Gunnar Peterson: It's Sexy to Try
73 min
•Feb 11, 20262 months agoSummary
Gunnar Peterson, renowned celebrity fitness trainer, discusses ego's role in career derailment, the importance of incremental self-improvement across all life domains, and why physical fitness serves as both a practical necessity and a reflection of personal discipline. The conversation emphasizes that success requires foundational habits (sleep, nutrition, training) before pursuing optimization tools, and that trying hard—even failing—is inherently attractive and valuable.
Insights
- Ego and its derivatives are among the top three reasons careers derail; understanding complementary roles (number one vs. number two) prevents destructive competition within teams and organizations
- The 'tenth of a second' philosophy—where every team member contributes incrementally to a larger goal—dissolves ego by shifting focus from individual recognition to collective success metrics
- Physical fitness is a controllable variable that signals competence, discipline, and capability to protect and provide; neglecting it undermines credibility in other life domains
- Optimization stacking (cold plunge + sauna + red light + sleep + nutrition) yields results through cumulative effect, not single interventions; foundational habits must precede exotic tools
- Post-relationship evolution is a choice: individuals either improve themselves or devolve; the best 'revenge' is becoming a high-performing, fit, responsible person
Trends
Biohacking and recovery optimization moving mainstream among 40+ professionals seeking competitive advantage without pharmaceutical interventionEMF reduction and grounding becoming normalized wellness practices driven by parental health concerns and stress-reduction narrativesPeptide and GLP-1 adoption among high-performers as testosterone optimization and metabolic management tools, with micro-dosing replacing traditional TRTIncremental fitness gains reframed as lifestyle hobby and cognitive engagement rather than vanity, appealing to optimization-minded professionalsAccountability through partnership and team-based success metrics replacing individual performance metrics in corporate and fitness contextsMental health framed through physical capability: fitness as proxy for psychological resilience, protector mentality, and relationship viabilityRejection of 'quiet decline' narrative; 40+ demographic actively resisting age-related entropy through systematic training and recovery protocols
Topics
Ego Management in Leadership and TeamsIncremental Optimization Philosophy (1% Gains)Cold Plunge and Sauna Recovery ProtocolsElectromagnetic Field (EMF) Reduction and GroundingPeptide Therapy and Testosterone OptimizationFoundational Fitness Habits vs. Exotic SupplementsPost-Divorce Personal ReinventionPhysical Fitness as Relationship and Parental ResponsibilityRed Light Therapy and Sleep OptimizationGym Ownership vs. Personal Training as Business ModelsProtein Requirements for 40+ Age GroupDeadlift Training and Back HealthGlute Training and Metabolic HealthGLP-1 and Food Noise ReductionParenting Through Personal Example and Discipline
Companies
GoFundMe
Sponsor providing fundraising platform for personal, family, and charitable causes with no pressure to hit goals
JYM Supplement Science
Gunnar's supplement brand of choice; uses their alpha gym, greens, protein powder, and creatine exclusively
Aries Tech
EMF reduction technology company offering chips and devices to minimize electromagnetic radiation exposure
Body Well
EMF mitigation brand providing chips for phones, laptops, and wearables to disperse electromagnetic frequencies
People
Gunnar Peterson
25+ year gym owner who trained action heroes and celebrities; discusses ego, team dynamics, and fitness philosophy
Ryan Hanley
Host of Finding Peak podcast; divorced 3 years ago, pursuing fitness optimization and peptide therapy
Ryan Holiday
Author of 'Ego is the Enemy'; referenced for framework on ego's destructive role in careers and relationships
Philip Gogly
Gunnar's nutritionist who emphasizes cumulative effect of nutrition (sum total, not single meals)
Dr. Trevor Bachmark
Instagram-based educator on peptide therapy; compelling communicator on BPC-157 and peptide benefits
Jim Stoppani
Founder of JYM; Gunnar's exclusive supplement source for optimization protocols
Jen Weeter-Strom
Co-host of podcast with Gunnar; discussed social media's positive role in fitness community building
Quotes
"You are the stupidest motherfucker I have ever met in my life. We had the best... You're the baby kisser handshaker politician guy behind the scenes with the board and the investors. I didn't want your job."
Gunnar Peterson•Early in episode discussing CEO conflict
"It's not the one meal that got you to 280. It's not the one workout that got you down to 185. It's the sum total."
Gunnar Peterson•On cumulative fitness effects
"If everybody gets one tenth of a second... we go from last to first place. Everyone just needs to find a tenth."
Ryan Hanley•Referencing F1 movie scene on team contribution
"I refuse to accept it. I won't go quietly into the night."
Ryan Hanley•On resisting age-related decline
"It's sexy to try. People are drawn to people who try. I would rather watch you attempt to pull that 500 and fail than listen to you talk about how you decided to step away from that attempt."
Gunnar Peterson•Closing message on effort and authenticity
Full Transcript
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Your buddies who come out of that relationship and don't use their abilities to improve themselves for the next go round on the dating marriage cycle, they're doing themselves and their current offspring or future offspring, a massive disservice by not trying harder. Fuck, dude, try. I hate getting that cold plunge every day. You do it every day? I haven't recently because mine just burst. I woke up in the morning and came downstairs, which I normally jump in the morning. I have a feeling one of my frigging cats did something, but I had an air inflatable on. A thing was leaking. It had fallen down enough that the water was starting to come over the edge and it ended up being half my day trying to make sure that whatever that is, 50 gallons of water didn't just blast out over my entire floor. It's been probably three weeks since I've been in, but yeah, I usually try to do four or five days a week when I can. You're a better man than I am. I have one. I get in it and then I just go to knees and then I go to hips and I go, I'm good. It's something about when I get up and here I just go, do I need this? Then I told myself, I convinced myself that the cold shower and the face and the shower and then if I stay in there for a minute and have it and there's something about being able to go gradually in that that I've just told me, but I will say this, I'm diligent with the sauna I can do and I use red light obviously, so Bayesium that's a given, but I do a combo of old school sauna and red light and I have no problem with heat and I joke with people like, I don't know, I don't think you get to me to your point. I don't get used to that cold. That's why I do it. I do it because I hate it. Not for that. I mean, I help benefits are definitely their inflammation, reduction, I being a non-technical fitness biology, I'm like a Monday morning quarterback, but for human optimization, I guess you'd call it. You know, wait, let me jump in just so you know this. I have told my other trainers, hey guys, I'm in the office. I'm doing a podcast and I go just if you have to walk out because it goes out to our parking, I'm fine, but whatever. I literally just had my coworker walk through with his pants down. That's the kind of professional environment I'm in. I would last five minutes in corporate just so you know, I just, I'm like, okay, and you think I'm not going to just out you on that pal? So that's what I'm dealing with here. And the good news is that's perfectly acceptable for the show. We're all we're good. Pants are optional. Pants are optional. Just he just walked through with his whole ass out smirking and I'm like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to take the hit for laughing. I'm going to explain to you why I'm not going to, I'm not going to show you, but I could explain to you what I'm looking at here. Well, yeah, it's your point around the corporate thing. I know we don't know each other, but I'm the exact same way. I cannot survive in the corporate environment for a whole bunch of reasons. Did you do it? Yeah, I did it. I got five times before I realized it took me three, it took me three times to realize that it wasn't for me. Yeah. Same reasons firing like, like failure to comply kind of thing. Or is it something egregious? No, no, it's the first two where I broke power law number one, never outshine the master. And the third one was just a complete, well, that's a 48, 48 loss of power. Or 40, yeah. And then, uh, wait, 50 set did one with him. Yeah, he was the, that was the 50th law. Yeah. What happened to 49? I think they skipped it to work for the title, but yeah, I'm sure there's a 49 then there somewhere, but, yeah. All right. So you out, you out, you out, shown or out, shown the master, fair? Yeah. It, um, which is a really interesting thing because I was young. I was in my late 20s. And I think this speaks probably to a lot of people. I thought I was just doing a good job, you know, and in my mind, I'm just hard charging tons of energy. I have fairly significant ADHD. Um, and I know that my brain's on all the time and I use that as a, as a advantage. You know, I, I've, I've learned how to control it and how to, how to focus it. And, um, I'm just think I'm cranking along and I wake up one day and get a phone call. And it's like, yeah, you no longer work here. Uh, come to find out a year later. Oh, so I'm the number two in the company, 47 person company. I'm the number two. Uh, I get a call a year later. And, and I was shell shocked. This was like, up until that point, this is like my dream job. I am running a media company. Uh, we're absolutely crushing it. We're putting on events, you know, whatever. Um, I get a call from the CEO a year later. First time I talked to him since the day fired me. And I said, you know, I pick up the phone. Did he fire you himself? Yeah, yeah. Well, black, but yes, it was technically his fingers on the keyboard that, that let me go. So I said, what do you want? And he said, well, you know, how's it going? And I go, what do you mean? How's it going? Go find out. Did your whole tone and approach to him change now that he was no longer in the, uh, let's call it superior position. Did you take on it? Did you, was your, uh, response approach significantly different? Yeah. My posture was go fuck yourself basically. I love it. Yes. Yeah. That was our talking. That was my posture towards them. Um, you know, and he's like, how you doing? I go, what do you mean? It hasn't going. I go, go fuck you. I go, what do you mean? Has it going? I was like, it has like fired me from my dream job a year ago. It never told me why. And so then come to find out I'll skip to that. I'll skip to the good part. No, this was the good part to me. Yeah. So basically, um, he goes, well, I need, I need your signature on something. So like, because I was the number two, we had a dual signature for, um, the payout on our, um, uh, we had a fan of equity plan in the company. And you needed two signatures for, you know, what some sort of compliance or whatever. And I, I was the other signature. So now he wants to get paid on his fan of equity and he can't get paid until he gets my signature. So once I found that out, I was like, look, all sign your document. I was like, but you got to tell me why you fired me. And he goes, and there's a fee for this signature. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I, he goes, um, he goes, well, you know, like, and I could tell he's trying to figure out what to say because we're getting a lot of, you know, a lot of likes, a lot of um. So he's, you know, I can tell he's grinding in his brain. And finally, he just goes, I thought you were coming for my job. And I go, and this is legitimately what I said to him. I go, you are the stupidest motherfucker I have ever met in my life. I go, we had the best, like, like I was out front. Media guy, event guy, write the blog post, do the podcast, you know, all that shit. You're the, you know, baby kisser handshaker politician guy behind the scenes with the board and the investors. I go, I didn't want your job. I go, do you think that I want to have to kiss people's at like everything you know about me? You think that I wanted to walk around kissing people's ass like shaking hands and going all these back room secret fucking investor politics meetings because we were like, uh, involved with an association too. It doesn't matter. And I was like, I don't want to do any of that shit. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. And he goes, oh, well, you know, that's the way it seemed. Then I go, wow, you are a dumb motherfucker. And then we ended up yelling at each other for about an hour, like two, just two grown men, just screaming at each other through the phone. And after about an hour, we both kind of run out of steam. And, um, and I just said, how about this? You stop being an asshole to me and I'll stop being an asshole to you. And then we can just move on. And he said, sure. And, you know, now we know that that's funny. Uh, somebody said to me, you always bring it back to you. I'm not bringing it back to me, but I'm trying to, uh, to draw a parallel to understand that I think going back to him to one of my dad who's been retired for years, when he worked that he, he taught me about there were some guys who are front men. They are the guys who go into the meetings first. And back in the day, I don't want it. I don't want him to get in any trouble, you know, after the fact that it was, there's a certain look to those guys. Uh, there's a certain demeanor to them. Regardless of their, their confidence in business, they were the guys you wanted to go in first to sort of, um, set the tone. And then, you know, business guys come in and that and, and I maintain, I've probably had, I mean, my brother once said, you have a ton of turnover in your gym. I'm like, really? I've had a gym for, you know, 25 plus years. I've had 10 trainers, you know, I don't, I don't ever say under me, but like alongside me. And they, they come and go as a rule. Most of them, let's say eight of 10, um, by their own hand, they leave. But the others because they're, they want to strike out on their own, no problem. Um, but some of them I go like the two I, I'm thinking of right now, they were the best and, and, and again, just to give it a label, but not to, not to create a hierarchy that's not there. They're like the best number two, right? Like I'm, I'm better front facing. I'm better to draw people in. I'm better to, to, uh, set the tone for a room when the client or the, uh, potential client walks in. I'm the right guy to say, here's what we do that. And I show them the stuff and I'm that. But the other trainer is as good as I am in the trenches doing the training work. And when they set out to do their own gym, I go, ah, that, that's, don't do that. I love you. Do like you and I, I just think it's my time. And I don't mind. I never want to hold anybody back. And if the big difference between being a trainer and a gym owner, you could, you could be a great trainer, fail miserably as a gym owner. You could be a great, uh, gym owner and fail miserably as a trainer. Two different skill sets. But when these guys set out, I just go, you're, look, dude, I love you. You're not that guy. Let me be that guy. Let me draw the business. And then I'll spread it around and we'll all succeed. So to your point, you didn't want to be that guy. You're doing the other stuff. You're doing, you're in your lane. He's in his lane and the two are marching along. I completely get it. So it's funny. I see it on my business too. So I did a, uh, Ted, Ted Xtalk in February. Um, it's called Stop Living a Life You Didn't Choose. And it was all about ego and how we, in my opinion, in my career thus far, I'll be 45 this year. You know, when I break down, what, what are the things that I've seen in my, in myself? What are the things that I've seen around me? People I've coached. People I've worked with. Easily one of the top three, if not the reason that I believe most careers derail is because of ego or some derivative of ego. And, you know, you look at the story that I just told, it's ego. You look at the individual who can't understand that they are an incredible and indispensable number two, but they have to be number one. That's their you talking without, but number two, doesn't mean you're beneath me. Number two means my thing has to come first. I had someone who worked with me once in the gym and, and they said to me, you think your job is more important than mine. They did all the administrative and I said, no, no, no, I don't. I need everything you do. But understand this, if you don't come in tomorrow, I still have business and work to do. If I don't come in tomorrow, you have nothing to do. That's not an ego play. That's not a power play. That's just understanding chicken and egg, like which is driving the other, right? Like, yeah, and, and there's that great book, Ryan Holiday, the ego is the enemy, you know, that book, but it's, there's some really good takeaways in that to your point of you got to know like, we don't have to be constantly measuring here. Like, let's just work, and it's funny. You had to deal with that. Well, it's funny. I guess it depends on how you measure success too. Like if you measure success solely on your own income or how many likes you get on a Facebook post or something, right? Then, then that's, then it is all about you. It's all about, you know, well, if he comes in the gym and everything stops when he walks in, then no one's noticing how many TPS reports I stamped and slid across the desk, right? Like, like, how do you measure success? I think, and if you, if you can get your organization to measure success by a metric that every individual contributes to in some way, there's actually this awesome scene. I don't know if you saw the movie F1 with, uh, Of course, yeah. I've watched this movie like 10 times now. It's phenomenal in my opinion. I went with my wife. I said this like a date and then she goes, babe, this is not a date night at all. This is you asking me to go to a movie with you that you want to say. And I go a little bit of making out in there, though. There's a little bit for the ladies. There's a little bit towards the end there. You get a little. My wife would strongly disagree with you. When I tried to play that office date night, she's like, no, no, let's understand. I'm going with you to the movies. And God, God bless her for doing that. You know, there's this scene in there where, um, it's the first race that Brad Pitt is by himself after, um, the rookie, the JP, uh, John Paul's name and the movie. I don't know his actor's name. He gets injured and he says, you know, they're like, what's our plan for today? And he says, you know, everybody, if everyone can find a tenth of a second, right? You know, he's pointing around the room. He's pointing at the rear jack and at the, you know, the girl that changes the tire and the guy that measures the air pressure and the, you know, and he's like, if everybody gets one tenth, just finds one tenth of a second today that they can get, find us. We go from last to first place. Everyone just needs to find a tenth. And like, and when you think about it in that way, and this is so hard, I'm very interested in, in kind of, how you do this in a, in a, in a, in a, in a team that you've worked with. And then you've obviously worked with some incredible celebrities and athletes. But I've seen this. Right. But finished that thought and I'm going to come back to three things, bang, bang, bang, and walk you through my connection to that. But I think about that. And I'm like, if my, if my measuring success isn't, isn't how I feel about putting this tire on. It's, did I get my tenth of a second or not? I don't care if I get my tenth of a second because I was good with the gun or because the wheel was positioned properly or the moon is in the sign of the Aquarius, right? The ego part of that goes away and it's just, I need to find my tenth of a second to contribute. And I feel like a lot of that starts to melt because now we have this bigger goal. And I clearly understand how I contribute to it. But if at any point ego injects itself, that it's like a, it's a, it's a wrench in the entire system. And now you're never finding that tenth of a second. I like to use wrench to stick with the car mechanic and allergy. I agree. Yes, I see that and I get that. And suspending ego is tough for a lot of people. But when you work in it in a team setting, I'll touch on that second. Hold that thought. I look at fitness like that. And I think it's not, what do we use to, we used to joke with, I want to say it was Johnny G who created spinning, but it's like one workout doesn't get you fit. One meal doesn't get you fat. My nutritionist, Philip Goly, it says the whole time. It's not the one meal, dude. It's not the one meal that got you to 280. It just like it's not the one workout that got you down to 185. It's not, it's the sum total. And I look at that with the recovery tools, right? Like it's not, it's not your cold plunge. It's not the sauna. It's, it's not the, the percussive device with the red light therapy on the end. But that helps the cold plunge helps. The sauna helps. The workout helps. The extra sleep helps. The temperature in the room when you're sleeping helps. The reduced EMF helps. It's like, it's all, those are all the tenths of a second. If you keep it in that mindset, I think you're, you're going to do nothing, but win, right? It's, you're going to do just the like our bands, the end all, be all of training. No, but adding the bands for, for an added eccentric to a movement that you've never used them on is going to create a different stimuli that contributes to breaking through a plateau that you've been stuck in for X amount of time. You can't quite recover. You feel like you're getting your sleep. You feel like this. You've done sauna. You've done cold punch. Then you add red light therapy. Bang. That's the one that takes you over or you've been getting your protein. You've been getting your creatinine. And then you read, maybe you, because you're over, I just, I listen to a study this morning, because you're over age 40, you need more protein to be anabolic. So you bump it up. One, two, three, four percent for every meal. And all of a sudden, your body goes more anabolic because you are older and you did take, you did make that effort to add to that. It's all those little, I'm going to use it. I'm going to put somewhere in the gym. It's all about a tenth of a second because it is and those all add up to, to, to that character's lines point, right? If we all get a tenth of a second, if everything contributes to that, you're winning all day long. I believe fully in that. Yeah, it's fun. So I do a lot of optimization stuff. But partially, I find it incredibly interesting and I love to test things. And partially because I absolutely fucking refuse to go quietly into the night. Like that's not happening. And you know, my buddies were making fun of me because I started looking into like, GLP ones and peptides and different stuff like that. In addition to the fact that I, you know, I ground and I also have a, a sauna with red light and I do the cold plunges and I do rock walks and are like, they're like, why do you do all this shit? They're like, just just go to, and I'm like, one, it keeps my brain active. I find it interesting. It's like a hobby, right? Like I sit on the couch and watch, you know, basically, I drive here at 431. If I added the Nordic curl before the zircher squat, I'll pre-exhaust the hamstring so that with the zircher, I'll really be able to smoke my quads because they won't be able to get help from them. And I'm like, why am I a grown ass man driving here in the dark, thinking about pre-exhausting my hamstrings before I go into it's, but then it's not insanity. It's like, that's what that's what we're doing. That's what all the great athletes do. How do you get 1% better? How do you get a little bit more, a little bit more? Because because what you did at 2021, 2022, 2023, probably is not going to have the same yield at 34, 35, 36 and you're trying to get that one last contract. Like, that's a big deal. If one of your success metrics is financial, then that contract is a big indicator as to whether or not your methods, your choices are paying off, literally paying off. Well, look what everyone else does. Everyone else gets fat and lazy and slow and, oh, you know, too old and they walk around on their like this, I had this moment. So I coach my son's a little league team. I'm a coach him since he's seven, he's 12 this year. And two years ago, not that I necessarily needed this awakening, but he was pitching and I went out to just, he was what it does matter. I went to say something to him, he was on the mound and I get out there for a second and one of the kids needed one of the infielders came in and he needed to tie his spike. So now there's like a break, right? So I'm standing on the mound and I kind of just do this little spin, right? Where I'm just kind of scanning the crowd. The other team, our team stands, you know, I just kind of, you know, just while I'm waiting for these kids to get their shit together. And every adult male that I could see was at a celly and was like sloppy and was like out of shape, right? And I just was like, why? Why allow yourself? And then, you know, like, I got this buddy and I leave, you know, this is, you probably hear this shit all the time based on what you do. But like, I got this buddy he's talking to me, great guy, wife's good person, whatever. And he's like bitching to me that he never gets laid anymore, right? And I looked at him and I just said, well, you think about losing your beer belly. And he didn't like that. But I said, look man, like I'm not trying to be a jerk to you because I love you. I do. I think you're amazing. Like you're a great guy. It's great dad. Good friend. I'm like, you got a big ass beer belly. Get rid of that and I bet she bangs you more often. Like just just face value. And maybe there's other things too. 100% That's a good place to start. That's a good place to start. So, so I say a little different. I go, let's look at what you're bringing to the table. Let's look at what you're bringing to the table. You're paying all the bills. Assume like if it's that kind of relationship, right? You're, you're, you're funding. You're supporting the family, right? You're the provider. You're presiding. You're protecting. But look at the package that you're bringing to the table. What makes her go? Oh, I want a piece of that. Yeah. And people are, wow, my guys, but they're married. They're in love. It has, you know, they love each other. They're connected on a soul level. They, it's not always about the physical. I go, it's not about the physical, but we are a visual society, right? From your phones to billboards to the size of buses, it's, I mean, yes, there are different advertising approaches. Now that there were 20 years ago, but you are hammered with attractive people, whether it's beautiful white teeth, long flowing hair, great looking bodies on the men and women's side. You know, if that's always shoved in your face when your partner steps up and they just haven't been taken care of themselves, there's something about that. And it's also the one thing in a way you can't buy. Yes, you can pay for help, right? You can pay for, like you said, the GLP won or plastic surgery or a train or this, but without showing up and doing the work, like you're not going to get the physique or the look that you want to bring to the dance. That comes back to you. That's it. That's a reflection on who he is as a person. I'm not knocking your boy, but that's like, do you need to get together? You need to get together. You know what I get? So you said something in there. You said protector, right? You said protector. Okay. If I'm, and I'm not a female, and any of the ladies that are listening, you've disagree with this, jump in the comments, let me know. I'm interested. But if I'm a female, right? And I do think that the vast majority of females, despite the nonsense that we see on social media, want a male who, if chic, it's hectic, can keep them out of danger as much as possible. Right? I do think that whether they are willing to verbalize it or not, it is a part of the equation. And when you wake up in the morning and you see your partner, your husband, it's hunched over and they got a gut and they look kind of sloppy and they haven't worked out in six months and they eat like shit and they're constantly complaining about their energy and they're sleepy all the time. Like, are you saying to yourself, like, if someone comes and bangs on our door at 2 a.m., that's the guy I want going down, making sure my kids are safe. I don't want to bang him at 11 if somebody's banging on our door at 2. That's what I'm saying. And maybe on the weird one, or I don't know where you fall on this or whatever, but like, I'm right there with you. But nobody says this. Nobody's going to say what you're saying because it sounds so superficial, so antiquated, so dated. We have ice here, right? We talked about the weather earlier. We are very nice. My wife hasn't left the house in three days. She goes, I can't drive on ice and I go, okay, well, the roads are cleared. I drove day one, day two, day three. I'm not reckless. I'm not cavalier with my life. I'm taking care. I said sweetheart, men and women created equal. Come on, come on and you want to show the kids that they can go out and conquer the world. You make smart choices. Hey, you know what? I know if I take, if I go out of our, where we live on our street and I make a right, that's roads all the way to my gym. If I go left, I go over this one high hill that comes down. What if that's icy? Hmm, let me take the flat way. And I also know if I go to the left, there are two bridges I cross. There are signs there that I read all year long, bridges, ice before roads. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go right. Let's use our brain. Let's use our reasoning and let's make good choices. I go, you can't just be trapped in the house. What if I'm not here, sweetheart? What if I'm on a trip? What are you going to do? I'm not trying to be cavalier with it. I'm not trying to say, you know, if they say, stay off the roads. Okay, but I want to go out and think how bad are the roads. I said, sweetheart, I have a truck. Let's, let's see what's out there. What if we need something and we did need a couple of things? And I said, you're fine for me to go get them. Then you're telling me now where the hierarchy is here. I'm that guy. I'm hunter gather. I have no problem with that. But when the weather circles back around, let's not forget who's in that role. Right? I have to be able to take care. So don't, don't begrudge me going to the gym early morning because that's what keeps me feeling competent to take care of this family. You gotta let me, you gotta let me be the guy. And I know those are sad roles. And we're not supposed to speak in those terms. But I'm with you on that. And you know, if the women disagree, like you said, hit me in the comments. And I'll walk you through why I see it that way. I'm not saying I'm right, but I'm right for me. I don't think most women do disagree with you. And on the show, the one rule we have is we have to live in reality, which is why I guess I currently fall under the, under the heading of maybe a more conservative take on the world, strictly because we just need to operate in what how the world actually works. And frankly, I love a strong female. And I actually seek them out in terms of the partners I've had in my life. And it's not about, I think where we get lost in here is, in this discussion is like, you know, sexism, and it's not what it's about. It's like, here's what I know how God created us. God created men to be dispensable. He created women to be indispensable. They're the only ones that keep the species going. Our job is men is to take the arrows and the rocks and the gunshots to protect the women not because they're weak, not because they're incapable, but because they're the ones that make new little humans. And we need them. And like, this is part of reality. And we hang on, we both make them. They need us to make them. But in my experience, they do so much better at taking care of them in those early years. From, you know, if you're going to get to defeating the whole thing, my wife gravitates towards our babies, way more than I do. I gravitate when they hit like that four-year point. And I'm like, baby, take a girl's weekend. I got them. And then we're doing dad stuff from four on. When our daughter, our youngest got leukemia a year and a half ago and went to the hospital, my wife did not leave the hospital. That's where that stopped. And she said, I'm not leaving. And I said, I get it. And I stayed there with her for a couple days. And then I said, sweetie, this is a really bad use of our time. I think I need to go back to work. And I need to make sure that our son has, as normal a life as we could expect him to have while his sister is going through this and his mother is going to be here. We have to think not just of her, but of him. And she agreed. And he and I ended up doing some real bonding's the wrong term. But we did some stuff that you certainly wouldn't have known that his family was going through anything this severe. We took, you know, travel soccer. That is as anybody who knows, travel sports is unrelenting. Like they don't care. He and I were driving Kentucky, Alabama, Cincinnati, St. Louis. Like we're driving together and we're making the best of it. If he were an infant, I would be struggling with that. That would be tough for me. Whereas my wife rocks that. The woman, my wife is great in that way. But at the same time, I'll do the dishes. Yeah. I'm not like, I'm not saying you're relegated to housework while I go out and, you know, kill saber to tigers. I'm fine sharing on both ends of that. You know, if she has an income producing job, great, if not, I still maintain that her job as a household person and child caregiver is as important, if not more important than my job. But I'm also fine to share that workload at home. But she is better at certain things when they're little to your, to your earlier point. And I think, I think to tie it all the way back around, it is our job as men, whether our females need us in this role or not to be physically prepared to defend. As, you know, we don't have to be jujitsu stars. You don't have to go do boxing. But just physically fit enough to put up some sort of defense in the event that someone comes to take your shit like what I say, what I say to people in my role, to what you said to your friend, I go, look, I'm not saying you have to be a body builder. I'm saying you have to look like you take care of your body. You have to look like the same way you brush your teeth, you wash your face, you comb your hair, you get haircuts, you have to look like you're taking care of the machine that is taking care of you. You don't have to, right? It doesn't have to be like the car that's always got the fresh coat of wax sold at it, it's show ready. But you have to look like you care and you're taking care of it. So I see what you said to your body. And I think it's awesome that you're that honest and direct to them. I have a couple of friends I've called them, like, and they get, they are overweight and they, you know, they bitch in the own about certain things. And I go, dude, you're literally on the road to killing yourself. Yeah. Like you're at the point now where you're about to get the diabetes phone call, where you're about to have the heart attack phone call weight range, age range, stress level range, those things are coming unless you make active changes. Oh, come on, dude. How can you say that's me? Because this is my world. I see this every day. When's the last time you saw an obese 80 year old? You've never, exactly, it doesn't exist. You don't, you don't make it that long. So if you're going to be obese, you're basically saying, I'm okay with my life being 10 to 15 years shorter than it would have been normally because you just simply won't survive. You know, I look, I don't, I know some people are built differently. They have bigger bones and wider sets and, and all that's fine. But none of it means that you need to, that just this, this, we've been sold this lie that you just kind of like limp into the second half of your life and take some pharmaceuticals and like manage the pain into when you ultimately everything goes black. Like, it's completely fucking bananas and I refuse to accept it. It's what you said. I won't go quietly. Don't go quietly. And I say this to people, I go, don't shoot the messenger. We're all going to die. And there's zero, there are zero guarantees that my dumbass coming here at 4.35 in the morning, working out, spending the time, making the right choices at the menu, blah, blah, blah. I could die today. I could die tomorrow. It could be a heart attack. Somebody could break it here and shoot me. And my car spins out. I record a million different ways for that to go down. But the things I can control, if they're not that difficult, people that you work out to wear today, that's ridiculous. I go, is it? So that's 10% of my week. So that's 10% of my week. How about that? Yeah. And, and I'm the psycho that enjoys it. I learned a long time ago, if I can convince myself, which now I don't have to do, it's just ingrained to enjoy the process. All the rest is gravy. How you look, how you, that's just cool. That just happens. My wife says, hey, sweetie, we're going to this. They do say you have to dress for this. I don't go, oh, fuck, what fits. Well, I know it all fits. I know everything. I can put anything on anything I own. I can wear, whether I like how it feels is one thing. But I know it all fits. I'm not choosing between my fat boy clothes and my thin boy clothes. Because I've harnessed all that. That's just another confidence feather, right? That just goes right in the cap. I'm like, I feel good going out. I don't spend 15 minutes going, what am I going to wear? Oh, well, this fit. Well, this, it's, we're good. And those are little things that add up over the course of your 40s, 50s, and 60s, where there's a lot, you reduce a lot of stress by, by reducing stress by training, I think, by taking care of yourself. I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. It's the basis of my whole life. I'm a seven day a week worker-outer. All different types of working out. Everything, hot yoga, taboxing, the powerlifting. My goal for 2026 is to finally hit 500 bills on the deadlift. My current PR is 465. So I have, you know, it to me, it's like, you know, and then I got buddies go, oh, you're, you're too old to what, what, what do you need to pull 500 pounds for? So I can, can do it because you can't, because no, because how, how many 45-year-olds in the world can deadlift 500 pounds? That's why I want to do it. For no other reason. Why the way, why not? Why not? Yeah. What, what, what else am I doing? Yeah, they're like, oh, you're going to be in the back. I'm like, you can, I heard my bag bending over to pick a fucking pencil up. I can hurt my back jogging. I can hurt my back doing just about anything. But I, the shoes is one that happens all the time. But you know what? It's a very common one. Guess why I'm not going to hurt my back, because I work out and I stretch and I take care of it. So I can bend over in time I shoe without falling over. When I was in L.A., I had a woman and an actor. I loved her dearly trained to be for about 10 years, five days a week. And she said, I, I can't, I can't lift anymore. I'm not going to do that. Just, it's going to hurt my back. I feel it when we do it. It hurts my back. I said, well, remember, some of what you're feeling in your back is muscle soreness. Think this way. If you felt that in your abs, would you say, I've hurt my abs or would you say, I trained my abs really hard in their sore? Because you have a rectus by day, right? The antagonistic muscle group to the rectus abdominis, your ab wall that gets sore from training it, because because you are in effect working it when you're doing deadlifts and other movements, you're just sore there. Because I just, I just, it's too risky for me. I can't. I said fair enough. But if your back does hurt going forward at any point, what are we going to blame? Because now we're blaming the deadlifts. But if we take the deadlifts out of the equation, what are we going to blame? The weakness, I maintain more people hurt their back because they don't do deadlifts than people hurt their back because they do do deadlifts. And I don't need to, we don't need to belabor that. That's just, that's what I would save you. I'm not saying you have to go one RM all the time on your deadlift, but like push yourself the same way you do on your pull-ups, the same way you do on your presses, the same way you do whatever movement you're doing, make sure you challenge yourself equally in the, on the post, on the poster of your change, just be honest with a friend in college, you go, I said, so you've got to train their back and then you go, I don't see that shit. I'm out there. I just lifted for this. And I get it and it was a funny comment in the 80s from a teenager, but now it's just an irresponsible guy. You got to train, train the muscles you don't see in the mirror, essentially is what it comes down to. And I know that it's not sexy, but it's sexy for other people. If you look at those studies, women look more at a man's glutes than they do his arms. And that's those poles are out there and you're like, as a dude, I'm not trading that. I don't know, okay, like up to you, but I think long term, that's not a smart path. Yeah, I'm with you there. It's, uh, and metabolically, metabolically, the glutes biggest most of the body, like, that's from a, from a, just from a body comp standpoint, right? Just from a lean mass to fat mass ratio, you're doing yourself a service by training the big muscle group. Why are we not doing, I don't understand it. No, funny. Yeah, it's funny that you see it and you get it in your mid 40s and your buddies are riding you about, I think that's hysterical. Yeah. You're on the right side of history on this one. Trust. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, so, okay, so I would like, um, I kind of, I would love to chat a little bit about, uh, if you don't mind, um, almost like rapid fire in a sense, uh, some, some general fitness, health, recovery type activities or ideas and just get your feeling on them. And these are not in any particular order, but you brought up one, um, that, uh, before that I have mentally just have not been able to pull my head all the way around. And that's, uh, E-M-F grounding. Uh, I have a grounding sheet on my bed. Um, seemingly, uh, sleep score, that kind of stuff would say it has had a positive impact over time. I do feel refreshed. I feel better. I don't know. I've been using it for so long. I don't know that I can tell, but I can't like put my finger on, you know, this, this idea of our electrical charge and its impact on how we feel, you know, there's no meter I can put on my grounding sheet to say it's working. You know, I mean, like, like, you know, where does all this lie? Cause, um, this is one of the things that I get a lot of questions about for my friends. Like, what's wrong? I'm like, no, but, um, you know, I just, what should we think about this grounding E-M-F and its impact on? Well, the E-M-F, uh, when our daughter, you know, she's still, um, she's still coming out of that leukemia, which is no joke. And anybody out there who's going through that or has gone through that my heart, go, I'll make myself cry on this damn podcast. I, I just feel for you, especially anybody with anything in that cancer realm, but especially, especially kids. Um, since then, our house has changed completely in terms of plastics are out. We have the grounding sheet on the bed underneath behind the thing, the phone's Wi-Fi is off at night. It can't be by your head. Everything, my wife has those little chips. I have one right here on my laptop. I have one of the back on my phone. I have the little things wrapped around the airpods. Like, she, she goes, crazy. I still wear the AirPods. I'm like, babe, I just do it on the podcast relax. Um, there is a lot of science behind that. You can think it's wo-wo, but, but I look at it like, these are kind of easy fixes. Why wouldn't I, right? My wife goes out with the, and, you know, I mean, your wife's become another. Actually, she hasn't. She's a woman who's watched her child go through cancer and she's chasing this down and she's become that protector, um, to the nth degree on that level. She has that reader that holds her mouth or someplace sock right at a place where they're those giant transform things and she holds it out and she looks at me and she goes, oh my god, look at the readout. We can't play here anymore. And she has the guy coming out to talk to the soccer people. Why are we on this field? What are we doing? The, the, the reading is so high. It's dangerous for the kids. I, I understand the argument of the devils and the dose. And if they're only out there once a week, is it that bad? So, so maybe, maybe not. I don't, I don't know enough to speak to that. But if it's easy to eliminate, why wouldn't we? If it's a little thing like putting that sheet on your bed, um, I will say I sleep through the night more like less waking up. You could say, well, that's your fluid level. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but if putting that sheet on the bed gave my wife peace of mind, how about this from a health standpoint? That is a stress reducer in and of itself. Yeah. If I can reduce stress, which is an indicator of health, that's an easy one to do. So I'm all over that. We have a little bench outside and a little sign that says, feet down and ground, like a play on that TV show. Uh, and I go, look in the spring, obviously not now. Not a bit of place to just sit and, and just take in five minutes, 10 minutes, just breathe. You know, if you can do it off your phone, great, or if you're just sitting there and you're catching up on the emails or text you missed during your workout, fine. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but still the grounding. Uh, I'm a fan. I have the, I have the little thing under my desk here. My wife put called grounding well and she has one of her desk. She put it in here. I said, babe, I have one right outside the gym. She goes, you have a, you'll sit at your desk with that. So the grounding is a real thing. The EMF, if you can reduce those frequencies anyway, we have those little cards in front of the TVs at the house. I just think that's an easy, like why are we pick your battles, right? I'm not going to argue that with my wife. Have you felt a reduction in noise on the little cards or the pins on your phone? Like, if you've seen or even anecdotally felt a reduction in your stress because there, there, and guys, just so if you're wondering, um, there's a bunch of companies. If you're on Instagram, you probably say like, Aries, tech, there's a body well. That's why I'm doing Jesus. Oh, that's where you use body well. Okay. That's another big one. And, um, the idea here is and correct me where I'm wrong. There's some, some components and some geometry in there, which basically breaks up some of the negative electromagnetic force. It doesn't stop your phone from working. What it's doing is taking the full, and again, I have a correct. It's taking the full frontal of this electromagnetism that we are exposed to all day and it's dispersing it and minimizing it so it doesn't have as big an impact on us. Yeah. So I'll tell you where the stress is reduced. I don't know if the stress is reduced directly by having the body well chip on the phone or the AirPods or the laptop, but I know the stress is reduced in that my wife is not writing me about it. So that's a huge win. She's like, Hey, babe, I put this on your computer. I put this on your phone. Please know I'm doing it for the right reasons and it doesn't change things for me. I go, no problem. And now we're in harmony there and that in and of itself is a stress reducer and I'll take that every day. So that's already a win. I don't walk around thinking about the EMF. I'm not wired that way. She does because while I visit, well, I went to the hospital every day for a daughter, my wife lived it and she documented everything. And if she sees that as if she saw that up close and personal in a way that I didn't see it, I was more just staring at our daughter for two to six hours every day and my wife was there for 24 hours every day and she's seeing different things. I'm going to defer to her all that. So, so yeah, I would say get the sheet for your bed. Why wouldn't you? The sheet is a no brainer. It's 79 bucks for the one that goes under your sheets. And then if you want to get the actual sheets, you sleep between it like it's not even expensive. I mean, that's the thing. And I will say what I know for sure, just from the amount of research that I've done is that our bodies are too acidic and that has to do with the plastics and the preservatives in the food and the electromagnetic radiation that we face every day. And I know the the tractors and the skeptics on this kind of stuff, are this has been such a short, this is the part that that where where I see the pessimists where I just cannot, I cannot even wrap my head around the pessimist viewpoint here because to your point, there's no harm. There's only upside, right? The the harm, the most harm is if you go full hog the couple hundred dollars for all these advice and a couple hundred dollars as much as it is for all these devices. So, and then the then the argument of yeah, but look at the people in the blue zones and look at the people who live to 80 90, a hundred years old, you're like, yeah, you have a time out. The the electromagnetic fields that we're being exposed to now, those people didn't have that they were born before there were things like cell phones for sure, but like credit cards, like they didn't travel the way we travel. They haven't been exposed to microwaves the way we have like, even if it's not on that microwave is, you know, I still use it. My wife absolutely not. She's air frion, okay, but the air fryer is electric. Like how far are we going to go? Those people haven't been around this and exposed. My kids screen time by age five is more than mine by age 50. Period. Like they're exposed to different things and with that, there are there are there are benefits and detractors as we said. So we just don't know, Connor, that's the part that tries me nuts is like, how can you have an opinion on people be like, but there's no studies. And I'm like, we've only been exposed to daily cell phone in our face radiation 24 seven for a decade. Because before that, the phones didn't have the same level of radiation coming off them. And even if they were near you or in, but in even culturally, we didn't keep them on us all the time because they only did, they basically sent text messages and phone calls. That's all they did. So like, this has been such a short period of time. There's no way for us to, there's no way for us to adequately understand the impact. What we do know downstream and this is the part where I just do not see being a pessimist on this stuff. What we do know is our bodies are too acidic and we have more mental noise in terms of like if you look at actual brain scans, then ever before in history. So we don't know why, necessarily, but we do know we have more mental noise and a, and a reduced ability to focus and more general state cortisol than ever before. And our bodies have too much, too much acidity versus what they should be. So we know those two things are true, but we can't directly tie them to some of this stuff. Why would you not want to take any step possible to put yourself back into harmony? I don't understand why that's the part that breaks me on this stuff. Agreed. I heard something not long ago. It might have been Oprah's thing on the view where she said the GOP ones turned down the food noise. And I've heard that term a few times in the last few months. And I was talking to my dad about it. And like, what are you talking about? Food noise. And I thought, yeah, he's not, my dad sleeps like his phone is downstairs. He goes, it's in the charger. And I'm like, he's just a different thing. He didn't have food noise, right? My grandparents didn't have food noise because there wasn't the TV on all the time where things coming on your phone or Instagram or or constant reminders or ads during podcasts like food noise was that that's got to be a, I'd love to know when that term was coined or when it became such a part of our vernacular. It's just a, that those are new things to us. Food noises new, EMF is new, but as are a lot of the devices that we take for granted and we adopted, like you said a decade ago or less, like it wasn't that long ago that it was like a landline, like everybody was landlines. When I was in college, I know which seems like a million years ago, we had a landline at our house. And after that, I remember having a phone in my car, like it was, it was hard locked in my car, like jacket out of the thing, right? And then there was a portable one that had like no kind of battery, a couple hours maybe. So these are all new things and you have to assume with them and with those conveniences, there are potential downsides. So if somebody's identifying the downside and then there's a counter to that, why I look at it like maybe we're saying the same thing. Why not? Why not do the preventative? Have you taken a G. L. P. One? I'm not. I take nothing. Honestly, that's funny. I have a, I work with Jim Supplemus, J.Y.M. I literally take, I take their alpha gym, I take their greens, I take their protein powder, and I take creatine. That's literally all I take. And I don't, but it's not a, it's not a, it's not a political position on my part. I have nothing against any of those things. And I think, I think, you know, I don't, I will drink alcohol, but I don't do drugs. That's not me. And I've had people say, but you know, if we do so much better for you than alcohol, I'm like, I'm from a different era. I could, I just grew up differently to me. I, you know, I don't gamble. I don't drink coffee, but I will have an energy drink like all drink is O.A. That's just me because somewhere in my brain, if I get on the other thing, I'll go, I'll go ham on it. I just know myself. If I got into coffee, I know myself, if I got into it, same reason I don't do the same reason I don't do steroids. The peptide thing, very, very tempting. But I look at it and I used to joke with this with, with the client of mine, an action hero in the movies and I, and I used to say to him, you used to say, you got to get on stuff. And I'd say, I know myself, if I get on it and I go down to 6% body fat, I'm going to want to go down to five, I'm going to want to four. I just know, you know, and I can always, I do this scan in the mirror every day and I go, what am I not doing right? Is my training on point, is my food on point, is my hydration on point, is my stress management on point, am I taking my supplements? Have I been diligent with my rest of recovery, my sleep, my red light, my sauna? Am I doing everything right? If I don't like what I see, there are always at least two things that I've done wrong, pilot error. If I correct that, the situation reverses. And until I lose the power to reverse the situation with what I'm doing, I'm not going to take on something new. Like the people who go to the supplement store and you buy five or eight things, I think that's a silly approach because how do you know what's doing what? Yeah. So this is, so I'm a, I don't know what it is about me, but like when I, when I'm into something, I go all the way down. So I have to be very careful around what things I start to let rent space in my head because in outside this happened like with around COVID with politics, you know, I always, I always kind of tangentially followed what was going on, but you know, kind of arms length and then COVID things weren't adding up like with a lot of people, whatever, and I started diving it. And then I went all the way down into like, you know, I'm reading books on this history and I'm like, no, and I'm like, this is nothing productive. I got to come all the way out. And now I try to stay out hard, whatever. But like with with the optimization part, again, I, I was the CEO of a seven location fitness franchise for about a year. That's a different story. I'm not a fitness trained in any way though. It's all just self taught. But with the, the supplements and stuff, what got me, so I do take a micro dose, you know, with a doctor, not self, whatever with a doctor, GLP-1, there's Epitide, technically a GLP-2, or Generation 2, and then Tessa Moralin, the peptide, and then I have some inflammation issues and I use, they don't, those are the three things that now now trexine, now trexone, some like that, lightweight and inflammatory. But um, No BPC 157? Not yet. No, not yet. If I, more I read the more I listen, there, who's that guy? There's a guy on Instagram, Dr Trevor Bachmark. He's very compelling. He breaks it down and it's almost like he's talking to you like you're an idiot, but I think it's, I think he's not. I think he's just so passionate and so knowledgeable. And the way he says that I mean, if a company were ever to do a pitch for it, like if it became something they were advertising, they should use some of his analogy, something because when I, the minute I come off his page, I think, I gotta get on it. Here I go. And then I talk myself off because I just know, once I start, it's gonna be able to take that, I should take TB 500, I should say that, I just know myself. So I pull back and I don't, and I haven't, but I'm not saying I won't. I'm not that kind. And I don't begrudge anybody who does, too, whatever you need. Go. Go. I think you're doing the right thing until you're mentally right. So what pushed me was I had a testosterone scare two years ago. It was this month, January of 2024, I guess it was. I'm used to New York winners. I'm used to the desolation and you don't see the sun and the whole thing, you know, vitamin D deficiency and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, I've done it for 45 years, except this was different. This was like, like every moment of my day, I was walking through molasses. It just, there was nothing, no libido, no energy, no drive, nothing. I was just, I was just operating. I was like a shell. So this goes on for a couple of weeks. I gotta figure what's out. Go to the doctors, get a test. My testosterone is in the seventh percentile. I have like 30 free testosterone or whatever, right? I can't remember the milliliters or milligrams, whatever it is. You know, all I know is you're supposed to have 500 to 700 and I had 30. And it was bad. And I did not want to go on synthetic testosterone or TRT. I didn't want to do that. That's what got me, that's what pushed me down this peptide path was, you know, in my doctor, I found this hormone optimization specialist. And, and okay, so all that's fine. That was my situation. That's how I get in, but I can tell you and it's so, I think you're doing the right thing personally, knowing yourself, because what I found is now I now I'm constantly searching for because I feel amazing. This, this low dose, very low dose, micro dose of, of, of testamorlin and, uh, tersempatide, I, where did your, where did your test levels net out? I'm at, uh, 770 now, but it's between 770 and, you know, 900, depending on, you know, whatever, um, and bounce back within three or four months. And now I feel like, I feel amazing, but the problem is to your point. Now, I'm constantly looking for that next week. I've been looking at BBC 157. Um, I've been looking at N 80 plus injections and I'm going like, in my brain, I'm like, just stop. Just, but I know, now I'm in this like tinker phase and I'm tinker and tinker and tinker and, but to your point, when you start stacking up all this stuff, I feel like, and, and maybe this is kind of the thing that I just want to share with the audience is that if you haven't done the primary work that we were discussing at the beginning of the show, right? Like having a workout routine, hydrating properly, getting decent sleep, right? Like eating right like if you don't have those things in place, you will never know if any of this exotic shit actually works. You just, because it becomes very dust, right? Like if you're, if you're sprinkling it, it's like I tell my son with the, with, one of your spices or sea salt or whatever I go, if the food's good, just eat very little bit. Yeah. If the foods garbage, put a little more on it's palatable and you'd be fine. I know myself and I know how it would be and I look at some people and I go, you haven't prepared the food properly. Like you haven't, you haven't done the base stuff. Like you think you're just going to throw peptides at this nightmare of a lifestyle you have and it's going to spin it all around because it's magic juice. It's not. And then, and then you're going to be, you're throwing good money after bed. That's one. And you're taking, you're dashing your own hopes, right? Like you're setting it up to be this success that it's just not going to be. I'm sorry. You got to do, yeah, we're saying, yeah, we're saying the same thing. So I keep doing the work like I told you in the beginning of this, I have no problem doing the work. I somehow, somewhere along the way convinced myself that the work was fun and cool and I love it and it's fun and and and and I stay engaged in that. I never tire of it. I don't know if that makes me a simpleton or like a meathead card caring member. I don't know, but I do like that. I do like in my head, tallying macros quickly and I'm probably way off, not 10%, I'm probably 30% off, you know, ahead or behind who knows, but it's a little game I play. And if that's what keeps me engaged, why wouldn't I want to stay engaged in my own development and my own improvement versus allowing myself to just slide down that hill that, you know, you said earlier, we're all sliding that we're all we're all going to die. I get it, but I'm not going quietly. Yeah, I am I am not just going to go, well, it's inevitable that I become fat and weak. So fuck it. I'm out today. I'll skip today because I would be the fattest and the weakest within two weeks. I just I know how I could let it go. If I let it go the same way when I go all in, when I let it go, I'm letting it all go, right? I'm I'm not cutting my hair. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing anything good for me. I'm just going hard the other way. And that's ridiculous. That's a ridiculous or what? But I know myself. Well, you know, and I want to be respectful of your time I'll let you go, but I just think this is funny. So I got divorced about three years ago. And, you know, it was the right thing to do. We're actually still good friends. We're great at co-parenting. We just weren't meant to be together romantically. But when I got divorced, you know, I looked around and and you know, I went and got coffee or beers with a couple of my buddies who had already been divorced and, you know, just kind of getting the lay of the land, right? I we'd been together for 16 years. We'd been married for more than 13 years. So like, you know, and I, you know, never never strayed, never cheated. You know, so I I'm walking out into the world as an individual human making my own decisions for the first time in a very long time. And, you know, I'm looking at my friends and I'm looking at the way they live their life. And, you know, and I saw two kind of bifurcations. And it was very clear. There were the guys that kept their shit together. And actually in some cases improve their lives. They became more fit, more thoughtful, better at work. You know what I mean? Like they used the space that they got to improve themselves. And then there was another group that became complete degenerate masses that could barely survive, could barely function like as if essentially their spouse had done it, whether it was the only thing keeping them attached to the world. And I think all of us to your point, we have this decision, right? You can either be the be the guy or gal who who says, fuck this entropy. I'm fighting this like I'm, I'm, I'm going to fight this. I'm going to stay in shape. I'm going to keep my shit together. I'm going to not eat like a full. I'm going to be a be the best version of myself or you can spin off the planet and and just let life happen to you. And it's a choice. And I look. Yeah. So who look I'm getting antsy, I can feel it. I think I see those groups. And I think it's our responsibility as a species. And I've talked to my kids about this. I go, I'm not smarter than you. I'm just older. I just have more experience. I say, if I, if I watch a movie, when I'm 30 and I see that the guy in the red hat is going to shoot the guy in the yellow hat. And I say to you before it happens, the guy in the red hat's going to shoot that guy. And then it happens and you look at me like, oh my gosh, I'm so smart. I'm not smart. I've seen the movie. So I say that to my kid all the time, a lot of things in life, you know, put your seat belt on, don't do this. The little things they go, I've just seen the movie, right? So I've seen this movie when you come out of a relationship, everybody plays a part in the breakup, right? Whether it's cheating, why did so-and-so sheet, that doesn't mean you offload the blame. But it means what did you do, right? What did what part did I play? How can I be better in my next go-round? Whether your next go-round is a fling, whether your next go-round is a shorter term version of the first go-round, hopefully as a species, we evolve and get better, right? And hopefully you as a spouse, as a partner, whether you, whether you spouse up again or not, or you just become a partner, hopefully you get better. So you go, what can I do to improve? So the guys who beat, like you say, just let it all go. I like, you're not, they're not helping themselves, they're not evolving, right? They're devolving actually. I think we should all evolve. Whether that means you do a complete 180 flip, you know, and you decide to drop all the weight and and and get your shit together and you quit drinking, you quit smoking, you take on a second job, you become a, you earn double, whatever it is, I don't think you have to do that. I don't think you have to reinvent. Although that would be the best way to get back at, if you're feeling those, those negative feelings towards your former spouse, the best way to get back at them is not to send nasty text messages and emails and be an asshole. The best way to get back at them is to become a high producing, high performing fit individual who takes care of the children and handles their fucking business. That's the way. But it's what you should have done before. Yes. And you can't blame them for not having been that. Maybe it took whatever awakening, whether that was her dumping you, her cheating on you, you're getting fired, whatever it was, that's what you should have done. So you go, okay, but like fitness, and I bring it back to that, it's never too late, right? They've shown actually two studies in 80 year olds and oxygenarians as well as since an errands. Like new muscle cell growth, but muscle cell hypertrophy, the growth in size in 80 year olds at people at 100. So it's never too late to start. I just saw a study this morning and said, if you're not, if you're not in shape, by the time you're 35, there's a x percent chance that you will never be in shape. And I was like, wow, that's super defeating. That's mental. I would love that to me, that's a great, that's psychological. Physiologically, we know you can. So to me, it's not, well, this is how I am. I can't change. That's just me that, you know, that's what I'm bringing to the table next time I have a partner, you're like, no, then you're going to have a partner that's less than your original partner. You have to try to be better. You have to elevate the species. I tell the kids, you got to be better. You're going to be better than I am. I remember my, my now, 26 year old, I said that to him once when he was about six in the bed, I said, Jack, you're going to be so much better than I am. And he goes, I could never be better than you, Daddy. I said, sweet boy, I'm figuring my way through life. I'm just a dude. I'm just a trainer. I'm just a guy trying to contribute to the fitness landscape and help people find their way the way I found my way from a fat kid to this. You are going to be better than I am. And I will maintain that all my kids, my older kids, my younger kids are all on the path to eclipse me, which is as in, in my opinion, as it should be, they should be better than I am. They should be, they should be smarter. They should have more deductive reasoning. They should have more the ability to be critical thinkers. They have to and with that, they should be able to find their path in health and fitness, whether it's lifting weights and cardio, you know, meat heads style the way I do, or whether it's through different classes or different protocols or through different, the way I take my alpha gym and my protein shakes and I use my so Bayesian red light therapy and I use my caffeine and all this the way I do all my little things, they're going to find their way and I would bet on all of them, they will find an efficient, a more efficient way than I found and they will find a more productive way than I found because they've grown up differently than I am and they're processing and assessing information at a different rate and I think that's my job. So I'm not going to pull my shoulder out patting myself on my back, but I think they're good kids and that's, that's my job as a dad is to raise them to be those kids. So your buddies who come out of that relationship and don't use their abilities to improve themselves for the next go round on the dating marriage cycle, if they're doing themselves and their current offspring or future offspring, a massive disservice by not trying harder, fuck dude, try. It's only you out there, try. I don't care if you fail because if you fail, you're going to fail upwards. I want to wrap, be respectful of your time and I'll leave you with this. I put on this conference in 2018 at about 830 people in the room and I did the kickoff, just kickoff note and the message was simply it's cool to fucking care. Like I hate this idea in our society. I would have been like this and you throw out that somehow like the, that really caring, like diving in even to like nerdy shit that somehow that's not cool. I'm like that day of like not going balls to the wall deep. It doesn't matter. It could be legos, it could be star wars, it could be accounting, it could be investing, it could be startups, it could be fitness, it could be relationships, it could be doesn't fucking matter what you're into, but it is really cool and sexy to give a shit to go. It's just going to say to you the word I say to my little kids because they're just flirting with that word. I go, dude, it's sexy to try and go, damn, you can't say that. I go, no, no, no, it's sexy, which means it's like people see that and they go, I like that. It is. I go, people are drawn to people who try, I would rather watch you attempt to pull that 500 and fail than sit over a nice dinner and a couple of cocktails and listen to you talk about how you decided to step away from that attempt. I'd be like, oh my god, this bozo. Yeah. But so watch you do it and fail. I'm high five and you all day long for that. Yeah. Bro, I can talk to you all day, man. I don't need to. We're aligned. Well, dude, I know there's going to be a lot of people from the audience that want to go deeper into your world. What are the best ways for them to do that? I'm on Instagram at Gunner Fitness. That's probably it. I try to put a people like, you know, you got to get your, what do they call it? You got to get your, what's the word it? We'll see Instagram thing. Your engagement has to be higher. I go, listen, man, I post stuff that the people in my world like and the people who don't, that's okay. Sorry. Maybe, you know, you're not for everybody. You're polarizing and you're not polarizing because you try to be polarizing. If you do that, that's as fake as the next guy. You just do what you like. And Timmy, that's what socials about. I sat with a good friend of mine, Jen Weeter-Strom, who's a trader and we have a podcast together and we sat at a, we sat at a sore next summer strong conference years ago. And the first three presenters at some point in their presentation, bashed social media. And I looked at her, I said, the next time I do a presentation, I'm going to gas it up. I'm going to talk about why social is cool. And if you don't like it, here's the great thing. It's voluntary. You don't have to be on it. You don't have to have the app and you don't have to go on the app and you don't have to like and you don't have to scroll and you don't have to post. So I think, not that I think, I don't think you use it as your one and only source of education and opinions. I joke about that guy has a degree from Instagram University. But, but I do think there are great things that come off of it. Even if you just get to know somebody's sense of humor and you're like, I never do that. I never do that. He was funny like that. Or I never do that. She goofed on herself that way. Like those are, it's like, it's like we're all connecting on a different level. And I think if you look at the positive on that, it can be extremely positive. I don't think you have to always go to the negative. So I'm on Instagram, a gunner fitness and you're right. And you're awesome for having me on and for, for talk about it. And I like the way you're coming out this and dude, I am rooting for you when you pull that 500 all day long. I appreciate the hell out of you, man. I, uh, this has been tremendous guys. I'll have Gunners linked it or Instagram linked in the description whether you're watching on YouTube or wherever you're listening scroll down. I appreciate you guys for listening. I love you for listening. We're out of here.