Ep. 37. Rapid Fire Q&A

Ep. 37. Rapid Fire Q&A 

Rapid fire questions have a way of skipping the small talk and hitting the truth. We sit down with Jake running the list while Nick and Braxston answer off the cuff, and what starts as coffee versus pre-workout quickly turns into a real conversation about performance, pressure, and how people actually grow. If you care about mindset, fitness, leadership, and the messy middle of building a life, you’ll hear yourself in this one.

They talk strength training versus endurance training and why the best choice depends on the season you’re in. They revisit the “dark days” that shaped us, from major career transitions and new parent life to the early grind of opening a gym. We also unpack how brutal workouts and competitive environments can break you mentally before they ever break you physically, and why preparation is the simplest antidote to doubt.

Then they get practical: the supplements they never give up (vitamin D3 and whey isolate protein), the learning habit that changed everything (reading and audiobooks), and the daily discipline of training even when motivation is missing. We close with a serious look at NIL and young athletes, why early money can create entitlement, and how planning for the end protects your future. The thread through it all is compounding, your choices stack whether you notice or not.

If this sparked something for you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a push, and leave a quick review. What’s one habit you’re compounding right now?

Also send in your questions for the next Q&A

Transcript

Compounding As A Life Lens

SPEAKER_00 0:00

But I think compounding of experiences, compounding of knowledge, compounding of relationships, everything is compounded. So it's hard to measure your knowledge of something. Like if I walked into your boardroom and I was like, I could do this, I don't understand how many steps it takes to get to where you are and how your mind works to understand where we even are in a conversation.

Rapid Fire Setup And Rules

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Welcome to the Rising Travis Podcast. I'm Nikki Rankar with Braxton Cave, and today we are gonna do what we call it rapid fire.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Speaking of that, Rapid Fire, Jake's take. Yeah, we should start like a thing on the podcast where we do it on every one. Like here's you know, like a question or something. Like we ask each other. I don't know. People do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

If people give us, I'd love it if people gave us a top top question of the week. Yeah, something like that. Something.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Anyway, we're doing rapid fire stuff, trying to keep it short. I don't know if I can do that, but I'm gonna try.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

We're gonna we're gonna hand it over to Jake. He's got a list of questions. He we we don't know the questions, so this is gonna be off the cuff, and uh we'll just run through. You're answering the first one first, so I have time to think.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

It's rapid fire, but it goes for everything, too. This is everything. So I'm gonna start off with you gonna know what you guys are both gonna say the same

Coffee, Pre-Workout, And Training Styles

SPEAKER_02 1:43

thing. Coffee or pre-workout?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I'm going pre-workout. Coffee.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I'm shocked on that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

By who? Me or him? Yeah. I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

I've just been in uh if I want to lift really, really heavy, like if I really want to lift, pre-workout.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

That's the only time I do mine.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

If I'm if I'm like, I'm going ham, but it goes through seasons. I might do that for like three weeks and then forget about it for three years. And be like, oh yeah, pre-workout. I'm pre-workout.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Dry scooping that thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Endurance training or lifting heavy.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

You gonna go? I mean, I like both, man. People be like, oh, you're lifting heavy. I'm like, yeah, but I I f lifting heavy is like a for me, it's this like raw, like I can't explain the feeling I get with it, but like endurance is like opens my mind, clears me. Like so I think for different things, like if I'm in like a I want to go in and just be an animal, I want to lift. If I need to like calm down, clear my mind, I'm gonna go endurance.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah. I think at its core, I'd picked strength training. But I just I love obviously over the last like five years, I love the ability to be able to move and and so the endurance has been a different challenge, a more enjoyable new challenge for me than strength training.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Okay.

The Hardest Seasons Of Life

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Seasons of life. Um, what's the hardest season?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

I think the hardest season for me was when I transitioned from the NFL to my corporate job and we had a newborn baby at home, and just trying to figure out how to live life, being a new parent and a new job. My wife and I call them the dark days.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Mine was when I uh opened up the gym, the first gym. We had a Jada was a year and a half, so younger, and I would say there was a two or three-year window that the dark ages is not a bad. I just say it was the worst few years of my life for so many reasons.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

The

Failures That Built Us

SPEAKER_02 3:59

biggest failure that's built you so far.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Biggest failure that's built me.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

I don't know if I would call it a failure, but I have referenced this before, but I would say lesson.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

I'll just say lesson.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Realizing that not everybody's gonna believe in you, especially like my dad would be the one, like he did not, he basically told me everything I couldn't do, and I reverse engineered and said I will never be that, and let anybody tell me what I can and can't do. So it allowed me to do things that other people wouldn't, even like CrossFit, all the stuff. Like I didn't care what you thought.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

I would say mine would probably be again. I don't know if I'd call it a failure, but my NFL career not living up to the expectation that I wanted it to be, and then learning how to the lesson in it was like the learning how to transition into competing in something different other than football.

Snacks And The Worst Workouts

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Your guilty pleasure snack.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Pretzels.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

I'm shocked on that one.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

I actually uh yesterday I went in, I was downtown South Bend, and I was working, and then I had to grab something from one of our rentals, and I was like, man, I'm really hungry. So I stopped at Purple Porch, which is a little clean eating, and I got a burrito, and then there was my favorite bag of pretzels, and I bought it, and I ate it yesterday and today.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I kept it in my car because I didn't want anybody else to eat them. I I would say mine would be jalapeno crunchers.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Those are actually bomb. Those are really good.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

They are, but you can't buy them at the store like you can buy pretzels.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Um, this one's for Nick. Um, the worst workout you've ever done necessarily like during your training.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Oh man, there's been a lot of really bad workouts. The there's two workouts though that I think it's when you're not as fit, it's a lot easier to say workouts are really bad because you're not as fit. And I did in 2010. So this would have been July of two, July or August of 2010. I the crosser games finale workout was like three workouts in a row. And I went to the gym and I did them. And I finished. I don't remember much. All that I know is I woke up laying on my front porch, and I don't remember anything after finishing the workout, and just waking up laying on the front porch looking at my front door, and I don't know how I got there, but it was by myself. So that was a normal. I wasn't fit enough to do that workout basically. And then the other one was at the CrossFit Games, we did Murph. It's like 130 degrees plus on the floor. Um, they gave us no water, no nothing, and I was getting no repped a ton on push-ups, and it was I just remember we got out of the sun, finished the workout, sat down, um, and I woke up about an hour and a half later not knowing, like I was disoriented, not knowing anything. So those two experiences I would say.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

I mean, I think Murph sucks regardless of what kind of shape you're in, because it's whatever you make it.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yeah. Right. So it and I I've done Murph a hundred plus times. It's not that bad to me. I would say it is now, I'm not as fit. But it was kind of just like you can only go so fast on every movement. There's I can breathe in the squats, I never have to stop. Like the run is kind of like fast, but not too fast. So it was there was never an issue. But people don't understand when you are competing, like a lot of times people break themselves through the pressure they put on themselves racing. And and when you get outside of yourself and you start racing somebody else and you start doing things in an environment like that, especially in those conditions, and then if you're getting no-rept, meaning I had to do way more push-ups than I was supposed to, uh it it at and you don't stop. You actually stress yourself out and you start trying to go faster, which then hinders you more, and you get inside your head, and yeah.

Tough Coaches And Personal Doubt

SPEAKER_02 8:42

For Bradford, the toughest coach you've ever had, and this is like your whole career from high school on.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Toughest coach I ever had, probably Charlie Weiss. Um, but I think that's why I love the dude so much and have a great relationship with him to this day. He just had a high standard and expectation for me and always pushed me, and but it was it was good. Uh uh if I had to go position coach, Harry He stand. Not even close. Harry's a grinder, unbelievable offensive line coach, but same thing, high expectation, and he you had to be prepared to come to work at Notre Dame. I only had him for one year. If I I tell people that if I would have had Harry my whole time, I would have been a completely different player.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

When do you guys, this is for both of you, when do you guys feel the most doubt?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I mean every day. Um I I would say I feel the most doubt when I'm unprepared for a situation. So that's that's why for me, and I think that part of that was just through football, something I learned. Like if you went into a practice or a game and you didn't feel good about the preparation you had done in the playbook and watching film, like you'd step on the field with some doubt. Like, I don't I don't know if I'm gonna be able to perform to the best of my ability. Uh or even today in corporate environment, going into a meeting and you don't you didn't do your homework ahead of time. Like, I think that's where I I would say I feel most doubt, or probably did early on in my career, but that helped me prepare better.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah, obviously the sports 100%. I think in my world your highs and your lows come real, like they can come one after the other. So you can feel great, super prepared, awesome, great, and then the next day you wake up and you're like, I feel like I'm the worst at everything in the world, and nothing changed. So that's why I can say for me, like I feel every single day, and it's a a pressure. Uh especially like you as an entrepreneur and somebody that there isn't anybody above you, right? You try to put people above you, you try to have people that you look up to and you want to mimic and you want to learn from, and but in the end, it's just you, and it's so easy to think you're prepared, and you get to a certain you know, you get a month, two months in, and you realize you missed some steps. And you didn't know you missed them until you learned it at the end. The hard way. And that I think that that happens all too often because you you don't have checks and balances. You are the checks and balances, you are all those things. So there's a there's a big learning curve, I would think, and it's constantly evolving, especially now with like AI.

Supplements We Actually Keep

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Nick, you and I talked about this when we weren't recording, because obviously supplements we don't use very much because food is king. Um, one supplement you guys would never give up. Just one supplement.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Why isolate protein?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

D3. Where we live. I would say vitamin D3. It will change your mood. If you don't take D3 and start taking D3 in one week, tell me you're not a happier person.

unknown 12:39

In Indiana.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Or Canada or anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Plug the brand plug the brand you use?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Uh shoot. Oh. It's not high performance nutrition. They don't have a lot of fun. Oh, I thought they did. Uh-huh. They don't have a D3. Uh I think Thorn is one, but I'll use also like the drops sometimes. Mm-hmm. Um five to ten I use. Except for sometimes you'll go over, but most of the time.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

You said way isolate? What flavor?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

I mean, I I put it in my coffee, I put it in Greek yogurt, I'll I'll just do it and add a little bit of milk to it, make it kind of like a sludge bowl. Like a flavor is it, those of vanilla? But typically vanilla. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. When you say all those things, you're going vanilla. Yeah, vanilla.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Yeah, because you can add anything to it.

The Habit That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_02 13:31

One habit that's changed everything in your life.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Listening to books. I would say reading, but it's listening to books.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Um, I I honestly would say the same thing. Um, but I I'm a reader. I I don't enjoy listening to books because I'm a note taker. Um my brain does not, I don't absorb information by listening to it as well as I do when I read and write and underline and do all that. But I I grew up hating reading. When I get out of school, I'm like, no way in hell I'm ever reading another book in my life. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

I think I read one book, one book in school. Everything else was trying to figure out ways to get around reading the book. Spark notes, baby. Dude. People don't know what that is. People listening to this probably know what that is.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Let's see here.

Mental Versus Physical Performance

SPEAKER_02 14:24

How much performance is mental versus physical? This goes for both of you.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I think I think that the it's mental first. I think that without most people will never reach their potential because they don't believe they can. So therefore, if you don't believe you can when you start, you'll never give it everything that it needs to even find out what you can do physically. And I think it's the people that go in ignorant, you know, like this absurd way of looking at it, and people are like, whoa, stop, stop, stop. Those are the people that get the crazy results. And yeah, that's I would start there. Once you get past that and you've got that belief, the mental and physical go together. Because you can.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah. No, I mean, I agree with you there. It's for me, if I speak for me personally, it's the mental side. I mean, I'll just put it this way nine times out of ten, when I wake up in the morning, I don't want to work out. But I do it anyways. And so it's just like if I can just get my feet to walk me to the basement to do into the gym, I'm gonna get a good workout in.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

So that's so on that note, when I was competing, I did not want to work out. That was my job. Like, right, it's like waking up being like, I don't want to go to work today.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

How do you wake up motivated every day to work out? I'm like, I don't.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

There was, I mean, I I say this all the time to people, there was a year and a half, and in I documented this year and a half, where every single day my alarm went off, I opened my eyes and I thought, I don't want to do this every day. To where that's the year and a half I got really strong because I was like, it's the easiest entry point. Walk in, start lifting slowly, gain some something that inspires you, get you motivated, get you wanting to do more, and then do the more. But now, not competing, there's no stress on how good I have to get. I wake up and I'm I have no issue. I'm like, I'm excited to super excited, and I did not have that when I competed because of the mental stress. There's no mental stress now.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

This can go both for both of you.

NIL, Entitlement, And Planning For The End

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Um the young athletes today, especially the ones in NIL, obviously, what do young athletes get completely wrong today? Do you think?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

I think the the and I can't speak for all of them, um, but I would say now that guys are getting paid at such a young age, like thinking that that's gonna last forever. Um, I think there's a we're already starting to see it with guys coming out of school, guys and gals coming out of school who have are making NIO money, they get out in the real world to take a job and they're taking pay cuts. And I think that that's uh that's a new harsh reality that people they're getting wrong of like they almost feel entitled to a new expectation of compensation at a young age.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

And I think that that has shifted so much because the money was when you made it pro. So I think now it it's it was the college players, right? You're trying to get that pay payday. Now it's high school players trying to figure out, and junior high kids, like, how am I gonna get that payday? Kids are getting agents as like freshmen and sophomores in high school. And I think exactly what you said. When you're young, you think nothing will ever stop. And I learned at a young age, which is what I would say to other people, is like, prepare for the end. If it ended now, how would you feel? What would you have done? What would you show for it? Not like a cool story, because it's not gonna be the cool story, it's gonna be the ending. Dang, it ended before I wanted it to. What are you gonna do? That's what I would always tell Chelsea to myself all the time, and this is what I would say like a kid, especially you can use four years, right? High school's four years, college is four, maybe five, maybe eight, depending on who you are. Maybe ten. Yeah. Is if you if you got five years from now and everything was stripped from you, what would you have to show for it? And if you've and if you're talking NIL money, and it doesn't have to be a million dollars, it could be fifty thousand, two hundred thousand, you know, I don't know what, but what do you have to show for it at the end so that when you take that next job, you've already got a leg up? Or if you do make it, you now have a better understanding of how to manage your money, how to be a decent person, not to just let it all go to your head. So I would say a lot of it is getting around people who are going to push for you, yes, to strive forward, but also push you to be a better you. Like, and I think that sometimes the people behind you who are pushing you forward are pushing for the end that in 10 years you're gonna have, you're gonna get a set hundred million dollar contract, you're gonna do all this stuff. They're they're not thinking with the end in mind of like that, but what if it doesn't happen? Who are you what are you pushing this person to? Like push them, yes, but I think there's way more to it, and we don't have enough people who are trying to balance these young people to be like, yeah.

Forever Foods And Corporate Lessons

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Back to food. One food you could eat every day forever.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Ground beef. We just talked about this. I said shrimp. Shrimp? Shrimp scampi, yeah. Shrimp. We got bubble gump over here. Shrimp cocktail.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

All right, we're coconut shrimp. Brex. Um what is one thing you've learned you've taken from Nordame football and continue to use in the corporate world today?

SPEAKER_01 20:34

I think it's and I don't know, I I'm sure it's similar at other places, but the like network and the people you surround yourself with is the key foundation to it all. And so in the business sense, it's you know, who who are the players, who are do you putting the right people in the right seats on the bus? Um you know, I don't I don't care how talented you are, if your character doesn't show, then like you can't be part of the team.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

For you, Nick.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Same question.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

I mean, if you have something on it.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I my world's different than the corporate world. So I would say that nothing nothing ever I think that as we've been talking a lot about sports, that there's an end, right? You're done it. High school for most people, like right, you know your last game. Right? You may not know it was your last game until like you're at a certain point in the game and you're like, oh, this is it. Like we're done. And then you take everything off and you're like, that's the end. Okay, hopefully you rode off in the sunset, or you know you get to go to the next level. And then college ends, and you're like, oh, this is the end. Or you go to the pros. And my guess is you didn't know when you played your last game. And then you're like, oh, this is the end. But I would say for myself, it's there isn't an end. Talking about competing. I still train. People still look at me and they're like, you could compete, you could compete. Yeah, I could. Just like you could still play football. Like, I think how I look at a lot of this stuff is life is about living. And you you lived that portion of your life, and it's taking that and saying, okay, yeah, the door closed on that part, but I'm not done. Like you've taken so many things. We for I I love thinking talking about compounding. So like we talk about compounding money, right? Like eighth wonder of the world, Albert Einstein says. But I think compounding of experiences,

No Finish Line, Only Compounding

SPEAKER_00 22:55

compounding of knowledge, compounding of relationships, everything is compounded. So it's hard to measure your knowledge of something. Like if I walked into your boardroom and I was like, I could do this, I don't understand how many steps it takes to get to where you are and how your mind works to understand where we even are in a conversation. And that's a compounding thing. Like you, that's why they always say the best way to move somebody up is one step at a time. Like, right? It's to find somebody who's one step ahead of you, not 20 steps. So I look and I'm like, every single thing that I've ever done has been compounding positively or negatively towards where I want to go. Competing all the like everything. So I look at it all as there is no end. It's a matter of when you decide to stop compounding or when in it growing, you know, growing or dying is another way of saying it. And I look at it like, okay, I'm either compounding to just get higher and higher and higher, or I'm negatively compounding, which would be like debt. And uh my whole goal is to just keep compounding and getting to places where I'm like, wow, I don't realize how far I've come until I look back at where people are and that they want to get where I am, and I'm realizing like, wow, I I I did a lot more than I thought.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

So go to Indiana State and that's what you'll learn. Because you know you've got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

I I didn't learn that there.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

I'll end it on this one

What Our Younger Selves Would Say

SPEAKER_02 24:31

right here. Um, what would your younger self say about you today, for both of you?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

My younger self say about me. The deep one. It is. Um I would I think it's something it this is actually something I think about quite often, to be honest with you. Um I'm I try to live every day to make the young version of myself proud. And like the the family that I have, the wife that I have, the kids that I have, like it's I'm living out a dream that I've had since I was a kid. Um you know, and then you talk about like the physical side, the you know, losing all the weight. I was always the the chubby kid growing up, and so to be in good shape now, like not not where I want to be yet, but um to be in good shape, and I think the the young version of me would be proud of where we're at today.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

So that I was gonna say he'd be proud of me, but I don't really think I'd be proud of me. I'd be like pumped. Be like, What look at us? Like, what? That's your wife. Like, we got like he'd be like super pumped. So I actually would flip it and I would give him a big hug and be like, You did this. I didn't do this. I'm the result of what you did. So I'm proud of you. And I say this a lot all the time. Like, if I speak and I've said this, we've maybe I've said it on here. I want to be able to look, I want my older self to come back to me now. I want me at 55 to come to me and just give me a hug and say, don't change a thing. Keep going. If I have to give myself advice or fix something, then I know like I messed up somewhere. It doesn't need to be perfect. But so I look and I want my older self to look back at me and be like, keep going. And that's what I would say to him is dude, just keep going.

Favorite Movies And Closing

SPEAKER_01 26:55

I got a question. Favorite movie of all time? Oh man, I got a few.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

I'll let you use two. I love Mary Poppins. It's been stated, it's been known. Um and really anything Peter Pan. I love Peter Pan. So we'll go there. He is a big kid. Um you are, dude. Dude, big kid.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Mary Poppins is a good one, though. I used to watch that on the Peter Pan. I was mad.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

So when Mary Poppins Returns came out, my Chelsea's mom took the girls to go see it. And I wasn't home. Uh I don't I don't even think I saw it. Because I was like, that's my movie. Like so. What about you?

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Me? Yeah. I'd have to say The Original Batman with uh Michael Keaton. And then probably this one probably nobody's gonna know. The natural with Robert Redford.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Oh yeah, baseball.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Yep, and that's the reason why I wear number nine as my baseball number throughout my whole time playing. So I yeah, I I watch that all the time. Rookie of the Year is a good one, too. Yeah. But yeah, I watch that re on repeat all the time. I still do today sometimes, on the spur of the moment.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

But I love it. This one's so easy for me. Rudy! No, I do love Rudy, but it would be the town and the Great Gatsby.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

How is that easy?

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Those are I said it's easy for me.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Oh, I think you're saying like, okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

No, no, no. Not easy to guess, but easy to guess. I don't think I've seen either. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Obviously.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

No, which Great Gatsby? The one with Leonardo?

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Okay, that's what I thought.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

I don't think I've seen either. It's good. What's the town about? I'm guessing there's a town. Robin Banks.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

I don't know. Right or Die Friendship. You should watch. It's a good. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

A little love story in it, too. Alright, like the notebook? Not like the notebook. Yeah, okay. Just checking. I don't know. It's not like Mary Poppins. That has a love story. So does Peter Pan. Wendy Darling. Awesome. We'll have to do this.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

We'll have to do this again.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Oh yeah, we're gonna do more rapid fire. There, I even have been interviewed by CrossFit about Mary Poppins. FYI. YouTube? Public.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Awesome. Well, thank you, Jake.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Hopefully there was something fun in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Well, like and subscribe. Yes. All that stuff. As always, at the end. Thank you, everybody. See y'all.