just we're in it, we're in the information era and so you know I'm going to do my best to create everything that I think is going to be incredibly beneficial and synergistic, to give you energy and focus and better health in some key ways. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:33:14

Some specific key ways and you know, I think that's what you need to be thinking about when you're looking at these pre-workouts. So, when you go, take a pre-workout, first of all, I don't think it's something you should do every day, even if it's just a lot of caffeine. I don't think it's something you should do every day, even if it's just a lot of caffeine. I don't think it's something you should do every day. If you want to, it's okay, because I've been that person before. You know what I mean, but I just don't think every day. You know what I mean. I think you should pick your days. You know what I mean. Like if I'm dragging ass, that's your head is and, like I said, I went years where I was sponsored by different companies. I'm taking the pre-workouts, I'm doing everything and like it's mainly just caffeine and a lot of the stuff back in the day. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:33:55

There was a couple brands that came out with something that literally made me feel high when I say high like it was releasing dopamine, where I was like energetic and like I was like what is this? And the girl that was repping it I was like I love this stuff. She said don't drink it, don't, don't take that stuff anymore. I'm like what she was, like I rep it but like it's bad. And then like turns out there was like this fucking component in there that literally is kind of like a drug and then it will actually dull your dopamine so you crash the next day and then you're like depressed and shit.

Speaker 2: 2:34:30

Oh wow, so you got to keep taking it, so I did it one time and then I felt that way the next day and I remember I was glad I met her the day I took it. I was like yeah, it's great. She's like no, no, no, don't take it. And so then I learned right away that there's a lot going on the supplement industry. It's good and bad. People say, oh, it's great because it's not fda regulated. First of all, fuck the fda, okay, they don't care about you, they're trying to make money yeah sicker we are and less we know, the happier they are.

Speaker 2: 2:35:01

So when people are like, oh, it's not fda regular, I'm like good, good, because you idiots are going to think the FDA cares about you. Like go over to Italy and Greece and eat some food and look at their fucking ingredients. On the back of their packages, dude, it'll say like butter, salt, flour, sugar. Yeah, you come over here. I can't even pronounce the shit what it is. Yeah, and then there's a million different fucking.

Speaker 1: 2:35:23

And that's all FDA approved.

Speaker 2: 2:35:25

Oh, all of it. Fda just hook us up. They care. They care about you, man. They just want to make sure we have all the best stuff. Kellogg's is literally going through a lawsuit right now because the guy that owns Hugh Chocolate, a guy named Jason Karp he's a buddy of mine he's got like this His company is huge.

Speaker 2: 2:35:40

It's in all grocery stores, everywhere it top shelf chocolate. He uses all the best stuff and like it's organic and it's naturally sourced and all these things. You know he does the best job he can at it. Um, he's like like suing, starting the letters of suing kellogg's, because kellogg's is an american company. That was like okay, here's our like fucking cereal. Like 90 ingredients for amer, nine for Europe. You started here and you're going to give us all this shit and give them the good stuff because they won't tolerate it, because they actually, whatever their food and drug administration is, actually gives a fuck. Ours, no fucks given.

Speaker 1: 2:36:25

It's insane.

Speaker 2: 2:36:26

So you know. So like when people argue like, oh, something's our fda regular. I'm like, good, thank god, they're not dude, thank god, thank god. Like that's the only way we can you know. And then people are like, well, what do you do? I'm like you get with somebody you trust and you start reading labels and fucking educate yourself. You know there's plenty information out there. You can try to find people that break stuff down, you know, and show you like, just stay away from this, stay away from that. Like, but if you don't know it, you just look for natural shit yeah, and that's.

Speaker 1: 2:36:52

That's kind of where I was at, because I was like I don't know what any of this stuff is. Looks like a science experiment.

Speaker 2: 2:36:56

I'm just going to train and eat it's tough with the pre-workouts because there's some new shit out there that really works and there's a lot of literature and stuff that points to like like alpha gpc, like if you take like four to six hundred milligrams of that, like it's like proving. It's like proving to make your brain work a lot better and even improve like public speaking and shit really like they did all these tests on it. So there's like nanobots in it.

Speaker 2: 2:37:23

It's just, um, it has a way. I think I. I believe this one don't quote me on this, but I believe this one crosses the blood brain barrier and so it's hitting these neurons better because it gets in there, um, but then the one of the women that was talking about it, the one of the scientists was talking about she said she uses it, but not all the time. She's like if I know I need to be sharp for something, I'll take it, but it's not something you time. She's like if I know I need to be sharp for something, I'll take it, but it's not something you do every day. Like gorilla mind is putting 400 milligrams of that in their energy drink and it's in all the different flavors and stuff. Um, it's a the guy that you know makes a lot of stuff with gorilla mind. He's a really sharp guy, he's he's really brilliant. Um, you know, sometimes it's even a little over the top, but that's kind of his thing.

Speaker 2: 2:38:08

You know he's gonna put all this shit in here, you know yeah you can hit you all these angles it's gonna be great, you know, and, um, you know, super smart and he's bagging it up with all the literature and everything he's doing and stuff. But you know, he's got a lot of new stuff and then some comes back some old stuff. He does a lot, you know, but for I just kind of have a different approach. I feel like this is going to be enough. You know, I don't want to overkill, you know. Yeah, I want to have enough and I want to do what's best.

Speaker 1: 2:38:33

No, I kind of appreciate that, and you were talking about your protein's. Pretty simple. Yeah, protein's real simple and that's one of the things where you're like dude, I just want to throw in some protein that doesn't have a whole bunch of stuff in it, and that's what you're doing with your protein.

Speaker 2: 2:38:50

Yeah, dude, it's got six ingredients. You know I have two types of protein. Um, you know there's a whey protein concentrate and isolate. And then I have cocoa for chocolate flavor, stevia for sweetener and two digestive enzymes Perfect. And people are like, well yeah, but isn't whey protein isolate way better than protein concentrate? And like you don't even know what's in a concentrate, and I'm like, well, first of all, you know what the fuck you're talking about okay so, like the milk, the cheese process is where you get whey protein concentrate, so you get it from there.

Speaker 2: 2:39:23

You know, when they get the concentrate, they filter it and they use an evaporative process to concentrate it down. So you have more whey protein. It's all very natural thing. But when you take it from there to protein isolate, you got to use this polyacrylic ingredient that is like an ion exchange. These are like toxic ingredients and I'm not saying that they're necessarily it's a bad thing, but I'm not saying that it's a good thing either. So, like you know, with protein isolate, you know maybe the procedure is great and it's able to isolate more of the protein and you know it's even more concentrated version. So I have both, but the bulk of what I have is protein concentrate because it's actually a simpler process. With protein concentrate you're going to have a little bit more lactose and a little bit more carb, but it's closer to a natural process.

Speaker 1: 2:40:18

Yeah, that makes sense. You see, what I'm saying yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:40:20

So when you do this other thing and they filter it and stuff, get it down as much as they can. So when you go to protein isolate not talking shit about it, but like you know it's more involved to get it there and then the protein content doesn't change that much. So it's really about the carb content. It's really what it comes down to people gotcha less carbs in there.

Speaker 2: 2:40:44

so, um, I really am proud of my product that I have. You know I've recently been talking about, you know, First Form. I was looking at their shit. They have like 19 ingredients in their protein A bunch of emulsifiers which are horrible for your gut.

Speaker 1: 2:41:01

That's what I've been reading on lately just talking about the emulsifiers and like different types of gums, Gums.

Speaker 2: 2:41:08

They have like three different gums in there. They got like these emulsifiers. They got I think they have Ace K, you know, preservatives and all this shit. They have sucralose. Like I don't use sucralose. Sucralose is Splenda and Splenda is made with three chlorine atoms. You know, and people will say, well, you know, it's no big deal, it's still it's chlorine atoms. Okay, let's just, let's just use stevia. All right, it comes from a fucking plant, man, let's just get used to stevia. That's what I put in there, like why do we got to fuck with something's got chlorine in there if we cannot have it? You know, like chlorine can be okay to fix your water when you let it evaporate out of there, it's fine, but you don't want to eat corn yeah, you don't want to eat corn.

Speaker 2: 2:41:48

You know what I mean. So, like, there's things you do requiring is okay and an amount of it is okay, and you know, and people will talk about chloride. Well, chloride and chlorine are like the same, almost the same, structurally the same, except one has a positive ion, one has a negative. So it's like the difference between, like, male and female, very similar, very fucking different, you know. So, like, when people are like, well, sodium, you know, salt is a sodium chloride, it's got chlorine, I'm like no, it's chloride, not chlorine. Homie, it's a fucking whole different thing. It's like a dramatically different. But, um, yeah, so when it comes to, like you know, supplements, I'm real big on less is more with supplements, because the reason people are putting all these extra fillers in emulsifiers and all these things is just to drive profits. Like, make no fucking mistake.

Speaker 1: 2:42:33

Like when I look at a fucking scoop of, is it because it's cheaper or because it can make more mass?

Speaker 2: 2:42:38

Well, because when I look at a scoop of first form protein, it's got 20 grams of fucking protein in there and mine's got 24. And they're all protein isolate. It's supposed to have higher protein content. And I'm concentrating on isolate. But I have 24 grams of protein, you have 20. And then you've got 19 ingredients. What the fuck else are those other 13 ingredients in there for? You care about your consumer Trying to make it taste good, or you just want to give them a good product?

Speaker 1: 2:43:09

You know, trying to make it taste good or you just want to give a good product. You know, like I think that's where one of those, one of those hidden traps is, and the more I'm learning about this stuff, you know, following a bunch of these holistic pages, um, the natural flavors, natural ingredients, right, or proprietary blends, you don't know what's in any of those. So, like the natural flavors, like that can be another hundred ingredients that you don't know what it is, or artificial flavors or whatever.

Speaker 2: 2:43:40

Okay with natural flavors. So I'm now entering the energy drink world and so I have these questions. You say natural flavors, like I'm like. Explain that to me. And the guy said well, when you get these natural flavors, a lot of times there's like different patents on them and whatnot.

Speaker 2: 2:43:56

You know so, unless you're working with a scientist that's going to create them for you or you can own it and be your own, like no one's going to tell you what it is. I'm like what do you mean? You can't tell me what it is. I'm drinking it like yeah, but it's natural flavors. I'm like what do you mean? You can't tell me what it is. I'm drinking it Like yeah, but it's natural flavors. I'm like but what is it?

Speaker 2: 2:44:09

And he'll say, okay, he broke it down for me, like this. He's like okay, let's say this, let's say that you want your drink to taste like orange. So you're going to take the molecule that smells like orange. Okay, it has like the orange smell, and then there might be something in there, like that cellulose that actually gives it the some of the flavor, the citrusy flavor that is of orange. But you might find out that it's hard to get it out of the orange and you can get the same thing out of pineapple. So maybe you're going to pull it from the pineapple because it's easier. But you really want this ingredient that is in orange but you get it from a pineapple because now it's easier to get and cultivate and so you're able to build this orange flavor. You know so like they will do that. So he's like. So you're getting a blend of natural flavors.

Speaker 2: 2:44:55

So when this is natural flavoring this is why, because it's pulling from this, from that, and the breakdown of it was actually easier to get from a different fruit, even though it wasn't the one that you think that it is, because flavor is interesting. So there's all these different molecules that make things you know, smell and taste the way they do, and they broke down what those are. It's like a fucking puzzle, and so they know they can get them from different foods. So when it comes to like flavor, it says natural flavors. On there there's been stuff pulled from maybe different fruits that are easier to get and less costly to get, and so then you can get the flavor you want, gotcha. So natural flavors it still is natural, it's just pulled in a funny way.

Speaker 1: 2:45:34

Okay, so then artificial flavors would be the same thing, but just more of a science project. Yeah, just chemicals To make it, you know?

Speaker 2: 2:45:43

Yeah they would do the same thing. This makes it taste like this Like strawberry.

Speaker 1: 2:45:46

Sour Patch Kid isn't actually strawberry at all.

Speaker 2: 2:45:50

We're a kid, yes. So if you've seen any of those buckets of flavoring in a warehouse, you'd probably die if you ate a scoop of it. You know, might as well be antifreeze you know, I hear antifreeze is sweet you know, maybe we could. Maybe we could put that in a drink. You know be by antifreeze I would. Maybe we could put that in a drink.

Speaker 1: 2:46:07

Well, we're excited to see the launch of your new products. I'm definitely going to check them out. I'm definitely going to get a copy of your book.

Speaker 2: 2:46:17

I should have brought some stuff. I wasn't thinking it was working today.

Speaker 1: 2:46:21

It's all good, I don't mind ordering it. But yeah, man, if people want to check out your book or learn more about your companies and what you have going on, where should they go?

Speaker 2: 2:46:31

right now. The site that I'm building right now is monarchliftingcom. You know, that's like the main one where I'm doing a truck giveaway, so every dollar spent. We got apparel, I got shirts, I got some new tank tops coming, I got my power pouch on there and I got my supplements, my book everything's on there, but I still have. You know, I'm in the we're in the merging process, so I still have my other website up, you know, which is supernaturallifestylecom. That's got just all my, all my stuff, my supplements, my book, workouts, all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 2:47:01

But, eventually it's all going to be Monarch. We're just we're just kind of walking that way because we got the energy drink coming and I'm going to be doing a merger with my supplements, so the label is going to change a little bit and stuff. So monarchliftingcom would be the best spot to go, because this is going to be the direction we run with.

Speaker 1: 2:47:20

Perfect. Well, I'll get those links from you and I'll put them in the description below. Okay, and then people can just go down there and click on them. Yeah, perfect, so well, Aaron, I appreciate you taking the time to drive all the way up here and sit down with us and, you know, share some of your story and some insight on diet and health. I look forward to hopefully having you back and we can talk more about this after I've tried your programs. And yeah, next time we'll allow more time in the schedule. We'll go shoot for a little bit yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 2: 2:47:50

Definitely like to come out here and play around. You got quite the facility, so thanks for having me. You know it's been fun awesome.

Speaker 1: 2:47:56

Thank you, I appreciate it. All right, guys. Well, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Full Spectrum Warriors podcast. I hope you got as much benefit out of that discussion with Aaron as I did. The nuance, the detail of timing our meals, what our meals should look like and other things like that to maximize our health and to optimize our nutrition so lots of great information. Check out his links below and go ahead and share and like this episode and, if you found it to be valuable, help us beat that algorithm and get the word out about these topics.

Speaker 1: 2:48:46

And again, today's episode was sponsored by Safariland Group. If you're not familiar with Safariland Group, they're leading in the technology behind our holsters and different retention. They developed the class one, two and three. They even have a four now regulations or standards for retention. So Safari Land Group is used with law enforcement officers around the country and even around the world, to be honest with you, and it's a holster brand that we used when I was in the SEAL teams and it's trusted by you know many and they're kind of the standard bearer. So if you want to check Safari Land out, go to their website. You can click the link below. You can use code CADREGRAM to receive discounts on your orders. And again, their slogan is together we save lives, and that is their mission, and that is what they're doing. So check them out and we look forward to having you back here on the next episode.