Barbell Shrugged - Let Them Play: A Triathlaon Across the Country for a Cause w/ Eric Byrnes — Barbell Shrugged #429

Episode Date: December 11, 2019

Eric Byrnes is a former MLB star who is now on the MLB Network. Last summer, in order to bring attention to the lack of PE in our schools, Eric swam, ran, and rode across the United States from San Francisco to New York City, and the documentary he created, Let Them Play, is awesome. Eric came on to chat about the lack of PE in schools and the creation of his film. In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, the guys take a look into the software of the body and how high performers use language to advance their athletic and coaching careers.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner and Doug Larson discuss:   Transitioning from Major League Baseball to endurance racing.   Setting world records in golf.   Why our country is so sick.   How to reshape the culture for children to help them play   Spreading the message of movement through action   The Let Them Play documentary filmed in a race across the country   And more…   Eric Byrnes on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram ____________________________________________ TRAINING PROGRAMS   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   One Ton Challenge   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM ____________________________________________ Please Support Our Sponsors   “Save $20 on High Quality Protein Powder at Momentous livemomentous.com/shrugged us code “SHRUGGED” at checkout.   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   WHOOP - Save $30 on 12 or 18 month membership plan using code “SHRUGGED” at checkout ---------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-byrnes ---------------------------------------------------------------- ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

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We met up with him at the Spartan World Championship in Tahoe. And man, he's super awesome. Dude is a wild man. He works for MLB Network, but he's most importantly doing a ton of work with kids. And we needed to get his message out. So it's very, very cool. Let Them Play is the name of his organization. And very excited that we got to have him on the show. Let's get into it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Eric Burns. Dude, this is super cool because we are at the Spartan World Championships, the Spartan World Media Fest. There's like nine different names they want me to say, and those are two of them. Hosted by ATP Science and Barbell Shrugged and Spartan Up Podcast. Make sure we give all the shout outs to everybody that paid for this beautiful Airbnb that we're hanging out in. But Marion Abrams, good friend of ours, she runs the Spartan Up Podcast, and we have a nice little inside line to her.

I said, look, we have like 100-something podcasters coming. I can't talk to all these people. Tell me the two that I need to have on the show. And you were the first one that came out and just in talking talking to you in the beginning here, now I know why. Because you have a ton of stuff going on. Your journey started as a baseball player. I remember watching you, Oakland A's, right? Yeah.

And Greg, our stat checker in the background, tech guy, he told me that he was reading your bio in your very first game. You got in a bench-clearing brawl. How about that? What a guy. Way to spice things up. UCLA. Was that 100% your fault, or was that just like you happened to be in a big brawl?

It was definitely not his fault. He just had to – he was the enforcer. I'll take blame. Did you finish it, or did you start it, or both? No, no, I started it. You have to understand, I got out on the front line, and I was ready to finish it. Yeah, there was a pitcher, as a matter of fact, by the name of Steve Reed, that took exception to the way I was swinging the bat.

And it's so funny how now the game has changed because you don't see a home run hit without dudes pimping it. Right? And back then, it was like you don't even want to so much as glance at the picture. If you look at the picture the wrong way, he's going to throw at you. So in this case, my first day in the big leagues, had a couple hits, stole a bag, was running all over the field. And late in the game, I took a big hack on a hanging slider

and stuck the next one in my ribs. And I put my head down and ran to first base, didn't think anything of it. And then the whole dugout, I heard them chirping. And they're like, dude, that's bullshit. Is this your dugout? This is our dugout. Oh, so they knew he was coming after you. Bullshit for hitting you.

Exactly. But, again, like, I'm just like, oh, I'm good. It's your first day. It's my first day. I'm good. It actually felt good. I'm not angry yet. I'm happy.

No. I made it. Yes. I'm making money today. Leave'm happy. No. I made it. Yes. I'm making money today. Leave me alone. I love this game. And you're not kidding. Yeah.

You guys got to understand, my first paycheck in professional baseball, $350. That's a two-week paycheck. Oh. So when I got to the big leagues, and fortunately I was able to get there quickly. Well, they are paying your rent for you to sit on a seat in a bus, so, you know, low expenses. It was so bad. It was so bad.

I did a short stint doing a strength coach with the Colorado Rockies for their minor league team in California. That's how all the players get paid, like, $1,200 a month. You don't make big money. They might have a signing bonus that has real money, potentially, some of the pitchers maybe, but then the monthly salary is not high. I signed for a bus ticket to Medford, Oregon. money potentially some of the pitchers maybe but then like the monthly salary is not high i signed for a bus ticket to medford oregon so yeah no it was it was if i didn't have my mom to help my

parents really to help support me at that point i don't know how i would have survived but yeah anyway so i get hit these guys are chirping the next inning we decide we're gonna throw one behind sandy alomar and you know a big veteran yeah yeah and so that incited this bench clearing almost brawl and i'd never forget like i'm just like jesus it's not happening but oh well so i ran right out in the front i wanted to make sure i was not going to cite anything but i wanted to be on the front lines i wanted to let the boys know like hey man i'm here for you yeah and i get out there and it was just there was david saggy and of all the guys in major league baseball that you didn't want to mess with it was david saggy and he literally had like snot come out of his nose he's self admitted like it's you know dabbling all sorts of every drug you could you'd imagine Well as far as performance enhancing, so he later admitted to all this stuff

Sure, and he's just jacked out of his mind you're on the A's team too, which it wasn't well Yeah, well of course Yeah Plenty plenty of dudes weren't clean on our end as well Everybody it was part of the part of the process a lot not as much as you would think, though, believe it or not. But anyway, I come face-to-face with this dude. I'm like, okay, here we go. And Matt Stairs stepped in between us.

And almost like a negotiator. He's on your team? He's on my team. And so Stairs and Segui start talking. And next thing you know, now I'm face-to-face with Omar Vizcal. And I'm like, oh, this is better, right? Light-hitting shortstop, but just Hall of Fame caliber defense like you've never seen. And I grew up a huge fan of his, and I'm like, oh, this is better, right? Light hitting shortstop, but just Hall of Fame caliber defense like you've never seen. And I grew up a huge fan of his and I'm staring at him. I'm

like, dude, Omar Vizcal. I go, I'm a huge fan, man. Before we punch each other, can I get an autograph? So that was it. He shook my hand. He's like, oh, welcome, Big Lee's kid. I'm like, hey, thanks. Sorry for all this. Whatever's going on. This is tough right now. It gets better. Dude, I watched a documentary called Fastball. And I love talking to people that actually play the game.

Because if you just watch the game on TV, you see the pitcher throw the ball to the catcher. And the guy at the plate's trying to hit it but if you are really talking to like a professional fastball pitcher that's throwing the ball 96 100 miles an hour they're holding a weapon and they're very aware that they're holding a weapon and there's a guy standing at the plate that can't actually see the baseball coming at him because it's coming so fast you just kind of hear it and hope and i had never heard a pitcher or many pitchers specifically in this documentary talking about like no i'm standing on the mound and my job is to take that person out and i can i could throw it at his head at any point in time and the batter knows that and

there's a fear game that's going on and it would it literally changed i mean it played baseball but never at a level where there was like masculinity and ego and all the extra stuff that goes into it and it radically shifted like my childhood of watching randy johnson of like oh that guy's that guy's great no he's a murderer he could kill you with his fastball that left hand coming from way the hell out there that that stuff's terrifying being up there. You know what though, when you're playing you don't really think about it like that. It's really sort of the same game that I played in Little League and I just never

stopped playing. As the velocities ticked up, obviously there's the danger element to it. I got hit in the head before, 96 in the head. I got hit hit in the head before uh 96 in the head uh got hit uh actually in the jaw 95 mile per hour uh fastball from scott proctor yeah who ended up pitching for the yankees you know what it shifted my jaw but it didn't break so my my jaw was like on the other side and just

hanging out there and it gradually sort of went back um but i was sucking lucky charms out of a straw for the entire summer in cape cod but yeah it's it's one of those things that really i can't tell you you know very few times if ever did i step on the box actually worried about really um i mean but you can't play afraid no exactly you can't and i think just think that there's so much of the game that um there's so many other elements that you need to focus on in order to be good that, you know, fear can't even creep in. And fear ever creeps in. And this goes to, you know, even little leaguers. I mean, once once that fear creeps in, for the most part, you're done. And, you know, the analogy can, you know, go ahead into, you know, all the endurance stuff that I do now even. You know, and stuff that you guys are involved with.

If you have that element of fear, there's a certain part that's, I think, healthy. And then once you cross that line, it's not. And you've got to do everything in your power just to try to stay on track and realize that there's so many things that are outside of your control in life that you can't do anything about. And so a pitcher throwing a ball at my head or in my face, that was always one of them. Yeah. It's interesting because when Marion told me that I needed to interview you, I was looking at all the bios, and I scrolled right by you

because I was expecting to see a baseball player in the bio and you're wearing a wetsuit instead and you're here today I would never guess that you were a major league baseball player or talked about baseball professionally still where are the big interests now and I guess you know you went for a big run this morning we're out here at the Spartan World Championships kind. What has been the transition for you out of baseball and kept that fire going with you? Well, I think like everybody in life, we all go through different transitional periods. And I think the professional athlete is none more so evident than someone like that, that has to go through a major transitional time in his or her life,

where all of a sudden their entire life that they had invested since they were kids is over as they know it. And then, you know, basically you have to kind of step back and say, where can I redirect that passion? And I always knew, even when I was a kid, I would told you guys, like, there's two things I want to do in life. Number one, play professional sports. Number two is talk about professional sports. And I wanted to get into TV. I wanted to get into radio. I've always enjoyed debating topics and subjects and, you know, stuff that stimulates us mentally.

And then physically, I think that there was this huge void. And so when I first got done, I started playing slow-pitch beer league softball, naturally. Just crushing people, too. Yeah, I could see that lasting like three weeks. You're like, this is so far away from where I was yesterday. That's funny. That's probably what it lasted. I think it lasted four or five weeks.

My Dutch Goose team. And it was cool because I was playing with all my buddies and everything. And then after a minute, it was just like, okay. Yeah. Did you know the very last time you were walking off the Major League field, like this is the last time I'm going to be on this field playing the game at this level? And you were very cognizant of that as you were walking off the field that day? Yeah.

What was that like? It was tough. It was emotional because it was my choice to be done um and walking off the field i remember i struck out and it was i was playing for seattle at the time and i had a great spring training i'd gotten off the terrible start though and i'd been hurt the two years previously and um you know i i knew it was coming to a head in seattle where it's just like dude they're gonna have to make some changes they're gonna most likely they're gonna release me um

but the question was gonna become you know am i willing to put in the work to continue to play and you know when you're 24 years old and you have you know entire big league career in front of you like you're willing to do whatever it takes. And at that point, I was 34 years old. And in my mind, I had seen every facet of the game. I've been the last guy on the bench going up and down. I went up and down nine times when I first came up with Oakland. You know, AAA, big leagues, AAA, big leagues.

There was a lot of that going on. I had to scrap and claw for every ounce of playing time that I got. Eventually got in there, went on a 22-game hitting streak, went to the playoffs multiple times. Had a couple big years, had a couple big seasons. Had one season where I hit 20 home runs, stole 50 bags, one of 11 players in the history of baseball to ever do that. So I want to say there was an element of feeling a little bit of the stardom too and at that level

um and then I'd also dealt not until the very end but dealt with a twinged hamstring that I tried to play through and tore it off the bone uh and then came back and as soon as I came back I get hit with a ball and shattered my hand and everyone's got their sob story but at that point it was just like, dude, I knew, I know this sounds weird, but I knew I could hang on and play until I was 42. Like there was no doubt in my mind I could play until I'm 40, easy. And I knew I could keep myself in good enough shape to do it. The question is, did I want to grind through all of the, I was going to have to sign a AAA contract, go back to AAA,

which I wasn't opposed to doing. It wasn't an ego thing. It was just the complete upside was, okay, now you're back in the big leagues, playing against left-handers, not playing every day. Scrap for the every time. It's just I was ready to move on with my life. And so, anyway, just kind of go back to what your original question was about the transition.

What happened was I ran into three junior high school friends of mine. They were going out to do the Pacific Grove Triathlon. This is just a few weeks after I got done playing. They're like, hey, come do it with us. It's a sprint triathlon. I'm like, ah, geez. It's always fascinated me. I used to watch Ironman World Championship with my dad.

When I was a kid, I remember Julie Moss crawling to the finish line. i'm like man okay yeah might as well go try this thing i'm in great shape those are the greatest videos like crawling all the way over the finish line they're like they're totally bonking there's people like in like in the background like trying to catch them and they're just like fucking crawling their way through the finish line like it's to be that at that level of fatigue and still just pushing to win is insane. And that's what got me. Yeah. Because it's like, what is it that would push somebody that much

where they're literally crawling across the finish line, peeing themselves and shitting themselves? What is that? How do I get there? I don't want to do that. So anyway, I end up going down there. I did this tryout. I didn't know.

I'd surfed my whole life, but I'd never swam, so I didn't really know how to swim. Got in the water. Almost drowned. They have this thing called the kelp crawl, really, because there's a ton of kelp in the water at Pat Grove. Is it California? California. It's Pebble kelp crawl, really, because there's a ton of kelp in the water at Pat Grove. Is it California? California. It's Pebble Beach. Okay.

And end up on the beach like a beach whale, just thankful to be alive. And I was wearing a 5-millimeter surfing wetsuit, too, which is not good for mobility or anything else. And when you go out there, you're in like a fight in water. Fight. People are crawling all over you. You can't breathe. It's nasty. So I got on my bike, and the only bike I owned at the time was a beach cruiser.

And I didn't show up to this triathlon to be the cool guy on the beach cruiser. I showed up because I was like, I'm just bringing my bike, and I'm going to be fine. And this is what normally, I'm sure there's other beach cruisers here, and there's probably some BMXs and stuff. And I had no fucking clue. I had no idea what this whole thing was right so i i get on my bike i'm getting passed by 15 year old girls because they got the names on the or the age on the calf and then uh get off the bike and uh run run a few miles and i finished the race all three of my friends kicked my ass and i just told him i said it's the last time you guys are ever gonna beat me and i thanked him for introducing me to the triathlon.

And 11 months later, I did my first Ironman. And then within like a seven-year period, I did 11 Ironmans and transitioned into ultra running. And somehow, much like Ironman, I became fascinated with the Western States 100. And I learned about this race all back in like 2006 when this dude actually ended up collapsing at the finish line. And as he's doing like the last 0.2 miles around the track, and they pick him back up. And then, you know, he runs and collapses. They pick him back up, runs, collapses. The same sort of thing as watching Julie Moss. and i was like man this is fascinating then he he ends up crossing on his own and they never helped him forward at all and they disqualify him why and

he won the race by 20 minutes but disqualified because you can't have assistance and so that was the first time i learned about western states and um so i kind of made it my mission that you know on when i turned 40 um this is in 2016 so i i was like i wanted to do um i wanted to do western states and qualified for it and was fortunate to be able to get drawn in the lottery uh to get selected to do it and uh completed completed the western states so it you know, between those two things, getting into Ironman and then Western States, and then, you know, last summer we did this crazy triathlon across the country as part of this foundation

that my wife and I started called Let Them Play. I just basically fell in love with Endurance World, fell in love with pushing the body to new extremes and, you know, really finding out what we're capable of. I think, you know, one of the things is people say, they say, you know, what are you running from? And for a long time, I pondered that. And it's funny because it's like I think people who do ultra-endurance sports,

it's not what they're running from. It's what we're running to. And you meet every one of your deficiencies, every one of your problems head on. And you're not scared to take on whatever is there. And I think that's just kind of how I've always lived my life. And endurance sports has been an incredible outlet to be able to engage with. A lot of the training that you're doing for baseball and then you're heading out so i guess in two parts like what was the strength conditioning slash like training side that you guys were doing during the season um you mentioned tearing your hamstring off the bone like the rehab of all that and then now you have to go run endurance races there's there's a

massive transition just physiologically that has to happen so what kind of what did it look like in baseball and then how long did it take before you felt confident doing triathlons and endurance races well baseball i imagine i trained much like you do or you did yeah and and it's real heavy power cleans yeah squat glad you picked that up by looking at me i feel really feel good right now i feel great look like you lift the weights. Man, we banged it in the weight room and got after it, and everything was super anaerobic, right? And so baseball, if you think about it, like everything's short burst speed,

where when you get into endurance sports, it's the exact opposite. I used to say, like, my long run used to be going from first to home. Guys, no high fives. No fives i need a break it's it's incredible but um you know we were trained to be thoroughbred racehorses yeah uh and so the transition you know physiologically going from being a major league baseball player and going into endurance sports, is there's very few parallels other than the mental element of endurance. Because I think being a baseball player taught me the mental capacity for endurance. Physically, I had to completely reshape my body. And I had to, you know, kind of change that mindset as to, Hey, look, man, we're going to go and we're going to go all day and we're, and we're not going to stop and we're going to be okay with that.

And so it's in all of us in life, it's like, we need to find your, where's your threshold? Where's, where's that point where you're going to be able to continue to go and you know you could sustain that for seemingly like an eternity? And just recently, I think I mentioned to you guys, before we came on the podcast, we did this 24-hour world record golf event. Yeah. There was this world record that stood for 47 years, and we're trying to kind of figure out what to do after the triathlon across the country in support of the foundation. And we came up with this crazy idea to chase this most golf holes

played in 24 hours which was stood at 402 and was set by a guy in Australia and 47 years later it still stood and now there's been some guys that went after it, whatever. But basically, when we decided to do this, I knew I was going into uncharted territory because even with Western States, that took 22 hours. Like, now I'm going, you know, it's even a couple hours further. It's like, how do you get to that point where you know that you're going to be able to continue? And in baseball, you don't know.

Like, in baseball, it's like, I would have never been able to find that threshold because it stopped at 90 feet. Yeah. And then it was done. Whereas in this endurance sport stuff, dude. Well, the endurance part of baseball is the fact you have to play 162 games in 190 days or whatever it is. It's like insane, the schedule.

It doesn't stop. Yeah. We were walking by fenway last time we were up in boston and we saw it's like the behind the scenes of like everyone's luggage is just there getting loaded onto a bus it's like oh they're gonna go hit the road for five days they're gonna come back they'll be home for five days then they're on the road for eight days like that's the endurance piece of baseball like you're not but you're not fully testing kind of like 22

hours straight yeah you know you know what the thing is is that with baseball it's there's no other way to put it it's an absolute mental mind fuck and you have to you have to post up every single day and there's no quit and no matter what even in my best seasons it was like you're only as good as your last performance yeah and i wish i took a little bit of a different perspective and realized that hey look you know what's done in the past has done in the past but fuck what happened in the past i'm only as good as my next performance, right? And so, so much of my self-worth, and baseball players all around,

so much of their self-worth is buried into what they've recently done. And so you guys can imagine the roller coaster sort of season that you're going to be able, you're going to have to endure in 162 games of having success. And, you know, quite frankly, though, it's a game that's predicated on failure yeah you know how do you recover from playing every single day for months on end like how do you make sure that you don't just crash as the season goes on performing less and less like losing losing body weight losing strength yeah losing kind of losing your edge, losing your motivation even.

It's tough because if you want to go out and play the game the right way, you're going to be late on the field night in and night out. And if there's one thing that I prided myself on, it was playing hard and getting after it on a nightly basis. And I 100% think that it also deteriorated my performance through the course of the season. I would find a second wind as we got closer to October and started seeing the playoffs in the picture. But, yeah, there were some seasons where, you know, definitely I'd come in at like 210 solid as a rock,

and next thing you know, I'm freaking struggling to try to get up to 200. And, you know, for the most part, you know, you're losing some strength along the way, and, you know for the most part you know you're losing you're losing some strength along the way and you know it's beating you down and plus the travel but look i don't i'm not i'm not gonna try to you know glorify it by any means like it's did you fly on private jets and stay in five-star hotels and yeah you know the bull derm shit's true like the you hit the white ball for batting practice, and the women all have long legs and brains, and everyone carries their suitcase.

Like, it's real. It's a false reality that I'm very fortunate that I felt like I was able to play my entire career and have a really good perspective on how fortunate I was and also that that's not really real life. Yeah. With that being such a big piece of your life, do you still kind of, I guess, identify as a baseball player or is this new kind of endurance life that you have much more of the identity and much more of kind of the circle that you run in and connect with now? That's a good question because, you know, I think a lot of it, I mean, if my identity is in baseball at all, you know, publicly right now,

I would say it's through television. And so, you know, the majority of the people that will come up to me and say, oh, hey, Eric Burns, I watch you on MLB Network. Yeah. And that's it. And, you know, I actually, I think I enjoy that a lot more even than when someone comes up and says, hey, man, oh, yeah, I used to watch you with the A's or watch you with the Diamondbacks, whatever.

And I actually like when someone will come up and say, hey, dude, I watch you on TV and that's awesome. Or even more so, I do like this daily blog called The Daily Hustle, which is, they're like writings kind of thoughts ideas a lot of it based on life experience um a lot of it's stoic philosophy uh related and so they're just kind of these short things that i send out in the morning and i do a corresponding podcast with it called the daily hustle as well and in the podcast i just kind of free flow um you know i'll read the short thing and then free flow after that and sometimes get animated and stuff. And so when I have – or I wrote a book called The Effort List, Life Lessons from a Human Crash Test Dummy, which was my nickname when I played baseball. We're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors over at Organifi.

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And he's like, dude, I read your book three times and all over the Daily Hustle daily hustle and he was wearing a let them play hat which is the foundation that my wife and i started and that's that's the type of thing that as far as like you know being rewarding that's the most rewarding when you have someone that that follows you uh and makes an investment daily into into what you're doing and what you're currently doing where baseball i don't identify myself as a baseball player at all it was cool it was something i did in the past yeah um but when it was done it was done and then it was broadcasting and then it was endurance sports and so you know now when it comes to you know identify myself as any sort of athlete it's just dude it's the long stuff yeah and why uh why is your your foundation called let them play what's the origin of that so basically um

a few years ago we were trying to put our kids in school and they were just getting that age and we're looking at all these different schools and there was one school in our area public or private one school in the entire like half boom bay greater surrounding area that had everyday physical education wow and so i knew how important pe was for me as a kid and being able to get outside and be active on a daily basis the only thing i was good at the only thing right and then so what happens no you want to play dodgeball gotcha and well the crazy thing is is that that dodgeball experience for you then allowed you actually to go back in the classroom and do better at math yeah and because what we're doing when we're when we're active and moving is we're stimulating our brain and so there's actually now brain scans to show what activity does and it's

quite frankly it's an epidemic so when we decided to do to start this foundation we wanted to kick it off with this crazy event and that's when we came up with the triathlon across the country which was a seven mile swim across the san francisco bay 2400 mile bike to chicago and a 905 mile run in new york York City and I just figured that you know I was in such a unique position of the endurance you know being an endurance athlete and then also playing major league baseball we would stop into these different areas and major minor league stadiums and we worked with the teams to find youth activity organizations where we would hand out checks to so we were going into you know we went into Jesus started

in San Rafael but we San Rafael Oakland San Francisco Sacramento uh Salt Lake City we went to Omaha Nebraska um Chicago Cubs they were freaking unbelievable with us. Ended up going to South Bend, Indiana. We went to Toledo, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and ended up finishing in Yankee Stadium. And so all the while, we were raising money as we were going. We were biking. My boy Kowalski's sitting over there, but he was by my side for a lot of it. We were biking 100 to 150 miles a day and running 30 to 40 a day. And we were doing it just to be able to get to the next town, to be able to deliver these checks.

And it was a pretty cool thing. But the whole let them play thing, if you guys remember, you remember Bad News Bears? Yeah. So breaking training when the guy was at the astrodome and he's on the field they just like they were trying to kick the kids off the field um and then you know one of the coach goes out there and he's like let them play so i thought it was kind of a cool different uh cool element of you know that being baseball related um yet at the same time you know our

whole message is let the kids play because right now if you look at all the numbers it's not happening kids are spending seven to nine hours a day on screens and we as parents we we as teachers we as educators like we're we're facilitating this and there's it's not like we can sit back and go oh you know it's not our fault the kids are just into the screen no it is our fault we we we have to do everything in our power to make sure they understand what real play is, what movement, what activity does to the brain to help them learn. It's really interesting. I feel like when I was growing up, I talk about it all the time,

like the first thing I ever tried to do to organize like not really a business, but in kind of that manner it was organize a street hockey team where my court played everyone else's court and that was how we were going to decide like who was king of the jungle like who could play street hockey the best and now I go outside and there's not a single kid in my neighborhood playing and you see people and I just I'm like I want it like being a new dad I'm like if no one else is playing with you I'll be the dad out there that just like why why can't the adults go play kickball in the court why can't but everybody just stays inside it's so easy so

free play is pretty close to non-existent these days and you know i think one there's a few different reasons for it number one it's it's the ipad it's the it's the devices that it's a lot easier for me to give you a device and to say go away for three hours right and you'll go bury yourself and god knows what digital babysitter exactly and the kid the kids will lose themselves in it um i think there's also uh an issue economically there's a gap where you know it's a lot more affordable just to give you that device and pay a couple hundred bucks and you know that's it whereas you'll see you know the wealthier families now look a lot of them they're getting their kids outside and playing to an extent but a lot of that's turned into travel ball a lot of it's turned into like really expensive sort of things.

So, you know, one of the things that we wanted to do is make sure that every kid had the opportunity to play because the more you went into these impoverished communities, the more physical education and recess was cut down out of their times, especially obviously in public education. So there's a huge issue there. I think ultimately, you know, the free play thing is parents, it's us parents wanting to have control. It's us parents saying, oh, okay, well, instead of like us boys just getting together and we're going to go out and play street hockey

or we're going to go out and get a wiffle ball game going in the backyard, it's like, oh, hey, we'll start a fall ball league and we'll do this and that. And I don't know, man. And I'll say one thing that like my kids playing soccer right now my eight-year-old and he loves baseball loves it and just wants to go out every day and practice yeah and so when i'm home i i'm in and so i'll take them out i'll throw a batting practice five balls ground balls whatever he wants to do we'll play. We'll play games with tennis balls, you know, the whole bit. And it's almost sad how few times I've seen other kids out there. It's brutal.

There's five fields. Yeah, I was going to say there's baseball diamonds that are just empty. Everywhere. Empty. Everywhere. Soccer fields and no one's playing. And I think there's also a really big problem with you talk about free play the structured play is also a problem the kids can't go and be creative

and just make the game up like my dad built a baseball field in our backyard and it was literally like just free reign we just play home run derby now and we don't put we don't use a bat we're going to go to the construction site and find pvc pipe that they're throwing out and now we have to go to the country club to steal tennis balls and now we got a bucket of tennis balls we got a fence we got a bunch of trees they're going to play you know basically they block the home runs and that we we made our game up and now we've got our own world series every single day and that just there's when there's empty baseball fields and when there's empty soccer fields, nobody's out there being creative.

Nobody's getting the movement side. But the problem with the structure side is like, you're talking about schools, like that, the teachers probably would love it. But now you're, you're getting into government and funding. How do you guys tackle that problem? Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So our first thought was that we didn't want to deal with the bureaucracy of having to try to fight the government, having to go through that element.

And then I think the one thing we learned after we finished the trip across the country, and we happened to be going back through West Virginia, of all places, and we're pretty sure if you look, like, your BC rates are the highest in the country, which is kind of baffling a little bit because I don't know if you guys have ever been through West Virginia, but it's gorgeous. Wild and wonderful.

I'm looking at these hills and mountains and rivers. I'm like, man, I need to get outside. I'm going to start climbing. So we actually went by the state capitol just randomly. And we walked in and kind of looking around. And we walked into this office. And we were in the governor's office. And the receptionist was there. She's like, hi, can we help you?

How can I help you? I said, I have a question. I said, is physical education mandatory, you know, in this state? And, you know, she's like, well, I don't know, like this and that. And so we end up looking it up like right there. I'm like, well, it says here is whatever it was. It was like, you know, you guys require two days a week. Like, why not five days a week? She's like, well, I don here, whatever it was, it was like, you guys require two days a week. Like, why not five days a week?

She's like, well, I don't know. And I'm like, I'm just curious. Is there a chance that I don't even know, I forget what his name was. Is there a chance, like, Bob's going to be around this afternoon? And I was just kind of playing with this. And I walked out of there. You were just being charismatic. Yeah, joking around.

How do I get into that door over there? And I realized realize i said you know what we can't fucking do something about this we can make a difference and so you know one of the one of the thoughts after that is that hey look what one of these you know ultra wacky crazy endurance events that you know we decide to put together um the next one, there's a very good chance it's going to involve going to state capitals and ideally having meetings with, if it's not the governor, some major influential figure in that state

because it's state mandatory laws is what it requires. And so what's happened is when funding gets cut, the first thing to go is physical education, art, music. And really, like, those are the last three things that we should be taking away from our kids. That's everything. That's the artistic side of the brain that we're shutting off. And what we don't realize is that that side, once we get that side, that actually helps the other side because what they're trying to do and the reason why they keep cutting it is they're like, okay, if we need to get higher test scores

and we get more funding and then that means more math, math, math, math, math, well, guess what? These kids aren't going to be performing the way they should be performing on math because you're sticking them in a classroom for eight hours a day. You're not letting them outside. Half the kids don't even learn that way. No. Most of the kids, you sit them in a chair and you're just like, you can just tell.

The system is failing them right away. Why? Is it the same thing in private schools? Because I went to a private high school and it was mandatory that we played sports. Every single day you were either in the gym training for whatever your most important sport was or, but every single day there was a physical activity that you had to do whether it was a sport for the season training for your sport you were at the rink playing sticks and pucks whatever it is but there was something mandatory that we had to do

every day we had to check in and physical activity was like a mandatory piece of the curriculum is that even remotely close to still true in the private school setting? It's more true than in the public school setting. Because their funding is different. But it's not perfect. It's not perfect by any means. Our kids go to an independent private school that we're constantly struggling to survive as a school, too. And the school's not cheap. It's like $15,000, $20, grand a year for these kids to go to school.

But it's tough because it's, you know, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, you got to pay the teachers enough to be able to afford to live. And that goes back to the whole minor league thing, man. Like, how, now one of the things they did in the minor leagues like we had we had host families i couldn't afford rent right we had host families that were that were supporting us so it's it's this delicate balance and then you know even there it's you know how much time do we have to devote to to physical education how much time do we have to devote to recess and

one of the issues I know, because my wife is on the board of the school, is, look, when you have recess, you need to pay the teachers to watch. That's supposed to be their off time. And so it's a balancing act that we have to do what's right. And I think ultimately,

when it comes down to it, it's not about us. Screw the bureaucracy. All the other stuff. It's about the kids what's best for the kids let's figure out what's best for the kids let's give it to them i feel like you have to align what's best for the kids with this with some type of incentive that makes it also the best for the teachers and and the administration etc it's like they're they're staying in classrooms longer than they used to cutting out physical activity they're all trying to like you know get the best scores on all these standardized tests and their teachers are measured against their performance on the standardized test and they don't see how how the

physical activity they would do during recess directly correlates to improve test scores okay so i'll give you guys one example so in the documentary that's coming out it's called let them play a triathlon across america we've done two screenings so far that, you know, I'm really stoked with that. I can't. The product is unbelievable. It really brings light to the epidemic. Again, like kind of highlights the story of the triathlon across the country last year. But there's a school that the producer went into and in Pagosa, Colorado.

And every 17 minutes, they actually have it mandatory in their school that they take brain breaks so they literally would like stand up like this and they're like all right like give me 10 dopamine jumps one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and then before school they have this guy uh this older teacher that gets up in a Captain America costume, and he goes on top of the roof, and it's like snowing outside. And here he is, and he's leading like, jumping up, and spinning around. And so they implemented this thing, right,

where they had a preschool, before school started, activity group, and they were kind of the case study, and they wanted to see how that affected their test scores. So all they did was that, and everything else was the same. It wasn't more studying, whatever. That group improved dramatically. So then what they did, obviously, they implemented it for everybody. So then the whole school, which had like these really low test scores,

ended up just killing it. And so they're on a mission now to champion the same sort of thing to other school districts across the country just to make sure that we understand that movement is so vital in learning. How do you guys uh just in your vision how do you define success of um the let them play movement that you're creating is it an hour a day half an hour a day number of schools like where are you guys looking for um just metrics on making a difference yeah i think like anything else in life, we need to stay in the moment and

not get too far ahead of ourselves. And I think that each day, if we can figure out a way to help kids get active anywhere, we're winning. And I don't think that this is going to change overnight. Devices aren't going away. They're seriously addictive and it's a problem. So the question has become, like, we have to give them something else to do. So, you know, whatever that is, however it is, I just think that we need to do everything in our power to get these kids out. Now, I'll give you an example for the golf. So this was a 24-hour golf event and what we did was we had 10 different local sports

youth sports teams come out and a normal round was five miles and so they had to run around with us to and then once they finished the round it was like the half-moon bay football team for example comes out runs around yeah boom here's a check for a thousand bucks boys that is my i'm on the road traveling like go to conditioning work just find a golf course and run it yeah and it's five miles ish every single time it's like gorgeous scenery everywhere you go might be a deer running across every once in a while i love it it's my favorite it's hot you're gonna sweat a lot it running across every once in a while. I love it. It's my favorite. It's hot. You're going to sweat a lot. It's the best. You've got a big team out there following you around.

How many – what were, like, the rules? I'm very interested in you playing 420 holes of golf in 24 hours or whatever. Yeah, the rule – Do you carry three clubs with you? No, just one. A woman's eight iron. Nice. It had a really big back to it, so it had a bunch of juice.

And then it was really light, too. It had a loft where I could get out of a sand trap if I had to. I could also close the club face down and hit it about 220 yards if I really got it. Nice. So, you know, it was – the rules were the most difficult part because just putting the whole thing together. So when you involve Guinness, and we had Guinness come out, obviously to verify it. And it's incredible.

You're talking about Guinness Book of World Records, not Guinness. Stop. I'm sorry. We had four – Sponsors for kids sponsor that's right no but we definitely enjoyed some guinness type beverages after we finished totally but uh we had uh we had to have four there's four witnesses at all times and one golf professional so at all times I was flanked by four different witnesses and one golf professional now Now the kicker was this.

The four witnesses and the golf professional could only work in four-hour increments. So we had to have six different versions of that. So we had to line up like 24 people to come out to witness it. And then the golf professional had to sit there to count the strokes and make sure i played technically by by all by all the rules and you know obviously see the ball into the hole and everything there were some rules i think that definitely helped me um geez tremendously one of them is that you don't have to take the flag out anymore yeah when you putt the other one is

if you have a lost ball instead of having to go back to the last spot and hit it where you lost your ball you now had a uh you could drop and take a two-stroke penalty yeah um so there was there were some things that you know obviously just kind of made for a long there were times where i'd find my ball and we had we had i mean i said five, six people at a time, but realistically I felt like we had bare minimum like 30 to 50 people at all times for the course of the night even. And it was super cool. I mean, I don't think I would have ever done it if I had to go out there by myself to do it. The juice that I got from, number one, having the 10 different sports teams.

So if you think about that, I played 24 rounds, right? So I think it was 23 rounds and eight holes or 23 rounds, six holes. But the 10 different sports teams that came out, that's 10 rounds. That's 10 rounds that I got the juice of all the kids. I mean, the Pescadero girls softball team doing these chants behind me i believe in you too too i believe in you 22 is my number when i played and yeah it was just it was probably nice to have that fresh set of energy every time you get done with the round every time every time so it was it was a i know it sounds you know as an individual feat and

ultimately you know my name is the one that's going to go in there but we ordered i think gee i i think we ordered like 20 different uh guinness book of world record certificates to hand out to all the different people so it's uh it was pretty cool you know back to the uh the kids and the foundation and all that i'd imagine you having an eight-year-old like you're you're as a son yeah yeah. So your son probably grew up in a slightly different culture and environment coming up, being raised by you. You're, you're passionate about movement and physical activity. So, you know, his upbringing is probably different than a lot of kids who just don't have a parent that's as passionate as you are about that. But you probably, I'd imagine, face many of the same challenges all parents face, like with, you know, your kid probably still, even though he likes to

play outside and whatnot, he probably still thinks iPads are cool. I love movement. I love training. I think iPads are pretty rad. So how do you just steer him away from it but at the same time accept the fact that iPads are just a cool device and everyone thinks they're cool? How do you find a balance there where you're not like – I think you set the time a day. And it's like, all right, dude, we're going to give gonna give you an hour go get it you want to watch a show uh my wife does a really

good job of managing that i have a uh nine a nine and ten year old daughter too so there's you know i have an eight nine and ten year old that the ten year old three kids in three years yeah there we're gonna be learning here he's got that. Irish triplets. Just fire them out. So my oldest one, I can't get her off the book. Oh, gosh. She just reads. She's a real paper book. She just reads.

That's awesome. That's good. And that's exactly it. It's like, I mean, I can't stop this. Yeah. But she's a gnarly ski racer, too. And she's very meticulous about what she does. And it's funny cause she's,

I would say of all my kids, she has a really conservative personality and then she gets on the mountain. She just fricking rips. And it's, I think it's like her outlet of, of letting go. But you know, I got this middle child that's wild as could be.

She walks to the beat of her own drum. And she's literally, I mean, she's a wildflower. Like, she's crazy. And I can't tell you, you know, one thing I've learned with the three kids is that I never thought that I would have three kids that are so different. Right? Like, they're just three completely different sort of individuals. And then, you know, my boy is like a little mini me and it's been, um,

it's been cool, but yeah, it's just, I feel like that's a running theme with anyone that has kids that they're like, dude, they just come at, they just come out of the box different.

They're just, they just are like, doesn't the upbringing can be very similar. They're just different people. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think ultimately if it,

you know, if there's parents listening to this or whatever, do everything you're on our power, uh, take responsibility for it listening to this or whatever, do everything in our power. Take responsibility for it, too. And don't just blame it on the kid. Because if you're letting this happen, you're facilitating. Now, just like anything else, right, if we're going to take alcohol away from an alcoholic, you know, or cigarettes or chewing tobacco away from someone who is addicted to nicotine, you have to give them an alternative.

And if you don't give them an alternative, they're going to melt. And so if you're going to take TV or your iPad away from your kid, have an activity ready for them to do. Have an idea. Give them something. And that's so often it's like, oh, well, go figure it out. Yeah, there's been times I shoved them outside and said, figure it out. But for the most part, it's like, hey, dude, let's go toss a football around.

Or, you know, to one of my girls, like, whatever it is, hey, let's walk down to the beach. Let's go do this or do that. And it's like, oh, okay. But it's funny because they get in that trance. And I know you guys have felt that trance, like when you're looking at your phone too long or computer screen too long, you just start to lose your mind. And it's tough to get out of. You go through that, like, rhythm.

Your thumb just goes in the same circle over and over and over again. You're like, ah, get me out. I'm in the Matrix. I'm stuck in Instagram. Get me out of here. Yeah. I feel like it's much easier to get my kids outside when I'm actually home. Like, right now I'm on the road.

I'm in Tahoe. My wife, their mom, is at home watching three kids. And so she's taking care of three kids. It's harder to, like kids and so she she's taking care of three kids like it's just it's harder to like go play when you only have when you've taken care of three kids you got a lot of responsibilities like outside of just playing with your kids all the time like i know you travel quite a bit like how how does your wife handle that when you're on the road i think you said it right i don't know there's that you've got to let go a little bit, right? Because you can't try to micromanage everything. She knows what we're both committed to

and how we're committed to raising our children. So, look, they have activities all day, though. And it's karate to soccer, soccer to baseball. During the winter, we live up here in tahoe and it's you know for my boy it's it's snowboarding it's snowboarding to skiing uh for the girls it's you know skiing they're horseback riding i mean it's it's there's always kind of something going on and so you have these structured activities and then there's also that time when you let go and you say okay there's you know what here's a couple hours of just kind of free play and if you guys want to watch a show or you want to get on the ipad or whatever you want

to do the thing that like makes me like really happy is when like when i when i my dad used to always tell me i just try to catch your kids doing something right i'm like huh and so like when i catch my middle one the wild child right when i when i i see her sitting there like with her dolls and they're talking and playing. And she's nine, so she's getting kind of out of that stage. But when I still see her in it, there's nothing better. It's just a mad, like, think about what we've got to do with our minds to put ourselves into this crazy, awesome, imaginative sort of state.

I just started seeing stuff like that with my 14-month-old. She'll just be lost in some toy, playing with these little things. I'm like, you're doing it. Keep going. Stay there. Don't come out into the real world. So cool. I want to take another quick break just to talk about our sponsors

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Back to the show. Dude, when you're doing this triathlon across America, something that is that long, the media kind of picks up to it. Your word gets out that you're doing it. Did you feel a momentum kind of building as you were going across the country and start to feel a lot more support kind of middle way through all the way to the East Coast? Yeah, for sure. You said it right. Like as you go, like it's like, dude, what's this guy doing right and so you're going city to city i think i think it really picked up in in chicago yeah and we went there and we were on wgn and um was on the i was on the cubs broadcast and they gave me a

really sort of big platform to to champion the foundation and champion exactly what we were doing. And so we had a lot of attention on us as we were doing the run on a daily basis. I was trying to capture all of it on Instagram, story times. There were some dark days. Yeah, what goes on in your brain in that many days on the road? You know what? Not just on the road, running and spending a lot of time with yourself yeah I think the the thing that really got me at least physically was you know when we started running we were running 30 or 40 miles a day and I hadn't run a month because I was biking

every day and so obviously you're using different muscles there and you know the endurance my endurance capacity was awesome of course because I'm biking 100, 150 a day. So all of a sudden, I'm running and all that pounding. So I think it was like the third day, I went like 30. I went, geez, we did like 35 the first day, backed up with like a 32. And then I was trying to get to the Golden Dome at Notre Dame. And we could have come up short. And I'm like, nah, man, I'm getting there, right?

And so we cranked it, and I ended up going like 38 miles, 37, 38 miles to get to Notre Dame for the third day in a row. And I woke up the next morning. Is this the same setup you have on MLB Network? Two dudes. Two dudes. Working on some lighting here. I like it.

I like it. Thanks, bros. There we go. Just a little break in the action here sorry to mess you up we got an umbrella up now on our beautiful coffee table or on our picnic table here sorry go ahead all good so anyway i know i end up waking up the next day and my my achilles was the size of a grapefruit and so the question was like dude like dude, what am I going to do? Like, how do I continue to go on? Now, the good thing was I was a little bit ahead of pace of where I was supposed to be.

So we went back to the spot where I finished and, you know, just kind of went back. Right when we put the umbrella up, it gets super windy. You're good. It won't come out of here. You're good. Just went back to the premise of ultra running, which is like one foot in front of the other. And so once this is the amazing thing is that once I started going and it was

like one mile, like slosh through, like shuffle through the first mile. And then I get picked up a little in the second, third. But as I got going, I noticed that the blood was flowing and as the blood was flowing like my pace would get better so i i'd start these things out just

going dude this is awful to no man i'm cruising i'm cruising i'm cruising so there was a couple times where i got towards the end of the day and i was like i want to keep, I want to keep going. I want to keep going. And, you know, literally I'd have my wife like, get in the van. And what's crazy is that there's not a doctor in America that would have told me to run on had I gone in and showed them what was going on with my Achilles. And within like a seven-day period, it healed itself. And so think about that. Like this is an injury that they would someone would have told me like dude you're you're done running for months uh it's you're gonna blow it out you're

gonna you know not gonna be able to walk for the rest of your life this or that and so when you have the mentality sometimes and i my mentality at least for this was, was fuck it. If I got to crawl to New York, I'll crawl to New York. I don't care. Uh, if it goes, it goes. And we push our body past perceived limits. And if you think about the whole recovery process in anything that any sort of training that we do, uh, recovery happens when blood flows. And so long as we're able to continue to get the blood flowing, then we are going to recover. And so in that sense, like here's all this blood that rushed down to my Achilles that said, dude, you're pounding me. You're pounding. You're pounding me. I can't take this. And then now you're circulating fresh blood. So it's almost like the same concept and idea of PRP, right? I think that's PRP. I said

it right. And I've talked to a few doctors about this because I wanted them to explain to me how or why they thought I would have been able to run on in this sense. And they said exactly that. They're like, no way we would have recommended you do it. But if you were to tell me that it quote unquote miraculously got better in a week's time, that's exactly what happened is you kept circulating in the blood. The blood never stopped circling. So also when I got done,

one of the things I did every single night and every single morning was I got the Norma tech boots, which would, you know, again, all this blood's rushing down to my legs because I'm pounding them and it's circulating the blood within the legs. And the other crazy

crazy thing you know that happened is I got stronger as I went on yeah and um you know my endurance at the end of this thing was just way better than you know even when I started how much of it do you think is even a physical battle I mean you had an injury in the middle of it but I feel like the mental side of it and just the ability to wake up the next day and go run another 40 miles is just such a beating that it would almost i i don't know what it's like come day 40 day 50 whatever whatever it is but i feel like that would almost put me like into a depression of like man i did this yesterday and I still have 20 more of these to go. Like, how is there an end? Is this thing worth it still? Yeah. You can't think about the 20 more. I think we did a really

good job of just focusing on what we were going to do that day. And so long as we did that, we realized, okay, there's, you know, there's, there's 32 today. All right, this is what we're going to do. And let's, let's just, let's just go. And so if you think about it, like, I think the most successful people in life are extremely routine oriented. They don't, there's not thought that goes into not a lot of thought that goes into, um, to action and it's action because the thought had, whatever it was, had taken place far before. And so if you sit there and meditate on it or dwell on it or, you know, fear of the anticipation, you're not going to do it. So when you get into a routine, it was literally, I was getting up and running, you know, 30, 40 miles a day.

It was as easy as getting up and brushing my teeth and flossing and then eating breakfast. And, like, it's just everything with that that that that and I really didn't think much of it and you you put your mind into that state of it's just what we're going to do today and I'm going to enjoy it and so one of the things we did too instead of looking at like the big number is we would go five mile increments and so if I was feeling sexy, maybe starting off, I'd tell my wife and the crew, like,

hey, I'll see you guys 10 miles down the road today. Maybe I wasn't feeling so great. Like, hey, let's meet like three miles up. And there was a lot of it too where, you know, I didn't carry any water or nutrition on me and I just relied on the crew to supply that. And I think that, you know, to have't carry any water or nutrition on me, and I just relied on the crew to supply that. And I think that, you know, to have it supported that way, like there's dudes and chicks and all that, like,

have gone across the country self-supported. Like, that's next level. And I got a lot of respect for those people. And, you know, but to have that support, you know, meant everything. And it also allowed me to be able to get to these stadiums on time to deliver the grants, to be able to do the media interviews, to get in front of people. And that was, you know, that meant everything. You mentioned earlier kind of the stoic philosophy. When did you start doing most people find that philosophy and big transitions in life

but you know when did you find that adopt that mentality and really start working from that place I think there was a couple different things I think number one it probably goes back to my my upbringing and my dad was a 4-3 black belt in keppel karate. And he was really, really into mental performance. And so, you know, there was books that he was giving me, you know, ancient martial arts books that he'd give me to read. And so I got into it a little bit, and so it sort of had this Far Eastern approach towards sports psychology and then combined that with The Mental Game of Baseball, which was a book that I got when I was a kid.

Harvey Dorfman and Carl Keel wrote it. Carl Keel ended up being a big mentor of mine for a long time, all through my entire big league career until he passed in 2008. But that was the base. I didn't know what it was, but that was a base of it. And then when I got into doing the ultra endurance sports and started delving into all sorts of books and other things, and then kept seeing, you know, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, and, you know, these quotes come up, and then I got into reading a lot of Ryan Holiday's books, and Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy.

You know, he has the new one called Stillness is the Key, and I had an opportunity to meet Ryan and, you know, just really kind of the communication back and forth. We just email back and forth, really. Lance Armstrong is a buddy of mine. He was a mutual friend with Ryan and then figured out that I'd read a couple of his books and linked us up. And it's weird because I don't want to, you know, maybe it's biweekly communication, but it's just something that goes back and forth between the two of us and just bouncing ideas and stuff off of each other and what's crazy is that like you know all this stuff that Ryan writes about or

you know that I you know champion in the daily hustle it's it's just 2,000 years old man like this isn't stuff that that we all of a sudden create and there's this new approach to life that is going to bring happiness and fulfillment to all of us. This has been around for a really long time. I just think we as a society have gotten away from it and we try to control everything. We look for easy things. We look for easy things all the time. We're afraid to step outside of our comfort zone you know i think the two main principles for anyone listening who

uh don't really understand what stoic philosophy is but basically there's two main guiding you know i'd say phrases um of stoic philosophy number one is amor fati and it means love your fate like love your fate no matter what happens to you like like whatever it is in life, because there's so much that we can't control, like love it and enjoy it. And it's crazy how powerful that is that puts us on this this path that's going to be a lot more enlightened than if you're trying to resist everything and hate everything and how poor me and you're always the victim. It's just not just love everything that happens to you, because especially even the dark dark times are the ones that you know really kind of let us know who we are and the other one is momentum or e means we all will die and i think even stoics i don't think they said this to to scare people i don't think they said it to um you know in this totally morbid sort of way, I think the concept of Momentum Marie is live. Live each and every fucking day

because it's not always going to be there for you. And at some point, it's going to end for all of us. No one, no one has gotten out of here alive. So when you realize that, when all of a sudden you go home after a long day or a long weekend or this or that and you're sitting around you know your kids are maybe you know irritating you at some point and the wife's you know it's just like and you feel this stress inside you're like coming to the moment and be like hey look

you know what life's not always perfect but how freaking cool is it that we're all sitting here? And that's, you know, that, that, that, that little shit over there that, you know, won't stop, you know, bugging me. Like, you're like that, like I created that thing and like, this is awesome. And just, it's just life. Like we all need to sit there back and, and celebrate life for what it is. And it's not, not necessarily even what we think it should be. And, you know, ultimately the other thing is it just comes down to, like, coming in the moment, feeling the air through the nostrils. That's a trick that I always go back to, and I did that in baseball too. I think the difference between now and when I play baseball is I did a lot

of these things, but I didn't know what I was doing. There wasn't really an answer for it. It takes a little time for the wisdom piece to come in. When you look ahead for the foundation, you guys have a documentary coming out. Where can people find that?

A little bit of the story behind where the documentary came from. I assume you had to pitch it to some director to get a whole crew to follow you around. When I start my documentary, how do I do it? I assume you had to pitch it to some director to get a whole crew to follow you around. Yeah. So when I start my documentary, now I know how to do it. How do I do it? Yeah.

You know what's cool, though, is that, like, if you have a vision, right, that goes beyond yourself, I think that's what got all of us excited about doing the doc. There's actually a documentary that I was involved with called Diamond to the Rough. It was all about my transition from playing baseball to doing the Western States 100. That's across all the platforms. Basically, I don't think it's on, at least it's on Apple TV and you get on Vimeo and whatever. But what I learned through that experience is that we were really proud of this doc and we thought it did a really good job and the reason was had nothing to do with me had to do with the message and so like the message of the transition

of like we all are going to hit a crossroads in our life where we're going to have to try to figure out what's next and diamond to the rough like really highlights that message so it's still to this day i mean on a on a daily if not daily then you know at least weekly basis i get messages and sometimes several messages like hey man like diamond to the rough is has really freaking put me in the right direction of you know i was in this spot in my life and i didn't really know what i was going to do and now i've you know i'm doing this or I'm doing that or whatever it is. I mean, anything from the guy that was 350 pounds, it just started, you know, with one foot in front of the other in the walk.

Because the whole concept of that, it's like it's not about running a 100-mile race. It's about finding something to do. And it's about moving. It's about just getting going. And it's about the start, right? It's a start that always stops us. And so then the whole thing with Let them play in this triathlon across the country

and when i was talking to a guy that was gonna produce it eric cochran from ty cooley productions him and i were going back and forth we were working on another project um and i was helping out with another project he had going about this kid a baseball player with no no hands and no feet well really landis sims his name freaking stud uh and so i pitched this to him i said hey man i said look so i'm going we're doing this thing i'm going across the country we only had about you know maybe a month before we were about to leave and i asked him i said would you be interested in in filming it and capturing some of it and i don't know exactly what i want to do with it yet and um you know ideally we'd like to use it as some kind of promotional piece so for the foundation

and so originally I paid him a certain amount of money uh to capture a certain amount of days and once we got to those days he goes I'm in and so he then funded the rest of it and the post-production and everything. And so we have this partnership, which is nice because we're both invested into it. And then the foundation is really the one I think ideally, if we can get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible, that's gonna benefit so yeah it's a it's a process but it's also well i think easier than you guys think i we put together diamond of the rough in like a four month period won the judge's choice award at the um monarch film festival in pebble beach um which obviously super proud of we got into all these these other film festivals. So we have the little Bad Star and everything.

So this one right here, as much as I love Diamond of the Rough, this one right here I think is freaking next level. And I just say that because, well, number one, the story is freaking cool. I should say number two, the story is cool. Number one, the message is fucking awesome. The idea of bringing this plight of youth inactivity to light is everything

and has a potential to make legislators think twice when it comes to making physical education mandatory. Man, I just think about that problem. And it's such a big one because we talked about it just a little bit ago, just how simple it is to do nothing. You just sit there and turn the iPad on, and it just talks to you. You don't even have to talk to it. You just press the button and something happens, but you're not actually doing anything. There's no physical product or action that's being taken. And it's so simple. And you, when you see parents,

like chasing that their kids have no role models to actually follow of getting outside and taking action, doing something, going and playing, there's no, there's no actual model for them to follow. And I think people when they actually get out and take action, someone that's in the public eye like you are, that can really go and, you know, just bring light and shed some light on what these problems are. It makes a massive impact. I mean, and to be able to do it through an entertainment and a documentary, a movie, I'm a documentary junkie. It just, it really makes an impact that people can like, oh, I just have to do something. It doesn't need to be go play major league baseball it can just be i get up and go for a walk every night there has to be just some

action taken and create some sort of model inside your household that kids can follow because right now they just don't have anything yeah i think it's on us i just help put together routines for them and i've tried with my kids and it's it's difficult because you help put together routines for them. And I've tried with my kids, and it's difficult because, you know, I try to get them to run a mile every day, and I did it at least during the summer. And I try to get them to run a mile with me every day during the triathlon across America, and especially on the run portion. And first few days, like, nothing. It's like, guys are going to come out and run with me.

And now, granted, it was 110 degrees, miserably hot outside, which is, you know, we dealt with some crazy, crazy weather conditions and whatever. But, you know, then one day, all three just hopped out of the van and just started running. And then the next day, they did it again. And the next day, they did it again. And the next day, they did it again. And the next day, they did it again. And it's like, we can try to tell kids whatever we want, right?

Like this is the way, this is the way, this is the way. I saw – I used this in a Daily Hustle the other day. I believe it was a Voltaire quote. It was like, you know, it was tell me and I forget, show me and I understand. You know, and then it was like – some of them someone was like let me do it and I learn yeah and it wasn't the exact quote but it was pretty damn close and the whole idea is that let them experience running for themselves let them experience that little runner's high that that we get at some point that says wow hold, hold on a second, man, I feel great after doing this. And no, it's not always pleasurable. And even as much as I run, I can't

say that I love every single mile. But what I really do love is that feeling when I'm done after each and every one of them. And even obviously the feeling that you get during, and, and that's a euphoric high. Now, all of us in life, I think, you know, the idea is to find sustained highs and, and that's what really kind of we're all looking for because these quick

fixes are like, they're not real. And that's why I caution people with quote unquote, the, like the life hacks, like just be careful because there's no really such thing as a hack like there's might that hack might work for a short period of time but ultimately unless you make this a part of your life and it becomes a lifestyle it's gonna go

away it's like diets right diets are the perfect example of the hacks you can hack where you could you know lose 20 30 pounds just like that and guess what you know a year later you're 40 pounds heavier yeah i mean you're mentioning the lifestyle piece like being a role model to your kids like if you if you train five days a week then your your kids just think you know going for runs and going to the gym and doing whatever is is totally normal if you're just trying to get your kids to go outside but then you never go outside yourself like you're telling them to go scooter and ride their bikes but you never go scooter with them or ride their bike with them. Like there's a disconnect there, which leads me to a more interesting question.

Do you know of any schools where they have like mandatory recess for the kids where the entire staff and administration also takes a break and they go outside and they're playing tag and they're doing yoga or whatever they're doing, like they're setting the example for the kids. They can see, oh, look at fucking Principal Jeffrey over there is playing basketball on his 15-minute break just like we are playing basketball on our 15-minute break or it's like the kids go play, but then there's no one setting the example at the upper level. That's brilliant. And I'm going to take it right to my wife on the way home. I swear to you.

We have a new idea. I'm calling her because she's on the board of of of our school and i'm going to tell her i'd say hey how about how about and they just got we just put this whole new outdoor space area and that's one of the things too you want to provide an environment that kids want to play in yeah right yeah it's they don't need much yeah but if you can provide an environment and we just did this whole new outdoor space thing at their school but i i 100 believe in that even if it's like just one of the recesses out of the day for a 10 minute period of time where the teachers and the kids get out

there and do the activity together and guess what that's also going to make the teachers better at their job that's going to make them more highly functioning and more acceptable for, you know, obviously the multiple personalities that they have to deal with on a daily basis. And I couldn't imagine how irritated they get at times. But one of the ways to relieve stress and anxiety, you know, number one, it's just getting out. I wrote about this the other day just getting outside yeah just even even us sitting here like getting so much cooler right that's a testosterone booster yeah like just feeling this feeling the sun on your face like

just feeling the fresh air it's like every time we go out to eat when we're on these trips like we just sit outside can we just get in the sun it just makes you feel so much better that's why socal was so nice too i'm sitting in the, I feel like I'm in a video game, and you can see, like, my life bar at the top of the screen. And, like, I get in the sun, and it's like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I'm, like, just filling up. Like, I got the force field. I just took, like, the magic elixir that, like, takes me from 20% life back to 100% life.

It fuels me, man. Yeah. I love the sun. Where can people find out about the movie, the foundation, everything? Yeah, I'd say just start at ericburns.com, E-R-I-C-B-Y-R-N-E-S.com. Right on the front page, I believe, is the sign-up for the daily hustle. You put your email address in, but you could go around the page. I mean, we got the book there, Effortless, Life Lessons from a Human Crash Test Dummy,

which is basically, you know, I started riding. It's a passion of mine, but I started riding in 2011. My dad passed away just suddenly and, you know, totally unexpected and was obviously going through a major transitional period of my life, not playing professional baseball anymore. And I started reflecting on a lot of the things that, you know, had happened. And over the course of the next seven years, just kind of I had these really cool compilation of stories um and but I didn't just want this to be an autobiography it's like what value if I just

tell you guys to read it like are you guys going to get out of it and so I went back and spent like two years um going back and pulling the lessons out. And that's where their short chapter is easy to read. My wife calls it a bathroom book. Like it's just – it's pretty cool. But then there will be a link to Diamond of the Rough there. You can watch the trailer to the Let Them Play documentary, all the up-to-date information coming out on that. October 10th is the screening in Nashville.

The tickets are free. Of all the screenings that we do, and we're going to do probably in the range of like 10 before the official release, they're all going to be free. We're not going to charge a dollar. Our concept and idea for this is to really try to just get people excited. So ideally we want to fill the theaters up with you know two to four hundred people have them get excited so when the official release actually does happen then you know people are going to want to go out and have heard about this or whatever so um the trailers

the trailer's impactful and it's like i you know i'm not huge on social media by any means, but we put that trailer up, and within a short period of time it had like 200,000 views on it, and it hit. I mean, there's very few things I've ever put up that have ever gotten those kind of numbers. But I think it resonates with a lot of people. So even if you want to see the trailer, go to the website. It's also, I think I have it, that's my pinned tweet there. But yeah. He was like, oh, Twitter, Instagram.

I'm dying. Just go see the movie. Go to the website. It's like it's pinned. I don't know. There's so many things. All the places. It is.

It's tough. You guys know. You got to do it is it's tough you guys you guys know but it's it's you got you got to do it it's it's communication it's it's all these different outlets now um i've i've embraced it to an extent uh you know i obviously i've like most people i find instagram at least a little bit more rewarding and more personal yeah than a lot of the other stuff where Twitter is a lot more newsy. Yeah. I use that a lot for my job. You know, Facebook stuff, I just link to it.

Terrifying. Yeah. Jeez. It's a good one. But overall, it's a really cool world that we live in. Yeah. Right? Because we're so totally connected. Yeah.

But I also think there's an element. It's like, man, like we're so totally connected. Yeah. But I also think there's an element, it's like, man, we've never been so connected yet so distanced. Totally. Yet,

I don't. Because no one plays together. Look at this, face-to-face interaction, looking into the lights of your eyes. Like, that doesn't happen

all that often. We can sit down and have some cool long-form conversation. That's why we go on the road and do this. That's right. Brilliant.

In person only. That's the way to do it. Doug Larson, where can I find you? Find me on Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. Come to Anders, at Anders Varner, because I'm Anders Varner, at Shrug Collective, because we're the Shrug Collective. OneTonChallenge.com.

Snatch clean jerks, squat that bench, add them all up. 2,000 pounds, 1,200 for you ladies. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Eric Burns. Make sure you get over to Let Them Play. Check out his awesome foundation. Follow him on Instagram.

Also, onceonchallenge.com forward slash join. 12 months. Strongest year of your life. PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. Also want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Our good friends at the Air Force. Airforce.com forward slash shrugged. Our good friends at the Air Force, Airforce.com forward slash special ops.

Momentous $20 off your first order of protein. Livemomentous.com forward slash shrugged. And then, of course, whoop.com. Use the coupon code shrugged to save $30 on a 12 or 18 month subscription. That's it friends. We had a blast. I'm going to talk to you next Wednesday.