Barbell Shrugged - Addiction, Recovery and Building a Life of Value w/ Tim Riley, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #818

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Tim Riley is Director of Sports Performance at Kollective in Austin, TX where he trains athletes at the pro, collegiate, and high school level. Most notably, Riley currently oversees and conducts strength and conditioning sessions for NFL, NBA, PLL & AVP athletes. The NFL off-season program at Kollective is one the largest and most respected programs in the country. Riley is also the head strength and conditioning coach for The University of Texas Men’s Lacrosse. Riley launched his training career in 2017 after receiving a lifelong training certification through NPTI, under the supervision and mentorship of Professor Dave Boetcher. He then founded Timrileytraining LLC, a training company working with young athletes. Throughout his career, Riley has acquired a plethora of certifications (NPTI, NASM, Precision Nutrition, & USAW among others) to further his education and better serve the training community, while also gleaning wisdom from multiple mentors: Mo Wells, Trey Hardee, Connor Harris, Dr. Pat Davidson, Dr. Ben House, Keir Whenham-Flatt, and Jeremy Hills, to name a few. To date, his professional experience spans across all ages; from high school athletes and collegiate athletes, as well as professional athletes in the NFL, MLB, PLL, AVP, and NBA. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Tim Riley on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrug. Tim Riley is coming into the podcast, and we're going to be talking about recovery addiction. I even open a little bit about my party days in here and actually trying to start taking my life seriously and not be so good at staying out so late, which I very rarely get to talk about on Shrugged and kind of the transformation from a 25, 27-year-old

to getting to turning pro, we'll call it. Tim has very much a similar. story, which is something that we were able to connect on and kind of a little bit of a different show. Like we typically talk training and getting jacked and all those things. And once he started down the rabbit hole of this, we knew there was no coming back because it was such an important part of his life and his story. So we rolled with it. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That's where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, are doing a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis. And you're going to access that over at rapidhealthreport.com.

Friends, let's get him to the show. Welcome to Marlboro Shug. I'm Andrews Warner, Doug Larson. Tim Riley, a lot of people probably know who you are, all the NFL people. But let's talk about the most dedicated athlete you have right now, your eight-year-old volleyball player. We went through like different things you have going on. And as soon as we talked about training, your eight-year-old and volleyball, your eyes lit up. And let's hear about it.

Let's go. Honestly, I said it kind of. tongue-in-cheek. First of all, guys, thank you for having me on. And I said it, yeah, kind of tongue-in-cheek. My most important coaching position currently is the head coach of the Purple Panthers, which is my daughter's eight-year-old little league volleyball team. But I'm not kidding. I bleed purple. And I am a Panther now. And we just had we just had practice last I got to say that the beauty of working with kids and that, and particularly the skill acquisition piece, right?

Because, like, I'm a performance coach. I don't do much position work stuff. The skill acquisition is, like, limited to, like, you know, sprinting and jumping. And while it's certainly a thing, it's only an aspect of the training, right? Whereas at this age, it's entirely about skill acquisition. and it's been fun. And guys, ask me how many volleyball games I've ever played? Zero.

But they, their ability to learn and absorb information if you're able to clearly communicate, create competitive environments within drills, and distill things down into, you know, bite-sized chunks, it is, it's fascinating to me. The ability for them to take on new information and learn new skills, And then, like, turn around and be able to, you know, make that happen in a game.

So it's been new. It's been fun. It's exciting. And, you know, I've been coaching all her teams ever since she was four. And so, you don't resist being coach at all. No. You were in. I was all in.

It was, like, the plan all along. And here's what, well, here's what happened. Okay. I coached a team. And then it was soccer. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to take a back seat because I didn't play soft. soccer. I'm going to let one of these parents who played soccer, who played D1 soccer. I'm going to

coach these kids because they're certainly going to do a better job, right? Fuck no. Gentlemen, I was sorely disappointed. I was like never again because like I'm just watching this person who's just not a coach. Like he's in finance. He's done very well. But he doesn't know and he knows the game, but I'm watching him try and explain concepts, basic stuff to kids. And he's just just not able to communicate those things, at least with enough effectiveness. And again, we're talking about four-year-olds, right? But what I found is I was able to, you know, and I didn't know the game. So that was that also kind of, it was a wonderful learning experience for me.

Because I was like, my God, I used to put so much into, and, you know, maybe this is limited to youth sports, right? but I used to put so much at my eggs, so many of my eggs, into the basket of like, you got to walk the walk. And having lived experience, there's really no replacement for it. And I do believe that still. But also, it opened up this new insight where I was like, okay, there are skills and qualities. If you have a level of expertise in them that transcend experience that can be applied

over anything in life. life, right? And that was one of those, where it became very apparent and evident. And look, not to shoot my own arm, but we've had a lot of winning seasons. Okay. So, but yeah, it's been so much fun. Dig into the nuances on that. Like what coaching is coaching, like understanding how to play soccer at a nuanced level. Like if you're a professional soccer coach and this guy needs like these like little things that only the best in the world know is way different than a four-year-old who just wants to have fun and needs like just global concepts and a lot of a lot of pat's on the back and whatever else it is like it's just a different game like what are the nuances for coaching

that you found transferred over to two to four-year-olds or now eight-year-olds well it's funny because I think if you had asked me this question and it had been um and I hadn't have had that coaching experience with the four-year-olds the answers probably would have been similar but I wouldn't have had the appreciation that I have for it now or the breadth and scope of understanding of how transferable those traits are and the ability to take a concept, any concept, whether it's how to stop a ball, how to kick, how to throw, how to catch, what you need to do at the individual level to identify what it is about their movement capabilities or the gaps that they're missing and their ability to put any skill together

and being able to communicate that in a way that it's able to make it stick for them, that really is the art of coaching and there's there's people who can say here I'm going to demo this thing here's how you do it now you do it okay that's one way or it's much more interactive and it's a problem solving adventure a collaboration that you and the student the athlete the client whoever that you're on together and you're embarking on this journey and when you view it that way and when it becomes something you're excited about exploring and trying to find the best way to help this person understand what I've found is one if I'm just demoing things and telling people to do them guys I don't love it that feels like a

job that feels like groundhog day that that feels like I'm not going to be in this much longer right on the other hand if I'm problem solving and I'm genuinely seeking to understand how I can best put this person in a position to complete said task learn said skill now it's engaging now it's exciting and then it also becomes less of a one-way street where now it's two people working together to accomplish this thing and there are other things like layered into that because you know some kids respond really well to being praised publicly at a big level so what i found is like there are kids on the teams and i get new kids all the time too which again it's like learning how to but some kids when they do something great in practice and I've been trying to get them to do it I'll stop the practice and I'll say everybody did you see what Ellie just did Ellie did XYZ everybody let's fucking go clap it I don't say that but I say clap it up right and I make everyone go absolutely apes shit for her and you can see what that does to their confidence and and how much it uplifts them and it's now it's not even just like her trying to learn this

skill on her own. But now I've got the whole team on board with this person learning this skill. On the other hand, like, you know, Margot's one, if I, even if she did something well, if I were to put her in that position where the whole team's focus was on her and whether she did or did not accomplish a task, that would be incredibly anxiety provoking for her and would not be a win, even if she did the thing. So, yeah, there's another skill set that translate, it's like being able to meet people where they're at, which is such an umbrella term, what it really means is being able to identify the way people like to be communicated with. That's what that means, you know? And I think that the ability to coach up those skill

pieces, the ability to actually understand and diagnose accurately, you're not going to be perfect, but quickly and accurately, people's preferred communication styles are things that, look, guys, I'm a high school dropout. I got a GED. I have six total college credits. I didn't get sober until my mid-20s. I was a real fuck up, okay? But what I learned from all those years is, and, you know, the inability to understand

myself and communicate. And the many, many years of therapy after running parallel to coaching people at the same time is that those are skills that transfer way, more impactfully than just like the nuts and bolts of like how do I program something or like should I do a you know an eccentric focus block next week like there are things that just matter more and I'm biased because I've seen what they've been able to do for me personally and my ability to coach people in my career right but yeah anyway that's it hold on a slight topic shift It kind of just dropped a bombshell in the middle of your

coaching your eight-year-old there. First off, congrats on the dropping out of high school and still being successful. That's like, Thank you. You saved yourself like a quarter of a million dollars chasing paperwork. Listen, I paid for it with rehab and therapists and counselors. I found a way to pay that money. Hopefully the alcohol was on the lower class side, so you still have all that money left over.

You weren't just like drinking like Dom Perry on every night. A lot of two. $2 shots and Budweiser pitchers, boys. Yeah. Sorry if anybody finds these jokes offensive. But you did save yourself like quarter million dollars. I did. Congrats, man.

No, I would love to hear this path. Where, how did this whole story kind of play out? Well, I'll try and give you the abbreviate version because there's about an hour to an hour and a half version. So I'll give the podcast appropriate version. And I'll try and leave out. too many, you know, potentially unsettling details, but long story short, is I started getting arrested early and often. I come from a, my home was broken at best. My parents did the best

with the tools that they had. Once I started getting arrested, I started failing drug tests pretty regularly. And from the age of 13, until I became an adult, I was perpetually in the juvenile detention system, either in and out of juvenile detention or going to rehab. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artee program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan.

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Now, back to the show. In high school, my mom had a boyfriend. At least this one wasn't abusive, but he was a local drug dealer, which for me at the time was, like, best-case scenario. And so our house, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the term trap house, but that is where I lived and I loved it because it meant I could party and do whatever I wanted and I had no rules and my house was the party spot and then you know I ended up not being able to complete high school as you can imagine it's hard when you have uh you know when that's

the life that you're living and then I started selling drugs uh naturally and I was pretty good at that um and that's not a brag um it's just you know i didn't i never had shit and so i saw an opportunity to um have something and it was when i started making a lot of money doing that that my alcohol and i mentioned i've i'd already been to rehab multiple times as a teenager full denial that i had a problem or that it was a problem and it ran in my family my dad was an addict and there's a lot of stuff around that um and you know basically every multiple family members in my life have died from drug and alcohol abuse. And so once I started making a lot of money, my drinking and drug use skyrocketed.

And there were a lot of nights or events like this. Okay, you ready? It's Thursday night. I'm going to go out. We're going to have one drink. We all laugh because we know that's not going to happen. The next thing I know, fast forward, it's early Sunday morning. we've not been to sleep

the drinking and partying has not stopped and we're all sitting around a back porch chain smoking new ports talking about how when Monday comes around we're all going to do better and I'm going to get the job back and I'm going to patch things up with my girlfriend

because I've had my phone off for 36 hours and I'm going to get it right I'm going to get it together and if I had had a lie detector test attached to me when I was saying those things I would have passed I believed it I meant it and even the next morning, you know, when I'm dealing with all of the things I said and how I

behaved from the past, you know, however many days on a bender. And then Monday rolls around and I feel pretty bad. And I'm, I kind of hate myself and the things I said and did. And I'm doing all the patchwork I talked about doing. And I promise everyone that I'm going to do better. And then something happens, the passage of time. And Wednesday rolls around. And one friend says, let's just go out for one drink. And then I do it. again and guys i did that for many years right lots of lots of promises i couldn't keep lots of letdowns um and finally i arrived at a place by the way this whole time like you know i went from like selling drugs to having a lot of cash to like zero cash overnight because that's the way

that works a lot of volatility in that space a lot a lot a lot of turnover yeah and um was there was there a party the liked it though you liked the volatility like the chaotic nature of it like appealing even if you quote unquote didn't like it you did like it also kind of like cross it doesn't have to be fun to be fun to be clear i loved it yeah you know because i i i had enough money to be in control and that was the longest thing for the longest time where i was like i woke up with money in my pocket so i could behave however i wanted to and there were no real consequences even though i hated myself morally about the way i was showing up um but that was okay i knew how to fix that you know i got to i got to solve for that we're going out to

night. And I told myself that I was just having fun. I'm just having fun. I'm just partying, man. I'm just partying, man. I'm just trying to have a good time. And I lived in that delusion for a long time. And then finally the day came where I'd gone out again. I had long stop making money from street sales. And I've been trying to work jobs, bouncing at bars. Believe it or not, I was a counselor to a teen crisis shelter. And anyway, the story goes, I'm going to have to call out of work again because I'm still awake. The birds are chirping. Bad news.

I have broken all those promises. I've turned off my phone so my girlfriend can't call me. I'm with this other girl who I don't even like. I just can't be alone. I can't be alone. And I'm trying to go to sleep, but I can't because my heart's pounding out of my chest. and I have such anxiety because I know that I've just, I've lied to myself again. And I just started weeping.

And, you know, guys, I'm not, I don't consider myself religious. I'm a man of faith, though. And I remember, I've said a lot of foxhole prayers. Hey, if you get me out of this jam. Hey, if I don't die because I took too much. Hey, if you get me out of this DUI, which by the way, many of those things happened. Um, I have an alarmingly small, uh, jail record considering the life that I lived. Um, hard to explain.

um but this was different i remember just saying help me and guys i used to have an idea of what miracles were i thought there were things that happened out here you know on the periphery outside you know a car flips over 16 times and the baby survives whatever i finally fall asleep that next day i wake up the next night what do you think i did i went out i did the same thing but here's what happened something about that event whatever lie i'd been telling myself up to that point around why i was doing what i was doing and just having fun and partying it vanished it was gone and i was left with for the first time the truth and that was dark and it was louder than anything else and that was

i'm unhappy all these people i think are my friends or not my friends they're just as unhappy with me, we're all living in a shared delusion, and I got to get the fuck out of here. And in two days, I had put myself in a rehab facility. Now, look, this is, what is this truth moment all about? I was, I was like waiting for, for what that, what that actually was. So, I can't explain what happened, but I can tell you what happened. something about me having that moment admitting that I don't have the answers that no amount of trying hard or making promises was going to change me in the way I was living my life

when I woke up that next day something had shifted I'd had a huge rearrangement of what I actually understood my life and my choices to be because there was the story I'd been telling myself all those years and then there was this new reality that I had suddenly been dropped into so how does that happen I don't know but something about that moment and that helped me that repeated please help me um I don't know if you want to describe it as surrender um I think that's those that's the only word that I can really adequately describe it as yeah um honesty you i've been honest truly maybe my whole life yeah up until that point and it it was a it was a you know a a baptism of sorts of realization and um um sort of like

the the what i previously thought to be true about myself completely disappearing yeah um we usually talk about training on here but um i'm actually really curious uh did did you have like a a religious upbringing before called like the wheels fell off like where was was there any basis to this or yes prior to this call it moment all right so this is going to get weird i went to a Christian private school growing up. Now, here's the thing about that. I don't know how my dad afforded that. I'm fairly certain his sister paid for it.

My mother and my father of two very different people. My mom's a hippie. I mean, off and on while they got divorced, I was like in second grade, she would live at the local ashram, okay? Because there was a spiritual teacher that she called guru. So my mom was like in a cult, okay? Let's call it what it was.

and then my dad was sitting us to this school and I got to tell you guys like my experience with religion in that regard I had a lot of resentment because I was living a double life I couldn't tell these other kids at school that my dad was a drug addict that my mom didn't buy into any of this that the abuse that was going on at home the screaming the fighting the yelling I just knew that I was different and I wasn't like these people and I was constantly in trouble and I felt judged and sort of like ostracized um because the truth was I was different

my life was different I had a hard time relating to these people and I would look around and I would see everyone with their hand up singing in chapel and I would say you fucking people don't know shit about what real life is about right um of course now growing up I know that like life's hard for everybody everybody walks through stuff. And even though I don't see it at school, I don't know what people are going on, what they have going on at home, the same way they didn't know any idea that I had anything going on in home. And there's the other thing. I didn't fucking tell anybody. You know? So yeah, but I, I had this very, like, you people are hypocrites and you're,

you're all full of shit. Everyone's full of shit. I was so, my, my worldview around people and community and just all of it. I just, because what I learned is that if I wasn't on my own and if I wasn't going to get it by myself I wasn't going to get it at all right whether that was love acceptance understanding compassion empathy it didn't exist not in my opinion right I know that's not true today yeah um but that's that was my how old were you when you had this kind of like breakthrough moment um coming out or like uh heading tour or like that like changed the path out of addiction I was 25 yeah cool that's i would say that that feels like um it's it's interesting uh i i always feel

like there's like uh there's ages or like um times in life where you have where uh it's it's almost like the cliche human story where it's like kind of wake up one day and you go oh i have to do something with my life like shit i have to like take myself seriously Um, yes. I, I, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, my, my, I never feel like I ever had any addiction, but I was like very good at partying and very good at having a lot of fun. Um, you and I would have hung out together. Yeah. And I also, um, I would typically never talk about this on truck, but, um, because we always talk about training. But yeah, when I was probably in that age, like, I actually feel like, um, like grad school was like one of the most devastating parts of my life because I I took like a very good partying in undergrad and then they gave me money with a job after undergrad. Mm-hmm. A real fire into it. And then and then I went to grad school at an SEC school. So like I was

immediately dropped into like the largest parties every Saturday that started at 6.8. am and I started to notice when I was like 25, 26 years old coming out of grad school and I moved to San Diego when I was like 27. But I started to notice in the year, like my

second year of grad school that like my brain knew to stop working before the party started. Like I would have a sip of alcohol and I would just be ghost riding the whip

all night long like there was no there was no stopping uh the the the the train that i was on um and i but right around that age it was also like when i opened my first gym and realized i like needed to take myself seriously and it was it was mostly like a conversation of like you know you're like really good at this but it's a game that you don't want to win like you can't win this game it only gets worse at a much more accelerated pace um but it was it was it was It was like roughly around the same age where I just realized like I never went to rehab. I never like had any any big, big problems. Everybody that I hung out with, it was like much more.

If everybody else was playing at like an eight, I was playing at like a nine and a half every night that we like tried to do it. But I often wonder how much of these things, how much of these like story arcs are like are because we're just loaded. with testosterone and trying to be good at something, and then one day we wake up and we go, I kind of want more out of life. Or does addiction over time really grab a hold of the people that just can't break free to the next level? And now all of a sudden you're 40 and you're living the same life. And I met you like 45 minutes ago, but to me, I feel like you, and you know,

you went to rehab, so it's different. know all the intricacies of the story but like um to me you feel like it it appears to me like you were just somebody that wants to be very good at something you just didn't know what to be good at so you put all your energy in it's like really bad place but you didn't know it was bad because it used to be really good it used to be like where all the girls were and all your friends were and like if you could be like if you could be like the best at that game there's like a lot of winning that goes on short term winning yes but by the time we turn 20, 25, 26, 27, there's something that mentally, physiologically, I don't know what

it is, but you go, man, I'm, I'm too good at this. And now my brain doesn't turn on from like 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. And, but do you feel like, and this is something that I, I used to think about a lot when I was, like, in my early entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial days of like, all of those things they're not bad they're not all bad there's an enormous number of skills that happen when you're like a nine and a half and the most fun person that transfer into being good at business and getting people excited and probably having like a very full roster of people that want to be around you in a gym and there's um do you feel like that you like you may have walked away from that time with a few super skills that you

you know that you have to have gone to the depths that you went to to come out and go, hey, I don't need all this, but also I'm really good at turning the volume up in this place and making things wild. You're spot on. There are a few things that come to mind. One is, you know, my ability to, when I become, if something has my interest and I become passionate about something, I'll bet on me against just about anybody.

Like, I am willing to work harder and longer and with more fervor than most. Yeah. And sometimes it's not like, you know, it's like what you would consider unhealthy. I've also found that in the pursuit of trying to make something special or great or build, like, there are times where that is like the price you pay. That's the truth. Um, you know, another thing, too, that I earned throughout that process was, and not just the process of the things I walked through, whether it was circumstantial or things by my own hand, you know, life circumstances, um, behaviors, the way that I was showing up where I made life harder on myself, but the healing required to become the kind of father, friend, employee, employer, um son um that i want to be the amount of time effort and energy that has gone into that into getting from where i was as a human and as a person and as a boy to who i am now today as a

father as a partner as a man that process and the skills that i've acquired and the emotional intelligence, frankly, that I've had to that I have to have, that I've had to acquire are the things that are really like cheat codes for me today. And there are, you know, how do you get self-esteem by

doing esteemable acts? How do you gain confidence? By going out, and doing things, even though you're afraid or scared, you know, that's how you, that's how you become courageous. That's how you become brave. And in the same sense, where it's like, I was someone who lived most of my life dishonest and with a lack of integrity. I know what that is and what it looks like.

I know it well. Because of that and because I've been at that other end of spectrum, I know now today what the opposite of that is, more than most. yeah um and so and now those things like i cherish those things those ideas those concepts and principles and they're the guiding forces of my life today whereas like you know if you say 11 years ago it's like well i just want to live with more integrity to be like whatever loser you know um but striving to be a better person and to live my life by my life by principles and making an honest effort to um progress and aim for

perfection as a human even though I know I'll never attain it um that sort of effort going into that does not happen if I don't walk through what I've walked through why would I why would I why would I feel the urge or the necessity to attack those things um with the level of intensity and attention that I've been able to the truth is guys I I I wouldn't you know do you ever feel um like a poll to call like the the degeneracies anymore um no but here's why not because i didn't like those because here's the truth oh no no i i i loved those things yeah because they served me um and that that's you were kind of alluding that to that earlier where it's like You know, I'll stick to drugs and alcohol.

There's a saying it's like, if I was enjoying it, it's because I wasn't controlling it. If I was controlling it, I wasn't really enjoying it. The difference today. So if I'm having to reel in or to. to rain in or to try and manipulate and control how much fun I'm having or how much I'm ingesting or how much I'm drinking or whatever. I'm not actually enjoying it because the truth is I don't want to control that.

I want to let it freaking rip, right? When I see someone drink two drinks, it blows my mind because to me that's alcohol abuse. What a waste of alcohol. You know? Like, you want. Or, you know, I can see someone walk away.

They've had two sips of wine. I'm not that guy. That doesn't sound like fun to me, right? The funny thing is, though, today to answer your question is I'm so grateful, dude, for the life I have today. That the idea of engaging with any of those old behaviors. And I'm so, I'm able to see so clearly how sad and broken and lonely and dark all those behaviors actually are and where they were coming from in me and the voids I was trying to fill. The life I have today is so big and beautiful and robust that I wouldn't trade the happiest

moment from that time frame. You know, there's always that one night where it was just like it was, everything went fucking perfect, man. The food was good. The drinks were there. The girl you like was there. and she picked you, dude. She picked you and she went home with you

and you woke up the next day. And it was all great. And you and your buddy sat around and you were kicking shit and talking and laughing. Hey, you remember so-and-so fell down the stairs last night. You know what I mean? I wouldn't take that best night for a mundane day that I have today.

I wouldn't trade them because I'm so proud of the life I have today. I'm so grateful. And it's funny because, again, most of my life particularly from the ages of 26 and down if I had heard someone say that I would not have been capable of believing them I would have laughed I'd said bullshit I think about it a lot

it's been something that I thought about very consistently over the last few months actually it's like an interesting time to have this conversation when you talk about you wouldn't trade it. I actually think that there's like a, the way that I frame it a lot, my brain is, is like there's, there's a choice to make all of the actions. I don't know if we just lost them. Oh, there you go. There's a choice in all of the actions. And you can obviously choose,

like the path that leads you away from like the most pure version and happiest version of yourself. And all of those things are available. And you can choose them, lot, a little, never, it's up to you. But if you are really trying to achieve kind of like greatness in your own life or to be the best person you can and the best husband and the best dad and leading by example, I'm by no means a perfect human being, but in front of you on a daily basis is all of the options. They're all out there. So you get to go make the choice. do I move closer to my most optimal best self, or do I fall for the, all of the degenerate behaviors that could exist in life?

And the closer you go to do and making great decisions, you know, you can oversimplify this into like, into training, nutrition, whatever it is. Like if you eat a hundred good meals and then you go and eat a gallon and a half of ice cream and for your 101st, it doesn't really matter. But if you're doing the poor behaviors on a consistent basis over and over and over again, it's hard to get on a path that works. But once you're on it, the momentum, like the tailwind is there. So you feel better.

You perform better. People want to be around you. They see when you walk in the room that you've got your shit together. Yeah. And that is the, that's a much longer, harder game than somebody walking up to you in a bar or whatever it is and going, dude, you're awesome because you're the craziest MFer in here. It's harder to gain the respect by being the good person or not the good person,

the person that's on the right path, making the right decisions, like not caving into all the things that you could cave into. And I think that turns into the product of a life that you go, I'll buy this. This is like a good package that I'm putting together for the world. like my offer to the world is a much better thing than the one that is up till 4 a.m. and doing dumb stuff and I think that when you talk about like I wouldn't do it or I'm not I'm not drawn to those things. I'm not either like I'm not even like have like socially feel like I need to have a beer most of the time if people are like it's not for me.

But I think a lot of that just comes down to like I don't even want to like get off. the path like i don't want to it's a beer is fine i don't have a problem with it two beers whatever people want to do it's fine but a lot of times in the back of my brain i'm like whatever we're doing right here is totally not worth getting off the path um i'd rather just stay stay the course and do this thing that i i feel really proud of myself about um and kind of going back to that that that moment of truth do you think that there was like a piece of the puzzle

there of like when you can't when you can't lie to yourself anymore you just go you're just not like proud of the product you're putting together like everything's got to change 100% and I do think

there's a scene and have you seen flight with Denzel Washington it's a wonderful movie and he's just struggling with a duke is it's very good but there's a scene at the end and he's on trial and all he has to do is lie one more time and he's a liar the whole movie is basically about him being a degenerate and he lies to everyone and his personal life's a shit show and he's he's on

trial in the last five minutes of the movie he has an opportunity to just tell one more lie and he's off the hook and he can't do it he just can't do it and in a lot of ways that moment that I had was me being forced to look at the fact that everything was a lie who I said that I was was a lie all the promises I make were lies

I couldn't even recall the last time I was being honest now in that moment I'm not thinking those things the only way I can describe it is being completely washed over with emotion and feeling like you know i've only i've only felt that level of like loneliness and despair and helplessness man that level of helplessness only a few times in my life and it's profound it's it is profound to be confronted with the with real truth with real truth particularly if your whole life like

had been built on a lot of delusions and lies. So, yeah, I think, I think you're right. Like, there, there, it was this moment of, like, being confronted with the truth that, um, it was all lies and that if, and that, that really was my experience. I was, I felt this, like conviction that if everything didn't change, nothing would. And that's why I went to rehab and I moved to South Florida into a halfway house and didn't have a car. And then that's where I got my first job in fitness.

by the way. I got a fucking sales job as a personal training sales counselor at L.A. Fitness. I didn't even know what the job was. I just needed a job. And the GM, he said, this was the interview.

He goes, you know how to hustle? I went, yeah? He said, be here tomorrow. I swear to God, that was the interview. Oh, God. It's a fire at it. Insane, man.

Yeah. It was like cycling the training conversation back into the story here. Like, I was never particularly good at partying. I did my fair share for sure through high school and college, what have you. But I always had training. I trained my whole life. I had a strength coach since I was like 14.

He's still a great friend of mine and talked to him a week ago. Like I always had training as an anchor. I only partied hard enough to not fuck up training. So I always had that like my back pocket. Like not even the specific sport. I did lots of sports, but like I always lifted weights. I knew I was squatting on Monday, guaranteed since I was 15 years old. And I was just the way it was.

And so I just always had that. So like having that anchor. point kept me from from getting blacked out drunk too many times it happened for sure but like it kept me from doing it every day you know like in college people would go out and I'd be like fuck man I got to go home like I got to train tomorrow and I was curious if training and you kind of just alluded to this to this a little bit like was training the thing that pulled you out of it and anchored you to a new a new passion prior to having having a family and now a kid so you know it's crazy that throughout all those years of especially when I you know when I

I got asked to leave that really nice private school. I had no business being in. They found out about the arrests. And my home life, they called Child Protective Services. It was a whole mess, right? But I kept that lie that facade up from the kindergarten all the way to sophomore year. School never knew anything about what was going on. And after they asked me kindly to not return, they basically said, Tim, we can't help you.

You're a liability to the other students. and they were right. For me, sports ended there, you know? And I was good, man. I was a good athlete. I was a starter on the basketball team. Like, we were good. But, and I didn't love training up until that point.

I mean, I wanted abs and I wanted bicep vein because I wanted to get a girlfriend, right? I wanted attention from women, for sure. I thought that was the only way to get it. um and so once once sports got removed i things really fell apart and that's you know uh when i really started leaning into everything else heavily in my teenage years um but the one thing that i fell in love with and it was a surprise to me was training and as i look back on it now i know that it was because it gave me a safe place to do something that was positive for myself and then there was also these like vanity benefits that's how it started um and throughout all those years

of living like that the one thing i would get back to consistently that never all the way left but like when it was time to like get my act together i knew i could go back to was the gym man it was the gym and believe it or not in my early 20s i got i i was my first love was jujitsu i'm former national champion as a kid four years in a row um now this is a different time in the 90s you were just a karate nerd. No one thought Jiu-Jitsu was cool. Okay? So no one gave a fuck that I was a national champion.

Yeah. Well, as a guy who has a jih Tzu shirt on right now, the audience can't see it, but I'm, I think that's pretty fucking rad. That's awesome, man. Thank you. Thank you, dude. So I got back into fighting in my early 20s, and that was like another way for me. I knew that I needed something. I wanted desperately something.

And, you know, of course, I'm smoking Newport's on the way to the fights. You know, it didn't last long, guys. um but um but yeah training was always there for me and so when i got sober um and i got that gym job you know i was good at sales imagine that but that ended up being really hollow and just miserable and i hated it and um but that was my first exposure to like training in a in a gym setting and i ended up being a counselor at a drug and alcohol um facility and one of the things i would do is i would take the men out on outings and one of them was the gym And when we'd go there, you know, I was the only fit one, usually, I would show these guys how to work out.

And when I left that job, it dawned on me. I was like, oh, I could make money just training people. That's like the only thing I like her that I'm good at, you know? And that's where it started. That is where it started, man. And I certainly never thought when I was getting that National Personal Training Institute certification that one day I would be where I'm at, out right um yeah it's kind of it's kind of a trip i mean i didn't start training as a sole vocation become a trainer until i was 26 i'm 35 now um and you know like i mentioned i

i've got no traditional education in the sense of a kinesiology degree or internships at some program and um but i did find ways to fill in those gaps for sure yeah yeah dude and now Now, you know, fast forward, nine more years, you have a gym, you got a cool competition that you're super stoked on and a hamlet, you got a podcast, you got a bunch, you got a bunch of things going on, I mean, you're fucking slaying now. Thank you. Well, I'm very blessed. I'm very fortunate.

I'm surrounded by really good people. And the truth is, is like, you know, someone in my position coming where I come from, I do not get a third of the way here without a lot of help from mentors, people willing to let me learn from them. People giving me a hand up, a lift, maybe even at times when I didn't deserve it or didn't warrant it, but they just saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. So I thank you, and I appreciate that. And certainly there's been a lot of effort on my part, but I don't believe in anyone, I don't think anyone's self-made. I don't buy that. I think anyone who does anything really special, they have a lot of help. That's certainly been my experience. I've had a lot of really good

people help me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly both those things are true a lot of people probably helped you and you also should give yourself some credit because you put in fucking work so it's it's it's not it's not a binary thing it's it's all happening at the same time yeah yeah yeah well yeah where uh where can the people learn more and tell us about your big event man all right so october 26 apex austin the first ever that's the name of it apex the first ever open apex event uh exactly a week ago today we put registration up 80 spots, 40 male, 40 female athletes. There are only, as it stands today,

there's one female ticket left. So we're super pumped. Here's the events, guys. It's a 40-yard dash with a one-yard lead-in, a med ball toss for distance, a broad jump, a full approach vertical jump, trap bar deadlift, AMRAP in 60 seconds, a bench-press AMRAP,

and we finish the competition with an all-out mile. Get some. It is going to be electric. We're super excited. I'm hoping that with this competition, I can finally give people like myself who like to train to be more athletic and push those boundaries, something to train for. I think there's a lot of excellent endurance events out there and fitness tests, but there's nothing like this. And I'm hoping that it's going to give a lot of people something to put their time and energy and effort into and that want to still compete. I'm super pumped.

Yeah. Dude, that's cool. It's like it's super simple. like those cool speed and power components nobody's doing anything quite like that's got like kind of this NFL combinee feel to it I like that that's really

it's really unique it's simple but it's but it's unique nobody's doing it I'm an Occam's Razor guy man simple simple is better dude very cool thank you they want to sign up where do they go yeah where do they go

if hey if you want to snag up that last women's spot you go to apex athleteofficial dot com you can get connected with me at tim riley training.com you can check out my podcast at coachemuppodcast.com and get connected to apex at apex athlete dot official uh on instagram when you said if you want to grab that i like took that as me and i immediately thought no way i'm not losing i tried to do the crossfit i tried to do the crossfit uh open the year after i stopped training

for it as a female to see how high and there was no chance i was making it again it head to the regional i was like i'm out three weeks i was like i quit these girls are monstrous they're so savage crossfit in general it doesn't get enough credit those people are so incredible the apex event either i don't want to lose coming last place i'm gonna arson you bet tim dude uh very cool hearing your your origin story here i didn't know all that about you so dude happy for you that you pulled yourself out of a bad spot now you're living a life that you're you're damn proud of so very cool brother i appreciate you coming on the show gentlemen thank you Thank you so much for having me.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged, and make sure you get over to Rapid Health Report.com. That's where Dan Gardner, Dr. Andy Galpin, are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. You can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.