Jackson Taylor: Investing in Your Physical Well-being Pt. 2

In this episode of Beyond the Break, we sit down with Dr. Jackson Taylor to discuss the principles behind his first book and why physical wellness is about much more than appearance. From strength training and muscle building to nutrition and overall health, Dr. Taylor shares how investing in your physical well-being can make you more capable, resilient, and prepared for the demands of everyday life.

We also explore the importance of building healthy habits, maintaining strength as we age, and the mindset required to pursue long-term health and performance. Plus, Dr. Taylor gives us a preview of the two upcoming books he has in the works and the impact he hopes they will have.

Whether you're just beginning your fitness journey or looking to take your health to the next level, this conversation offers practical insights and valuable perspective on living a stronger, healthier life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beyond the Break, a podcast where we dive deep into the stories behind today's entrepreneurs, leaders, and change makers, and we uncover what it takes to build something that lasts. Let's get started. Beyond the Break.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

All right, Dr. Jackson Taylor, welcome to Beyond the Break. You ready for this? I'm ready. I'm always ready. All right, great. Well, you are our first repeat interview. Uh, and I knew it the first time we interviewed you that we had a lot more content to cover. But since then, you've done something spectacular. And tell us what you've done uh in the last few months.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Oh, I wrote a book.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Which is cool. We had a baby.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Oh, yeah. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

That's exciting. Although she's, it must have been before that, because it's been, she's 13 months old now.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So between having a baby and finishing this book, uh, I've been a I've been a busy guy. So yeah, wrote my first book, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

It was uh you learn a lot by by writing a uh was was having the your child the impetus for this book? Because it you talk a lot about being a father in the book. So almost got this guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Uh not not quite. So this book is probably a decade in the making, but I just finally decided that I was going to commit to it the last couple of years. It took me about two years to write. Um, but really it was, you know, I work with men primarily in my business and I work with young men a lot. And it was just this consistent trend that men were looking for information. They were kind of rudderless. And me being like, what's the missing piece here? You know, and as I started digging into that and, you know, figuring out that a lot of it was men were looking for meaning. And so I started thinking about my own life and I opened talking about my dad. Um, he passed away back in 2012. Um, but I looked at him as the heroic man. And it was just somebody who was broken, but was trying hard and was showing up for his family and working hard and trying to be healthy and doing all the right things. And his life got cut short from he had Lugar's disease. And I was thinking to myself, that's what I want men to have is are we doing everything we can to be capable for the people that we love? Sure. Right. That being the heroic man. And so as I started wrestling with kind of this idea, I was like, well, there's multiple parts to this. So one part is the physical part, yeah, is nutrition and motivation and how to train and blood work and testosterone and what are peptides and all of these things.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Well, and I I love what you've done in that space because you really you bring it back to first off, you're not sponsored by anybody. So you give a very neutral approach to research. And I think that's what a lot of us have learned in the last few years is a lot of research is paid for with an outcome predetermined. So a lot of what you give a lot of the supporting research, you give both sides to a view, whether it's about cholesterol or something else. So I love the way you present it in the book. And it's a great reference for someone who, and you can flip right to it, right? You've got a section on blood work, you've got a section on working out, and I think it's just really helpful the way you laid it out.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, and I think it's uh in a sea of information in a world of you know how to be healthy as a man, there's just too much. Yeah, you know, between social media and podcasts, and every week somebody is sending you something that's contradicting something else.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

And so ultimately, with this first book that's focused on the body, my goal was that when a man reads it, it's just everything that he needs, right? Is it going to be the 100% of everything? No, because you could write an entire book on LDL alone.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

This is meant to be a this is what you need to know. This is how you apply it. And these are the things that you can do to make sure that you are available, capable, and can conquer the world physically as a man. Yeah. And so that's really what I want it to be is a blueprint, is kind of the way that I a battle plan is what I use on the front of the book. But what do I do? Like, what blood work do I get done? What do I like training? What do I need to do? What's the minimum viable dose that I need to do? Yeah. What how much cardio do I need to do? What do I need to know about protein? So, as opposed to getting all of these different pieces of information, it's put into one place. So it gets enough enough depth that the average guy can go, oh, I get this.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

But you're not swimming through seas of information about what some influencer on TikTok told you to do.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Yeah, I love just the the statement you just made about conquering the world. It's it's it's that attitude that is refreshing. You know, it reminds me of a lot of 80s and 90s movies that uh I was able to grow up with. And it it's it really made you know men very powerful and driven. And I think we've gotten away from some of that, but now you're bringing that back here in this book, and it's important.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah, I think if you were to, you know, even in the book, I make the distinction. I'm a firm believer, kind of the Aristotle mindset of like there's a golden mean, there's a good middle ground most of the time, and extremes are almost always bad. So extreme dieting, extreme powerlifting, or extreme obsession with vanity versus not caring at all about your body. Yes. Both of those extremes are unhealthy in nature. And I think that men have been caught like I'm either one or the other, versus finding that middle ground of I can be emotional, I don't have to be a complete stoic all the time, but I do need to be strong, I need to be capable, I need to lead from the front while also being able to, you know, get on my knees and apologize for things. It's the reason that the front of the book is, you know, a dad on his knee looking at his little girl. Is I'm here to protect you from the darkness of the world, but I'm also here to be a level with you versus being an overlord to you. And that's for men, modern men, anyways, they're trying to figure out what that means. They want that purpose. And I think we're actually the pendulum has now made its way or it's coming back a little bit. You see a lot more younger people, you know, they're getting dressed up and going to church, they're joining groups, they're getting off of certain social media, they are working out more again than they used to be. They're reading more. There's been this little bit of boom in young people reading old literature. You couldn't make me a happier person than people that start reading the Odyssey or they start reading Token and Lewis.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

You like to read. I love to read. You wrote a book, but you also listen to it.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

I am a I am a big, big reader. Um, but those are good things because I think we've, especially young men, everything has to be hard, yeah, or it has to be super soft. And it doesn't have to be those things, right? You can be a bookworm, you can be emotional, like you, I'm a poster boy for crying. Like if I'm watching like a an emotional movie, or you know, like on ESPN, like they'll have college game day and they have like a story about a kid who's surviving cancer or whatever. I'm just freaking waterworks, too. And I have no qualms with that. My father was the same way. It's it's maybe genetic. I'll blame him.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

I'll I can I get sad at the end of Uncle Buck every time. See, it's it's totally gets sad.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

It's totally okay. Um, but having that while still being able to have the I am a protector, I am a leader, I can love, you can have those things. They can be married together. Um and this book attacks everything from that, is that you know, we are, I believe that we are called, you know, by God to be given unique gifts that the world needs. And men have gifts that they're not giving to the world. And it starts by being healthy and capable so that you can go produce.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Like it's training is a means to an end, unless you're somebody who competes as a powerlifter bodybuilder for like work. Like you and I work out. It's not how we make money, correct? But we do it so that we can be capable and love on our family and do things like that. And we're just losing too many men too young to things that were probably avoidable. You know, three-quarters of us are overweight or obese today in the US of men, right? And that's driving a lot of issues in our world. And we can approach that better than we are now.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

When you look at exercise and fitness, what because you see a lot of patients, and you've been very helpful with me and my family and my coworkers, frankly. Uh, you know, even uh females here are in your program. So it's, you know, you work primarily with men, but there's there's uh females who also uh benefit from your training. But what are a few basics that you would recommend for people who are currently not very fit, but how do they get back in the game?

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, so I am a firm believer in the minimum viable dose or in the business world, the minimum viable product. What's the least amount we can do and get the most out of it? So I like to think of it like ringing the towel, like that first ring. Yeah. You get 90% of the water out. That's the way you should approach fitness, is we just want to get that big chunk out. Uh so I'll give you a simple example. If you are lifting zero times a week, and by lifting I mean resistance training for 30 to 45 minutes, right? Going from zero to one is a big boost. Going from zero to two is an even bigger boost. Going from two to three is a boost, but it's not nearly the same as from zero to two. Three to four gives you a little bit more, but it's diminishing returns. Okay. So if you go to the gym two days a week, you resistance train two days a week for 30 to 45 minutes doing a total body routine, irrelevant of what it is, you've got most of the good stuff there. Okay, so that's the gym. Conditioning-wise, if you are in the poor VO2 max, that's basically just your body's ability, body's maximal ability to use oxygen. If you are poor and you go from poor to fair, the decrease in mortality is gigantic versus going from fair to good or good to excellent, okay, it's a diminishing return. So, although it's important that you're trying to get as fit and healthy as possible, it's that bottom of the curve that's going to make you live longer and more healthy. So if you only resistance train twice a week, okay, for 30 to 45 minutes, right? So let's just call that an hour of weekly resistance training. Yeah. And you did and you got 150-ish minutes of moderate aerobic activity. So let's say a combined zone two to zone five, right? Because you can get some of that from lifting and running or cycling. If that's all you did fitness-wise, you're probably gonna be okay. Yeah, is it optimal? Certainly not. But is it good enough that you're probably not gonna lose years of life? Yeah. So a couple of days of resistance training, 150-ish minutes of aerobic activity, you're probably going to decrease your likelihood of mortality a substantial amount, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

What about even the basics of just walking?

SPEAKER_01 11:22

So most people should walk more.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Um, what I would say is if you're doing nothing, walking is better than nothing, right? Um, we always have like the like 10,000 steps, or is it 7,000 steps? And it depends on the person. I think we've gotten a little too caught up in that research. Most of the time, if you're walking 10,000 steps, you're also doing other things that are making you healthy. And thus the research would reflect that, well, they're just they walk 10,000 steps, but they also eat a, you know, they eat a balanced meal, they sleep decently at night. So those things lend to it. Um, but that gets included, it gets lumped in. I think a lot of times it ends up being too easy for a lot of people, and they're not actually getting their heart rate up enough to make a difference. If you're doing nothing, that's your starting point. But ultimately, your goal should be I'm getting my heart rate up. And so in the book, I describe it as easy and hard conditioning. Easy is anything below 80%. So call it 60 to 80%. So basically zone two to the end of zone three. Hard is hard conditioning. I can't breathe. I'm doing, you know, four by four Norwegians on an air bike. Greater than 80%. Yeah. If 80% of your time is in that zone two and three, and 20% is in that zone four and five across your week, you're probably gonna be okay. But just like the bare bones, you must be lifting weights.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

I think that's I don't really know when the change was. It was probably when you were a little bit younger, 80s and 90s, when it was like because it used to be cool to lift weights. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And then it kind of classes came about, um kind of in response to CrossFit a little bit, but even CrossFit off to the side, like the F-45s showed up and things of that nature. And so people like cardio, cardio, cardio, like was a was a big thing. And I think we started missing out that as important as people's VO2 max is, you still have to be strong. You still need the more muscle mass you carry, the harder you are to kill. I don't know how many times I say that in the book, a million of them. But ultimately that's the goal. It's not just that you're fit, it's that you're robust, right? And so, really, for most people, the goal shouldn't just be that I'm getting more fit cardiovascularly. It's am I getting stronger and am I getting as muscular as I can be? Because it just wards off all of the bad things that can happen to you. Yeah. And so, simple example, it also depends on the person. You, let's say for instance, we went and did a DO2 max test and it was woeful, right? And then we did a DEXA scan and we looked at your muscle mass and your strength, and we're like, man, you're really strong based on your age group and and where you're at. But your conditioning is not good. We need to focus on that. So we're not gonna lose this, but we just might try to maintain it while we upregulate the amount of conditioning that you're doing. Yeah. Because for you, that's gonna allow you to live longer and live better. That's a much better way to approach it. So if you are somebody who's been running for years or cycling for years, that's great. I'm not overly concerned about your heart health or about your cardiovascular health, but I am concerned I've got a client right now who's, you know, he's got a pretty good VO2 max. His muscle mass is in like the bottom quartile. Okay. That's problematic.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Yeah, because I look at uh, you know, the difference between a long the body type of a long distance runner versus a sprinter. The amount of muscle mass, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

And yeah, they're different. They're definitely different things. Now they're also based on what their training is.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

One of them is training at different levels. But contrary to popular belief, when you look at like elite marathoners, they're they're mutants. I mean, they're running five minute miles for 26 miles. Yeah, right. They're sprinting, all things considered. But they just won't be able to go as fast as a sprinter, right? A sprinter having a little more muscle mass is is of benefit to them. Whereas being too heavy as a distance runner is is not of benefit to them. And that's the other thing. Funny you mentioned it. Most people don't fall into either of those brackets. Like most men don't qualify as distance runners or sprinters. Yeah. They're not actually doing, they couldn't train hard enough to do those things outside of being it, you know, recreationally, right? Like your boy right now trying to run a marathon, which we're thank you. Which we're which we're which we're working on. So it's it's more about finding what the individual is trying to accomplish and getting you to that point. So if you're somebody who's doing nothing, right, just starting with some basic stuff is going to get you there. Even people that go run, like minimally, that aren't doing anything, they'll see their muscle mass grow because they haven't been doing anything. Their body is sensitive to any training.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

So even if you're just going for a cycle or a walk or a little bit of a run, their muscle mass gets a little bit better because their body is has to adapt to it quickly. So most people just haven't trained long enough for that to be a real issue.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

And also when they're in the gym, should they be doing sets of six or sets of 12, just back of the envelope? What would you recommend?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

So here's what people should know. In terms of hypertrophy, muscle growth, growth. You can do any repetition range or any reps between five and 30. Okay. And you'll get the same level of hypertrophy. We can't say that any end is better than the other. When it comes to strength, excuse me, strength, the lower end is going to be better mostly because you can't express top end strength later into the 15s and 20s. Your body's too tired. But in terms of muscle growth, you could do anywhere in that five to 30 range and be happy. Most people, what my recommendation is, is that across body parts, you should be doing eight to 12 sets a week per body part for five to 30 reps. Okay. If you want to really narrow that down, eight to 12 sets a week of somewhere between eight and 12 reps.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

And is each time to failure, isn't that?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

So you should go to failure every so often. But for somebody who's new to training, it's completely unnecessary. Anything you do will create results. That's the beauty of being a beginner when it comes to training, is your body is so sensitive to it that you'll get stronger at every session. If you were doing the bench press and you did four sets of five at 135, the next time you went in, you could probably do four sets of five at 155. And then you would keep going up really exponentially for a while. Eventually you're going to hit a ceiling.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Yeah, you're not.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

But in the beginning, you make huge gains across time. So ideally, when it comes to the failure question, this is something that a lot of guys did forever, is they would just go until they were completely dead.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

And then the next workout, they would do the exact same thing, trying to add a representation.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Every set. Every set, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

The problem is that, or the the issue with that is that's going to lead to more breakdown of connective tissue or chances of getting hurt because you're always going to that failure point. And you're not actually getting any more benefit than if you were close to failure. So if you did a set of bench press and you got to the 10th rep and you went, my form's starting to break down. I've got like one or two left in me gunned to my head. If you stopped right there, you would get about the same amount of strength and muscle gain as if you'd gone to that failure point. Really? Yep. Okay. So the difference between them is minimal. Maybe you get a little bit more, but it's not enough to make a difference. And for the average guy, why push that envelope? Now, there are times where you should test what that is. But we're going to pick and choose that based on the person. If you're somebody who has never gone to failure doing a back squat before, why am I having you do that? You're not even comfortable with the movement, right? Now, that's for a squat. If it was bicep curls or tricep extensions or lateral raises, something that's the chances of injury are a little bit lower, relatively speaking, and the fatigue level is lower, a back squat is not the same as a dumbbell curl. Maybe we can go to failure more with those things, or things like push-ups where external load isn't necessarily there. We can test that out. Okay, what's our failure point here? So it really depends on how you approach that. But the general guy, no, I do not recommend that they just always go to failure. Okay. Every once in a while, I think in the book I even say, like, you know, you put on the Ronnie Coleman video and see what's happening. Lightweight baby and see what you got going on and kind of test it out. But it depends on the person, their training history. So being specific with that is important. If you've never deadlifted before, don't go do a five rep max deadlift. Yeah. Right? Like it's just not, even something is, you know, I say this a lot, this is a big trend right now is sprinting, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

I think all men should sprint. If you haven't sprinted in 20 years or five years, and you go out and you run as fast as you can, as stiff as you probably are, you just have a higher chance of injury that's just not necessary. Yeah. We should build up to sprinting, just like we should build up your strength to hitting to failure sets, right? And so you have to be intelligent about how you approach those things. Because right now, every week I get a new phone call about, oh, you know, I went and played pickup basketball last week for the first time in 20 years. Oh, yeah. And like both of my heel cords are killing me, my knee really hurts. It's like, well, dude, you haven't jumped in 15 years.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah, you're doomed with that. But it's funny you mentioned the sprinting because I I I saw recently, not recently now, probably uh six months or more, about how few people over 50 sprint. So I looked at that as a challenge. So what do I do now? I sprint. So I've been incorporating at the beginning of my workouts, I start off with farmers' carries, I do three um three two-minute walkarounds with basically 50 pounds. And then I go to sprint for about 15 seconds, uh, recover for a minute, 15 seconds, uh, doing four of those. And then my heart rate is on fire. So is that a and I've worked up to that. Is that a good regiment to begin a workout?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

So here's what I would say. It's not a bad regiment by any stretch of the imagination. I am of the mindset that doing something is better than doing nothing. Everyone should do something quickly, do something for strength, and then make sure that their cardiovascular system is is in place. When it comes to doing things quickly, when you are tired, you can't do things at the max speed you could do them. So when we program any kind of speed work, it's always done before you are fatigued, right? So if we're doing med ball slams, we're doing them. Prior to bench press, right? The thing that's because if you're not doing something at 100% or close to it, the speed never really gets better. And for everyone, power, the ability to move quickly, is the thing you lose the fastest as we age. Okay. Right. So power, strength, and muscle are kind of going down, if you will. Power goes the fastest. So when old people fall, it's not necessarily that they're not strong. Like they could stand up out of a chair. They have the strength to do it. They don't have the speed to stop themselves from falling. They don't have the ability to catch. Yeah. Right. And so that's the thing that we're trying to preserve across time. So anything that makes you sprint, to your point, if you're doing 15-second sprints, like that's going to be included. But there's a cardiovascular component to that, which makes you on your fifth set of 15 seconds as fast as you can, it's not as fast as you can.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

No, no.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

It's as fast as you can in that moment, but you're tired, right? When it comes to true power work, we try to do that where you're not fatigued. For instance, this morning is my sprinting day, right? So I end up doing 10-yard accelerations, 20-yard accelerations, 30-yard flies, and then some striders. I am fully recovered for every single rep. Okay. My heart rate's down. I feel good and I'm sprinting and I'm timing it so I have a better feeling of how much I'm losing. But I am trying to run as fast as I can in those moments. Yeah. Right. And if I'm seeing a huge drop-off, I'm too tired. I'm done.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Right. So in terms of true power work, that's kind of the way to approach it. Um, however, hopping, you know, pogo hops up and down, side to side hops, med ball slams, uh, even with weights, like when you're warming up, doing things with maximum speed, short, because you can only do it for so long, but trying to produce force rapidly is important because it's going to maintain your ability to produce power long term. And in terms of things that are going to help you live longer better, especially as you get later into life, you just can't avoid it. So everybody I work with, we do something where they are moving something as quickly as they can.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

This is 60-year-olds, 70-year-olds, 90-year-olds. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Doesn't matter who it is. We'll find out. We won't, you never stop. You should find ways to move things quickly. It just might change based on what they have available to them.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Right? If it's a 90-year-old person, it might be something as simple as we give them a ball and we just have them throw it as hard as they can against the wall or push it into the ground. Or I'll have them try to just march as quickly as they're just trying to move quickly.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah. Because I think the mindset of, well, I'm X age now, I don't do that anymore. What, you know, what would you say to someone who has that approach?

SPEAKER_01 24:43

You it's the their idea is I don't want to get hurt. Right. You are way more likely to get hurt if you are not strong. You like it is being weak is dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Being strong makes you capable, right? Can you get hurt by lifting weights? Sure. The chances are like really low compared to like everything else in the world. There's been a big push recently or a big conversation recently about kids and lifting weights. And everyone's like, oh, it's so dangerous for kids to be lifting weights. It's going to affect their blah, blah, blah. It's like half as dangerous as playing soccer.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Like they're more likely to have growth plate issues from fracturing a leg that gets stepped on playing a sport or from a concussion or whatever. Lifting weights is protective to a certain degree of a lot of those things. And so as you get older, it gets harder to build your armor.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

It's the reason I hound young people, especially in their 20s and 30s, when it's like the they're starting to pick the road of like, eh, I'm going to slow down and I'm working and I've got kids and blah, blah, blah. And they lose that time. You cannot waste that time. Like that needs to be the time where you are getting stronger. You know, you're building up your cardiovascular system. You're making sure that your bones are as strong as they can be. You're keeping an eye on your blood work. Everything that you do there sets up a foundation so that when you're in your 50s and 60s and 70s, you're making your life better. Now, if you've been doing nothing and you start in your 60s, of course you can get better. But you should start now. Yes. Like that is so vital. So the thought of like, uh, you know, I shouldn't be jumping or throwing things or lifting weights, it's it's dangerous. It is dangerous not to.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Now, can you be an idiot? Of course. You can go in there and throw weights around and hurt yourself, of course. I mean, that's that's what's happened with a lot of guys who are like, oh, I'm gonna go to this new class. Yeah. Or they're gonna go join a CrossFit class, or they're just gonna go to the gym and do some bro split that they saw on, you know, ChatGPT or whatever. And they go in and they hammer it and they're like, dude, my shoulder's killing me, my back hurts, this or that. They just do too much too quickly after doing too little for too long. It's kind of like a funny adage. But that's the danger of it.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

So would you say if an overweight 60-year-old man came to you, you still would work on a program to get him 100% to that?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

There's no there is no time in someone's life where they can't get stronger. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

That's crucial.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Crucial.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Right? They can get stronger, right? Does it get harder? Of course. Like aging always wins, right? Like you will always decay as time goes on. From the time you're born to the end, you're always going down. Our goal is to just make that curve go down slowly versus be the cliff. Yeah. Right. And anything you're doing is going to make that cliff come right back up. We want that curve to level out. And ultimately, I think the thing that most guys mess up is that they think or they go through what I call the yo-yo of death, where they go up and down. Like they train for six months, they stop, they train, they stop. So they never really get more fit, right? Because it's not a part of who they are. Like if I told you, like every morning you were just talking about your morning routine, right? Where you like get up and you read and you do your stuff and you work out. That's a part of your life. Like it's a part of who you are. It's like brushing your teeth every day. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

It's just it's telling your wife.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

It's my foundation for the day.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

It's your foundation for the day, right? It's who you are. That's what men have to get to. It's not, I'm a guy who's trying to work out. It's I'm a guy who trains.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

I go to the gym, or I every day I will do something to make myself sweat or work harder.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Right. It's it's having this identity shift from I'm trying to do something to I am that thing. There's a um great book called The Master Key System by Charles Honnell. And I happened upon it a long time ago. But the premise of the book was if you want to be something, you need to act like that something. So if I want to be a successful businessman, if I want to be a bodybuilder, if I want to be a pro athlete, well, what does Steph Curry do? He shoots thousands and thousands of shots with specificity and everything is structured effectively. He's doing perfect practice, which has kind of gone out of vogue a little bit, but you're doing what that person would do.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Right? If I want to write a book, well, what do authors do? Well, they wake up, they clear their heads, they, you know, talk to their muse, they they do all of these things. Well, that's what I want to do. So I need to do those things. Yep. And that's how training is. It's I identify as somebody who trains, but also as somebody who eats well and somebody who cares about their health. You know, I identify as someone who's a good dad or trying to be a good dad and a good husband. What would those people do? In the book, I tell people that they should all skip to chapter 23, uh, which is called What Lights Your Fire is the name of the chapter. Read that first and then read the rest of the book. Because it's about identifying as that guy.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

You know, I think of it. Well, it works. I think visualization is so powerful because it first off, it sets you with a focus or a purpose, right? So now you have a goal, you have a process already set, which is a lot better than not having a process, right? So if you're envisioning becoming that person, becoming that father, then you're on the path. You're one step closer. Now you still got to do the work, but at least you've told yourself the goal and what it's gonna take to get there.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah, and you're also anytime that you fall off that wagon, you immediately want to go back because you're gonna have those blips. Everyone does. I have them. Sure. I've had moments where I've like gained a bunch of weight that I was like, man, what the heck happened? Or like my training has laxed, or like things have gone awry. But to get them back on track is easy because it's like, well, I I train, like I work out, I take care of myself, right? It's we we don't really look at training that way a lot, although we should, but we do think about it in other aspects of our lives. It's like, oh, well, I screwed up with my kid, whatever that is. Well, that doesn't mean that you stop being a parent.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Like you still have to, you still have to show up and be a parent, even if you screwed up, right? If you and your wife had a knockout, drag out fight about something and you were in the wrong, yeah. You don't stop trying to be a good husband, or at least you shouldn't stop trying to be a good husband, right? If work goes wrong, it's what you do next. It's like it's well, I'm I still own this business. It can't crash. I have to go forward and and make it work. Yeah, and training is no different. You might fall off or have some issues, but when you become someone who trains, you're like, ah, that's okay. I'll I'm gonna go to the gym tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

It's just a part of who you are.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

You know, talk about weightlifting, and your book is titled The Heroic Man, but I truly think anybody can read a female can read it just as easily and apply it the same way. It really is. Um, but I've also seen a lot of women now in the gym weightlifting in the last few years.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

And I think an important transition in all of the country. Um, although I think it's become more mainstream. I still think we have a lot of work to do on that front. Um, because you also have the advent of lots of yoga and lots of Pilates, and those things have good purpose, like they help people clear their minds and they feel good, but it's not making that female more robust. It's not making them stronger. They might be getting more flexible, they're having fun, like they're mentally getting more clarity, but their strength isn't going up, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:50

And for females, still need strength training and still have to strength train, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Especially considering that, you know, osteoporosis is mostly a female problem, right? Bone issues are mostly female in nature. And one of your big repellents to that is strength training, right? Never mind the fact, you know, it's after watching my wife go through having our baby, and you know, she was such a superstar, as you can attest to with all of your kids. Like watching your wife go through that is just like the most awe-inspiring thing. And she worked out really hard through her, and I say really hard through her pregnancy. She was weightlifting two to three days a week. She was still doing conditioning all the way until our little girl. We have a picture of her and I in the gym the week before Maddie showed up.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

And it made her postpartum wonderfully better, which is already it's hard enough. Yes. Like I can't even fathom it. Like it's just I'm sitting on the outside, like no, no, we uh observing. I'm trying to help. Like, what do you need? What can I get for you? Like, there's hormones all over the place, and you're just trying to help.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

But the stronger they are, the better all of life gets. And when you start talking about like picking up kids and moving them and throwing stuff into the car and all of these things, it requires strength. Sure. And so for females, it is so vital that you are training. Right, especially if there's lots of kiddos around and you're trying to like manage all of that because your health directly impacts them.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Right? Like the ability to get in and out of a car, go to the zoo, go to the beach, pick up kids. I watched my wife pick up our 13-month-old now. It's not like she's big. My bicep is smoked after like 15 seconds of holding. I'm like switching arms. I'm like, golly, you're heavy. Yeah. My wife's picking her up and slinging her around. But that strength matters. But it also allows them to, you know, live better, live longer, and you know, not lose their bone structure and their muscle mass. And, you know, it's it's not harder per se for women to get stronger, although, contrary to popular belief, it is. Certainly their muscle mass is capped just based on how much testosterone they produce. But they can still get a lot stronger. Like a lot of it used to be like women don't train because they don't want to be bulky. Yeah, they don't want to look like bodybuilders.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

They don't want to chance of that happening, right? Of being too bulky overnight. They're just not, right? No one for men either. Genetics for men specifically.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

People joke that they're like, oh, you're gonna get so jacked if you do that. It requires legitimate effort to get really strong and jacked. And do you have the genetics? Some people are just genetic mutants. There's a guy that I that I train, he adopted a kid from Haiti. This kid's never worked out a day in his life. He is stacked. I mean, it literally looks like he was chiseled. He's a Greek god, yeah. Like he's in the Coliseum, yoked, never lifted a weight in his life, right? He just genetically was given a sweet deck of cards. That plays a huge role, contrary to a lot of people's belief. So looking big in jacked is not a bad goal, but it shouldn't be the goal.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Being strong, being quick, being able to recover. You know, one thing I wanted to ask you about is I think there's been a lot of uh advice historically about injury that is now being changed. Basically, if you're injured, rest and ice. Yep. And if you could address that approach.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Yeah, those days are should be gone.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Um but it's been ingrained enough.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

It's been ingrained, and it was a big part of like the 70s, 80s, 90s. You know, everything needs to be iced, and you know, rice was a big thing, rest ice compression elevation. Um but even back then, there was no data really to support that. I think it was just kind of the normal It sounded good, it had an acronym. It sounded good, it had an acronym. Um, but in the book, I I break it down for people pretty simply is that anytime you stop moving, we're in trouble. And so, my the general advice that everyone should follow is you should do as much as you can without pissing off your symptoms. Okay. So let's say that you roll your ankle.

unknown 37:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

How about tennis elbow or golfers elbow? Tennis elbow and golfers' elbow.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

So let's say that somebody has has tennis elbow, right? Which tends to be from overload of some kind or repetitive motion, and you've just pissed off the tendon in your elbow. Now, should you stop playing tennis for four to six weeks? No. Historically, people would historically people would spice it and they would stop. Tendon injuries are a little bit different than muscular injuries. However, it still applies. You should still do as much as you can without pissing off that elbow. And the rule of thumb that I give people is if it's a three to four or five out of ten pain, which is subjective, right? But you could still do something, but you're like, I don't love that, but it's not killing me. I can still grip pretty whatever. Do it. And then you look the next 24 hours. Did it get any worse? No, perfect. Keep doing that thing. So with tennis players specifically, they really might struggle with their forehand. Like, man, it's just smoke in the inside of my elbow. Backhand feels fine. I want you going out and hitting backhand off the machine or doing network. Oh, that doesn't seem to really bother it. Sometimes it's velocity driven when they really try to load up and hit it. They're like, oh, that really hurt. But at 50%, it feels or just general volleying. They feel okay, right? Or just general rallying, they feel okay. You should be doing that, right? For a couple of reasons. The first one is when you just rest, especially tendons, they don't actually get a whole lot better, right? They need load to know that it's okay to do some more. Right. To well, and to not, you know, go the other direction. Four to six weeks of doing nothing is gonna result in some kind of atrophy.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Right. And it's also your brain going, hey, is this safe? And so the next time you do it, you go, oh man, that hurt. Something's wrong. This is bad. I got to give this up. And that happens a lot, right? So the importance of continuing to move is that we're not losing any muscle mass, generally speaking, we're not losing the ability to do things, but you're also teaching your brain that it is safe to do. In the book, I describe pain, or you know, the brain is like a learning ADT system, it's a security system, right? So the example I use is let's say that you're at home on a Tuesday morning and you've got a fancy security system in your house, and a thief kicks the door down and tries to come steal all of your stuff. Alarms are going nuts, cops show up, you know, the fire and rescue is there, your neighbors are running over, you know, the grandpa four-doors down, has his shotgun, he's coming over to take care of it. It's a big response, right? And thief, you know, gets caught, everything's okay, you go back to normal. Your ADT system remembers this. Six weeks later, it's a Tuesday morning, the alarms are going nuts, right? And they're even more exaggerated this time. They're louder, there's like 15 more fire trucks that show up. Every cop in the county is there. Meanwhile, the door was just blown open by the wind. There's no actual danger. But the last thing that that system remembers is that a thief came in and tried to do harm to your family. That's how your brain looks at pain. It looks at past experiences of it and goes, hey, the last time you did this, it was bad. I need it to hurt more this time because something could be wrong. It doesn't know the difference between the door being blown open by the wind and a thief blowing the door open. It just goes, something's wrong, set the alarm bells off. So that's why you'll hear people talk about, well, I've had you know back pain for 50 years and it's never gotten any better. Yeah. And it's got to be because I have some slipped disc or I have this or that. Meanwhile, when you looked at like an MRI of their back, you'd be like, well, I mean, everything looks okay. Like maybe you've got a bulging disc here or there, but that's those are normal things. So the pain isn't necessarily from a physical broken piece. It's because your body has learned about that. And so a lot of what we used to do in rehab was that idea that like everything has a broken that needs to be fixed.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

As opposed to, yes, there's a part of that. Like we got to get inflammation down. But we also have to make sure the brain is learning that it's just safe to go do these things. And the bigger part of that is it also makes the person more confident in like, hey, I can still go train, I can still go play tennis, I can still go play golf. I might have to modify it, but I can still go do it. And I have confidence that I'm not going to make it worse by doing it. In the book, I list like a bunch of red flags that you should look for. 99% of injuries don't fall under the red flag category, like outside of like strokes.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

And that's why people's injuries aren't fixing themselves because they're doing the wrong thing. Right? They're resting, they're icing.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

They're resting, they're icing. And I think that there's this idea that it's not necessarily that rest is bad or that ice is bad. Ice just is it's a numbing agent. It makes it feel better, which if it makes it feel better and then allows you to go move, knock yourself out. Yeah. Ice till you drop, right? But if you're just icing for the sake of icing and it becomes like a crutch where it's like, oh, if I don't ice this, I'm screwed. Yes, that's bad. No different than if I don't take in, you know, six Advil a day, I'm in trouble. You know, anything that puts you in that kind of relationship isn't good because it's taking the locus of control away from you.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Right? You don't have the ability to control this. You're being controlled by your pain. I give a couple examples of clients of mine in the book that have gone through that where they're just their pain tells them what they can and can't do. Yeah. That's just not how you should live. You should do as much as you can without pissing off symptoms, right? Keep moving is the biggest thing. If you want to use ice, you can use ice. I usually recommend that people keep things warm, keep them compressed. So if you can wear a calf sleeve or an elbow, like you've got tennis elbow we talked about. Yeah, put an elbow sleeve on, right? If it helps with the symptoms and allows you to go move more, do it. Right. If there's a cream you like to buy, not necessarily Voltairean, because that's actually an anti-inflammatory cream, but if there's just some generic cream you like and you're like, oh, I rubbed it on there and it feels great, and I can go play. Okay. The thing that matters is the movement. Keep moving. Whenever you're moving, you're pumping your, you know, you're pumping your muscles, which is pumping blood, which is getting inflammation out, if there's anything there, and then it's building confidence and you doing the movement, right? Most of the time, whatever you're whatever you've done isn't truly sinister, right? It just hurts. And the way that we work around that is doing as much as we can without pissing off symptoms. And that seems so simple. Yeah. It's like almost reductionist in nature, but it's the truth. Like it's just about continuing to move forward, even in the midst of something being uncomfortable. You will experience pain.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

It's still gonna be there.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

It's still gonna well, and it's just part of the human condition. Yeah. Like you're going to do things that like it's very rare that someone's like, I've been pain free my whole life. Right? Like they probably just haven't done a lot. Like you're going to hurt yourself somehow. Yeah. Right. But when you're like, hey, it's just a part of this process. I just need to keep moving through it. I'll give you some great example. My best deadlift ever was about a week after I couldn't get out of bed because my back hurt.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

Really?

SPEAKER_01 44:13

I hurt my back training and was like, oh my gosh, my back is like really hurting me. I took it slow for the next week, just did my normal stuff, got to that Saturday and was like, eh, it's still a little bit sore, but you know what? I'm I feel pretty good. PR deadlift of my life. And I can't tell you how many other people I've been around where they've had like big events coming up and have been hurt.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

But we've ingrained that, like, hey, it's okay, minor setback, let's adjust, blah, blah, blah. And they still end up going and competing, even in the midst of that. It's the same thing with people. I'll give you there's a great Kobe Bryant example. Trying to remember, he was talking to like Patrick Bett David or something. And he was like, say you're at home and you have a bad hamstring strain, you're lying on your couch, and there's a house fire, and your little girls are upstairs. Do you think anything about that hamstring strain? Or do you sprint up the stairs, grab your kids, and get out of the house? Yeah. And the point was kind of like a mind over matter kind of thing, which isn't per se wrong, but it's also just what do I think of this? How much emphasis am I placing on how this hurts versus, well, what can I do about the fact that it hurts? Yeah. And that mindset shift for people is really important. Um, that's actually probably the part of the book that's really critical for people that have had pain in the past or have pain now to wrestle with. It's like, am I in control of this? And am I, do I really want to not have it? Because some people find their identity in when things hurt. Yeah. Right? They're like, oh, I just I always have something that hurts. We used to used to see it in the PT clinic all the time was the frequent flyers. Right. Like that's just who they are. They always have pain. And so do you want that taken away or do you want to handle that or not? So it's a it's a simple way to look at it, but it is helpful. Just keep moving.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

But I think, you know, what you touched on there also is so much of what your book is, is there's a lot of factual how-to's in it. But I would summarize it as overall, it's a mindset and to be the heroic man, to be empowering yourself to help others as well. And most importantly, the responsibility we have as men to our families and society. So I think I think you nailed it. It's book, it's the first of a series. First of a series. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

So this is the physical book, and by physical, I mean the body. Yeah. So blood work and nutrition and how to strength train and finding motivation and how to defend your family. Um, and then the second book is actually being a father, husband, and friend.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Uh, and the third book is actually about wrestling with God and how does that look and uh the struggles that I've had in the past and and all of that. But it's that's kind of the three-part series, is is kind of body, mind, and soul.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

Great. Well, I look forward to reading those next ones, and we'll have you back as our first repeat repeat visitor.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Repeat guest.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

I like it. So welcome back to Beyond the Break and great luck, great uh good luck with the book as well. I think it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Thanks for tuning in to Beyond the Break. If this conversation brought you value, make sure to like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you never miss an episode. We've got more real stories, sharp insights, and powerful turning points coming your way. See you next time.