Don Moxley - Mode Method & Leveraging Longevity

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. One of the most important and undeniable trends in our industry is the ever-growing consumer demand for personalization. That personalization is driven by health data. If you are a consumer-focused health and wellness company, you know that acquiring and making use of that health data is traditionally expensive, complicated, and full of friction for the consumer, but not anymore. Thanks to the good people at Sprint, a camera-enabled digital biomarker platform that connects any app to the human body. Formerly known as Elite HRV, the patented technology behind the Sprint platform leverages a decade of research into physiology, behavior, and health insights, including collaboration with 117 universities, analysis of more than 4 billion biomarkers across 20 million user sessions. Using the smartphone as the sensor, Sprend's evidence-based machine learning algorithms deliver actionable biomarker insights such as body composition, HRV, stress, recovery, progress tracking, and more, all through an easy-to-integrate STK and API. Health and wellness companies are integrating Sprend to better understand their users' holistic health, make their apps more personalized and adaptive, demonstrate measurable progress, and empower their members to understand their bodies and make well-informed decisions for their well-being. Go to Spren.com and learn more. That is Spren.com. Hey friends, if you follow the show, you may have picked up on my passion for heart rate variability when it comes to recovery, performance, and longevity. I track it religiously and I'm always looking for ways to improve. Over the past few months, I've been taking this new supplement called HRV Plus by mode and method. Over that time, I've experienced significant improvement in sleep quality, faster recovery, and an objective uptick in my average HRV. About two to three points on average. That's a big deal. HRV Plus is the world's first expert-curated, carefully sourced blend of all natural micronutrients to optimize recovery, increase performance, and boost heart rate variability. Formulated by some of the world's leading experts, HRV Plus combines their proprietary hemp extract with omega-3 oil, magnesium, and curcumin extract to target inflammation, improve sleep, and supercharge our endocannabinoid systems. I encourage you to give it a shot. Go to modemethod.com and enter discount code Eric15. That's modemodemethod.com and enter code Eric15 for 15% off. Go get it. All right, we are live. Don Moxley, welcome back to the future of fitness for your third or fourth visit. It's it's uh it's been a few.

I think I know and I don't I don't think it's four. It's probably three if it's not two.

Well, it's good to have you back, man. I always enjoy our conversations and uh there's always a ton of value. All of your interviews are very well received with with the audience, and uh, you know, it's because you're uh interesting to listen to and and you throw out a lot of insightful uh information and and it's it's just fun. So good to have you back. And I think what we could do is well let's get that let's get that bar lower, okay? Let's let's start with this, Don. Uh explain to me, because you were just telling me prior to recording about this setup that you're sitting in right now. I think a lot of people who are into the uh hashtag van life or mobile life will be really uh, I guess, inspired for what for what you said. Where where are you sitting right now in the moment?

So, right now I am sitting in my office, which is what's called the bunkhouse of a 42-foot Jaco North Point uh fifth-wheel RV. Um, my wife and I moved into this uh back in April. Um my daughter, you know, the house that we lived in for 25 years, uh my daughter moved out January 2nd. And she she had been at Ohio State as a lacrosse player. She moved home during COVID and did grad school while she was at home, but she got a job coaching in um at Northwestern University. And when that happened, I said I set looked at my wife and I said, listen, we are she's not coming back. We don't need this house anymore. And um but we didn't know where we wanted to go. We've we've always loved the West, um didn't necessarily want to buy a piece of property right, you know, particularly January, February, March of of this year, 2022. It's too expensive. So we bought the fifth wheel and we have been traveling. So right now that fifth wheel is sitting back in central Ohio. We have been out west, and in fact, you and I, you know, on our trip, uh, when we were up in Montana at Glacier, you and I got together for a cup of coffee. And after we left you, we went over to northwest Washington and spent several weeks uh in the Seattle and north of Seattle area. We have migrated back to central Ohio for two weeks. Uh, we start our second week. Uh, I guess this is starting our second week here. And then uh at Sunday we will leave. We'll be down in the Carolinas for Thanksgiving. We will be down in Florida for Christmas at my brother's house. Uh we will head out of Florida and be in Dallas, Texas for New Year's. And after Dallas, we work our way over to uh Santa Fe, New Mexico for a couple weeks and then Sedona, Arizona for a couple weeks and start to work our way back up the western side of the country.

Wow. That's and are you enjoying life on the road? Any any drawbacks that you didn't expect?

Oh, I I love it, uh frankly, Eric. I I freaking love it. Um, you know, we you have to learn to adjust. So, you know, right now we're talking. Um, I am talking to you. I'm connected to the internet via a Starlink setup. Uh, so we're getting pretty good throughput on that here. So you got to get your your internet worked out. We have I have three, I have three internet systems, whether you know, one on my phone, we have a T Mobile 5G home hotspot, which we really like. And I added the Starlink, I don't know, three or four months ago, because there's sometimes that whether T-Mobile or Verizon, you just can't get connected. So, you know, if in that case, all of a sudden the satellite works. So, you know, we have a washer and dryer in the rig. I've got uh I'm I'm sitting in my office, which has a one-person infrared sauna, I have a Juve red light system, we have a Peloton in the rig. I have a Concept 2 ski ergometer that attaches to the outside. Um and so I'm able to do all the things that are important to me. Um you know, we're in an RV that has four freaking TVs in it, you know. So um it's it's pretty comfortable, it's been pretty fun, and we're getting ready. We're we're we're seeing just the most beautiful places. And you know, like I said, Whitefish, when we got together with you, I'll tell you what, driving around Flathead Lake up there where you live, that is just gorgeous. Um and we're look we're looking for a new home. So we're we're we're letting our new home find us, is how we how we put it.

Yeah, well, I mean, the Flathead Lake may be beautiful, Don, but you know, honestly, it's really cold here and uh people are mean. And I don't recommend a whole lot of people trying to move these.

Well, I'm kind of mean and I like the cold, so maybe I should move.

Yeah.

Uh well that that's a nice uh segue. And I'm I'm really excited to cover what you're in, because you're you're knee deep in you know what is emerging as probably one of the biggest industries out there, which is longevity. Um and I'll let you explain, you know, by your definition what that is. But I want to kick it off with this because when we did meet together uh a few weeks ago in person in a coffee shop in Whitefish, you asked me a question that's been kind of stuck in my craw uh for a little while because it really made me think um not necessarily the question, but your answer. And that question was Eric, do you think the fitness industry is dead as we know it? And I was like, whoa, whoa, done. Let's you know, take it easy. And then and then you started explaining, right? So give me the give me the impetus behind that question. Why did you ask him? What's what's your thought process behind it?

Well, let's let's back up. Let's back up to where that question came from. So to a little bit of my background is is I finished up graduate school at at Ohio State back in 1985. Um, I immediately moved into the management of a health club, which back then was an eight-court racquetball center. Um, and what happens when you have these old racquetball centers is the corner courts sweat with the change of weather. It's really hard to keep them programmed out. So inevitably, we put an aerobic studio in one corner, we had a Nautilus selectorized room in another corner, we had a free weights area in the fourth corner, and then right before I left that gig, spinning was introduced, and we installed a spinning studio. So what was an eight-court racquetball court turned into four racquetball courts and more of a general fitness facility. And and Eric, you know, the industry, uh, when you're in the fitness industry, there's a there's an organization called Ursa. Uh it used to stand for the International Racket Sports Association, but it's the membership association for independent health clubs. And they they they it was organized originally to compete with YMCAs that were expanding, you know, just you know, really expanding hard and putting a lot of competition and doing so in a tax-free manner. So it was hard for the mom and pop health club industry to compete. So, and I don't know what Earth is up to. I've they've got to be in 40 or 45 years. I I went to I I think show number three they did. But fitness, you know, I've watched fitness evolve over the years. I remember the original Nautilus Center. So Arthur Jones invented the Nautilus equipment with the cam, and he put these into mom and pop uh uh storefront operations. I remember those. You see that evolve into mom and pop health clubs. These eventually got swallowed up with uh by uh larger groups, and and largely those mom and pop operations are gone. They've been replaced with the big uh brands, you know, the lifetimes and the crunch and things like that. And um and so we've watched a dramatic change happen in the in the fitness industry. So, and then COVID comes along. So you have all these facilities out there, COVID comes along, and they just get slammed. Um, you know, this was really hard. And and and you have Peloton evolve, so all of a sudden, fitness is now acceptable accessible from your home. I have a Peloton unit in my fifth wheel. Um, my wife gets on in the morning, I get on, I don't do classes, I just ride and and and use the metrics from the bike. My wife does classes, and we can do that wherever we're at. So all of a sudden we're not tied to a facility anymore to do our work. So my question came to you with the impact of COVID, with the emergence of video-based exercise leadership, and and this is where the question came from. Does the fitness industry as we knew it, whether it's a mom and pop, uh uh social gathering site, um, where people used to come together and and and and again, you built your tribe there locally, you had your support coming from locally, that's gotten hammered. Um, and that was the question I had for you. Is is is that aspect of the fitness business gone? Is it done? Um I, you know, we've watched uh CrossFit emerge. Um and you know, CrossFit has largely fed into this mom and pop style of the industry. You know, you can spend a thousand bucks, go get certified, uh, get your get your license from them uh with a fifty thousand dollar order from Rogue, and you find a warehouse somewhere, you've opened your facility, right? Um and um and again, we're watching that model flex. Um, I'm not sure that's a real sustainable business model for the individual uh club owner. I think that's really hard to make a living. And when I say make a living, I mean house payments and car payments and insurance and employ people, you know, those and and those people that you employ get to buy a house or car and have insurance too. I'm I'm not sure the re I'm not sure the revenue's there. Uh it may be in some, uh I think in most it's not. In most it's it's basically a uh a hobby. Um and so I that's that's what I'm trying to figure out. Where is the fitness business as we've known it in the past? Where is it today? Has it completely transitioned to digital? Um and and that was that was the foundation of my question.

Yeah. It's a really interesting question. And I think it's one, you know, if you are in the fitness industry and you're not asking yourself on a fairly regular basis, like what where what is the state of the industry? It's like looking in the mirror, you know, like what is going on? And and you're right. I mean, having you know, um having owned a a CrossFit and uh, you know, classified as a boutique fitness gym, uh, and a couple of them and working with a lot of gym owners who, you know, in similar states, like there's a lot of different, you know, what always got me was there's a lot of different coaching models or business models for these, you know, independent gyms, and they're all based off percentages. Like, well, you know, if you pay your pay your head coach a percentage of you know their personal training and the classes they do, then you know they can make eighty, ninety thousand dollars and you can retain them forever and they can have a real career. I'm like, well, wait a minute. That means that the pie, if you're gonna give them that kind of slice, that means that the pie has to be pretty darn big. And the pie never rarely gets that big. And that that's you know, that that's a uh that's a reality of it. I mean, and you're right, to to have a career, right, where you own a business as an independent gym where uh you can have all those things, a 401k, you know, have a uh own a home and cars and have employees who can do the same and they'll stay with you for 10, 20 years. That's rare. That's a rare breed.

I I'm I'm not sure it's I'm not sure it's out there anymore. Um, you know, this, you know, as we've been traveling and looking at this, I I'm not sure that model is is there anymore. You know, I distinctly remember when I I when I uh years ago I worked for Polar Electro, the heart rate monitor company. And um one of my accounts was Lifetime Fitness. And we wound up working with Lifetime, and I walk into this gorgeous facility, you know, 160,000 square feet, beautiful equipment set up, and just a very well-trained staff. And when we first started working with them 20, 25 years ago, there were a lot of people in that in that system that were earning six figures in the fitness business. Um but inevitably an accountant looks at this, someone looks at this and says, you know what, if we cut a little bit here, we could get our profits up. If you've got, you know, inevitably the shareholder becomes more important than the stakeholder, meaning the employee in those systems. And and those those I don't I don't think that six-digit uh salary is there anymore. It may it may be. I haven't seen, I don't see it very often. Um pretty low barrier, you know. So once you're earning uh six figures at lifetime or or one of the other big chains, you know, it's inevitably you have a sugar daddy that you're training that doesn't want to write the check to this, and they'll finance you developing your own CrossFit situation. You know, because that's that's kind of the lowest bar, that's the lowest point of entry, the lowest bar to get across. And and so, you know, that that same sugar daddy finances or helps you finance, they move out. And again, it winds up being uh a pretty significant struggle to be able to pull that thing together. And again, you throw this in the middle of COVID and it just wrecked it. Um so so the question is, okay, so if you got through COVID, God bless you, um, there's going to be other viruses. We, you know, I the idea that that that this is going to move through and we're not going to have some other kind of uh uh a viral issue come along, you're I think you're kidding yourself. But um, so you know, that goes back to the question. Um, is the fitness business as we knew it, as we know it today, in fact. Um, you know, we've watched we watched uh Peloton just explode during COVID, but now it's shrinking. It's shrinking fast. Um and you know, so what's going to come out of that? You know, I'm I'm not sure. Um but I I I do I don't think I don't think you can um create a mom and pop fitness operation anymore that meets those needs that we talked about, that pays the investors, that pays the executives, that pays the employees a wage that that um that that you can that you can live on. Um so that was that was the reason for the question. Because I I know I don't know where that business is right now. It's certainly diversifying, but um I'm just not sure where it's at right now.

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Which which is a failure on our part. Oh gosh. Yeah, don't I mean, yes.

Um, that's that's a whole other conversation. So I think, you know, health and wellness is where the evolution of it is going and technology is a part. And I had um uh Jim, uh the CEO of Nautilus, we discussed this recently on a podcast, which will come out after this, uh, about you know, kind of areas of of where where it's going. I mean, it's it's you know, there's overwhelming, you know, a larger percentage of Venice will become connected. Um, and that goes for in-person and at home, really. Um, then you have the you know, the hybrid model where people are are doing all the things, right? Like you. They're they're got their Peloton home. I would imagine maybe uh you do a lot of hiking activity, maybe you maybe you stop in a gyms when you're traveling, you do a little bit of weight training. You know, it's just it's just uniquely, it's not one central place that everybody goes for their fitness and health. And um, you know, that's those those are kind of the big things. And I think also to get into our conversation for today, I think one of the big this things that they're shifting is people are looking at their health span, right? How long, you know, it's shifting from fat fat loss into health span. How many years can I live a quality life? Right. And that's uh that's one of the most dynamic areas of of wellness, and that's something that you're in. So maybe you can, you know, I'll hand over to you. Give us a little update like what is going on in the health span and longevity sector.

Well, that and that's been the interesting part from my standpoint. That that's the windshield I've been looking through for the last couple of years. And um so so two years ago, um, well, let me let me go a little further back, 2015 through 18. I was working at Ohio State as a sports scientist. Um, I had stepped in and helped the program fix an athlete, and we did it mainly using heart rate variability technology. Um, and all of a sudden, HRV becomes really important. So by the time I left there in 18, um, we were measuring three and a half million data points on a team in a season, and that included both heart rate and heart rate variability data. But we got to the point to where we could use HRV and I could predict who would win the morning. I I knew who would be an all-American the first day of the tournament um based on HRV status. And that was really powerful. Now I wound up having to leave Ohio State because uh the the as a larger organization, they weren't interested in having someone like me pushing the pushing the system like I was. Um, and I wound up getting an invitation to go into the cannabis industry. And one of the things that really opened my awareness of this was uh along the way, I had worked with uh a guy in wearable technology out west. Uh, he left this same wearables company about the same time I did, and he went into cannabis and I went into sports science. Um, but we remained friends, and he sends me a note one day and he says, What do you know about cannabis and HRV? And I said, Well, I don't know anything, to tell you the truth. Um, and I needed to start to do some some work on that, and and then all of a sudden it it's it's like, wait a minute, there's there's something here. And and the thing about this was, Eric, is that so in your body you have a thing called the endocannabinoid system. It's part of your nervous system, and it's actually named after cannabis because the molecules you produce when you exercise, it's called anandomide, is part of this endocannabinoid system, and it is so important for nervous system control and recovery and resilience. It's just it's critical. So, but I didn't listen, we don't no one talks about cannabis and its health benefits. So, you know, I took a I took a head-first dive into the pot pool down in South Florida and started learning and and was just blown away by this. Now, we go two more steps and this will come full circle, I promise. Um I I leave that industry because the problem with the cannabis industry is it's batshit crazy. Um it's with without uh without rescheduling, um, you don't have interstate commerce, you have you don't have interstate banking, you've got a bunch of people. So we legalize cannabis state by state on the backs of uh of cancer patients and epileptics, and it immediately becomes an adult use rec market automatically. Um so the medical kind of goes by the wayside because you know cannabis growers sell what people buy, and people are buying THC. They buy THC. Um and I'm looking at this saying, okay, we're missing there is a value here besides THC. We saw the emergence of the CBD market, which is okay, but it's largely a bullshit market. Um, there is benefit there, but it's not being leveraged at all. Um, so we're working in cannabis. Um, and I get a call one day from a guy that I worked with in Florida, and he said, What are you doing? And I said, Well, I'm looking for a project. And he says, What do you know about autophagy? And I said, Well, I have a passing understanding of it. And he says, So have you ever heard of a thing called spermidine? And I said, Nope, that's a new one to me. And he said, and he sent me some stuff, and we started to look at it. And um ironically, I have a I have an advisor, a personal advisor that I that I talk to on almost all things human performance. And I sent him a note from my phone and I said, Have you ever heard of spermidne? It has to do with autophagy. And my phone auto-corrected the spermic. Um, and he sends a note back, he says, I think you're talking about spermodyne, right? And I said, Yes, I am. And um he said, ironically, this is something our facility is looking at. What do you know about it? And and I had a chance, Eric, I had a chance to go work with a company called Longevity Labs, and that's who I'm working with now. Um, they were founded in Austria. Um, they have a product called Spermidine Life, and Spermidine is a molecule that's in every cell of your body, men, women, plants, and animals. It declines with age, and the data is beginning to show that spermidine is a key molecule in the autophagy pathway. Without spermidine, you don't get autophagy. Um, so we have been ramping up this cut this company in this country, um, Spermidine Life. If you go to spermidinelife.us, that's the website. You can learn about Spermidine there. Um, and and so, you know, we've we've that that's the space I've been. Now, ironically, um where my world really came full circle on this is that if you when we started, if you purchased our product in the marketing emails we did, you got an invitation to have a phone call with me to talk about your experience. So I I probably talked to six or seven hundred of our first thousand clients. Um now, uh, our clientele, our we blew up when a podcaster by the name of Dave Asprey featured us on one of his podcasts. He, one of our advising docs, Dr. Elizabeth Yurth, was on it, and Dave's reach is phenomenal, and we just exploded. It was wonderful. Um, now in the phone calls that we have with these people, um, so Dave talks about HRV. He's talked about aura rings uh that you measure HRV with, and it's it's my preferred modality too. Probably 80% of the people I talked to had aura rings. Of those that had aura rings, probably 10% knew what the hell to do with it. Um, there was a complete disconnect between the data that it was providing and the behaviors that need to go into this longevity process. And and so um, no, so a couple things. Number one, we got a lot of feedback. People who took Spermidine saw an improvement in their HRV. And and maybe we should spend some time talking about HRV here in a minute. Um, they saw an improvement, but along the way, we started looking at other projects, and you know, we'll talk about a couple of those today. But um, you know, it was kind of an interesting full circle moment for me going from working for a company named Polar that was one of the first to commercialize HRV in their products, um, and then have it emerge as a tool we used at Ohio State with the wrestling program, and we used it effectively enough to win a national title and multiple Big Ten titles. And I think I had you know 28 All-Americans and national champions. It was, and and a lot of it, HRV was a huge, was a huge tool for us in that. Um, then to go into cannabis and understand the role of the endocannabinoid system. And and Eric, I believe this with my heart. The endocannabinoid system should be chapter two of exercise 101. The benefits of exercise are not weight loss, it's not skinny, and it's not beauty. It is being able to improve longevity. It's that quality of life. That's where our gyms are full of 18 to 25 year olds that are in the dating circuit, it should be full that these gyms should be full of 65 to 90 year olds. This would be improving quality of life, improving health span, also improving lifespan. This is the value of exercise. Um, and using tools like this to track it are where one of the real value props are. But but frankly, 80-year-olds are not going to CrossFit facilities. Um, you might get them into a lifetime or something like that. I think crunch is probably questionable, but there's I think there's an interesting opportunity for someone in this lifestyle and health space to take longevity as a goal because the foundation of longevity is movement. We evolved to move. We now live in we now live in a situation where we don't have to move. Um, we have food available 24-7. We have space available all the time. We don't, we I mean, we don't have to change the temperature or the the temperature in our homes is controlled by a computer. Um, so we don't have to adapt, and this is critical to this long-term adaptation that yields improved health span and yields improved lifespan. So I think there's a real opportunity here for the exercise professional and for the nutrition professional to get away from proteins, fats, and carbs and get into micronutrients and understand the role of not just spermidine, but things like NAD, NMN, uh nicotinamide ribazide, some of these other key molecules that decline with age. This is where there's an opportunity right now, which which really led to that original question. Is the fitness business as we knew it dead?

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, Don. And I I think, you know, people um just for the for the sake of uh you know, time, that there's a couple episodes, including one of yours, um, Don, and then Jason Moore and Joel Jamison where we've taken a deeper dive into what HRV is. I don't want to cover that here because I think there's there's more to unpack. And I guess my first question for you on all that is uh is there ways for us to somehow, I guess, uh quantify what's going on, quantify what's going on with the endocannabinoid cannabinoid system.

Yeah, listen, if you're measuring HRV, you're measuring endocannabinoid system status when it really comes right down to it. Um, you know, as your HRV improves, you're improving resiliency. The endocannabinoid system is that system that puts uh a level into your that that levels out, adjusts that bioadapts your uh your nervous system. If you're anxious, you know, I I I do this in a lecture and I talk about and and we can do it with you. So, Eric, if your body is craving nutrients, what is the signal your body gives you when it's craving nutrients?

Well, it's hunger and thirst, right?

It's hunger. And and if it's if it's if it needs hydration, it gives you thirst. So what is anxiety? Right, right when you when you look at so what is anxiety? Well, personally, when you understand endocannabinoid system, anxiety is your body's way of telling you you need to move. Okay, if you're dealing with anxiety and these things, the first step to solving that is moving. This is going to cause your endocannabinoid system to produce an endocannabinoid called anandomide. Anandomide bonds to CB1 and CB2 receptors, which eventually lower your level of anxiety, improves neural communication, and lowers your level of anxiety. This is this is fundamental exercise. Um so HRV is that tool. To answer to your question, how do you monitor it? You monitor it with HRV. Um, that readiness score is a is a secondary indicator of your endocannabinoid system status.

And when you look at HRV, because I don't know if this actually has been tied in, but you know, HRV and longevity, right? Health span, aging well. What's the connection there? I mean, obviously, you know, HRV in the short term just tells you whether or not you're ready to do whatever, you know, train hard if you need more rest or if you're ready to perform um, you know, a competition or at work, whatever it may be, just be a performer. What but what's the tie-in to longevity itself? How do you utilize that metric in that context?

There's there's two there's two elements that plug this in. So number one, when we look at when you look at longevity, and we're looking at at both lifespan and health span. So with longevity, we look at two. So lifespan's the number of days that you're breathing. Um, health span is the number of those days that you're breathing and not in a hospital, for lack of a better term. Um, and when you look at both of those, I I I you know, if you want to live for a long time, the first thing you gotta do is figure out what's gonna kill you. Um so listen, if you play in traffic every day, you don't need to worry much about you know uh inflammation and things like that, because the thing that's gonna take you out is gonna be a truck. Um, so once you, you know, when you're young and you solve those early problems, you do what your mom told you, wear a helmet when you ride a bike, buckle your seatbelt in your car, do the things that that that so safety is part of your lifestyle. The next thing we have to look at that's gonna take you out starts in your 50s, 60s, and 70s. And most of those things are inflammation related. Um, so they're inflammation related that lowers the proficiency of your immune system, it raises your risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, it causes a problem with neurological communication, so you wind up having to deal with Alzheimer's or dementia or things like that. These are these are the things that are going to take you out, and they're all inflammation related. Well, turns out HRV is highly uh reactive to inflammation status in your body. Um, as diabetics improve their blood sugar levels, their HRV improves. As you take spermidine and autophagy, or you take spermidine and fast, or you take resveratrol and fast, your HRV improves. We know we know HRV declines with age. We know that, but we also know that, and and we also know that right before you die, your HRV is going to be zero. It's going to go down to nothing. So when you start taking a look at a progressive longevity practice, HRV gives you a great dashboard indicator as to am I making progress or not? Am I improving? Am I able to move this needle?

So I'm going to jump to a conclusion here. And if if I'm a um a fitness professional or maybe an entrepreneur in the space or you know, someone who wants to start to look at longevity as a path forward, um, I better get to know HRV. Is that is that you're telling me? Like that's that's the metric that will drive a lot of this.

Listen, you um, if you're a race car driver, um you can drive around the track and count telephone polls and figure out how fast you're going. Or you can get an indicator, you can get a speedometer on your car that tells you how fast you're going. This is the same thing with HRV. I can, I can guess at what I'm doing. I can get blood work a couple times a year. I can get it, but with an HRV system, I wake up in the morning and I have a I have an indicator right there of what's going on. And over time, what you will find is that as you engage in the key behaviors that lead to improved longevity. And I think those behavi, I think those five four key behaviors, I call them the rocks in the jar. The rocks are movement, you hack that with exercise. The second is is nutrient-dense food, and you hack that with supplements. The third is sleep, but you it's you cannot hack sleep. You can hack sleep preparation, you can hack the sleep environment, but at the end of the day, you have to sleep. It's critical for both aging and you listen, when Mother Nature wants to take you out, she'll take your sleep. That's the first thing that'll happen. When she takes your sleep, your recovery goes. When your recovery goes, your HRV goes to nothing. And then finally, light. You have to, you are we evolved. Uh light is a nutrient, and I really believe in this. And I've seen I've seen some great responses with this. But my four big rocks in the jar are movement, nutrient-dense food, sleep, and light. Um, and those all go into the jar of what I call purpose. You have to have a purpose. You have to have something that you wake up for every day because our environment is such that it's hard to, it's, it's hard to our environment makes it hard to make the right decision. It's easy to not go get the workout in. It's easy to do something um and just let it slip. Um, but you have to have a purpose for the reason that you're going to get past easy and go do the work. Um so HRV is that is that uh that top level indicator that you can look at that tells you, am I moving forward or not? And it's a really good indicator for that.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, just I've been tracking my HRV consistently for four or five years now, um, primarily on the Morpheus device, but I and their system, but I also, you know, right now I'm I'm I'm testing a few things. So I got the Whoop 4.0, I got my Garmin, and uh a couple different things. So I'm always tracking different metrics, but I Morpheus is really the one that's consistent all the time. But during COVID, dropped, right? Just absolutely through the floor um when I when I got sick. Um I noticed it when I travel, it drops. Like there's certain things, it's almost undeniable in the trends that you see, and and it is direct correlation to how I feel. If I can, I mean, I can almost almost 99% sure every morning when I wake up I can guess my HRB to a couple different degrees. And um it's it's one of those things where I'm I'm a full believer in it. And there's a lot of, you know, I don't know why there's so much uh denying that it's valuable in the market. A lot of people say it's voodoo magic or whatever they want to say about it. But I, you know, I just think it's it's it's just a metric, you know, it's another data point that we can study. And to me, the the data correlates personally with, you know, n equals one to exactly how I feel and how I'm performing. So I think it's you know it's a pretty critical metric. Um listen, it's go ahead.

And anyone who is serious about training, anyone who's serious about this um and understands the science of training. Listen, there's a lot of people, and again, Eric, coming from the CrossFit community, listen, when you go into a CrossFit facility and you bury yourself in the gym, there's certainly some dopamine that comes from that. There's certainly some reinforcement that comes from that. And I don't wanna I don't want to neglect that at all. But if you do that too many days in a row, you eventually break. Okay, this is the this is one of the problems with that with that modality. Um and too many times this is this has been my experience at Ohio State. This has been my experience afterwards. When you apply science, meaning that you create a hypothesis, you test it, you interpret the data, you come back, you make changes to your model. Too many times in the fitness industry, what we do is based on dogma. It's based on I'm a west side guy, I'm a CrossFit guy, I'm a this, I'm a that. Okay. My this is my program. There's a lot of ego built in that. If you talk to a college strength coach or you talk to a personal trainer that's a leader in that, there's a lot of ego that, oh, this is mine, this is my program. Um Um and that listen, dog, it's not science. Okay. You know, one of the things we ran into at Ohio State, this was a really interesting, just kind of interesting little example is that when when I got there and started working as a sports scientist, we essentially had three strength coaches. Um, I had we had one guy that the university paid, he was the university paid strength coach. The uh elite wrestling programs have what's called uh Olympic development programs. Um and that our Olympic development program had a strength coach. And some of my better guys, I had an Olympic gold medalist on my team that had his own strength coach. Um, and you don't tell that guy, no, you're not going to do that program. You need to come over and do this other program. You just don't do it. Um, and when they asked me what they should do, is I said, let the athletes pick. Um, so we went ahead and measured what the performance was. So uh ultimately our goal is to make all American. And and that year we had we qualified the entire starting lineup for nationals, 10 guys, first time in school history. Um, three of them followed one coach, three of them followed another coach, and four of them followed the third. As even a distribution as you can get. So programs did not select for the guy's ability to make starter on our team. We went to nationals, uh, I had eight all-Americans, our school, uh school record. Um, the breakdown on coaches was 2-2-3. These were clearly different programs. But at what we learned is that I'm not worried about what the program is. Get the damn door open, get the athletes into the weight room and let them lift. That's a that's accomplishing about 90% of what you want. What we learned is we went and ran correlations against performance versus exercise performance. Um, bench pressing predicted nothing. Okay. In fact, it's it was it was it was uh it was uh inversely proportional to performance. The better the bench, the worse the athlete. Now, that doesn't mean you don't bench press, it's an important exercise. And in fact, the coach and I went at this a couple times. He's like, I want to do a bench club. I'm like, over my dead body. I said, because benching does not select for what our goals are. I said, if you want to bench, great, put it in the program. I'm I'm not saying don't bench, I'm saying you just don't put the damn thing on the wall. Um your ability to deadlift two and a quarter times your body weight selected from your ability to move from just a guy in the room to a starter. It no, not it didn't select anything after that. Okay. Pull-ups selected your ability to move from starter to all American. Weighted weight hangs, so muscular endurance selected for your ability to move from starter to all American. Um so until you use scientific process, hypothesize test means you measure everything, but then you come back and do an analysis. You know, our analysis was we took my all-Americans or better, they were one group. Uh, guys that started but never made all American was the second group, and the third group was guys that never started. And these are people who wrestle together every day. They're all high-quality athletes, but something has to select. Well, you know what? Uh, strength, dogmatic strength did not select. Strength does. You gotta you gotta lift, you gotta be strong, um, but you don't have to celebrate, quote unquote, your program. Um, so and I think this is an important part of this, is that, and this is the thing about longevity. This is about using science to determine what determines are you gonna lead a long life? I have a good friend, his name's Ken Ford. He says he wants his life to be happy, happy, happy, happy dead. Um, that's what that's what longevity is to him. You know, nothing, there's there's no transition. And and again, if I get if I fall off the edge of the Grand Canyon when I'm 90 years old, you know what? I hope I enjoy the trip down. Um, but um, I hope, you know, the thing I'm shooting for when I get into my 90s and and and push Centurion is I want to be able to hike the Grand Canyon. I want to be able to go to these beautiful places. I want to go to Glacier up there where you live and do some of these amazing hikes. Um, that's movement. That's what drives longevity and what sets up. And when you can do that, all of a sudden you build resilience, you build your ability to recover. And if you combine that with the appropriate nutrients and you combine that with good sleep, and you combine that with light, you know what? You start to have uh a recipe for success in longevity.

Oh, that's great. Quick question because, and then I want to get into longevity lapse for light, for people in northern climates like myself, and I I'm thinking about this more question for my mom. She's she's 84. We just moved her up here from California. So she's gonna get decidingly less sunlight this winter. How do you how do you hack the light?

Red light. Um, I think this technology, the red light therapies, um the uh we've invested in it. It's in my facility. I sit in front of a red light, near-infrared light uh unit, uh 10 minutes on each side of my body every day. Um and when I don't, not only do I notice a difference uh phenotypically, but you see a difference in the HRV, your HRV improves with regular good light exposure. You've got to get light on your skin. So um I and and you know, when you look at what are the business models now, um, we're starting to see the emergence of facilities that are based on recovery. They have cryogenic chambers, they have red light therapy, they have um hyperbaric chambers. Um I think all of these are very valuable, uh used correctly. Um so so I I go with I think red light, red light, near-infrared light therapies are uh a nascent technology that are incredibly valuable.

Awesome, awesome, thank you for that. So uh what what are you up to at Longevity Labs? I'm I'm right now I'm holding um, you know, from uh I guess your new sub brand, I'll let you describe it, from mode and method, the HRV Plus supplement. And I have been taking it uh now for I guess two months, and I have decidingly way better sleep. And I I mean, not getting paid to say that whatsoever. My sleep is far better. Um I wake up less, I fall asleep quicker, and my HRV has ticked up about two points, which is a big deal, right? I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot, but but two points going from you know average 81 to average 83. Wow, that's without changing a whole lot else. That's that's pretty darn good. Yeah. So so what are what are you guys up to? What's what's new there?

So the this is part of being part of a a pretty cool company that that um wants to continue to explore. Listen, we decided to come to the market and and and market a product called Spermidine. You know, every marketing company that we talked to said change the name, and we're like, nope, this is the name of the molecule. And um, and and again, the science is critical on this. You know, we have a study that's coming out by the end of the year. If you take a mouse and you fast it, you get you get an uptick in autophagy. If you take a spermidine knockout mouse and you fast it, you don't get autophagy. It doesn't happen. So sperminine is critical. When we look at when we look at blue zones, if you ever read the book Blue Zones on Longevity, you know, these are communities around the world that have people that routinely live to 90 and 100. They have spermidine-rich diets. You know, there's other things that go into this, but they're spermidine. You have to have that molecule there, or else it doesn't work. Fasting doesn't work in the absence of spermidine. Now, and so we extract our spermidine from a European wheat germ uh that's grown in with much different rules than what we raise wheat with in this country. In fact, we've not been able to find a wheat supply in the United States that is spermidine rich enough for us to run our extraction processes on. Um so while we grow wheat and we have lots of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, the macronutrients, no one's paying attention to the micronutrients that come from industrial farming. So Europe, Europe does a better job of this. So all of our product comes from Europe. We have a spermine-rich wheat germ. And so we started marketing this, we started talking to people about, and again, we're in this biohacking space. And, you know, the biohacking space is just a new name for fitness freaks. Um, the same people that used to, you know, weightlifting is biohacking, running is biohacking. You're hacking your biology in order to get a positive response. Um, and um, so as we're looking at this, and HRV just keeps coming up and coming up, and they finally came to me one day and they said, Listen, why don't we have an HRV supplement? And I said, That's a great question because the science is out there. So I was tasked with creating this and we went back and did the work, and HRV Plus is what came out of this. Um, it is a uh nutritional supplement, so we extract the cannabinoids, so the cannabis molecules, we extract them from hemp. So uh we're not you're not going to get high taking this product. Um we we bump or we equalize a lot of what's called terpenes. Um terpenes are other plant molecules that are very beneficial when used correctly. So we bump some terpenes in there, and then we carry it in an omega-3 fish oil, DHA EPA, to lower inflammation. And in our production run, we will also have what's called specialized pro-resolution mediators, SPMs. And these are the biologically available omega-3s that resolve inflammation. Um, so everything about this product is designed to improve endocannabinoid system tone, making sure you have the nutrients on board so the endocannabinoid system can function as effectively as possible with our CBD, CBDA, uh beta carry offline, some other things. We also, again, omega-3s, DHA, EPA are anti-inflammatory. SPMs are aggressively anti-inflammatory. Um, and then we package it with uh a little bit of magnesium, there's a little bit of curcumin in there, um, all of which designed to improve that inflammatory process.

Uh yeah, it's good. I like it. I really do. Um, I think you made a lifer out of me. So, how are you guys how are you guys distributing this? Like, is there a launch coming up? Is it gonna be B2C? Are you gonna be doing it, you know, any affiliate programs or something like that? No, we we will launch this. What's the go-to-market?

Yeah, it's gonna launch across our website, modemethod.com. Um, and um, so we we'll have a D to C. We'll also have a B2B uh side on this. Um so if someone uh works with other people, we will I I don't see how we do this without an affiliate program. Um again, a lot of it, we've got to get it launched first. Uh a lot of a lot of this affiliate marketing, things like that comes once you get the business up and going, you figure out okay, how can we tweak this? I don't know that we have the affiliate worked out yet, uh, but I expect us to get there. But there will certainly be um uh B2B discounts available to professionals. Um, and you'll be able to go if you go on to, and we'll give you a discount code that we'll put in your show notes that if someone wants to try it, then go to modemethod.com and put in the discount code and get a couple bucks off and decide if it's something they want or not.

It's great. And I I encourage people um to really start looking at especially maybe uh people who are lifers in the fitness industry and they're looking for they're feeling the change, right? The last three years, if you if you didn't feel the change and you're in the industry, then you know, good for you, you know, then you find some kind of isolated pocket where you know you you're insulated from that, I guess. Um But there's a there's a shift. And I think as a a you know, from a trainer all the way up to you know a health club chain or you know, um online services, practitioners, all those things, like starting to shift towards longevity is is a smart move. And whether that be through you know adopting some HRV technology, looking at what's out there, having recovery modalities available to your clients, um, starting looking at you know supplementation and all those things that we've discussed today, I think it's a really good move. And it's not like you have to adopt it all at once. You can just take little pieces, start using, you know, start tracking your own HRV or start testing some of these supplements for yourself. But it's it's something that I highly encourage people to start looking to because it does seem to be the overwhelming trend is health span and wellness. I mean, it's it seems pretty clear to me, but uh, yeah.

Let's dig into this for just a second. We started this talking about the changes in the industry, and one of the big changes is technology, the tech that's coming in. If you are an exercise professional, the largest amount of disposable income is owned by those that are 50 years, 60 years now, and older. Okay, there's more disposable income there, there's more availability of people that can write a check for your services than anywhere else. Listen, I love coaching athletes and working with this, but frankly, it is really, really hard to make a living at that. Um, that's that's another story. But number one, number two is technology is part of the solution. And Eric, I think you and I talked about this. If someone comes to me and says, What's the first thing I should do if I want to exercise? I don't care if it's for human performance or for longevity, whether it's for sport performance or longevity, the first investment you need to make is in a heart rate monitor, understanding exactly intensities and understanding energy systems as it goes in. Because at the end of the day, Eric, we're not going to die when we run out of time. We're going to die when we run out of energy. Energy is a function of the mitochondria in the cell. You remember that from sixth grade biology. We had to do the project and your mitochondria, that's the battery of the cell. Um, the mitochondria are critical. Well, listen, if you want mitochondrial development, you can get that very effectively from zone two and zone three work. And this is on a five-zone system. Okay, huge benefit comes from that. But you don't know you're in zone two or zone three unless you're wearing a heart rate monitor. You don't feel exercise until you get to zone four and you start to feel a little bit of lactate. Okay, that's not where you want to be. There's no value to exercising in zone four that doesn't come in zone three. And if you're exercising for longevity and mitochondrial development, put your butt at the top of zone two and sit there as long as you can. Sit on a bike and just crank that out. Mitochondria love that. Kick that in on top with a fasting program, whether it's intermittent or longer term, so that you have the stimulation of autophagy. Turns out spermine light, sperminine needs to be part of that equation too, because it's critical in that autophagy mechanism. But doing zone two work, zone three work with your heart rate monitor, getting the appropriate nutrients will yield an improvement in your HRV. It'll improve your VO2, it'll improve all those things. And you don't have to lay in a puddle of sweat in the middle of the floor in order to demonstrate that you worked hard that day.

Yeah, that's great. Well, good messaging, man. I I really appreciate it. And it's uh it's always fun to talk to you and get some insights because I know you're, you know, even though you've been in this industry for a long time, you're constantly educating yourself and in developing new insights. So it's it's uh it's great to kind of, I guess, leverage that when I can. Where where do where do you want people to go, Don? If they want to get a hold of you or if they want to check out more uh because you mentioned different websites.

Yeah, if you if if you're looking for HR V, if you're looking at that, go to modemethod.com. Um and again, we'll put some note, we'll put something in the show notes about a uh an affiliate code or a or a discount code. Um if you want to find more information about about spermidine and longevity, go to spermidine life, S-P-E-R-M-I-D-I-N-E-L-I-F-E, spermidineelife.us. That's the you that'll get you to our site. If you go to .com, we're getting that that takes you to the European site, and we don't have this totally geolocated yet, so we're still if you go to .us, you definitely wind up on our site. Um and and you know, you can follow us. We're on all the social media, spermadine life.us. We're in social media. You can follow Don Moxley on social media. I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn and and I I'm not a I'm not a big Facebook guy. Um more Instagram and Twitter. Um, I usually push most of my um perf uh performance stuff out through Twitter. Um I'm a boomer, so I don't convert it well to photos yet. Um I need help there, but I've got someone helping me with that, so hopefully I'll get better.

Awesome. Well, Don, thank you so much for joining us. Uh I'm sure we'll uh happens when you're a boomer. We'll uh we'll check in in about a you know, six to twelve months, see how things are going. We'll get some more insights from you. And uh as a as always, it's it's a pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, Donald.

Thank you so much, and I cannot wait to get back through Montana and sit down for our second cup of coffee.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.