Anders Varner - Barbell Shrugged & Rapid Health Optimization

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[00:02:06] All right, we are live.

[00:02:07] Anders Varner.

[00:02:08] Welcome to the Future of Fitness, my friend.

[00:02:10] And it's great to have you.

[00:02:11] As I told you in previous calls, I've always been a big fan of Barbell Shrugged.

[00:02:15] It was really, you know, probably one of the biggest motivations for me ever to start a podcast.

[00:02:20] I just saw you guys, what you did, especially me coming from the CrossFit space, and you guys have obviously expanded way beyond that.

[00:02:26] But it was really cool.

[00:02:28] You guys captured a couple really early trends at the right time and, you know, just capitalize on those extremely well.

[00:02:36] So I think, you know, for people who may not know you yet, Anders and Barbell Shrugged, and we're going to get into, of course, rapid health optimization, what you're doing with Dr. Andy Galpin.

[00:02:45] Man, you swim in really strong circles, I have to say.

[00:02:48] But let's give a little of your background, Anders, and we'll take it from there.

[00:02:52] Absolutely, man.

[00:02:53] Yeah, depending upon kind of how far you want to go back.

[00:02:56] But this has just been, without knowing fitness had been my whole life, you kind of like start playing the tape back and you realize like you were like the nine year old in your cul-de-sac that like wasn't just playing for fun and was like trying to take lunch money on a daily basis in street hockey.

[00:03:14] I think I was probably eight or nine years old when I was knocking on not even my neighbors, but neighborhoods around me.

[00:03:23] Like once I got a bike and you could travel, I remember trying to start a street hockey league because it wasn't good enough for me to figure out if I was like the best hockey player on my cul-de-sac.

[00:03:33] Like I needed to know other neighborhoods and I needed to know other people that did the same thing I did so I could just find out if I was good.

[00:03:39] And that's probably been like the early story of my entire life.

[00:03:44] I left home when I was 14 to find out if I could play ice hockey.

[00:03:47] So I went to Massachusetts, I left home four years later, I found out that I was like lightly barely above average.

[00:03:55] Turns out there's not like a lot of college coaches knocking down the doors for five foot eight 190 pound sort of fast sort of guild players.

[00:04:04] And then college I lifted weights, I started lifting weights when I was like 13 years old.

[00:04:09] And then that trend just kind of kept carrying through there's ebbs and flows and peer pressure and self-image and lots of things that go on when you're in puberty.

[00:04:19] But got to college and I trained but very, very just kind of like nonchalantly.

[00:04:26] Like there wasn't really a whole mindset coming out of like trying to be a real athlete, kind of like a purposeless time where alcohol and beer pong center stage.

[00:04:36] By the time I was a junior, my junior year in high school, I got an internship in D.C.

[00:04:43] And the first like couple of weeks of that, I realized very quickly that I could either go to happy hour every single night and be a part of that, the hill scene or I could go to the gym.

[00:04:58] And as the stars aligned for the rest of life, like that was probably the biggest change in life as far as just pure training going, like making the conscious decision to go do something positive with my time.

[00:05:10] And from there, the right people start showing up like a kid moved into my house that had been training also since he was like 13 years old.

[00:05:16] I later became business partners with him.

[00:05:18] He's the best man at my wedding.

[00:05:19] We owned the gym for six years.

[00:05:23] 2006, I graduated college in 2005.

[00:05:26] So in 2006, I found CrossFit and it was like the coolest thing ever.

[00:05:31] My friends and I always just wanted to compete in everything.

[00:05:34] It didn't matter what it was.

[00:05:35] Now, I had a sport that I could go play against people that I didn't know on a leaderboard that I didn't know existed, doing something that I had already had like a decade of experience in, of training really hard and kind of being in these like conversations that I thought were very important pre-internet, finding people in chat rooms and trying to accumulate knowledge on how to get really strong.

[00:06:00] And then the sport showed up and it was never really like a training program to me.

[00:06:04] It was always a sport.

[00:06:05] So 2006, I was doing it at a Gold's gym.

[00:06:09] I found an Olympic lifting coach.

[00:06:10] There was zero CrossFit gyms.

[00:06:12] I had to drive like 45 minutes to go find a CrossFit gym.

[00:06:14] And they were in like a warehouse, CrossFit, Fairfax, I want to say.

[00:06:18] And they were giving away intro classes, which is unheard of.

[00:06:23] That's just people were just dying for somebody to come to the gym that they own.

[00:06:27] Ended up going to grad school, like all Lost Boys do.

[00:06:31] Broke up with a girlfriend, moved to San Diego.

[00:06:34] I was working from home before the world was working from home.

[00:06:37] So I never told my boss that I was leaving.

[00:06:41] And three months later, signed a lease.

[00:06:45] 75 plus regional athletes.

[00:06:48] One person made it to the games.

[00:06:51] Trained with John Cena for four years.

[00:06:53] And lots of cool stuff in my life.

[00:06:58] Ran a business, sold it in 2016.

[00:07:01] And then really like just keep asking the question about how do you get better?

[00:07:06] Like at some point you kind of get 32 years old and your brain's fully formed and testosterone kind of slows down a little bit.

[00:07:14] Like how do I, what am I, what am I doing here?

[00:07:17] And it really turned into a conversation on like how do I just keep playing this game at a really high level for the rest of my life?

[00:07:27] Which is kind of a longevity question, but it's really about like a performance longevity in a way of, I don't want to just live a very long time.

[00:07:35] I want to be a total savage for a very long time.

[00:07:38] But how do I do that for kind of like the internal health?

[00:07:41] How do I do that for training programs?

[00:07:45] What does my body want?

[00:07:46] What is the speed that I'm supposed to be moving at?

[00:07:48] How do I, how do I quantify intensity?

[00:07:51] And a lot of these just questions that really probably people maybe not struggle with, but are looking for answers to not just for the ages of 17 to 32 years old when you're in your like training peak, but 32 to 120.

[00:08:09] And I think that that is really where I'm at right now and that I just want to be as healthy as possible.

[00:08:15] If I can do that, then I don't have to worry about all of the other stuff that that seems like the training part seems very, very simple to me, mainly because I've been doing it for nearly 30 years.

[00:08:26] But if I can just keep my body healthy and injury free and not worrying about disease or not.

[00:08:34] Cancer is like a big topic, probably that whether you see it coming or not doing your best to just stay away from that stuff and making really quality decisions.

[00:08:44] As often as possible so that I just get to have the freedom of physical function.

[00:08:53] And, and, and that really is like kind of the, the driver of a lot of the stuff is that I just, I, I don't have to think about it anymore.

[00:09:01] There's, there's like little, like the volume button.

[00:09:05] Sometimes I get to turn it up and that's fun.

[00:09:06] Most of the time it's at about like 80, 85%, but I'm still stronger than, I would say I'm as strong as I need to be.

[00:09:17] And that's probably like 90 ish percent.

[00:09:19] If I really tried, if like how strong I ever was in my life, CrossFit numbers haven't really changed that much.

[00:09:25] There's just like a lot of, I was almost thinking about it last night.

[00:09:30] It's like for all those years that you train really, really, really hard when you're, when you're, you know, it's the cheat code to health.

[00:09:38] I feel really bad sometimes for people that have come to us that they're 50 years old and have never worked out because they missed that like sweet spot.

[00:09:45] That, that, that like 17 to 28 years old where you just get to go crazy and your body recovers.

[00:09:51] You're just super, super resilient.

[00:09:53] You build muscle really easily.

[00:09:55] And that really has kind of been like my cheat code.

[00:09:57] Like I just, I've been doing it so long, all of the systems and the habits.

[00:10:02] And then I just get to go and find like a new thing, blood work or, you know, sleep and, and turn those dials up a little bit where the fitness part.

[00:10:12] Just, I've got, I've got that side of it drilled just because it's just been a part of my life for so long.

[00:10:19] Yeah.

[00:10:19] It's, it's interesting.

[00:10:20] So how old are you now?

[00:10:22] Andrews?

[00:10:23] 41.

[00:10:25] I'm 47.

[00:10:26] And I recently had a conversation to Rob Wolf about this on this podcast and you know how he's a little bit older than me, not by much, but how you, you start to see, especially I think in your early to mid forties, you start to see a speciation event.

[00:10:41] In some ways, like you go to a reunion or you get together with friends you haven't seen in a long time.

[00:10:46] And you really start to see the difference between, okay, who kind of adopted, you know, mostly it's training.

[00:10:51] It's like, you know, you could talk about how healthy lifestyle, but it's usually just people who weight train or I would say just even boiling it down as simply as just weight training.

[00:10:59] And you start to see a very significant difference in that lifestyle accumulation over time.

[00:11:04] And it's, it's blatantly evident, right?

[00:11:06] You know, I think it's right.

[00:11:07] And I think it may be even the good, good folks at Brand X, Jeff and Mickey Martin who kind of pulled down to like, there's a sweet spot to like ages seven to 10.

[00:11:16] Or it's like, if you're an active child during those times, it seems to stick with you for a very, very long time.

[00:11:24] And if you're not, it's more difficult to overcome.

[00:11:26] And no one knows that back then.

[00:11:28] Right.

[00:11:28] But it's just, you kind of, I think you and I were just lucky that we, we did that.

[00:11:32] Yeah.

[00:11:34] Just grow up in good neighborhoods.

[00:11:35] Yeah, I totally.

[00:11:36] I mean, I hammer my kids every single night.

[00:11:38] Like, I feel like the majority of my opinion on parenting is I need to run my kids into the ground every single night.

[00:11:45] I do not want them, especially on the weekends.

[00:11:48] Like by the time bedtime comes around, I don't want them standing.

[00:11:51] I don't want them to have energy.

[00:11:52] I want them sleeping and recovering and getting their, like building the battery back up.

[00:11:57] But I want them outside.

[00:11:59] I want them playing.

[00:12:00] Like, I hope everybody listens to this podcast except my neighbors now.

[00:12:04] But it drives me nuts when I see parents buy their kids, like electric scooters.

[00:12:09] And I just look at their kids.

[00:12:10] I go, how are you going to get the energy out?

[00:12:12] What are you going to do?

[00:12:13] You don't, you can't go down the road.

[00:12:16] You have to have this, like, you have to have an engine now and you're seven.

[00:12:19] What are you doing?

[00:12:20] It drives me insane.

[00:12:22] There's so many tangents of where, like, we just lose the, like, that drive in people to push themselves.

[00:12:32] Especially, just the physicality side of things is, to me, is it's the dumbest, easiest way to get an advantage in life.

[00:12:40] Like, you don't have to be smart to go run really hard when you're 10 years old.

[00:12:46] You don't have to, you don't have the skills to be smart.

[00:12:49] But what you do, you have two legs and there's a ball outside.

[00:12:53] And we should fight and win over who's going to hold that ball and go score the touchdown.

[00:12:58] Or hit it the hardest.

[00:12:59] Or whatever.

[00:13:00] Like, you learn how to compete.

[00:13:01] You learn how to, you learn where you stack up in the pecking order.

[00:13:04] And you can't, you can't hide when there's competition.

[00:13:09] You can't hide when there's physicality.

[00:13:11] And maybe Child Protective Service is going to call me and say I'm a terrible parent.

[00:13:16] But my kids are going to be physically fit.

[00:13:19] They're going to eat a lot of protein.

[00:13:20] And one day they might meet your kid in the middle of a football field.

[00:13:24] Yeah.

[00:13:25] And that might not be good.

[00:13:26] I don't think Child Protective Services listens to this podcast.

[00:13:30] Right.

[00:13:30] So, it'll be okay.

[00:13:32] But it's like, I'm running my kids into the ground every single day.

[00:13:36] They're like, there might be something going on in that household.

[00:13:38] Why is he making a beef?

[00:13:40] Ground beef every meal.

[00:13:43] You know the thing that concerns me, this is pretty anecdotal, is easy bikes.

[00:13:46] And I go back and forth on it.

[00:13:48] It drives me nuts.

[00:13:49] I live in...

[00:13:50] How old are your kids?

[00:13:51] I don't have kids.

[00:13:52] Oh, beautiful.

[00:13:53] There you go.

[00:13:54] The, I go to Glacier National Park.

[00:13:57] It's, you know, 45 minutes away.

[00:13:59] And there's certain parts of the year, spring and summer in the schubler season, where you

[00:14:02] can ride your bike up the glacier, going to the Sun Road in the park.

[00:14:06] And it's amazing.

[00:14:07] And people have never seen at least Google going to the Sun Road and see what you're

[00:14:11] missing.

[00:14:11] But it's hard, dude.

[00:14:13] It's 16 miles up this road.

[00:14:15] And, you know, if you get it, if you get up there, like you deserve it.

[00:14:19] You earned this moment, right?

[00:14:20] And everyone up there is super stoked.

[00:14:22] They're like, everyone's happy and high on the endorphins and the view and the experience.

[00:14:26] And it's unreal.

[00:14:28] And then like four years ago, we were doing it in the spring and I saw my first e-bike

[00:14:33] on the road.

[00:14:33] And I was like, oh no.

[00:14:35] And the girl was wearing two inch heels.

[00:14:36] She had a purse on her arm.

[00:14:38] Like, oh no.

[00:14:40] And like my wife's like, that's not a big deal.

[00:14:41] I'm like, that is a big deal.

[00:14:43] That's because that, well, first of all, it's going to annoy the shit out of me.

[00:14:46] So that's why it's a big deal.

[00:14:47] The second of all, like, yeah, it just doesn't feel right.

[00:14:49] And I can't, I don't know if it's just me being, you know, uppity about it, but I just

[00:14:54] don't like it.

[00:14:57] I think all of this stuff is actually invented a lot of times to meet the people that can't

[00:15:02] do it and give them an option.

[00:15:04] The problem is, is just so many people can't.

[00:15:07] So they've, we've, we've like lost the physicality.

[00:15:10] We've lost the trust and the physical freedom that come with just being able to do stuff.

[00:15:14] And because of that, someone has to go invent an e-bike so people can still have the same

[00:15:19] experience, but don't have to do the work to get there.

[00:15:21] It's the same with kids.

[00:15:22] Like I even saw like a commercial the other day was like, you don't have to bend over to

[00:15:26] tie these shoes and they're just as tight.

[00:15:29] I'm like, because people can't tie their shoes, there's now a product for people that can't

[00:15:35] tie their shoes.

[00:15:35] So we've completely eliminated the need to do that now.

[00:15:40] Like now there's just a shoe where you don't need, we've technologied our way out of having

[00:15:46] to tie our shoes and be able to bend over and touch your toes.

[00:15:50] That's scary.

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:15:51] But there's a market for it because there's a lot of people that can't do it and aren't

[00:15:54] going to put the work into being able to fix the problem.

[00:15:57] Yeah.

[00:15:58] It's just hard.

[00:15:59] It is.

[00:15:59] Oh man.

[00:16:00] I want to go back to a moment that you mentioned like 2006-ish in CrossFit.

[00:16:04] I felt like that was like, I missed, I'd gotten in no weight.

[00:16:06] It's when I first kind of, you know, uh, drink the sauce.

[00:16:11] And, but my, my first CrossFit coach, like one-on-one was James Fitzgerald.

[00:16:16] Right.

[00:16:17] And he always talks about the old days of like the forums and people don't know James Fitzgerald's

[00:16:21] also known as OPT was the first CrossFit games champion when they put the first game

[00:16:25] in 07.

[00:16:26] But he talks about the forums and the everything he was competing against all these people.

[00:16:30] So maybe walk back in that time, like how special was that time of like 06, 07?

[00:16:34] And then they finally had the first gathering of athletes.

[00:16:36] Right.

[00:16:38] Yeah.

[00:16:38] That was, that was like the groundswell.

[00:16:40] I think that actually the, the, the coolest time to me was I opened my gym in 20.

[00:16:50] So the year that regional athletes all met at a place that you had to qualify like that

[00:17:00] two, three years to me, it was the coolest one.

[00:17:03] One, I was the most into it.

[00:17:05] I owned a gym.

[00:17:06] We always were in Del Mar, which was like 30 minutes.

[00:17:09] So we had like, I think we had two coach buses that we shipped all of our, like our

[00:17:15] whole gym showed up and just had like this massive part of the stadium cleared off.

[00:17:20] The forum days were wild because nobody knew one, anybody that was doing it near them.

[00:17:27] It was like maybe two or three people that trained together.

[00:17:30] And then you would see the names like OPT, AFT.

[00:17:33] There's like, there's some real OGs listening, like creepy videos of Allison NYC showing up.

[00:17:40] There's like, who, who else?

[00:17:42] Uh, Miranda was doing all the like really cool stuff.

[00:17:47] There was this like this like group of people that were so freaky and there were cameras following

[00:17:54] them.

[00:17:55] So you could like see what a seminar looked like.

[00:17:58] I haven't even seen a video of a seminar and feel like a decade.

[00:18:02] So the, that time you were learning a methodology that was so far outside of the bodybuilding

[00:18:11] world that was happening.

[00:18:13] There was a real theory to it that I feel like if, if I sat in front of a whiteboard cold right

[00:18:19] now, I think I could give you like 75% of Greg Glassman.

[00:18:22] What is CrossFit speech?

[00:18:23] Awesome.

[00:18:24] I think I've watched it so many times and I haven't even thought about it in a decade.

[00:18:27] And I almost, I'm very certain that I could get up and walk you through what is CrossFit,

[00:18:32] why we do it, the hopper, like how we are able to increase, uh, like work capacity and

[00:18:40] then how they make the 3D model about how it not only, uh, extends your fitness out over

[00:18:46] time, but then as you age, it's still high.

[00:18:48] Like I go do the whole thing.

[00:18:50] I had never, it hit me at a time when everything changed in that I wasn't just lifting weights

[00:18:59] for sports.

[00:19:00] I wasn't just lifting weights for girls.

[00:19:02] I wanted to go compete and stuff at a time in life when everybody stopped competing.

[00:19:08] Like I was not going to go play rec kickball or rec soccer or softball.

[00:19:17] Those people, no judgment, did not fit my recipe for fun at all.

[00:19:24] Because what do they do at the end of all of those things?

[00:19:26] They get up and they go drink.

[00:19:28] It's a dating league where we go play a sport before and then we go do this dating thing

[00:19:34] after.

[00:19:34] And it drove me nuts.

[00:19:36] But CrossFit, one, I had a decade of experience before I even found it in lifting weights.

[00:19:43] And then two, if you didn't train hard and you didn't live the life, you sucked at it

[00:19:49] so nobody paid attention.

[00:19:50] So it forced you to eat better.

[00:19:53] It forced you to do all of the lifestyle things.

[00:19:56] It forced you to push yourself to the edge every single day.

[00:19:59] And now all of a sudden I found a sport.

[00:20:02] I found a forum.

[00:20:03] And I found this weird tribe of people that I would end up never actually, well, I met

[00:20:08] many of them, but not all of them of like, I just found them.

[00:20:12] They were my people.

[00:20:13] They were all posting these crazy times back in the day.

[00:20:17] And that was super exciting that I could just, I knew that those people had to train hard.

[00:20:24] They had to eat well.

[00:20:26] To do the things that they were doing were so freaky to me.

[00:20:29] And I knew how painful it was, but I just kept going.

[00:20:31] And then I just kept going.

[00:20:32] And then all of a sudden I opened the gym in 2010.

[00:20:35] That's a whole fun story of being so broke you can barely stand it.

[00:20:40] But then one day it just kind of like works.

[00:20:41] But it also like we, my gym was in a way like very central to CrossFit headquarters.

[00:20:49] I had, I think we had nine coaches at one point in time and multiple of them were on the

[00:20:55] seminar staff.

[00:20:56] One of them was a flow master or like general manager.

[00:20:58] Uh, the person that wrote our newsletter for us was also, uh, a freelance, uh, writer for the

[00:21:10] CrossFit journal.

[00:21:11] One of their main lawyers was also on our staff.

[00:21:14] So we had HQ at our gym all the time.

[00:21:19] We were doing CrossFit.

[00:21:21] Like they would post like the workout of the day and then post the video of the people doing it.

[00:21:26] And it was all, it was like the first time I was like on camera working out and I knew

[00:21:31] hundreds of thousands of people were going to watch it.

[00:21:34] It was super awkward on camera.

[00:21:36] First time these, these things.

[00:21:38] So the excitement around our gym, what we were doing at regionals, getting to the games that

[00:21:45] we had, we, it was just this awesome time.

[00:21:49] The vibe was so good.

[00:21:50] If you were to kind of look at CrossFit right now, where it's like very clearly owned by

[00:21:55] a private equity company and they have very, very clearly stripped every expense imaginable

[00:22:01] to just gut the profits and kill the company.

[00:22:06] And who even knows if it's around in five years, it was the exact opposite of that.

[00:22:11] It was every expense was put into media.

[00:22:15] Every dollar was spent to make it look cool.

[00:22:17] The branding of it was incredible.

[00:22:20] Pukey the clown was like, nobody gave a crap if it was politically correct or not.

[00:22:25] It was like, we're coming for you.

[00:22:27] We're going to take the fitness world.

[00:22:29] We're going to flip it on its head.

[00:22:31] And it's going to be insane how much we make you look bad for doing your training program

[00:22:38] and not ours.

[00:22:40] And I was right there.

[00:22:41] I was ready to rock.

[00:22:42] I would have fitnessed against anybody at any time in any circumstance.

[00:22:47] And it was just an attitude.

[00:22:48] We were coming for you.

[00:22:50] And now it is so soulless.

[00:22:52] It was like the exact opposite of what it is today.

[00:22:58] I couldn't even imagine me and my friends in 2024 going to the gym and be like, you want

[00:23:04] to try this CrossFit thing?

[00:23:05] I'd be like, no way.

[00:23:07] Yeah.

[00:23:07] Couldn't be more off brand of who I want to be around and how I want to train.

[00:23:13] It was unbridled, reckless at times.

[00:23:18] Like just, you know, very almost angry.

[00:23:21] Like, you know, like it was interesting.

[00:23:23] I mean, I opened my gym and, you know, we kind of came into Santa Barbara and we didn't

[00:23:28] know anybody.

[00:23:28] I never even been in Santa Barbara.

[00:23:30] But the, you know, the way we would, I got a lot of clients.

[00:23:34] We would go out on Saturdays and we would, you know, spend every dollar we had buying clients

[00:23:39] and friends beers and drinks.

[00:23:41] And I would constantly get in arguments with like the bartender who was like a personal

[00:23:44] trainer.

[00:23:44] And just like everything was just, it felt like a fight.

[00:23:47] I used to make people cry.

[00:23:48] Yeah.

[00:23:48] I've made girls cry because they didn't eat paleo.

[00:23:51] That's terrible.

[00:23:53] I would never do that now when I was so deep.

[00:23:55] Yeah.

[00:23:56] But it had its moment in time.

[00:23:57] You're a hunter.

[00:23:58] You're a hunter gatherer.

[00:23:59] Just in modern day terms.

[00:24:01] How could you ever eat bread?

[00:24:03] You're killing yourself.

[00:24:04] I was fully convinced, Anders.

[00:24:05] I could solve anything.

[00:24:06] I've said this so many times.

[00:24:07] I could solve anything with CrossFit and paleo.

[00:24:09] Any problem known to man.

[00:24:11] The truth is, is you probably could because you would, if you could get the person to buy

[00:24:17] in, they would eat significantly better.

[00:24:19] Yep.

[00:24:19] They would train really hard and you could do it in a very responsible way that an enormous

[00:24:26] number of their problems would go away.

[00:24:28] And that's what happened.

[00:24:28] I mean, that was exactly what happened.

[00:24:30] It wasn't perfect by any means.

[00:24:31] Yeah.

[00:24:32] You can't just go in and just hammer people every single day of their life.

[00:24:36] Yeah.

[00:24:36] But you kind of can.

[00:24:38] And they will build a lot of resilience and they will get a lot tougher.

[00:24:42] Yeah.

[00:24:42] Like I, you know, I have this like completely unscience based like theory that for every

[00:24:49] three years you did CrossFit.

[00:24:52] You have to, it takes you like a full year to unwind all of the stuff that goes along with

[00:24:57] that.

[00:24:57] So like, I was like 15 years.

[00:24:59] Yeah.

[00:24:59] Turns out to be like five years to be completely fine with not killing myself every day in

[00:25:04] the gym.

[00:25:05] Yeah.

[00:25:05] Like actually taking care of my body.

[00:25:07] But also for every like three years, you are more comfortable suffering or for every,

[00:25:14] for every year you do it.

[00:25:15] Like you're more comfortable suffering and you get three years ahead of people because

[00:25:19] you're willing to go through the shit more than others.

[00:25:21] So like you got to choose the one you want.

[00:25:24] You can be really tough and learn how to increase your, your suffering and your toughness by doing

[00:25:30] workouts like that.

[00:25:31] Yeah.

[00:25:32] You also don't have to, and it's going to take some time to unwind it, but there's a lot

[00:25:38] of good that comes from looking at people and going, you don't work hard enough.

[00:25:41] And it being okay to say that.

[00:25:43] Yeah.

[00:25:44] I want to get, I want to give us plenty of time for rapid health optimization.

[00:25:47] Cause I am fascinated.

[00:25:48] You don't want to talk about CrossFit in 2000.

[00:25:50] I talk about CrossFit a lot on this podcast.

[00:25:54] Yeah.

[00:25:54] You'd be surprised, but I want, uh, before we get to kind of never goes away, but yeah,

[00:25:59] I know.

[00:25:59] Gosh.

[00:26:00] Uh, rapid health optimization.

[00:26:02] Before we get to that, I want to talk about your entry point into barbell shrug is around

[00:26:06] 2018.

[00:26:06] You formally joined the team, right?

[00:26:09] What was going on?

[00:26:10] Like, how were you attracted?

[00:26:10] How did you get in line with those guys?

[00:26:12] What were you seeing from the outside and then the transition to the inside?

[00:26:16] Oh man.

[00:26:17] So good.

[00:26:18] So I met, um, so I sold my gym in 2016 and I wasn't like very clear on exactly what the

[00:26:29] next steps look like, but I knew that, uh, I was, I was very newly married.

[00:26:34] That kind of means you're going to be newly a dad at some point here in the next couple of

[00:26:39] years.

[00:26:39] And that owning a gym or starting a new gym where your, your schedule starts at five 30

[00:26:46] in the morning and then you kind of stop working at nine and do business things.

[00:26:51] And then you're back at noon and then you're back at four and this, and you're not home

[00:26:54] until nine o'clock, uh, is not the way.

[00:26:58] And that was a piece of me selling the gym.

[00:27:00] Um, the other piece was just like, I w I needed out of the cult so badly.

[00:27:05] It was just when you, when you own a CrossFit gym, you've rebranded it.

[00:27:09] I, we rebranded in 2014.

[00:27:12] Cause I just felt that we had like, we had hit this plateau and the vibe had just, we,

[00:27:20] we hit, we hit the mainstream and that underground kind of like culture of it.

[00:27:25] It was gone.

[00:27:26] And I felt it and I didn't know what it was at the time and which I really should have

[00:27:30] sold it then.

[00:27:30] Cause that was like the peak.

[00:27:32] But once I sold the gym, I just knew that I needed to go online.

[00:27:35] I didn't know what I was going to do because, cause I was doing CrossFit for 15 years.

[00:27:40] My body was like kind of in shambles.

[00:27:43] I needed to go just take care of myself.

[00:27:45] And as all the stars align, when you're broken, broken people kind of find you.

[00:27:51] And that became a lot of my personal training business inside the gym was low back pain,

[00:27:55] knee pain, shoulder pain.

[00:27:56] Like how do we go fix these people?

[00:27:58] So I partnered with a physical therapist named Teresa Larson.

[00:28:00] She was running her practice out of my gym and we just started building programs about joint

[00:28:05] pain.

[00:28:06] She did the physical therapy side.

[00:28:07] I did the training side and it was great.

[00:28:09] But in that I had never started an online business.

[00:28:12] So I needed to learn from people that knew how to do that and hopefully do it very well.

[00:28:17] And we got, her and I got invited to the barbell shrugged breakfast.

[00:28:23] So every Friday they would have like a two hour long breakfast to just invite gym owners and

[00:28:27] people that are in our space just to create that community.

[00:28:30] And it was about 45 minutes away from where I lived.

[00:28:33] So the idea of going to that every Friday was there was just no chance.

[00:28:39] But I have this weird thing about my life where if I can just get people in the gym with me, I will win.

[00:28:47] Like I'm going to.

[00:28:48] You're going to be my best friend for sure.

[00:28:50] I don't care.

[00:28:51] I've coached people that are in wheelchair basketball teams.

[00:28:54] I've coached murder ball teams.

[00:28:56] I've coached people with back pain.

[00:28:58] I hang out with girls.

[00:28:59] We lift weights the same.

[00:29:00] They don't even know that we lift different weights at all.

[00:29:03] Like I can make any experience in any gym awesome.

[00:29:07] It is like my secret sauce.

[00:29:09] If I get you in the gym, you love me.

[00:29:12] So this breakfast is like 45 minutes away and I've got one shot to become friends with Doug and Mike and get them in the gym with me.

[00:29:20] And it worked.

[00:29:21] Right next to him, like very intent about like making connections and just going, hey guys, I can't do this every week.

[00:29:30] But we need to go do this thing.

[00:29:33] Next week, got invited to go train with him.

[00:29:35] Doug's been my best friend ever since.

[00:29:37] And when you're around people and you become friends with them and you have these like deeper conversations is what's so good about podcasts.

[00:29:44] What's so good about training is you can't really hide from people.

[00:29:46] Like the people part starts to come out.

[00:29:48] And shrugged was just going through a lot of stuff.

[00:29:51] So they started out as this podcast.

[00:29:54] They kind of rode like three big waves at the beginning, which is three monstrous things to maintain all at once.

[00:30:02] Right.

[00:30:02] Like they were the first ish fitness podcasts.

[00:30:05] They were the first CrossFit podcast.

[00:30:09] CrossFit's exploding.

[00:30:10] Podcasts are exploding.

[00:30:12] And then online training's exploding.

[00:30:15] And they were at like the like ground level of all three of those.

[00:30:21] Like selling premium training programs to large groups of people with trust built through them spending hours with you every Wednesday when the show goes up.

[00:30:32] And a specific niche called CrossFit is an insane number.

[00:30:38] Like three things hitting it once.

[00:30:41] And there's a company that is doing all of them very well and growing massively.

[00:30:48] But then they did this transition into online.

[00:30:52] It was like a CRM system essentially for gym owners.

[00:30:56] Barbell Logic.

[00:30:57] That's right.

[00:30:58] I was a client.

[00:30:59] See, that hit home when I said that.

[00:31:01] Everybody had it.

[00:31:02] It was the business was exploding.

[00:31:04] But as businesses are exploding and things are changing, kind of those original crews start to get lots of friction in them.

[00:31:10] And I could tell that there was friction without ever knowing that there was friction.

[00:31:14] Like Doug and Mike had moved to California.

[00:31:17] A lot of the crew was still back in Memphis.

[00:31:19] There was just like a really weird vibe every time I would bring up like how shrugged.

[00:31:24] You know, just simple questions like that.

[00:31:27] At some point, they would have been like incredible, man.

[00:31:30] Like we're riding these three waves right now that are so gnarly.

[00:31:33] And everyone's having so much fun.

[00:31:35] We're traveling the world with our best friends.

[00:31:36] We've got a video camera following us.

[00:31:38] Like they have it, you know.

[00:31:41] But then it changes.

[00:31:42] And it's not the same.

[00:31:43] It was like December.

[00:31:46] It had probably been like really good friends hanging out.

[00:31:49] Our families had gotten together and kind of all that stuff with Doug.

[00:31:52] And then towards the end of 2017, really like the end of 2017, he texted me and he was like, you want to be a co-host on shrugged?

[00:32:03] And I was like, of course I do.

[00:32:08] I had been a guest once.

[00:32:12] And I had never had like any large marketing anything in my life.

[00:32:16] But the day after I was on shrugged, I made a lot of money.

[00:32:19] It was crazy how much money I made.

[00:32:22] I had never made that much money in a single day in my entire life.

[00:32:26] And I was like, whoa, podcasting is awesome.

[00:32:29] Like what do I have to do to be on that show all the time?

[00:32:36] My first show was with Brett Contreras.

[00:32:38] And it's really interesting because I remember what my first show was like on Barbell Shrugged.

[00:32:44] So anytime I have like a new co-host that we're just like filling in or they're on our team, I've had a couple moments and they don't say that much.

[00:32:53] They're like kind of shy.

[00:32:54] But I crushed.

[00:32:56] I was like ready.

[00:32:57] I had built this opinion of myself that I was totally worthy of being on this microphone.

[00:33:05] But from all of the experiences, I could really talk about John Cena a lot on here, which doesn't really like play into it a lot.

[00:33:13] But that dude gave me an amount of confidence in my own self and the person that I could be.

[00:33:18] That any opportunity that shows up, I feel like I have gotten very lucky and worked hard enough to create that luck.

[00:33:26] That when I get there, I just show up with the confidence.

[00:33:29] And I feel like I've almost like developed this thing where I go, say I was the host of Barbell Shrugged.

[00:33:35] How would I act on that day?

[00:33:38] Like, don't worry about the gap between the number of shows Mike's done and Doug's done and my zero.

[00:33:44] Let me just jump to the end and act like I'm that person already.

[00:33:48] And it worked.

[00:33:49] And they both came up to me at the end of that show with Brett Contreras.

[00:33:52] And they were like, hey, man, you did a really good job.

[00:33:54] You want to keep traveling with us?

[00:33:56] And I was like, of course I do.

[00:33:58] This is incredible.

[00:33:59] I can't believe.

[00:34:00] Let me think about it.

[00:34:01] Yeah, let me think about it.

[00:34:02] Like, I'm a host on Barbell Shrugged, the largest CrossFit slash fitness podcast that exists on the planet.

[00:34:11] And that is when I started to see there was like some real issues at the company.

[00:34:17] There was a lot of people.

[00:34:19] There was lots of, I don't really want to go too far into it, but there was lots of internal conflict.

[00:34:24] They fired pretty much everybody on their staff.

[00:34:27] They had to rebuild business.

[00:34:29] There was lawsuits going around.

[00:34:31] It was very, but I was sitting in the middle of it.

[00:34:33] I was like the calm of the storm just going, I just showed up.

[00:34:35] I don't care about the story from the last six years.

[00:34:39] Let's just make the new story cool.

[00:34:41] About a year later, Bledsoe stepped away.

[00:34:44] He had really just started to distance himself.

[00:34:45] And he needed to go find himself away from being like this like uber famous fitness guy.

[00:34:52] And then Doug and I took it over.

[00:34:55] We took over all the debt.

[00:34:56] We took over everything.

[00:34:57] We took over the lawsuit.

[00:34:58] We took it all.

[00:35:01] And we struggled for three years really, really hard.

[00:35:05] As soon as we started to get momentum going, COVID hit and just shut everything down just like it did for everybody.

[00:35:12] So it's not really like a complaint, just part of the story.

[00:35:15] Through COVID, I mean, the company was two months away from completely shutting down.

[00:35:20] We were so broke, which I had also, because of the gym, just become comfortable.

[00:35:24] Like it's okay to be broke.

[00:35:25] It was different because I had a kid this time, so a lot more pressure.

[00:35:28] But me personally, I was kind of okay in that spot of like, I've done this before.

[00:35:33] I've been two months away from zero and I'll just figure this thing out somehow.

[00:35:39] So I had, sounds crazy even talking about now,

[00:35:44] but I had $16,000 left in a bank account that was like my business bank account.

[00:35:49] Like the account that I get to go gamble with of me being an entrepreneur before I have to go back to the real world.

[00:35:54] And John Swanson, for all the CrossFitters, maybe the guy that started the, was the Granite Games.

[00:36:03] That's right.

[00:36:03] I took his business course on building programs.

[00:36:06] Like I had been friends with him for a couple of years and I was like, dude, we got this thing called the Diesel Dad.

[00:36:10] It's great.

[00:36:11] Like people are buying it, but they're not buying it at the speed and volume that I like need to get out of this hole we are in right now.

[00:36:20] So we started selling high ticket coaching programs.

[00:36:23] And within a year, things like took off.

[00:36:29] Like crazy.

[00:36:30] It's awesome.

[00:36:31] And it's almost because of COVID, like everybody was in their house drinking, eating.

[00:36:37] The pantry was there 24 hours a day.

[00:36:39] And we were meeting those people exactly where they were at in the fat loss space, muscle building, just getting them back to going.

[00:36:46] And then during that time, we had, I became like the face of low testosterone, me and Frank Thomas.

[00:36:55] We got into Walmart, bombed.

[00:36:57] But when we bombed in Walmart, we also brought our film crew down and we did like the barbell shrug thing.

[00:37:03] Like we brought the camera crews.

[00:37:04] We did this massive thing on Walmart and their dedication to health and communities.

[00:37:08] I was like friends with the purchasing director or merchandising director, I think that's what they call them.

[00:37:13] We were working with a nonprofit down there for military vets with PTSD.

[00:37:17] Another thing that Sina put me in touch with.

[00:37:20] And it just, it, this whole thing was like broadcast on LinkedIn and everywhere, right?

[00:37:27] So this company found me.

[00:37:29] It was like, you run this thing called the Diesel Dad.

[00:37:32] Like 40 to 50 year old dad's trying to be in shape.

[00:37:35] You have a channel and a broadcast or an audience that fit this.

[00:37:42] You also have an in at Walmart.

[00:37:45] And we went from 12, 12 stores in year one to 2,500 stores in year two.

[00:37:54] My face was all over the box of the low testosterone products, which is really funny to talk about.

[00:37:59] But it also forced me to then take the deep dive in on shrugged into testosterone, understanding what it was all about.

[00:38:08] And it was super pertinent to me.

[00:38:09] Like I was 38 years old, something like that.

[00:38:11] And I needed to like pay attention.

[00:38:14] So I texted Gallopin who we had known for a long time.

[00:38:17] He said, you have to go talk to Dan Garner.

[00:38:20] Nobody else's opinion on testosterone matters.

[00:38:22] That's the only guy.

[00:38:23] So I interviewed Gallop.

[00:38:24] We all hopped on a show.

[00:38:27] Two hours later, I pulled out my wallet, paid Dan Garner to read my labs.

[00:38:32] Three months later, I was down at an event that Bledsoe was putting on called Strong Coach, a bunch of coaches.

[00:38:39] And we sold a program that was not even like 10 times more expensive.

[00:38:48] It was like 50 times more expensive than anything I had ever sold in my entire life in the fitness space.

[00:38:54] And then we had a business.

[00:38:56] And that's been super cool.

[00:38:58] That is awesome.

[00:38:59] I think we do like, I think we do work that we get to go do for an extremely long time.

[00:39:05] I don't really feel, my dad always comes out to me and is like, you know that Diesel Dad thing?

[00:39:09] That really could be like a great business for the rest of your life.

[00:39:11] I'm like, yeah, guess what else could be?

[00:39:13] This one.

[00:39:14] The one where we're taking like the deepest dive into people's lives and giving them the exact truth about where they're at, how to improve it, and doing it at a level of precision that I just don't think exists in the market.

[00:39:27] This episode is brought to you by our good friends in Matabolic.

[00:39:33] Matabolic is a boutique franchise system built for entrepreneurs and backed by experience.

[00:39:39] Founded by former professional athletes Brandon Cullen and Kirk DeWall, Matabolic blends elite training principles with a proven business model.

[00:39:47] With 36 open locations, 8 new markets launching soon, and another 50 plus in development, now is the time to invest alongside a growing, high-performance boutique fitness brand.

[00:40:00] Learn more at matabolic.com.

[00:40:02] That's M-A-D-A-B-O-L-I-C dot com.

[00:40:09] Man, what a journey, dude.

[00:40:11] What a journey.

[00:40:12] I mean, that's...

[00:40:13] Dude, if you play the game hard for a long time, it just turns out cool.

[00:40:16] Yeah.

[00:40:16] You just gotta keep going.

[00:40:17] I hope so.

[00:40:18] Not for everybody.

[00:40:18] And here's the fun part.

[00:40:20] Again, I'm bringing him up because he's always like...

[00:40:22] He's always there in my life.

[00:40:24] But I ate lunch with Sina last October down in Florida.

[00:40:31] I was like, dude.

[00:40:33] I was like so close to going broke again.

[00:40:36] Like, we were done, man.

[00:40:38] And then we just...

[00:40:39] Out of nowhere, it's just been like...

[00:40:41] You know, like you put me in touch with this non-profit that you're a part of.

[00:40:45] And then I was looked in weights with this guy that buys all the protein in the world.

[00:40:50] And all I did was just...

[00:40:51] I just went, hey, man.

[00:40:52] You sell all the protein, but there's no training programs next to protein.

[00:40:56] Like the easiest cross-sell in the world.

[00:40:58] How could you not think of that?

[00:41:00] And he goes, never thought of it.

[00:41:02] Why don't you just do it?

[00:41:04] I'm like, I just picked Walmart.

[00:41:06] The largest company like in the world over a barbell.

[00:41:10] That's just...

[00:41:11] I don't know.

[00:41:13] Just...

[00:41:13] And he was like, dude.

[00:41:15] Everybody goes broke.

[00:41:16] He's like, that's the secret no one tells you.

[00:41:18] He's like, everybody thinks you get it right.

[00:41:20] He's like, everyone goes broke.

[00:41:21] He's like, I've been broke for a long time.

[00:41:23] Now I have lots of money.

[00:41:24] But he's like...

[00:41:26] He's like...

[00:41:27] People...

[00:41:27] It was kind of...

[00:41:29] It was the short part of the conversation.

[00:41:32] It's like, people don't even really respect you if you get it right the first time.

[00:41:36] Because they just know that it was lucky.

[00:41:37] Yeah.

[00:41:37] You're like...

[00:41:38] The people that have been broke multiple times typically where they're like...

[00:41:42] And then I just figured it out, man.

[00:41:43] It's like, can you believe that I was almost homeless and my wife would have left me and

[00:41:48] taken my kids because I was just some bum fitness coach.

[00:41:52] And then it didn't.

[00:41:54] Yeah.

[00:41:54] And I don't know why, but it didn't.

[00:41:58] And I don't want to go back.

[00:42:00] Yeah, I know.

[00:42:01] Well, you know, they say...

[00:42:02] What is it?

[00:42:02] Like luck is residue of design or hard work.

[00:42:05] I mean, it's true, man.

[00:42:06] And you have to go through times.

[00:42:07] I mean, after I sold my gyms in 2017, I had this really strong plan.

[00:42:11] I had a plan, man.

[00:42:13] And the plan didn't go.

[00:42:15] And it was a little dark.

[00:42:18] I bet our plans looked the same.

[00:42:19] Yeah.

[00:42:19] It was a little dark for a while.

[00:42:21] Yeah.

[00:42:21] I admit.

[00:42:22] And same thing is, you know, we had to kind of lean on my wife's income.

[00:42:26] And I'm pretty sure that wasn't always appreciated at times.

[00:42:31] And...

[00:42:31] I know about that one too.

[00:42:32] You know, and I'm not...

[00:42:33] I haven't hit anything big, but you know, things are stable.

[00:42:36] And...

[00:42:36] But it's a tough one to swallow, especially when you're like maybe a little bit later in

[00:42:41] your life, in your 30s or even in your 40s.

[00:42:43] You're like, I should be...

[00:42:44] And you have friends, maybe you've been in a career for a very long time.

[00:42:48] And they're like, oh, they're making great money.

[00:42:51] The thing is, I find it funny.

[00:42:52] It's like, I'll meet friends who are like making well over like a half a million dollars

[00:42:55] a year.

[00:42:55] They start as an intern in a financial company in college, right?

[00:42:58] Like they're just houses and all the things.

[00:43:01] And they're like, man, I really appreciate the way you did things.

[00:43:04] Like, what do you mean?

[00:43:05] Like, don't look at me.

[00:43:07] Like, I don't know.

[00:43:08] Don't do that.

[00:43:09] And they're like, no, I really do.

[00:43:10] You kind of do it your own way.

[00:43:11] I'm like, well, I look at you sometimes, pal.

[00:43:14] And I'm wondering, you know, look at my decisions.

[00:43:16] There's somewhere in the middle, right?

[00:43:17] Yeah.

[00:43:17] So here's what I like about...

[00:43:19] So I've had conversations with you.

[00:43:21] I've had conversations with Galpin and Garner and a lot of the people, even the absolute

[00:43:27] rest team.

[00:43:28] And what I've noticed about approaching, you mentioned at the very beginning of this, is

[00:43:33] performance longevity.

[00:43:33] It's not just about longevity, right?

[00:43:35] It's not just about health span and how long you can live a good life.

[00:43:38] It's about like, how do I be a savage for as long as I can?

[00:43:41] How do I do all the things, right?

[00:43:44] Yeah.

[00:43:44] And I feel like that's what you guys are working for is truly optimal.

[00:43:46] So give us some insights into like, what does that mean?

[00:43:49] How does that unfold?

[00:43:50] What's the client experience for you guys?

[00:43:52] Yeah.

[00:43:54] Yeah.

[00:43:54] So I could kind of even break down maybe as like a framework for that idea or performance

[00:44:00] longevity, like why that kind of rings true with us.

[00:44:02] Everybody wants to live a really long time.

[00:44:05] But if you were just looking for 20 extra days, like what is the metric that we're chasing

[00:44:13] if longevity is the goal?

[00:44:16] I don't know.

[00:44:17] Like how many days is a win?

[00:44:19] And then what are those days look like?

[00:44:21] Or how many years is a win?

[00:44:22] Like, do we get you to, because I would, I would imagine the plan to get you to as long

[00:44:30] as possible is also the same plan that, or at least 90 ish percent of the same plan

[00:44:37] that I would do if I wanted you to be at a hundred percent eight months from now, we

[00:44:44] would just only look at the eight months and then we would reshuffle the deck.

[00:44:49] We would figure out where you were.

[00:44:50] We'd set a new goal eight months away.

[00:44:52] And then we would go take that.

[00:44:53] And if we did that over and over and over and over again, where we're always chasing

[00:44:56] peak performance, by the time we get to a hundred, we're still chasing peak performance.

[00:45:01] We still have to be eating well.

[00:45:03] We still have to be sleeping well.

[00:45:04] We still have to be training well.

[00:45:05] We still have to be bringing the performance mindset things to things, thinking two things.

[00:45:12] You know, all of these buckets allow you to live a very long time, but we actually will

[00:45:21] have a metric if we know that eight months from now, I need you to go run a marathon.

[00:45:26] Cool.

[00:45:26] Running a marathon every day isn't necessarily going to be a healthy path.

[00:45:31] That will beat the crap out of you and will actually take away from your longevity.

[00:45:34] But if we paired it with the first eight months, we go run a marathon.

[00:45:38] And then the next eight months, we try and run a 400 or we try and run a mile or we try

[00:45:43] and do a powerlifting meet.

[00:45:44] Or now all of a sudden we have to maybe I'm like going all the way back to CrossFit in

[00:45:49] the greatest sense of things.

[00:45:50] We are trying to be great at every domain of fitness by building this massive resume of things

[00:45:58] that we've accomplished because we're trying to focus on performance.

[00:46:02] But along the way, we're always just fine tuning how healthy we are, the decisions we make,

[00:46:09] the habits we are able to stack on top of each other.

[00:46:13] And really the process that our clients go through, I think is.

[00:46:20] I think it's hard to I think it's very hard to come up with a more comprehensive program

[00:46:27] than what we have created here.

[00:46:29] And by that, what I mean is a lot of people are very good at some of it, like the outside

[00:46:35] in stuff.

[00:46:37] And even those coaches, they might do a whole bunch of like lifestyle tracking, right?

[00:46:41] Like what do you do when you wake up?

[00:46:43] How much water are you drinking?

[00:46:44] How much food are you eating?

[00:46:45] Can you give me like a three day food log?

[00:46:47] How much did you sleep?

[00:46:49] But what they probably lack is the internal health side.

[00:46:57] And what's actually happening once you put the food into your mouth, it's got to go through

[00:47:02] this giant processing center called your body.

[00:47:04] And then it's got to come out of you.

[00:47:06] So sure, you might be getting your blood work done every year at your doctor, probably pretty

[00:47:12] depressing just because you walk out going, why did I waste this 30 minutes of my life?

[00:47:16] But you're not going to be getting urine, stool, saliva, and blood work, and not just like

[00:47:22] a little bit of blood, like all of the blood, all of the markers that are possible.

[00:47:26] And collecting 500 something data points or biomarkers.

[00:47:31] And from that information, now we get to understand what your internal health looks like.

[00:47:36] And that's still not even all of what we need to know.

[00:47:40] Because then there's the other piece, the subjective side of, well, how does that stuff make you

[00:47:45] feel?

[00:47:45] Like what's going on in your life?

[00:47:48] You can be eating 100% perfect.

[00:47:51] And then we get to know what your internal health looks like from blood work and stool

[00:47:54] samples and saliva and urine.

[00:47:56] But then now we need the subjective side.

[00:47:58] Like, do you have a lot of energy?

[00:48:00] Do you feel like you sleep well?

[00:48:03] Do you feel like you have the libido that you should?

[00:48:06] Like all of those things are kind of your experience of how your health is serving you in your life.

[00:48:14] And then we got to go figure out how you actually perform.

[00:48:18] Because maybe what goes in your body is fantastic.

[00:48:21] What comes out of your body is a B plus.

[00:48:24] And how you feel is great.

[00:48:26] But you perform like crap.

[00:48:28] You don't have the muscle mass.

[00:48:30] You have managed stress so well in your life because you've been an entrepreneur for 20

[00:48:36] years that you don't realize like you're just bending your wheels.

[00:48:39] You're stressed out of your mind.

[00:48:40] Your body doesn't like anything that's going on.

[00:48:44] So you can't recover.

[00:48:45] You aren't gaining muscle.

[00:48:48] Your VO2 max sucks.

[00:48:49] Like, now we got to go figure out what are the actual performance metrics that we're going to be chasing

[00:48:53] so that we can show, yes, your body's working significantly better.

[00:48:56] It's more resilient.

[00:48:57] It's more adaptable.

[00:49:00] And through that, you can literally collect thousands of data points on people.

[00:49:07] Like, you can figure out everything about that person's health and physical performance.

[00:49:12] Like, everything that is their physical body, we know inside and out what's going on.

[00:49:18] And then we're going to take all of that data and throw most of it away so that we can then

[00:49:25] sit down and divide it, take what's important and divide it into two different buckets.

[00:49:31] It's the visible side of things, the hidden stressors, and then the hidden stressors,

[00:49:37] and then the visible side of things.

[00:49:39] That's going to be like the outside end stuff.

[00:49:41] So Dan, who I met for two hours and then handed my money, I really feel like that guy is the

[00:49:46] best in the world at understanding root cause issues in your physiology, the downrange effects

[00:49:51] of those problems that then show up as symptoms, which will most likely show up in the questionnaires,

[00:49:55] and building nutrition and supplementation for all of those pieces, the internal health side.

[00:50:02] And then Galpin, everybody knows who that guy is, widely considered the best in the world

[00:50:07] at kind of like the visible stressor side of things, training programs, sleep programs,

[00:50:13] recovery stress programs.

[00:50:15] How do we optimize the lifestyle side of things?

[00:50:17] If you're a pro athlete, well, if you play pro baseball, your life isn't normal.

[00:50:24] Like, you're on the road every single week.

[00:50:27] You're three days, you go to bed at three o'clock in the morning, you're up at 11,

[00:50:31] maybe there's a day game and you have to get six hours of sleep from the, like, it's not normal.

[00:50:35] If you're an NFL player, you get in a car crash 20 times a Sunday.

[00:50:41] Like, it's not normal.

[00:50:43] So what information do we need?

[00:50:45] How do we build these six programs?

[00:50:47] And then Dan is kind of one of the first, like, you hear these terms in business a lot

[00:50:52] because they're, but the theory of constraints, I'd never heard it applied to health.

[00:50:58] But it's perfect.

[00:51:00] Like, if you have a bunch of gut health stuff going on, you don't have consistent schools

[00:51:03] or you've got bloating or reflux, try being like a baseball player with bloating problems.

[00:51:10] When are you going to eat?

[00:51:12] Like, what do you do when you're on the road?

[00:51:14] You have to eat out.

[00:51:16] You know, do you think you're going to go hit 300 when you have loose schools every single day,

[00:51:22] four times a day?

[00:51:23] It doesn't work.

[00:51:25] And these are people that have all of the resources.

[00:51:28] When we get into the executives, like, it's crazy how much stress beats these people down.

[00:51:33] And then we got to go figure out what is like the biggest rock that we can move right away

[00:51:37] that will clear the path, the rest of their physiology to fall in line.

[00:51:41] And that really is kind of what the theory of constraints is.

[00:51:45] Like, what is the root cause issue?

[00:51:47] Causing the rest of this stuff.

[00:51:48] So we have these thousands of data points and hundreds of biomarkers.

[00:51:51] We throw most of it out, but we do take the stuff that's really important.

[00:51:55] And we go write programs to go solve those specific problems.

[00:51:59] And from there, then we have to go figure out like, what is this?

[00:52:03] What is the team that we build around people?

[00:52:06] So we take these people, we put an executive assistant in their life.

[00:52:09] Can I manage all things health and performance?

[00:52:11] They've got a coach that they are going to then be working with on a daily basis.

[00:52:16] Most of which have come from Galpin's lab.

[00:52:19] So it's all directly in line.

[00:52:21] Like, they only think one way, Galpin's way.

[00:52:24] And then we surround them with subject matter experts.

[00:52:27] So anything that pops up, they've got somebody there from behavioral health coach for performance

[00:52:32] mindsets, a sleep scientist, so that we can track every single night of sleep.

[00:52:36] So we know how they sleep on the road, when they're traveling, methodologies to create better

[00:52:40] sleeping situations when they are on the road, when they're at home, all those pieces.

[00:52:44] A physical therapist, so if something were to happen, nicks and dings, we've got that

[00:52:48] person ready and jumping on things immediately, as well as a nutritionist.

[00:52:53] So people that are writing meal plans, they're writing meal plans for when they're home, on

[00:52:58] the road, how do we prepare for games?

[00:53:02] What are the recovery?

[00:53:03] What's the hydration strategies?

[00:53:05] So it is the exact plan.

[00:53:08] So once you get into that program, you just know every day I wake up, I do this.

[00:53:13] Here's my weekly goals.

[00:53:14] How many of these things did I hit?

[00:53:16] And then how do we stack good habits so that eight months after they start, really, they

[00:53:23] show up and they feel better than they've ever felt in their entire life.

[00:53:25] And what's interesting about that is I was like the first person that went through it.

[00:53:32] Like that was what I said to Doug when we were down in Austin.

[00:53:34] I looked at him, it's like, dude, this is the best I've ever felt in my entire life.

[00:53:39] I can't believe that this is even possible.

[00:53:42] And now we get to go do that on a, on a large scale and it's incredible.

[00:53:48] It's very cool.

[00:53:49] Yeah.

[00:53:51] I mean, who wouldn't want that?

[00:53:53] What you guys are offering.

[00:53:54] Right.

[00:53:54] I mean, the only like, uh, and it reminds me of like, did you ever read the book?

[00:53:57] The one thing.

[00:53:59] Yeah.

[00:53:59] Yeah.

[00:53:59] And it's like, I could summarize the whole book, like in one quote, it's like, you know,

[00:54:03] like, what is it?

[00:54:04] Do the one thing today that'll make everything else easier or unnecessary.

[00:54:07] Right.

[00:54:07] Which is kind of what you guys are looking at.

[00:54:09] I was like, well, what, what can we remove that allows everything to kind of flow naturally

[00:54:12] towards an optimization state.

[00:54:14] And, uh, and from what I understand, you guys are backlogged, like as far as clients coming

[00:54:18] on board so that this is seems to be hitting home with a lot of people.

[00:54:22] Like, yeah.

[00:54:23] Give us, you know, when you're talking about, like, uh, we're talking about how hard business

[00:54:26] can be.

[00:54:27] Yeah.

[00:54:28] When you go and create a thing like this, we are, November will be year three and we have

[00:54:36] had a wait list for over two years.

[00:54:38] It's crazy.

[00:54:40] Like we, we have at least a three month long wait list and we've had it for, it's, it's

[00:54:46] been up to eight months before.

[00:54:47] Crazy.

[00:54:48] Like when Galpin show went live on Huberman, we had an eight month long wait list to get

[00:54:51] in.

[00:54:51] I mean, there's also pieces of it.

[00:54:54] Like it, the business side of it's very hard because we've got to go get all of that data.

[00:54:58] Yeah.

[00:54:59] We got, we got people that are very busy that we got to go get them to track their food

[00:55:03] and water and how much they weigh and how much they weigh after they pee and like lots

[00:55:07] of stuff.

[00:55:07] Yeah.

[00:55:08] But fulfillment and scaling is very hard, but we offer a very premium service.

[00:55:13] I actually, uh, I feel like I hope I am the only person that has ever coined this, but

[00:55:18] high precision luxury health and performance.

[00:55:19] It's a luxury item.

[00:55:20] Yeah.

[00:55:21] If you, if you want to go find out what it's like to go drive a Ferrari for health, that's

[00:55:26] what we did.

[00:55:26] It's awesome.

[00:55:27] Well, the big question is most people are listening or asking like, that sounds expensive.

[00:55:32] Do you guys have like a price range?

[00:55:34] Yeah.

[00:55:35] It's 25 K to somewhere around 150, depending upon what you're looking for.

[00:55:40] Okay.

[00:55:41] Per year.

[00:55:42] Yeah.

[00:55:43] Yeah.

[00:55:44] That, uh, okay.

[00:55:45] For most people that's expensive.

[00:55:47] But with when I've heard from people in longevity clinics and things like that, and some of these

[00:55:52] prices that are being thrown out there.

[00:55:53] Yeah.

[00:55:54] We're actually not that bad.

[00:55:56] It's like three 50.

[00:55:57] Yeah.

[00:55:58] Dude.

[00:55:58] Yeah.

[00:55:59] The problem is, is like the services that are that, that are doing what we do or similar,

[00:56:05] you can't scale it.

[00:56:08] Like you really can't.

[00:56:10] There's just like, how do you make another Dan Garner?

[00:56:13] That's got thousands of hours of reading labs.

[00:56:17] But how, how do you do it?

[00:56:20] Do you have to go find somebody that's 21 years old right now that's hungry and then has

[00:56:27] worked with the same clients and the same everything.

[00:56:30] And to go and be able to, you know, one of the trickiest parts of the entire business

[00:56:37] really is the focus that one needs in order to get the results for the clients.

[00:56:43] So like if I'm just writing macros, you know how many companies out there just recording

[00:56:48] loom videos, reducing their calories by 250 calories a week, I could do like thousands of

[00:56:54] those in a month.

[00:56:56] But if you want to go and analyze 500 biomarkers, understand gut health at a very complex level,

[00:57:05] understand stress levels, understand how every supplement affects the chemistry, micronutrient

[00:57:10] deficiencies, which leads to symptomatic issues.

[00:57:13] Like it's not, it's not a, it's not a scalable thing.

[00:57:19] It's very hard.

[00:57:21] And that's why there's wait lists because it just takes a long time for us to be able

[00:57:25] to get through two people a week and do the work that we want to do.

[00:57:30] There are plenty of options for people to get healthier.

[00:57:32] I totally get it.

[00:57:33] Just like everybody can go drive a Honda Civic.

[00:57:36] Totally cool.

[00:57:37] I loved my Chevy Lumina back in the day.

[00:57:40] But if you want to go do the thing, you got to go.

[00:57:45] It's not easy because it's not easy for us as a business.

[00:57:48] Like we got to go find those people.

[00:57:50] Yeah, man.

[00:57:50] Well, I love it.

[00:57:51] I love it.

[00:57:52] Anderson, I could, uh, I could ask you a lot more questions, but unfortunately, you know,

[00:57:56] time is limited in any given day.

[00:57:58] Really interesting, man.

[00:57:59] I'm so glad I got this opportunity to kind of hear your backstory and how you got into

[00:58:01] everything.

[00:58:02] It all makes perfect sense.

[00:58:03] And I think it's very, uh, you know, for people, especially in this industry who are listening,

[00:58:08] like it can be hard being a coach and trainer.

[00:58:12] Isn't the most lucrative things at times being a gym owner can be very challenging.

[00:58:16] And oftentimes with the overhead can seem like a weight you just can't bear.

[00:58:21] So just keep trucking through because you know what, it's okay to be broke at times

[00:58:26] and it's okay that you try new things.

[00:58:28] And sometimes I find when things plateau or when things start to reverse, that's when

[00:58:32] you find your biggest leaps forward because you actually are forced into some action that

[00:58:35] maybe was what has seen as extremely uncomfortable before.

[00:58:38] So appreciate you sharing all the stories.

[00:58:40] And, uh, you know, if people want to get ahold of you directly, obviously rapid health report.com

[00:58:44] is a great place to go.

[00:58:46] Barbell shrug.

[00:58:47] There's, I don't know, thousands of episodes out there now, so you can get to know Anders

[00:58:51] pretty well.

[00:58:52] Yeah.

[00:58:52] Where else, where else would you like people to go?

[00:58:54] I'm very inactive on all social media.

[00:58:58] Uh, but if you want to send me a DM, I check it here and there, uh, at Anders Varner on all

[00:59:04] the places I'm, I'm, this is the first, uh, first time Andy Gallup is so famous.

[00:59:11] That's the guy that's on the socials and Garner.

[00:59:13] And, and I get to, I get to go build a business, which is very cool.

[00:59:17] It is very cool.

[00:59:18] Well, thank you, sir.

[00:59:19] I really appreciate you spending some time on this Friday and, uh, yeah, ladies and gentlemen,

[00:59:22] Anders Varner.

[00:59:24] Awesome, man.

[00:59:24] Thanks for having me.

[00:59:27] Hey, wait, don't leave yet.

[00:59:29] This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Fitness.

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[00:59:41] We really appreciate it.

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[01:00:16] love to hear from our listeners.

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[01:00:20] This is Eric Malzone and this is the Future of Fitness.

[01:00:22] Have a great day.

[01:00:22] I'll see you then.

[01:00:23] Thank you.

[01:00:24] Thank you.