Barbell Shrugged - 153- How to Increase Physical Activity, Nutrition & Overall Wellness w/ Spartan Race Founder Joe De Sena

Episode Date: December 3, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to review Spartan Race founder, Joe DeSena. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Sounds like a story we should hear. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bletzer With Doug Larson Chris Moore Oh wait wait wait Sorry sorry

I forgot my name No It's gonna be This is a combo cast So it's not just Barbell Shrugged This is also Spartan Up Joe DeSena's podcast Should we go with

Spartan Barbell Shrugged Or Barbell Spartan Barbell Up Or Spartan Shrugged Spartan Shrugged Spartan Barbell Shrugged Up Assholes Spartans don't Just so we're clear Spartans don't shrugged or barbell up? Barbell up. Or Spartan shrugged. Spartan shrugged. Spartan up, barbell shrugged up, assholes. Spartans don't, just so we're clear, Spartans don't shrug. There's no shrugging going on.

They never not know. They're very confident. Very little shrugging going on when they're asked questions. When was the last time you were here? We were here, was it February? He said it was February. I feel it was a little later because I think February would be a lot colder than when we were here. Six, seven months ago.

It was cold. It's just we woke up early and started running immediately. It wasn't that cold. I mean, maybe 40 degrees in the morning, maybe in the 30s. Yeah. But I feel like in the winter it should be a lot colder here. It's colder, yeah. There was no snow.

No, then it probably was March. You guys probably came in March. Yeah, so we worked out. You guys introduced me to what a podcast was. Yeah. I had no idea what it was. We had a blast, right? We spent like an hour on these mics.

And then you left. And then fast forward, you probably posted it how long after you think we met? A week or two. So a week or two later you posted it and then i had to travel around the world because i had the book yeah and so we did this tour we went to frankfurt we went to uh london we were in slovakia we were in czech and i'm not joking i was in canada i did like i started hearing some of these stories and i was like these are jokes i am not joking and some of them i I think Marion was here with me.

And everywhere I went, one, two, three people came up to me and said, hey, man, I know you. You were on that barbell shrug. I'm talking about in Frankfurt, Slovakia, London, anywhere in the world. And so I said, fuck, where? Virgin Islands. Virgin Islands, right? Virgin Islands.

Anywhere I went. And yeah, it was a guy, it was a guy and we were in the airport in the Virgin Islands. Guy came up and said, I saw you, or a woman. So we said we got to do, we were together, right? We got to do a podcast. So we called you. I don't know if you remember. We got four microphones and a camera.

And Marion has been miserable ever since. She's like, this is a great idea. And then once you start implementing it, it's like, oh, no. Oh, yeah, Joe's told us he did 15 episodes today so far. Jesus, you never go half-assed on anything, Joe. This is maybe 16, and it's a lot of work, man. I don't know how you do it. It is a lot of work.

I want to quit every day. We don't do 15 a day, let's be honest. Yeah, I mean, if I did that many, I would quit. Yeah, it's so much work. And then you start to lose energy. It's hard. It'd be easier to work out, to be honest. The thing about it, too, is you don't want to do a podcast.

There's a lot of things you can do where the energy starts dropping and you get tired. I'm sure some people have noticed that there's a couple podcasts where I don't have the energy that I had on the previous podcast or something like that. Because when you start dragging, it's not good anymore. Right. You don't want to post that. No, you got to be pumped. You got to be pumped. And I'm pumped to see you guys.

You showed up last night. Did you come in a minivan? You got to bring a lot of people. We roll. We roll in the best town and country. Roll in style, man. Luxurious. A lot of people.

People make fun of us sometimes. We'll roll up and we always opt for the minivan. There's no question. It's like, because once you've traveled in a minivan, you don't want to go back. No, a minivan is nice. It's so comfortable. It's embarrassing, though. You've got to admit it's a little embarrassing.

No. No. We take pride in it. Really? Rolling style. We can rock it. So where'd you come from? You stopped somewhere.

You were in PA. Yeah, so this trip, yeah, we tend to stack trips. So we'll fly to one side of the country, and then we'll stack like two or three things together. So this trip, we tend to stack trips so we'll we'll fly to one side of the country and then we'll stack like two or three things together so this trip we kicked it off we went to uh manasquan new jersey first hang out with uh zach evanesce our common friend and uh we went and hung out at his gym one day and we held a mastermind so we we hold something called a mastermind uh for uh people who own gyms and are in the fitness business. So we just kind of get together and help each other develop our businesses further, share ideas, things like that. So we did that for a day.

We were invited to Princeton University to speak. And so we each- For some reason, it let us in there. Yeah. We all- Was it Penn State or Princeton? Tell us. It was Princeton.

Actually Princeton. Just fucking kidding. And then, well, you know, it's funny is we got to podcast with some people, and we got to use the same room that Einstein once taught in. Wow. That was a little bit of a mind blow. We were like, when we did one podcast and we didn't know it, and then the last podcast they were like, they let us know that that was the case.

I was like, oh, shit. Wow. And so who did you interview over there? We got Carl Pauly, Nate Helming, and Dr. Romanoff, the pose running guy. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. He was fantastic. Nice. And was that fun?

Oh, that was a blast. Yeah, we had a blast at Princeton. It was the National Endurance Sports Summit. Oh, I had heard about that. It landed on the same weekend as our championship, but we couldn't make it work. Exactly. Because you invited us to that, but we had already committed to the Princeton deal. And the Princeton deal was a lot of fun.

We all gave talks we hadn't given before. And so we got to develop some new content for ourselves. Nice. That's fun for us. Then you jumped in the minivan and drove to Vermont. Yeah, we jumped in the minivan. It was like, let's go to Vermont. You know, the six-hour drive, five to six hours.

We normally take longer to get to where we want to go than most. We like to make stops and eat, and we enjoy the journey. What do you guys eat when you stop? Mostly pancakes. No, no, no. I was going to say something good. You're like pancakes. Sugary protein bars, too much caffeine,

coffee, energy drinks, you know, the classical stuff. We normally, if it's breakfast, everyone orders a round of omelets and black coffee. We keep it pretty simple. Paleo-ish. As we drive up, Doug and I were talking like, yeah, it's going to be a good visit, but probably our assumption was it would not be as good as the last

one. We came up here, we met you for the first time, we got immersed in this community, which is amazing, for the first time. We thought, well, initially, that was that first sugar rush. We were discovering something new. We'll come back. It'll be familiar. It'll be great, but not quite as good. Now it's better.

Cool. We came into that event last night. We thought, oh, is there a joke at a wedding or something going on? We can get a free dinner or something? Cool. We walk in and go, oh, there's Menarchin has him, and there's a lot of interesting people there's a lot of i knew there was an event going on but i didn't know much about the event because when i can't go to something i just block it out of my mind sure well i thought i was gonna be over by the time we got here i didn't realize it was still gonna be going on we got here on monday night

like we showed up after after working out yesterday morning and then driving for six hours and we're in our workout clothes shorts and and light t-shirts basically like i'm wearing right now and then we walk into like a dinner party where everyone's drinking wine and shit. And we were like, oh, I didn't know this was happening. Yeah, they're like, I'm an author. I wrote this book. And I'm like, I just drove six hours in a minivan. And I'm breathing in my mouth.

And I smell from my workout. But to be honest, it was just as awkward for us because we didn't really have room for you. You just showed up. I'm kidding. You weren't even invited, really. Supposedly, I mean, I think there was like bunks have room for you. You just showed up. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. He's like, you weren't even invited, really. Supposedly, I mean, I think there was like

bunks set aside for us and then when we got here, you're like, oh, you brought your wives. The bunk situation is not going to work. Where did we put you? Are you in Trailside?

Oh, the Trailside Inn. Love that place. You're with Josh. Good. I'm really happy about that because the first time we came up here, I was like,

my wife needs to come up here with me next time I come up. And because we stacked the trips and she came with us this time, but I didn't like, I don't think deeply about much of anything. But we got up here. I was like, oh, we get to stay in the Trailside Inn. I was like, this is where I wanted to bring you. So, you know, it just happened. Let's dive.

Wait, what do you got? I was going to dive into something real. You guys did the Spartan World Championships here this weekend. We did, but before we get into that, here's what I was thinking, if you're okay with it. Yes, sir. So we have the trail side, right? We've got the general store we're sitting in. We got Amy Farm.

And the idea was, could we build all these businesses, these buildings, and then find some people to run them? I don't know if we talked about this last time. We talked about how it was all an emerging little economy that it wasn't clear how it would all turn out, but we knew there was a good chance this would really work out. You were going to be the black sheep mayor of town. No, I was the black sheep. And I'm just getting my green juice here. It didn't really work.

And the reason it didn't work was because it was an experiment. Like, I thought, think about your podcast business. You probably had no funding when you started you were in that coffee shop right yeah exactly you did a few and then you could buy some equipment it just kept growing i started my first business that way and what i what i figured was if somebody had backed me and bought me some good trucks in the beginning and i could hire some good labor i would have got there a lot faster same Same probably with you, no? Actually, I think I would have just had more expensive lessons to learn.

Well, you're smarter than I am. Well, you went to Princeton. You can technically say that. You drove through campus one time. Yes,

I went to Princeton, yes. So, my thing was, I thought people would be able to just walk into this general store

which was already set up with inventory, and run it. I thought somebody could just walk into Trailside and run it. Somebody would walk into the Amy Farm and run it. Every one of the businesses failed. And I think the reason they failed was exactly what you said. I think if you don't have skin in the game, and you're not an operator that has a mortgage, and you put up money, and you don't have a choice,

you've got to make it work. You had to make this podcast work, right? If it didn't work, what were you guys going to do? So we got really lucky this year. After you were here last time, I think. I don't think Josh was here last time you were here. He was here. Oh, he was.

He was new, I think. He probably just showed up. He wrote a check. It was all brand new. He wrote a check. He came in. So before he got here, that had failed. Failed. The phone would ring. Nobody nobody answered the phone people would show up there's nobody behind the door when they got there

i couldn't get employees slackers oh man it was terrible so um so he showed that whip well you but you got to manage them and it's just a headache right so he shows up he writes a check we don't have to worry about anything anymore. His money's on the line. He's going to be friendly to you because he wants to make money. Is that why he's being friendly to me? That's why he's being friendly to you. I thought he liked me. It has nothing to do with you. We say the same thing about people when it comes to it.

If you want to get in shape, we say the same thing. People get free help or look for it or get shortcuts. They go to the gym because their buddy got them a deal. They never get results. It doesn't work. You got to pay and you got to put a chunk put a chunk of you online then you get an extraordinary outcome i got this saying i don't know i think it's true adversity is the road to success right so josh has got to feel some adversity some pain write that check right be stressed out

just barely on the bubble whether he's making money or not right and he's making that place work and that's why you you're excited about it. And same thing with the farm. You met Joe today. You met him last time too, right? He's an amazing guy. We had four sets of farmers there before Joe. And I might have told you this last time you were here. We had the only farm where the animals ate brunch instead of breakfast

because no one would wake up early. No one would get up early enough to feed the fucking animals. The animals can have brunch on Sunday, but every other day of the week they need that breakfast. There's a reason why every farmer in the world gives his ass up

with a crack of dawn. That's the nature of the game. Our cows would be saying, what kind of fucking farm is this, man? I've been on a lot of farms. This is not... It's 6 a.m.

It's time to eat. So that... I wanted to go down that road on business, so we're fixing that we got Katie and Kevin now in the general store did you meet you met them

they cooked for you last night oh they're amazing this place is ridiculously good the food here is incredible so Kevin

I would say this is my favorite place to eat breakfast in the whole world I call it the capital T-H-E general store the general store

I ate two breakfasts this morning and additional eggs did you really crushed it all well you did you did the burpees but kate so kate and kevin 300 burpees this morning he he ran he was doing 14 million dollars a year down in new york in a restaurant he was a top top chef yeah when we went down to richard branson's island um they knew him so so he says to me he had done the death race right he was in that community and we were just up to our neck with frustration like we needed people to run these businesses

and um kevin raises his hand with katie and says i'm in we're gonna and i'm like you're doing 14 million in new york you're not you're gonna come up here and do 14 dollars it's not right nope it's our dream we want to live in vermont so they're here now probably six or seven months, and they are killing it. Literally, I lost money in this place. I took it over in 2005. Nine years I've lost money. They've been here five months. They're making money. It's the mindset, right?

A guy who's going to give up $14 million a year to take on a new challenge because he knows he can do it again, that's the fucking guy you want on your team, right? Well, if you can be successful in Manhattan running anything, you probably can be successful anywhere, right? Well, if you can be successful in Manhattan running anything, you probably can be successful anywhere, right? I don't know about that. I would argue if you could be successful in Vermont, you could be successful anywhere, right?

I was thinking Frank Sinatra should have sung Vermont, Vermont, not New York. You could be successful here. It's tough here. I mean, 400 people in town. There's just not a lot of people to do business with. Not a lot of people. Yeah. Shit.

But you were talking about the World Championships. Yeah, that's not the death race. That's something different. Is that right? So basically for Spartan Race, you've got the sprint, three plus miles. You've got the super, eight plus miles. And then you've got the beast, 13 plus, like a half marathon. All with obstacles.

This is Spartan Racing. Spartan Race. You're the founder for people that don't know you. Yep, I'm the founder of Spartan Race. We started 2010 in here in Pittsfield. So anybody that was feeling bad for me, and the story I was just talking about with all these businesses not working. Nobody's feeling bad for you.

Nobody's feeling bad. The good news is Spartan Race probably did better because I was hurting everywhere else here in Vermont. The same thing was applying to you. You had to make that work. I had to make it work. So anyway, you've got these three different distances, and the reason we did that is we wanted to emulate triathlons.

So triathlons got distances as well, and you can work your way up to an Ironman. We think we're going to have an Olympic distance Spartan race. We tested it this weekend. And it won't be bigger. It'll just be faster, and we think we're going to get it in the Olympics. That's our goal. We're going to work to get it in the Olympics. People would love to watch that. With cameras on the course, like they do with the cycling and stuff. You can see the cameras on the course. It's going to be insane. Apparently, Boston put in a bid to get the Olympics there in 2024.

It would be awesome because our headquarters is in Boston. So imagine if in 2024 this could be the new sport. What's making it happen, Joe? What do we got to do? I want to knock ping pong out

or something like that. No way you're knocking out ping pong. There's a ping pong table in every break room in the United States and around the world. You can't get rid of ping pong.

I'm drinking a Kool-Aid like, what do we got to do to get this shit done? I don't care about odds. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. What about curling? Can we get curling out? Let's get it out of there. Fuck them.

I think I could do without the curling. I was talking to a guy today. What is that sport where you spin the frigging fabric around in circles on a stick? The prancing in gymnastics, the floor routines. It's kind of like a stick with a fabric on it. Yeah, they do. Like Will Ferrell did it

in that movie. That's the only thing I've known that for. It's in the Olympics. It's in the Olympics. Can you believe they try to kick the sticks? As wrestling back dancers.

The ribbon dancer at home is going, they try to kick wrestlers. Taking wrestling out is ridiculous. That's like how the Olympics fucking started. What in the shit

are people thinking? We've got to keep the horse dancing and shit in here. We've got to get the wrestling out. The problem, first of all, the problem with wrestling was the outfit. The singlet is a little weird. You've got to admit, the singlet's a little weird.

Was that the argument they were making? No. It doesn't get big TV ratings like MMA. If you gave guys a tight t-shirt, I know it's maybe harder to wrestle with that, but I think you'd have a better chance of getting better ratings. Really? MMA at least they have shorts on and no shirt, and that's not weird compared to all spandex

out there. I think I've been wearing singlets too long to realize that it is weird. Right. Wrestlers don't care. You don't think you look weird in your singlet. They're weird. I'm going to show you some pictures of me in my singlet. So this morning, I'm going to tell you.

Careful, careful. Not weird at all. I'm going to show you some pictures of me in my singlet. So this morning, I'm going to tell you. Careful, careful. Not weird at all. I'm going to tell you, I'm embarrassed about this. This morning, thanks to you, with your podcast, we were doing a podcast with Ben Greenfield. You know Ben Greenfield? Yeah. Oh, we know Ben. He came on the show.

I got a funny story about Ben. I got a funnier story. I hope so. So I'm with Ben this morning, and I've got another podcast lined up, so I can't do Ben. So Ben had already dived into our pool, and it's like 35 degrees this morning, and he's sitting in the pool, and he's freezing. And so I'm doing Ian Adamson.

He's a world-class athlete. He holds all kinds of world records. We're talking to Ian. Ian's done. Ben is now purple because he's been sitting in the pool waiting to do this podcast. And we take him out of the pool, and I said why don't we fake, you know, like a recovery, like we're going to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. So I go to put my hand to block my lips from it.

My lips land right on his fucking lips. We were both so pissed. Hey, I'm going to revive you right now. Are you ready? So what happened? How did he miss? I just, I closed my eyes revive you right now. Are you ready? So what happened? How did you miss? It was terrible. I closed my eyes because it was so weird to begin with,

and they just landed on his lips. It was terrible. This is on camera? This is on camera. It was terrible. There it is. Oh, we got to edit that in. We definitely do.

I'll make you feel better. Doug and I actually kissed accidentally. How did that happen? Wait, wait, wait. See, when he said it, he said my lips land on his lips, but you didn't say you kissed him. You said we kissed, and that's not the same thing. I looked into Doug's eyes, and we knew. We would give this love a try.

Give it a chance, Mike. Our lips touched accidentally once. Yeah, see? That's what he said. Were you on a microphone? Is that how it happened? No, we were doing jujitsu. Right's like he was feeding me spaghetti i got the other spaghetti in my mouth we went in the middle it was awkward no like like i'm laying on my back i don't remember

who who was where but like i'm laying on my back and he's inside control on top or something like that and someone was talking to him over there and someone was talking to me over here like both giving like coaching each one of us coaching advice and so i'm looking this way he's looking that way and then we both said okay and then we both turned at the same time when we just like bumped into each other and then went we made eye contact for one moment was like oh no we kind of looked around was like did anybody see that and he's like i don't think so i was like let's keep that shit to ourselves girlfriend may have seen it later that that night, we were like, hey, so about what happened earlier. What happened earlier?

You're right, nothing happened earlier. Nothing at all happened earlier. Isn't that, it's aggravating. It's forever. You can't get rid of it. You can't take it back now. Not with this public. It's definitely forever.

It's in my head. I mean, yours is on camera. Mine's on camera, and I'm thinking, does Ben think I did it on purpose? I didn't want to kiss the guy. I mean, he's not a bad-looking dude. I mean, if you're going to touch your lips with another dude's lips, I mean, Ben's a good candidate. There's definitely worse dudes to do that with. You know what you did?

You made the tough decision. You said, well, I've got to kiss the guy. It's a tough decision. You always take the hard path. You take the hard road. Whenever possible. Let's go back to eating. You guys are on the road.

You're eating pancakes. You're eating all this stuff. This is just Michael eating. I was joking. Kind of. I mean, I ate pancakes. You ate... The pancakes here are dope.

What's every once in a while I eat pancakes? But yeah, nine times out of ten, I don't. What do you think about this idea of... I don't know. Do you want to talk about the guy you just interviewed? Or does that screw you up based on when you post it? We can talk about anybody. So Dr. Bishi does that screw you up based on when you post it? No, we can be fine. We can talk about anybody.

So Dr. Bishi. Yeah. Fred. Oh, yeah. This is an amazing man. The dude's awesome. So Freddy. We should bring him up as much as possible. All right.

So Freddy Bishi, he's 85 years old, right? Raw fruits and veggies for 50 years. Was a weightlifter, so you guys could talk to that. I met him just before my wedding, so we're 2014, so like 2000. And I decided I'm going raw fruits and veggies. And so I did it straight for six months. And I got to say, I had the best endurance performances at races than I've ever had in my life. I went across Alaska on raw fruits and vegetables.

I had olive oil with me. I was drinking olive oil. I was eating peanut butter, and I had carrots, and it was incredible. I did it in Canada. Same thing, seven, eight days on raw fruits and veggies. Problem was when you're out there in the snow, you don't have a choice. There's no restaurants along the way. There's no food, right?

But when I'm home and you walk into a place, it's hard not to. You got the general store in your backyard. Yeah, it's hard not to just eat, right? But what do you guys think about what he's saying? I think there's some validity there. I think it's not for everybody. I think some people actually really do well with a vegan diet or a raw vegan diet or something like that,

and that's kind of what he described to us. There's an M&A fighter that does really well on that. But then there's other people, they, I know guys that have gone, you know, raw vegan, lots of juicing for like 60 days. And then they feel good, like the first 60 days, and then they like start trailing off. And then what if they add in like healthy meats, you know, like grass fed beef, wild caught fish, things like that. Once they start introducing that, they start feeling better. So I think it varies from person to person.

I think some people do really well on that. I think it has to do with probably genetics, like your family lineage. Maybe at some point. And your training goal, obviously. You've got to tinker around to see if it's going to work for you. Yeah, if you're trying to be in a certain weight class, then it might be tough. But I think anything is worth trying for yourself.

Everyone should be treating themselves as their own case study all the time, seeing if they look, feel, and perform better. If you look, feel, and perform better when you do something, keep doing it. If you try it out and one of those things start falling, maybe you should ditch it. To that point, certainly no one's going to argue that raw fruits and vegetables are bad for you in any kind of way. I imagine that goes for nuts, and you said olive oil too.

Even if it's somewhat processed, like olive oil is processed technically. It's made from olives into an oil, and there's a refining process there. But just because it's not cooked, it counts. So does sashimi count in that category for no well just fruits and vegetables here's the problem he said to me i didn't realize when i did it 10 11 years ago he said joe you went right to the red line like that's the most extreme diet you can do now obviously he believes it's the right diet but he said um it's not practical you're not going to be able to stick to it it requires tons of work that he was willing to do I couldn't do, right?

He said, you're better off just cut out all processed food. Eat meat. Eat some things. Eat some cooked things. Just cut out everything processed. So I just had them in my kitchen. And we went through the cupboards and everything. My wife wasn't home because she would have never allowed this.

We threw everything out. Yeah. We threw everything out. He went through. He said, no good. You know, this is good. This is not good. Yeah.

What I do, I'm a big fan of like elimination diets where you toss out anything that could potentially cause, you know, negative effects. So basically you're only keeping like grass fed beef, wild caught fish, and then, you know, organic veggies and stuff like that. And even then some veggies you're not playing around with, you know, you're not eating beans, you're not eating a lot of nuts. There's a lot of things, anything that could potentially cause any problems in any person at all. You avoid that for like 30 days, you get nice and clean, go through what he might refer to as like a detox or something like that. Hit that

30 days and then add one thing in every three days. So it's like, okay, and the thing that you're craving the most, like, man, I haven't had caffeine, I haven't had coffee, and I crave that. You start back with that. You just kind of add the things. But for that entire three days, you're going to feel really good at day 30 no matter what. And you start adding things in, and you figure out exactly what is bothering you. You could take that to the extreme and say, hey, I'm going to go raw vegan. I'm going to juice only or some of the things that he was suggesting, which was just water for like 30 days and then you could go extreme elimination diet that way add one thing

and see how that makes you feel so uh it's just so hard to do i mean that's socially right it's that's the problem absolutely some of his points other options around you all the time it's hard not to eat them i think that's the that's the biggest reason why people don't eat healthy period is just because you have social pressures. Things are in their house. If it's around, you're going to eat it. If there's Oreos in my house, I'm going to dip those jokers in some milk and put them down. Yeah, you will.

The thing that stuck out. Just don't have it around. If I go out and hang out with the guys, if I go to a business meeting, oh, I'm drinking scotch. I'm going to have an IPA. Whatever. On that note, do you think we should just, as a government, I know you keep trying to jump in. No, I was going to make a point just because it was time. I was coming on his strength. Dr. Beachy.

I don't want to mispronounce you. Beachy. I was just going to say before the moment passes that a lot of things he said, one, a couple years ago, I would have laughed at some of this stuff because I've got to be strong. I've got to eat. I've got to be a certain weight. I weight I could lift what I need to lift the last this last year I've experimented not really experiment but I found myself not wanting to eat as much to to spend mornings just relaxing spend time with family easing into the day not quite as extreme

easing but eating a lot less than I would have a while ago and training in a smarter way in a better strategy a little more of a sustainable way. And what I'm finding is it's echoing his experience where I'm getting in some lifts and a lot of lifts. I'm getting stronger than I ever was. And I'm eating sometimes not until like noon and eating much lighter. I will tell you, I don't know if you believe in this because I've seen you eat. You seem to be almost fucking ate it. Again, I've done Marathons

And long runs On almost no food Yeah And the less I ate The night before None of this pasta loading stuff The better I did Yeah

I'm not real big On loading up Right before you race Or anything like that I think the energy Is already stored in your body That you're gonna have I mean

You don't wanna go do Like a ton of exercise The day before a marathon And not replenish those nutrients. But, yeah. No, because the body burns an enormous amount of calories processing food. So why would you want to burn all that energy, right,

processing food before an event? And you also have the bowel movements. You got the bowel movements, yeah. You don't want to like have to be taking shits every few hours if you're on a really long endurance deal. You were going to ask me something about I think the government should do something. Oh, you think the government should mandate what we could eat and what we can't eat? I think we should just cut scotch out, and that would solve your problem.

It would solve a few problems for me. My wife likes the scotch being around. She's like, honey, end of the day, he's like, you need help. This is one of those days. Go have a scotch.

But no, I think it's a really bad idea because there was also a day that the government believed so much that grains were good for you that they subsidized corn. Yeah.

So, and now we all know that that's like the worst decision ever. And so, I don't think those clowns know what's good for us. But we know soda, we know soda's not good. Let's just cut soda. Yeah, but they also say red meat's not good for us. And so I don't think those clowns know what's good for us. But we know soda's not good.

They also say red meat's not good for us. But if I eat a nice grass-fed piece of ribeye, it's got a lot of health benefits. All right, can we agree on the soda? I agree it's not good for us, but I don't think it should be mandated, no. But we're not smart enough to, I mean, the government's not smart, but we're not smart enough to make those decisions the government's not smart, but we're not smart enough to make those decisions. I mean, drinking 16 ounce sodas like. What you got to ask yourself is why

does soda exist as it does today? Go down this rabbit hole with him. Go ahead. Here comes conspiracies. Well, it is a conspiracy to a degree, but it's not planned. So maybe it's not, but we have high fructose corn syrup that's readily available, right? And the only reason it's not but we have high fructose corn syrup that's readily available

right and the only reason it's readily available is because we subsidize the corn industry uh it is more expensive or it was at one time more expensive to produce it it probably is now because we subsidize it who knows what the actual cost of anything is these days but uh it's more expensive to create it with sugar and so if we were creating drinks off of just natural sugar and high fructose corn syrup would have never been invented had we not subsidized that corn in the first place because we had an abundance of corn and we didn't know what to do with it.

So scientists came in and said, hey, we got to come up with ways, things to do with this corn, some extra food. So they process it to like, you know, 19 different ways to get it down to some high fructose currant syrup. So now we have really cheap soda. We have a lot of cheap things. A lot of cheap foods because of the subsidy.

So you think cane sugar would have been so much more expensive it might have changed the game? So if we were doing it only with cane sugar, we wouldn't have the volume necessary. It wouldn't be cheap enough. It'd be a treat.

The problem is bottled water is more expensive than soda, and we know that. But the only reason that can happen is we can sell water more expensive because people who are conscious of that will spend the extra money, and I think that's totally okay. But it's not that the water is that cheap. It's that the soda is that artificially cheap. It's an artificial thing and that's a government created problem so to say okay let's take tax dollars and and

and make soda cheap and then turn around and tax it seems really retarded to me like like basically you're just stealing more money so you take you take money from the citizens and then you take it from them again. And so now you got them double. And so now the politicians are basically bending us over. So then you agree with me. Just cut soda out entirely. If they just cut out the corn subsidies,

things would be a lot different. People's plates would look a lot different. So nobody thinks that soda is healthy in any kind of way. That's not a debatable point, really. What do you think the answer is i mean if it was me i'm gonna sound like a nutcase here but i would just i would have everybody wake up at 5 a.m i'd have like a siren that goes off nationally everybody be in bed by eight we'd get rid of alcohol and um we'd be on like celery water and maybe some grass for you the healthy 1984 it'd be unbelievable everybody'd be working

hard you'd have to sweat every day there'd be one year like um mandatory military like uh israel it'd be but i'm a little extreme yeah you know uh i think that people a lot of times people want that type of society when they there's like a goal for the society but like uh again who's directing that and are they smart enough to direct that and and you know i think a lot of innovation comes from people who wake up at 10 a.m smoke a bowl and then uh and then make art and then go on about their day being creative and so yeah there's a i think there's a balance there There definitely needs to be people like yourself and there needs to be people

probably out on the West Coast doing such things. I'm a big fan of both. I like hanging out with both crowds. I'm a big fan of it. I'm here hanging out with you. I work out at 5.30 a.m.

but, you know, a month ago, you would have found me at Burning Man. I'm with you. Did you meet Skywalker by the way I did

I met him in the Reno airport oh he told me that I ran over to him last night and I was like dude I fucking met you like a week ago

in Reno he's the best yeah he's the best he's a cool ass dude yeah so and you guys didn't see him at Burning Man

you saw him in the airport coming out of Burning Man I know his camp the camp that he has on 2 o'clock in Esplanade the dinosaurs or dragons or whatever. Yeah, he has a big

concert camp, like a music camp. Yeah, he's big on music. Did you hear that girl singing last night? She's amazing. Was she great? Stunningly amazing, yeah.

You go to Burning Man? I never went. You want to take Joe next year? Yeah, take me. You fucking told us you'd come. Dude. Let's do it. Bring it on.

I'm in next time. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when he comes back you know what let's everybody relax a little bit slow down

take some time to smell the roses what the hell happened Joe you broke Joe how many people are there could we have 68,000 could we have

everybody doing burpees could I start an early you could probably have a burpee camp here's the thing Burning Man you can make it anything you want it to be

and everything is there like there are things that you couldn't dream up there's a real life thunderdome there like you can make it anything you want it to be and everything is there. There are things that you couldn't dream up. There's a real life Thunderdome there. You can climb on top of this cage and watch people go at it. There you go, Joe. They have bungee cords to people and they would launch people into each other

and they had foam weapons and stuff. But they were beating the shit out of each other. You could climb up on top. They were being aggressive. You could climb up on top of this thing and just, and you could climb up on top of this thing and just like, yeah, kill him. It's like an exploration of the human condition, really. Anything that matters, art, you know,

these drug experiences, physical combat, you know, out in the desert in a supreme, like, you know, stimulus-free environment where you gotta carry everything in and then carry everything out and do not damage the environment. I think it's a very balanced experience.

It's a, you know, a leave-no- no trace type of thing. It's so cool because you know everything was set up in a single weekend, and it's amazing. It's like, how did these people do it in a single weekend? I mean, these people are as Spartan as you get, really. Lived in the desert for the week. Brought everything with you that you're going to have,

and then a week later you clean it up to where you couldn't even tell anybody was there. And it has some of the most amazing art you've ever seen. Does it look that clean? Yeah. Spotless? Yeah. Like they got every wrap or everything? Yeah, especially our camp.

Our camp is like, I mean, we're picking up like, we had carpets there and stuff. And there was just a tiny piece of carpet on the ground. We picked it up. Nice. Like every single bit. Like you wouldn't tell. I mean, you might be able to tell due to like some tire tracks in the dirt but in a week those will be gone and and uh what's temperatures like it was not that bad it's in august yeah so like during the day maybe 90s yeah but that would be a super high it was

like in the 80s yeah and uh and at night it would get down like 60 and it was just like it was cool enough at night that you could sleep and be comfortable and it wasn't so hot that it was just like it was cool enough at night that you could sleep and be comfortable and it wasn't so hot that it was just like blowing you out during the day so it was it was nice and even I felt like

are they running generators everybody's running generators not everybody yeah some people are doing tents some people do generators I mean

you can run there from here there are there are concerts in the desert so yeah there's a lot of energy being consumed yeah being consumed

hey side question here somebody Tony DeFridge actually you're going to talk to at some point There are concerts in the desert, so yeah, there's a lot of energy. Being consumed. Yeah, being consumed. Hey, side question here. Somebody, Tony DeFridge, actually, you're going to talk to at some point, the guy that runs with the refrigerator on his back. He said whenever you come into town with the Spartan race, why don't you have one of those Batman lights, giant lights, and so that everybody in town knows two days before at night that's a big Spartan logo. Dude, that's legit.

That's a great idea. Do they work? Have you seen those things? Not like in the Batman movies. Are you asking me because I'm actually Batman? Exactly. That's what I heard. The bearded Batman.

Well, yeah. I actually have to wear a bald mask on my face, and then I put the cowl on. Well, I guess you would need a cloudy night, right? Well, that's what I was going to ask. Have you ever seen one of those giant, did they use them in Burning Man? Have you seen anything like that?

They had laser shows. They used lasers. Yeah. Green lasers. Yeah. It would be cool. It would be cool. You could create something with light.

You might be able to somehow shine it Batman style onto the side of the mountain. They had these lasers that were so dense. It wasn't one of those things where you're like, yeah, I can kind of see that light. It's like so dense from mountain to mountain. You're like in a valley and it's like, it's pretty crazy. I'm going to go with you next year. I'm in.

Yes. So let's talk about 431. Let's take a break real quick when we're talking about why we actually showed up. Yeah. All right, cool. This is Andrea Ager and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you.

To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. You want to do the intro back? Here we are at Spartan Shrugged at the General Store in Pittsfield, Vermont. You guys cool with that or you want to go shrug Spartan? Nah, I like the Spartan Shrugged.

Spartan Shrugged. Yeah, that's legit. Hey, so we came up here to do, you're doing this event called 431 Project. I started checking it out a little bit.

I noticed that we weren't going to be able to make the majority of it so I wasn't paying too much attention to it but we showed up late last night. We got roped into a dinner.

We had to get on microphones and tell people about ourselves. And I'm like, I just got here. Could someone fill me in on what's going on? But I was able to use some context clues to find out that it was about combating childhood obesity. Could you tell us about the 431 Project? Basically, my mom was way ahead of her time. My mom was super forward thinker, like a Fred B. She type long distance runs, yoga, meditation, 30 day fasts in Queens in the 1970s. That was crazy. Nobody was doing that. And what I saw was she fought

the whole world for 20 years. Everybody was against her, including her kids, me and my sister. But she won at the end of the day. She won in the sense that now we're sitting here with four microphones talking about this stuff. So she was right. And she impacted my life. I impacted 20 people's lives. So I said, what about these kids that don't have a mom willing to fight the whole world?

How would they ever learn that Oreo cookies or whatever maybe aren't that good, right? And maybe you should. They're really good, but they're just not good for you. They're fantastic. So I said, all right, we've got to come up with a plan.

There's no way I could pull this off alone. It's too big of a mission, right? How do we get kids fit? So can I invite a bunch of fire in their belly kind of people that just get shit done people like you guys anybody that just can get behind something and make it

happen could we get 300 people to show up 200 people you know i have no 10 people i don't know what's going to happen so we we named it the 431 project because in 431 bc empiricles came up with earth air water fire four elements today's four elements for most of us are couch donut car phone whatever right we don't we don't interact with the correct four elements we bring people back to that and um and we invited a bunch of people we didn't know what was going to happen you guys showed up uh about 150 people there they were from from nutritionists to boomerang experts. It was a wide array.

It was a wide array of people, but everybody seemed to like it. And so the goal is, can we get into the schools and make some kind of fun gamification for kids where eating an apple gets you more points than eating frito-lays potato chips we're running a certain amount of distance each day gets tracked and then your school's competing with other schools and we just gamify it yeah and um i don't know i don't know if it'll work or not but if i get some help i think we can make it happen yeah i mean and kind of going back to some of the you're talking about working with schools and going back to some of the government stuff is like one of our business partners like they're they're uh he has to get a doctor's note

so the the teachers will give his kid water at a meal versus like milk doctor's note you just made a squinty face and and that was appropriate. Yeah, so this is a really great example of where... The government's confused. Well-intentioned, but in a terrible way. Yeah, I think the intentions are right, but the system is so full of BS that working inside the schools might be kind of tough. You might have to, in my opinion,

is like we, and I wasn't here for all the discussions over the weekend. It's like most systems, like, you know, you look at medical, you know, some of the stuff that's happening in hospitals and stuff too is like, sometimes it's just not worth trying to change something because it's so far on one side of the spectrum.

Just let's just circumvent it and do something else. Right. And so That's my opinion. You think we might have more luck. There's a lot of ideas. I like to approach things from an entrepreneurial perspective versus let's get in the government and try to make change. They tried to do that in the 60s. It's tough.

We now have a Democrat dropping bombs on people on this side of the world. There's lots of ideas that came out of the weekend, but another one is, can we just get kids signed up for races? Any kind of race. Could be a 5K, could be a Spartan race, could be anything. Yeah. And because what I found, I don't know if you guys agree with this, it could be a weight

lifting event. Yeah. But you get a kid signed up for an event, you get a human being signed up for an event. I was going to say, kids, I need the same thing. Right? Yeah. Me too. All of a sudden, you're need the same thing. Right? Me too. All of a sudden you're training now.

Yeah. Right? Because you've got a competition coming. Yeah. You just need a reason. You need a reason. Purpose. So who knows where it leads, but we're going to meet once a year, and my goal would be

to meet once a year on every continent with a bunch of movers and shakers and just keep You just got to put on a different weekend in the Princeton thing, and I'll be here for the whole thing. Well, you're like alumni so they want you back in Einstein's room. I get it. We left that dinner going,

what can we do to help man? That dinner was inspiring. Oh good. You know, I was like, well, I'll eat dinner,

I'll hang out, I'll hear what people have to say and by the end of it I was like, even though I didn't get the bulk of it, I mean,

we basically showed up for like the last two hours of the event is what happened and I was like, we've got to help. You know get the bulk of it. I mean, we basically showed up for like the last two hours of the event is what happened. And I was like, we've got to help. You know, you were into it. I already got the wheels turning, you know. All right.

So now simultaneous to the 431 project going on while you guys were fucking around in Princeton, there was a lot of shit going on here. We had the World Championship Spartan Race, which was the half marathon. We had a death championship Spartan race, which was the half marathon. We had a death race going on. We had two weddings going on. We don't have to talk about the weddings. And we had an Olympic, we tested an Olympic course because we want to get this thing in the Olympics. So my team had turned to me at some point. Yeah. My team turned to me at some point and said, why, why would we have like seven events on the same weekend in the same place? In a town of 400 people. Well, because of you, actually, is the reason.

And I'll tell you how this ties into you. Because of us? Yeah, because of you. Oh, jeez. Because you gave us this idea for the podcast. So I've been running around interviewing people, and I interviewed this Special Forces guy. And I said, how do you grow?

How do you get better? And he said, here's what we do. He said, we take our guys and we push the limits. And as soon as we get complacent, we push the next limit. And so this was just pushing the limits this week. And what could we do? All right, we're doing two weddings. Let's add something else.

All right, we're doing championships. Let's add 431. And let's just see if it breaks. Let's just keep pushing until something breaks. But nothing broke. So now we can go to nine events, right? We almost had a break. So here's a great story no one knows about.

So it's Saturday afternoon. you guys are messing around in Princeton I'm looking for you up here and we're filming with NBC at the World Championships and our attorney gives me a call oh that's never good not good he's on the mountain he's at Killington where this is going on

and he says we got a problem I said what's the problem he says got a guy underwater 10 minutes he goes I on, and he says, we got a problem. I said, what's the problem? He says, got a guy underwater 10 minutes. He goes, I'm shutting down the obstacle or something. We got a problem. So I'm thinking, how far away am I? I'm processing this very fast, faster than I'm speaking to you. I start running.

I'm stripping off my stuff, going as fast as I can. I'm thinking, all right, I got to get 50 volunteers with me quick. We've got divers. We got 10 divers there looking, but it's a big pond. And so if I got 50 guys and we all dive in, we'll find this body and maybe we'll save this guy or girl, whatever we got. I get there. I round up 50 people. By the time I make it to 100 yards from where I got the 50, there's one guy left behind me.

They all dropped off, right? They don't want to really go in the water. I stripped down to my underwear. I dive in. It is so cold, this water. So cold that I think this guy's dead. Like there's no way somebody's under this water, this cold for 10 minutes, right? Swim out to the little dock.

I run into the divers. I'm asking them where we stand. They're looking. They've broken it into quadrants. They're looking for the body. It's looking pretty bleak, right? Now I'm starting to get cold. I'm in my underwear.

They're all in wetsuits. And it turns out there was nobody underwater. Oh, wow. Nobody was there. Here's what happened. And the same thing happened last year. There was a three-person team. Now, we've got 10,000 people going through this race.

There's a three-person team. They all went in the water. One guy comes out, turns to our staff, and says, hey, my buddy, I didn't see him. I think he might be still under. I'm going to continue, he says. But right. So he takes he takes off. What a teammate.

Fuck that guy. Let's go. Yeah. So we're digging around now. It was good because it gave us some practice. Right. It's good to do a fire drill every once in a while. Yeah.

But but it's it's it screws things up. I mean, you know, you stop a whole race. Last year would happen. It's midday, same race. How'd you guys figure out that he wasn't in there anymore? We have a tracking device on everybody, and it just took time for him to get to the next location for him to come up. Oh, yeah, they hit different stops.

Stops, yeah. Gotcha. So we were waiting for that to happen, but at the same time, we're not going to stop looking. We've got to look for him, right? Last year, we got a call from a frantic mother. It's midday. 10,000 people on the mountain.

Oh, my God. My daughter called me. She's lost and her phone died. All right? State police show up, SWAT teams, helicopters, don't find a thing, right? We've got to shut down the race. I said, listen, turn the music way up

because if she's in these mountains, I want her to hear the music. We go on a whole search and rescue thing. We find her in a bar. Oh, my God. Oh, that race was too hard. She called her mother. She said, I got lost.

And she decided to bail, went to a bar, and was sitting at a bar drinking. Oh, shit. She's that guy who decided to not Spartan up. Is she banned from all Spartan races again? It's like a nightmare. And they don't realize what they do to us Because now you're putting everybody else in jeopardy Oh yeah

I was really hoping the other guy You guys be watching Maybe you're crying Like we lost a guy the first time in a Spartan race This guy's dead What are we going to tell his family? Oh God what are we going to do? He comes up behind eating a sandwich

Hey what are you guys looking for? Well let me tell you I mean all that stuff was running through my head Like you're processing right? All that stuff real time fast. But, um, so that was, that, that was the world championship. The death race took place and we, we ran an experiment this weekend. It was a great experiment. We wanted to see my, my, my guy, Johnny weight ran the race. He did a great job. We wanted to see if you gave people a memorization task that was a positive thing to memorize.

Let's think of a great quote, let's say, that's just a positive quote about how you got to live your life and do all these things. Pimping ain't easy, Joe. Pimping it easy? Pimping ain't easy. Pimping ain't easy. There you go.

That's a famous quote about being positive. Let me hear it. That's it' ain't easy. There you go. It's a famous quote about being positive. Let me hear it. That's it. That's it. Pimpin' ain't easy. All right, that's a famous quote about being positive. I got it. It took me a second.

It's Princeton. That's where we learned it. Princeton. It's written on the wall in the Einstein room. Yeah, I was thinking Harvard. I was thinking Harvard. You're going Princeton. I got it.

So anyway, we gave great quotes and then terrible tasks. So let's say a four-person team has two two-by-sixes that are 12 foot long. And those four people have to strap those two two-by-sixes to their feet. And they've got to walk in unison through the woods for 12 miles, right? While they're memorizing this positive quote, right? Wow. So we're talking about 10 hours, right? Just boom, boom, boom, walking through the woods, losing their minds.

Versus another group that has a negative quote going through the mountains. Sure enough, positive quotes win. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally. And they don't even know. They don't even know that's happening. Yeah.

You're not telling them, like, oh, these guys are going to do this. The power of words is a trick. Not hearing something to yourself that's positive can carry you through anything. Wait. You had a single group with each one, or there was multiple positive groups and multiple negative groups? Yeah, exactly. Okay.

So, Joey, now you're a scientist as well. We're a scientist. Yeah, the positive group finished faster. Positive group. Yeah. So that was the death race that took place. That's a cool experiment. That's a cool experiment.

No, Joe, you could probably have somebody come in here, control it, maybe do it again, repeat it, and carefully lay out a careful method and invite somebody up who can make it into a little proper study. You could write those results up and publicize it and have Spartan Race be in the methods. It's funny you should discuss that because there is a study I want to talk to you guys about.

Other than your current partnership with you guys, have you had partners? Any of you had partners before? You have girlfriends, obviously. I heard him mention your girlfriend. Any other partners? Don't tell my wife. Business partners?

Yeah, never had another partner. Yeah, we've had other business partners. You've had other business partners. So I don't know if they've been positive experiences, negative experiences. But many people that have multiple businesses have had some negative experiences with partners, right? And so I want to understand why that happens. And you guys know the cookie test and the marshmallow test. Yes.

Delayed gratification. Delayed gratification. We talked about it. He's still alive, by the way. I'm going to get to him. But he's in his 80s. I think he failed when he put on the study. Here's what he did.

Everybody here got a cookie or marshmallow. Choose to eat it or wait and get two, right? Yeah. He decides to eat his. Here's what he did. Everybody here got a cookie or marshmallow. Choose to eat it or wait and get two, right? Yeah. He decides to eat his because he's always hungry. You've been eating less. You decide to not eat yours. Yours is sitting there, right? Actually, we all don't eat ours, but you eat yours.

Now, I think he should come back into the cubicle, and he should watch us eat ours because I want to see what happens to him, right? He's out of cookies. He's hungry again because he gets hungry every hour. And does he start to get pissed off at us? Does he start to think, what the fuck? They should give me some of theirs.

You think that happens? I think it's human nature. You think that happens in society? Yeah. Look, I made a mistake because I'm hungry. Are you going to help me out or what? Yeah, I think we're saying to ourselves. I don't think that does happen. I think, look, I made a mistake, but I'm hungry. You're going to help me out or what? Yeah. I think we're saying to ourselves, I don't think that does happen.

I said, what do you guys, we're saying to you, like we, we were sweating for the last three hours. We didn't eat our cookies. The same type of person who's going to eat that cookie first is probably, is probably the guy who ate your cookies.

I'm with you on the theory. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so that's a study I want to do. I want to get a bunch of kids and I want to, I want to see, does the guy that ate his tackle,

the other guy? I think that'd be a great start. I think that's what I'm looking into. That's a great experiment. And I think if you look back at business partnerships that might not have worked, that's probably what's going on.

I'm not really having negative experiences. So in your example, there's two groups. One decides to take the easy road and get the single cookie and then the other kid

that had the delay gratification got two cookies in the end and you're curious to see if the first kid gets pissed that the other kid got twice as much as he did even though we had the same opportunity.

Yeah, you got to sit him next to each other and he's got to watch the other guy eat those two cookies. Yeah. And he might not think it's fair that he got two

even though he had the opportunity but passed on he might say hey man you owe me some of that like oh yeah i helped i helped because i was here you got those i was yeah that's right if i wasn't here you wouldn't have got those two i'm the one that told you to come to this test right i found the article in the magazine last week right yeah yeah so anyway that was my i think you're honest that was my the experiment i want to but i i can tell you right there if i if i was the editor at a let's say a human performance journal where endurance stuff was being published or there had been a precedent for endurance tests and like psychological interventions questionnaires to test how decision

making would change or how the outcome would be altered by a certain thing so you get somebody here to make sure you set up in a way that somebody would accept it. But you could publish these results in a scientific journal that would get, you know, pretty, like you could share the outcomes of this to help other people understand these things. The Pittsfield Research Center for Psychological Studies. Yeah. You'd be like, everybody here is crazy.

That's right. I thought you were going to say for psychos. That's right. I'm trying to think. Let's dive into. We need to have a psychologist move out here. We need a psychologist. We'll study you and then you guys can run some experiments side by side.

Here's the problem, and this is going to sound terrible to anybody from here that watches this. I think there's a negative correlation. I think the psychologist you convinced to move here already has a problem. You know what I mean? I think anyone who gets a psychology degree already has a problem. You know what I mean? I think anyone who gets a psychology degree already has a problem. Right. Based on the girls you've dated in the past?

Yeah. I did date a couple of psychology majors. Let's dive into Queens where I grew up because I think it ties into the cookie test. Okay. So you had all these guys that were wise guys and they were ruling. They're really ruling with fear. I guess a little bit of greed because guys are making money.

But it's mostly fear like you. Right. You're talking about actual gangsters. Yeah. Yeah. Actual wise guys. Real wise guys. Not guys who, you know, have a depth of knowledge. Guys you wouldn't call a wise guy or else they'd kill you probably. So real guys. So my question is, like, what's the difference between the guy that rats or doesn't, right? And why did they start to rat more and more prevalently as the years went by? Is it because they all started speaking English as opposed to Italian? Do you see less rat in the Chinese mob because they're still very tight

and speaking just their language? Yeah, I don't know. Because they all have similar backgrounds, right? So when I was in the Navy, I saw some instances where there was a guy who would rat out the team or something like that, right? But it was usually because he was already kind of like an outlier in other ways like he he wasn't quite except like there was something different about him already because people come come there with different backgrounds but but he made but he made a deal he came he came

into the wise guys like these guys probably all have they grew up in the same neighborhood and stuff like that so but they do take advantage of the benefits of being associated with these guys. And then when the times get tough, then they take the first path out. That's what happens. That's what makes it unacceptable. Yeah. Right? You bought in.

Same thing with the Navy, though. Same thing with the Navy. Yeah, that's probably the same guy who's going to ditch. You know what you're getting into. This is not like on the up and up. You know there's no way out. But when you go threatening, instead of just biting the bullet and saying, look, I committed to this.

I'm going to see it through. Hey, if I got to go to jail, if I got to get whacked, whatever. No matter what the term. That was still the same guy that you wouldn't want on your, you know, you wouldn't want him with you. So how do you find out who that guy is? It's the same question. It's the same question. Well, you got to put him under like extreme conditions.

And test him. Yeah. I don't know if that's enough. And then you got to kill him if he betrays you, Joe. You got to throw him in that lake. No, I don't know if that's enough. I'm really asking you guys this question because just be— I think you should ask Mark Devine.

We're at Seal Fit. I was with Mark recently. He held my head underwater in ice-cold water for about 10 minutes. Because of you. Because of you three. Actually. I went there for a podcast. Seven Navy SEALs jumped out, held me underwater.

Really? Made me breathe through a hose. I was crazy. I was like, I'm only here for a podcast. Seven Navy SEALs jumped out, held me underwater. Really? Made me breathe through a hose. I was crazy. I was like, I'm only here for a podcast, man. Oh, he invited you out? That was totally staged. They just wanted to get you. It was crazy.

So my question, though, is you can't just throw a guy up Everest and say, all right, because he climbed Everest, he handled extreme conditions. That makes him. Well, I think you have to do it with the group of people he's expected to not rat out. All right, so you take them all up Everest. Right. And they handle Everest. They're that tough.

I don't know if that's necessarily the only thing that's correlated. I'll give you a little example of what I've seen. There's a competition involved. One team wins, one team of what I've seen. There's a competition involved. One team wins, one team loses. If you lose, there's a punishment involved. And then if the team cheats, you intentionally have a team cheat.

And then if that guy goes, I've seen this, that team cheated over there, and then that's your route. You've got to have a level of competition. Everyone's not being treated equally. You have to put them in a scenario where they feel like what happened to them was unfair. All right, you ready for this?

Yeah. So we held a death race one year, and I wanted to test it. Okay. And I'm just making up numbers. Let's say we had 300 people here, and they were all broken into teams of four, hypothetically. Let's say 400 people broken into teams of four, 100 teams, just for ease of math here.

They all went up on that mountain and we staged cheating. Yep. We staged it in front of them. They didn't know that we were staging it. Right. 99.9% of the teams then cheated

because they saw somebody else cheat. Right. And 99.9% of people then ratted everybody out. It was complete failure across every kind of human being that was at this race. You did that?

I did it. Really? Was it because the, what part of the race did this occur? Was it a point where they were dark? They, throughout that entire mountain there were stakes in the ground.

It sounds like it became acceptable to rat. It became acceptable to cheat and to rat. You are keen on the details. Yeah, it came, to cheat. I'm just trying to analyze

kind of what's happening here. There's a psychologist that wrote a book on this whole thing. You ever read The Honest Truth About Dishonesty? No. It's all studies just like this about who will lie and when, and when they think it's okay, and how much they'll cheat on their tests in college. The whole book's about this whole thing.

Yeah, I got to get it. What is it? Dan Ariely wrote it. It's called The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. I got to read that book because it's intriguing to me what makes people do that, where they go off the rails. The whole book basically says people are more than happy to lie as long as they think it's okay and other people would lie in the same situation. And then they actually convince themselves it's the truth. Yeah, as long as it's socially acceptable, then they'll think there's nothing wrong with it.

As long as they think it's socially acceptable. They see other people doing it, they get any amount of social proof, they'll convince themselves that it's not a bad thing, they're not a bad person. That's a big thing too. As long as they can convince themselves that they're not a bad person,

they can rationalize it, then they'll lie. So then why do I have some friends, again, outliers from Queens I grew up with, that went to jail for 10 years, never ratted, never? It wasn't socially acceptable for some reason in their minds, I guess. Right, because you've got to be, you know, now that guy might not even climb Everest, right? You wouldn't say, oh, he's a tough guy because he can handle it.

No, he just did the right thing. I wouldn't rat you out, Joe. But at the same time, don't put me to the test because I don't know what will happen if I get on the mountain. Mike did it. Mike did it, Joe. At the same time, don't put me to the test because I don't know what will happen if I get on the mountain. Mike did it. Mike did it, Joe. I'm your buddy. Mike did it.

The guy doing time might be the outlier and the study needs to be done more on their side of things. I don't know. Yeah. What causes somebody not to lie, you know?

Yeah, right. All right. What else we got? We need another book called The Truth About Truth. Shit. The Truth About Truth. Somebody go write that. What was the story? alright what else we got we need another book called the truth about truth truth about truth somebody go write that what was the story

dog story the dog story why were we talking about dogs before oh we were talking about you were talking about you were a dog person I was saying I was a dog person but you're especially good with dogs and I was saying that I like dogs but I don't think I'm especially good with them since they

tend to bite me. So my wife was like you and that she was afraid of dogs. But I said, if we're going to get married, I said, um, I can't have a wife afraid of dogs. Right. So I went out and I bought, I got on the American kennel club and I looked up. They list every kind of dog, and I saw. I love how you solve problems. Yeah, I was like, it said gladiator dog. So I was like, of course I got to get a gladiator dog. It said American Staffordshire Terrier, right? Oh, nice.

So I call up the lady, and she's like, yeah, we got one left. It's blue. And I'm thinking, I never saw a blue dog before, but I guess that's a term for a coat. It's not actually blue. It's kind of like a grayish. Yeah, it's like a brindle or whatever. So she sells me the dog and um it's really a pit bull but i don't know this it's a type of pit yeah type of pit more like a show pit right and so we get the

dog beautiful great dog name her lucy and um my buddy brings up a pit from the bronx to our wedding so now we have the dog for about a year and And unbeknownst to my wife, while we're getting married, the actual ceremony, my buddy puts his male pit from the Bronx in with our female, Lucy, and gets her pregnant at our wedding. He's like, how you doing? You look nice over there. Well, this is my first time here. So we end up with, we go on our honeymoon. We come back and we got a dog that's fully, looks like she has a bowling ball in her stomach, right?

So my wife and I deliver eight pit bulls in our house. We had eight pit bulls living with us. So we got to know dogs really well. I watched them grow up. They all had different personalities. I got one left and gave most of them away. But very interesting to watch, even from a psychology perspective and a growth perspective, how they're completely unhappy when they're sitting in the house,

completely happy when they go outside, diet changes. You could really study the animal inside all of us with dogs. And I don't know why we went off on that tangent but um but i love dogs the guy the guy in the back said dogs what would he has another story deserted island story i think i told you guys this story so my first race i feel like i didn't hear it i don it. I bought this URL. You guys will appreciate this. Peek.com. P-E-A-K.com back in 2000. Good job. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was thinking, I want to create an adventure business, you know, like races and stuff. And so I got in touch with Ian Adamson, who was at the party last night. You have to talk to Ian. I didn't meet him. Yeah. Yeah.

So he's heading up the International Obstacle Racing Federation, where we're trying to get this thing in the Olympics. He's literally, he holds Guinness Book of Records across many sports disciplines. Amazing athlete. Anyway, I call him up, and I'm like, hey, I want to put this race on in the British Virgin Islands. The biggest adventure race ever. I want to include sailboats and climbing and rope coast. All kinds of shit, right? He says, I got you covered. So we set the whole thing up.

Race is going to start, let's say, on Friday. Ian and his team are setting ropes out of the ocean. The waves are crashing. There's a hurricane going on. And they're going to climb up, I don't know, 300, 400 feet out of the water. They're going to jumar up the ropes. You know, you've got those little hand holes that climb. They go up the rope. They don't come downar up the ropes. You know, you got those little hand holes that climb. They go up the rope. They don't come down.

Ascender? Yeah. And so one of the rope setters, if that's what you call a guy setting the ropes, slips and cuts his leg. So the team says get into a dinghy and go get yourself stitched up. Right?

Unbeknownst to anybody, the guy can't get the motor started and there's this hurricane going on and the boat starts to drift, right? Fast forward a day or two, the race is happening now. It's like an eight-day race, right? I'm down there. We're trying to make everything happen. September 11th just happened and Ian is on the media boat. We got a boat just for media that's following the race and there's a dinghy going by. I'm not on the media boat at the time. And the guy on the dinghy is like waving like, hey, I need help. And everybody in the media boat is waving back, hey, how you doing?

He drifts. Well, fast forward eight days. Race is over. We're having the party. Oh, my God. Ian comes up to me and says, fuck, we haven't seen Johnny, you know? I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, and he explains the whole thing to me.

And I said, fuck, we've got to get the Coast Guard involved. So we call the Coast Guard. You spend a lot of money. Government money. You don't even know how much money I lost on this whole race. Anyway, rolls out the fucking maps. Coast Guard triangulate the thing. And they're like, all right, if you last saw him here and you first saw him here and then the storms rolled in,

there's a chance he's 150 miles away on this little deserted island called Little Tobago. So we're like, all right, you know, whatever it costs,

do it, right? So they chop her over. They find him on the island. He drifted 150 miles to Little Tobago. Oh my God. He's eating crabs. He's drinking rainwater.

Living like a king over there How'd they know he got this small island Jesus What are the chances he would actually end up there They triangulated it They used math I'm thinking we're dead He's gonna come back

He's gonna blame us Lands off the chopper a little skinnier than he was when he left He's like hey man can we go grab dinner I am fucking starving. That was it. He was that. Absolutely awesome. He got presented with a situation that's made the fucking most of it.

This is what I'm doing. I forget our positivity quote from him. I've got crabs. I've got water. I kick it here. I've never spent eight days by myself. Can you imagine that? I don't think I've ever spent an entire 24-hour period by myself.

Can you imagine? I would love to think I've ever spent an entire 24-hour period by myself. But, yeah, I mean, can you imagine? I would love to. That's a nice little experiment I think everybody should try to do. Little Tobago's the place. Let's put you on the boat and see what happens. I don't know if I need to go in the middle of nowhere. You've got to go to your own island. Hey, you know we're doing a cruise.

We're doing a Spartan cruise. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we're doing it in March. It just popped in my head because you said you need to do something like this. We should put the Spartan shrugged on the cruise. Yeah. Oh, no. We should do it.

What's the dates? I'll get you the dates. We should definitely do it. He's the cameraman shaking his head yes. I'm already committing to dates, so we need to get this down. Yeah, let's get it. What's going to go on the boat? What do you got planned?

There's like, I think 1,000 people only we're taking. I think this is going to be a lot different than cruises I've been on in the past. Yeah, like the cruise normally goes to shore, right? And you unload and you go shopping and stuff. This one won't. This will stop. Everybody jumps off, swims to an island. This sounds awesome.

Then we'll do a Spartan race on the island. That sounds way better than a stupid cruise where you show up and the whole town shows up to sell you bullshit. No, what we should do together is you guys should find some speakers that have been awesome. I should find some speakers that have been awesome. We'll have them on the cruise. That'll be easy. We'll pick a time. The siren will go off.

Everybody's got to dive overboard, swim to shore. We throw a race on the island, maybe some weightlifting competition or something you guys could organize. You have our attention, sir. Let's do this shit. We should do it. Yeah, let's do it. Why not? I wasn't even thinking of it until you said you needed to stay alone.

Obviously, you would go to a different island by yourself for three, four days. Well, I'll do that when that whole thing's done. Yeah. No, email me on that. We'll get this cruise going. That'll be good. If you want us to do that, you should tweet at us. I think everybody's going to tweet.

If you're listening. Yeah, tweet. We could even give a few away if people want to. Oh, yeah. Should we hold a contest? We should hold a contest. And a few select fans will bring them along to the dream ride of the century. Yeah, we should hold a contest that they have to figure out a problem.

They have a really difficult question that you have the answer to combined with something I have the answer to. Like how many stone steps exist on our stone staircase in the back, right? They've got to answer that and then you guys come up with something like what was in the classroom. What episode of Barbell Shrug had a cat in it?

What episode of Barbell Shrug had a cat? You've got to have that plus, you've got to add that number to the number of stairs that exist on the back and you've got to add that number to the number of stairs that exist on the back and you got to send that in. Oh man. I think you're good at this shit. Add the episode number to the number of stairs.

Yeah. And send that number in. Sounds good to me. You got to be a super, you got to, you got to be a fan, man. Yeah. And we should cap how many we give away total. How many should we give away total? This is the first, uh, the first three people that post that on Twitter.

Should we do a budget for this and then see how many we give away? We'll give away three. You do business like the opposite of me. That's not true. Well, you went to Princeton. Three cruises. I love how you keep on bringing up the Princeton thing. That way I don't have to worry.

Three cruises. They're pretty good wrestlers in Princeton. That's what I hear. I didn't encounter no one tried to take me down so you um

I'm going to Cornell by the way to speak to the head of wrestling over there oh yeah I don't know if you have any interest

we'll coordinate that as well that sounds good yeah sounds fun actually I mean you've been to Princeton Cornell will be

nothing for you don't tell those guys that don't tell anybody should we use the hashtag spartan cruise no one probably used that yet that way we can track all the all the comments on this i i might have one already oh yeah so um do we need to say that right now or could we weave it in what we'll do is we'll go to um well yeah we may do spartan shrug cruise that's fine

and but we'll also just just to be sure, go to the Barbell Shrug website and click on the blog post and we'll put it in the show notes. Chris always puts together like show notes and you'll be able to like copy and paste that in.

That way you're not, you know, accidentally misspelling anything. Do we want to tell people where the stairs are? So if they want to come here and count them. Sure.

Yeah, it's in your backyard. It's in our backyard at Riverside Farm in Pittsfield. Now, the bad news is you guys are leaving what time tomorrow? Eight. Early eight. Like eight-ish. I would suggest, just for your listeners, that you guys get up around five, hike the stairs, count the numbers.

It's already in the plans. All right, cool. You're already done. That's good. I ran it this morning. But, yeah, I mean, let's do it again. By the way, the fastest time up those stairs, what do you think it is? 14.50.

I'm going to tell you this. 13 minutes. I was in a meditative state, so I lost all track of what time means. So I have nothing to base it off of. Slacker. Well, Jack, little Jack, told me he did it in 18. How old is Jack? Jack's going to be 9 at the end of this one.

The 9-year-old, in case he was lying to me, said he did it in 18 minutes, so I figured it would be well faster than that. So, 13, 14? I'll go 13. 11. That's booking. 11 minutes. I don't even know how to do it. Doing that whole thing in 11 minutes, that's a full-on sprint. My fastest is 14

so when you guys go in the morning try it well I went about as fast as I could this morning there was no way it was near that

it was 15 plus for sure 11 you ever done the grind in Vancouver Canada I have not it's fucking straight up it's like maybe

3 or 4 times that long and twice as steep I think the world record time is like 45 minutes something like that it's just like, it's like stairs straight up forever

and then you take a gondola down. That's a grind. Dude, it's a fucking grind. I would do it backwards. Gondola up, stairs down,

skateboard down. Skateboard down. I think you said step down. It'd be worse, wouldn't it? I would not want to step down all those steps.

No, once you get up there, you want the gondola. Yeah, exactly. We ready to wrap this joker up? Yeah,

we're good. Yeah. Yeah. Where should they go to learn more about Spartan Races? Spartanrace.com, or Spartan.com. We got Spartan.com. Oh, you got that figured out. Wow.

Thanks to Mike. That's a good brand, right, Spartan? I was thinking. Hell yeah. I know we got to wrap this up, but- By the way, I scored one of those hoodies last night. Oh, did you get it? Isn't that great?

Oh, legit. It's my favorite hoodie now. Talk about the hoodie, because scored one of those hoodies last night. Oh, did you get it? Isn't that great? It's my favorite hoodie now. Talk about the hoodie because that's our big push. We want to have the most bulletproof hoodie on earth. Do you think it qualifies? Yes. Dude, it's like a thick Carhartt hoodie. There it is.

That's what it feels like. It's fucking dense and heavy. The thing I noticed about it aesthetically first was instead of having the drawstrings, it has the buttons. Nice. I just think that looks a lot cooler. There it is. That's it right there.

And the brand is so simple. It's like you've got the whole – everyone knows what Spartan is that should know what it is by now. Yeah, you've got the helmet on there, and it's just really simple. I dig it big time. I'll be wearing that quite a bit. My only complaint is maybe if it gets too wet, you know, it just becomes a wet blanket.

Yes. You should probably not use it for like sailing. Right. Use it for sailing. It's cotton. But if you plan on staying dry. Yeah.

It feels like it'll stop a bullet. I was thinking... Oh, it's so heavy. I was actually thinking of putting a little pocket and putting like a plastic poncho so that if you did run into a situation where...

There you go. Right? There's actually a really cool pocket. So if you put your hands in the middle, there's like a little poncho so that if you did run into a situation where you were. There's actually a really cool pocket. So if you put your hands in the middle, it's like a little pocket for your key. Yeah. Like right in the middle of that middle pocket. iPhone or whatever. That's legit.

Yeah. Set up a hashtag for that too and we'll give away some hoodies if you want on Barbell Structures. That'd be fantastic. Spartan hoodie. Whatever you guys want. Yeah. Come up with something. Hashtag Spartan hoodie.

Yeah. Check the show notes. Check the show notes just you guys want. Yeah. Come up with something. Hashtag Spartan hoodie. Yeah. Check the show notes. Check the show notes just to be sure. Yeah. It's the only way to know for sure and not totally screw that up. Hoodie is legit. I'm going to wear it every time it gets cold. Forever.

So the hoodie, the Spartan.com. We already did the book. What about your podcast? The 431. Check out Spartan, the podcast. You can't see it yet because we don't know anything about podcasts. Oh, you've been recording but not posting.

Yeah, we haven't posted anything because we don't know how to do it. So we're working on that. We'll help you out. We'll eventually put that in the show notes too. Once you do have it up, you can go back to the show notes even if it's months later after this and we'll post where it's at. Go to the 5-star com at the whole shebang.

The431project.com. Or.org. I think it's.org. I think you got.com too. If I got.com, that's fine. When in doubt, search Google The431project. Joe's like, how would I know? Numeral 431.

Yes. 431. And that's all good. What do you guys want to push? Because someday when we figure out how to post this podcast on our site, what do you got? Peace and love, man. Peace and love. Just go to barbellshrug.com and sign up for the newsletter.

We give out free advice on training and nutrition and all that stuff all the time. We podcast other guys that are a lot like you. And so if people like you, they're probably like some of the other people we bring on too. We shared a lot of guests. We post a show like this every single Wednesday Every Wednesday We never miss for years now So if you want to watch more shows like this

Except for maybe tomorrow depending on if the wifi In Pittsfield works At the top of the mountain I've got a crank radio Antenna thing You crank it You gotta crank for four hours While that episode uploads. It's like an old school.

It's the next death race. It's like an old school gorilla broadcast. Upload this video. If you stop, the upload stops and you guys start from the beginning. It's like gorilla radio style. That's right. Yeah. Awesome.

I'm glad you guys came. Yeah, thanks for having us. Love hanging out up here. We'll definitely be back. See you guys. Cheers, everyone.