EverydaySpy Podcast - Meet The Exercise Scientist Behind The EverydaySpy Fitness System!

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/4ffYFzN Learn more from Alex: https://everydayspy.com/alex I'm super excited to introduce you to the exercise scientist who keeps me and Jihi in top physical fitness shape – Alex Van Houten! Alex has an awesome story of fighting a genetic disorder, overcoming chronic pain, and living out his faith in his work and his personal life. If you are fit, were fit, or want to get fit, don't miss this awesome conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exercise science is the study of how our body adapts to the things that we do. We can use exercise to create the changes we want to see in our body, whether it's to improve our metabolism, get stronger, get leaner. The more we study how certain exercise can be applied, the more intelligently we can use it to make the changes we want to see. How is exercise science different from what we're inundated with every day? It almost couldn't be more different. So the exercise that you see in the media,

I have been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. Coach Alex Van Houten, exercise scientist, close friend of mine, for anybody watching, for anybody listening, the first thing I want them to understand is that what I eat, the exercises I do, how I calculate everything from my macronutrients to my amount of sleep, is all sent through you first. Alex, please take the time to introduce yourself and tell everybody who you are.

What's up, guys? I'm coach Alex. the distinct honor and privilege of training Andy Bustamante through all of his many, many, many, many adventures. It's quite the honor. And also, also, it's difficult to keep up with you. I'm just saying you're a very challenging client, but I love working with you. You know, I've been challenging from the beginning and I apologize about that because the first time I talked to was, I think three years. Was it four years ago?

I think it was 2019 actually. Yeah, we met six years ago. We keep getting old. years ago. Jeez. So six years ago I came to you. I was doing just yoga. I came across your profile. You came across my profile. And immediately I recognized your skill, your terminology, your background as very, very akin to what we have at CIA when we are assigned exercise scientists by the Office of Medical Services, OMS, when we are assigned exercise scientists to help us recover from an operation, help us recover from a mission, help us recover from some

sort of medical issue, or help us deal with something that we have chronically dealt with before we ever joined CIA. And yeah, and what you have done with your career is essentially the same thing. You have worked with people who are from the extremely elite fit, Navy SEALs, tier one operators, professional athletes, all the way down to the person who's coming out of some sort of terrible medical condition. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, yeah. So, exercise science is one of those things that's so applicable no matter what your walk of life is, whether you're stuck and can't do anything, or if you're a top-tier operator and you get to hike very, very large mountains on a regular basis or run half iron mans. And exercise science

is one of those things that can help people get better wherever they're at. And so in my career, it's been both a privilege and an opportunity to help just somebody learn to walk again. all the way up to somebody like yourself who's just traveling all the time, having a hard time finding exactly how to keep the fuel in the body and keep the body firing on all cylinders, but also to be able to do everything that you do on a regular basis. And so that career has carried me from one type of person all the way up to the top tier operator. And what's really cool is as the science continues to develop, the things we learn scientifically can be applied,

no matter where on that spectrum you are. What, you've used the term exercise science. I promise you that is not a term most people use. It's a term I understand and I use only because of my time at CIA. Even in the Air Force, we did not use the term exercise science. Can you define exercise science? Yeah. So imagine, imagine in our world today when you think exercise,

the average person thinks, oh, okay, I'm burning calories. I'm going to get up. I'm going to move around and, you know, I'm going to hopefully burn more coming out than I have coming in, right? That's the average way of thinking about it. But exercise science is the study of how our body adapts to the things that we do. Because we can use exercise like a sledgehammer and just beat ourselves up all the time, which is not advisable.

But we can also use exercise like a scalpel, which means we can use exercise certain amounts at certain intensities and certain volumes and certain consistencies. We can use exercise to create the changes we want to see. in our body, whether it's to improve our metabolism, get stronger, get leaner, that sort of thing. And so the term exercise science is the idea that the more we study how certain exercise can be applied, the more intelligently we can use it to make the changes we want to see. How is that different from what we see on Instagram and YouTube, in Men's Health magazine,

in, you know, everything from advertising to TV shows? How is exercise science? different from what we're inundated with every day. It almost couldn't be more different. It almost couldn't be more different. So the exercise that you see in the media is the marketed fitness, right? And just because it's marketed doesn't mean it's correct and doesn't mean it's scientific. It just means that it's catching people's attention, right? And at the same time, exercise science is actually looking at the underlying mechanism for why certain

things work the way they work. I'll give you an example. So CrossFit is a very, very powerful form of athletic exercise, right? Very huge dynamic movements, very large compound, explosive things that you do in a CrossFit workout very intense, right? For the average person who sees a CrossFit athlete doing clean-in jerks and mountain climbers and jump on really tall boxes and stuff, they go, oh man, I want to be like that guy. And so they'll go do CrossFit. Nothing wrong with CrossFit except it's extremely intense. And what we learn in exercise science is that when it comes to the adaptation of the body,

we should be starting with consistency rather than intensity. And so what the average person will end up doing is they'll see these things on social media or on TV or in a magazine or something like that. And they'll go put the cart before the horse instead of starting at square one for adapting your body. And what happens, unfortunately, is people end up injured. They find themselves creating adaptations. They didn't want to begin with. And so they'll say, ah, man, exercise isn't for me. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

Interesting. So what's happening then is there is a process and an order to everything from what you eat to how you exercise your body towards this goal, what you call it an adaptation. That's right. So when someone's trying to lose weight or build muscle, when someone's trying to decrease cholesterol, what they're trying to trigger an adaptation in their body. You got it. Exactly right. And the way that you trigger that adaptation in a long-term way is through exercise science. That's exactly right.

And marketed fitness, whether it's a supplement or a one-trick pony kind of pill or whether it's a 50-day push-up challenge, it's missing the point, which is why anybody who's ever been on a diet or anybody who's ever taken a 30-day challenge, why they see limited impact in a short period of time and then it goes away. That's exactly right. Yes. The industry right now is driven by short-term results. And the thing about short-term results is,

and you could probably speak to the neuroscience that's better than I can or the psychology of it, is that when I do something and it seems to work for me, now I become a believer in that thing. The only issue is whether or not that is going to continue going forward. And now I'm going to tell my mom and my friends and all those people about it, and they're all going to try it. It's going to work for 30 days, right?

But come follow up with us a year later. Let's see if it's still working. And science is still working. the others actually. Yeah. And it's, I feel like this is a conversation that's going to be very relevant to a lot of people. If you yourself haven't been through the process of being disappointed by a workout or a diet or a nutrition book, somebody that you love has been. Yes.

And in many cases, it's entire spheres of influence that are like collectively disappointed in something that happened. Because families share issues. Families share whenever you have immunity. So families share immunity issues. Families share weight loss or weight gain issues. Family disorders. Families share joint issues, muscle issues. This is a very niche area.

Your expertise is a very niche area of a saturated market. Health and wellness is a saturated market. There isn't a 22-year-old person with six-pack abs anywhere who's, trying to be a health and wellness coach. Right. Right. So why would you do what you do? Why would you throw your hat in this very crowded ring? It has to do with my passion and my own personal mission and my health and fitness. Do you mind if I tell you about it? Please. Okay. So I started, like in my life, I grew up in a fatherless home under the poverty line with a genetic disorder called Eilers Danlos. I didn't know I had it at the time, but that meant I was going to wrestle

with chronic pain, injuries, and all kinds of other things. Eilers. Eilers, Danlos. E-L-E-R-S-Danlos. Yes, E-L-E-R-S-Danlos. So it's a disorder that makes the collagen of my connective tissue not very easy to synthesize. And so my tendons and ligaments are way looser than they need to be. They don't hold me together like they should.

And that's a genetic disorder that's relatively small portion of the population about I was going to say, I've never heard of it before. Yeah. And the connective tissue. So like a knee or an elbow is supposed to work a certain way. Yeah, so imagine your knee comes together two, well, it's three bones. You've got your femur, your tibia and fibula. They come together like this, right?

And your kneecaps over top. And that structure is held together by very strong Kevlar-like tissue called ligaments, that's bone-to-bone. And tendons connect your muscles to the bone. And so all of those hold the knee. And so when you walk and it does its thing, as long as all the connective tissues holding it together, your knee moves like it's supposed to. Without any, well, with overly elastic ligaments and tendons, what happens is there's a lot of slippage, a lot of movement, a lot of grinding. So it's very easy for things to pop out of place. It's very easy for things to get injured due to poor movements over time.

It's a very, very painful process. And you grew up with and still have this condition. Yes. How did you find out? So my journey took me, I loved to be athletic. Even though I was constantly dealing with injuries, constantly dealing with pain, I refused to be fragile. I hated it. So if I was injured, I'd just like, oh, well, I just got to keep doing what I'm doing and fix it.

You know, like, I didn't know any better. Like, I'm running, and now I can't run. It's like, I'd like to run again. So you walk and you figure stuff out. And so my journey with exercise science actually started by trying to rehabilitate myself because my mom would take me to the doctor and they didn't know Eilers Danlos at the time. So it was like, oh, it's growing pains. Here, take some ibuprofen, stay off of it for eight weeks.

You ever tried to have a son? You ever tried to tell a 12-year-old, like, don't move for eight weeks. It'll be fine. And take a Tylenol. Yeah, it's not going to. Swallow a pill with water. What? That's like terrifying, their child.

Right. Right. So through that process, improving my own ability to overcome injuries and whatnot is what really led me down the path of understanding how to use exercise in an intelligent way. And so later on in life, later on in life, I actually sustained an injury while I was climbing. I like to boulder. Bouldering is a lot of fun. I was training for the American Ninja Warrior at the time. And so why am I not surprised you would have tried to train for American Ninja Warrior almost got there. I got to the executive cut. So, so I was climbing up this, this climbing wall, and my hand slipped. And in bouldering, you don't have a harness.

You don't have anything to hold you up there. And so I fell, and no big deal. There's a big mat down there. And that happens all the time. Well, I fell funny on my ankle, story of my life. And I dislocated my ankle. So my foot's supposed to be here. And now it's here.

And I look down and I'm like, this is not good. And so, so I reached down and I popped it back into the place. I know, right? I know. So my buddy who was with me threw up everywhere. He was no help at all. So, so what, what happened is I dislocated my ankle and then I had to go, you know, go to the doctor. What do you do? Go to the doctor. Well, I went to the doctor and he said, well, this is the first ankle dislocation I've seen in my entire career. Wow. That didn't result in a break. Because I didn't have any broken bones. Tibia, fibulae were fine. My talus is fine. And so, so he says he says Alex do you have eelers danlos i'm like i don't i don't know what no i don't know oh yeah and and what was weird as i walked away from the doctor being like i don't have time for this you know i was in my early 20s i had worked to do and you know a a girl to love and all that stuff so

so i don't think much of it a couple days later i was talking to my mom and she had just gotten back from her doctor's appointment they said hey they're testing me for eelers damlos i was like Where have I heard that before? I had never heard of it prior to that conversation with my doctor. And so that led me down the path to going through the diagnostic criteria and finding out, wow, I've been living with this all my life. Like so many things make sense now. Why was your mom being reviewed for the same thing?

What triggered it for her? So she has been through an enormous amount of chronic pain in her life. And so for much of her life, she was told like, oh, we're testing you for rheumato. arthritis. We're testing for fibromyalgia, which is a very strange diagnosis. It basically means you're in pain and we don't know why. But through that process of being tested for all the different reasons she could be in pain, she finally came to a doctor who was like, you have all of the symptoms consistent with this genetic disorder. Let's look into it. And it explains so much of what she'd wrestled with in her life. It's not normal for a 25-year-old woman to be in so much.

pain that she can't walk for months on end. It's not normal. But it's normal in Eler's Danlos. So you get this diagnosis. I imagine somebody had to tell you it exists in only 1 to 2% of the population. And if, again, I'm projecting here, but if that was me, I'd be like, oh, well, then it's probably not that. Like, that's so rare.

That probably isn't it. Is that the thought that went through your head or did something different go through your head? My thought was, I don't know what I have going on in my body, but if I'm not, I don't know what I have going on in my body. If it's something like that, I'm going to beat it. And so that was my attitude. Can you beat Elyler's Anelos?

I'm doing my best. How long have you been fighting it now? Since I found out, so probably 14 years. 14 years. What were you professionally trying to do before, aside from American Ninja Warrior, which is an honorable profession? Right, right. But what were you professionally studying for?

What were you trying to achieve? What was your kind of life goal before the diagnosis? So I had just gone through this very strange crossroads in my life. I was studying to be an orthopedic surgeon right out of undergraduate. So I got my degree in chemical engineering in psychology with a pre-med focus, which is a dossier of a young man who has no idea what he's doing with his life. But who's very smart. Very different than the young man who is very dumb.

So I wanted to learn all these things, right? But at the same time, I loved the body. I told you about my experience with exercise science. And before knowing about Euler's analyst, it was just something, the way the body fits together, the way everything connects, the way it adapts. It's just so amazing to me. And so I took a year off of school to study for the MCAT and figure out what specialty I wanted to do in medicine because there's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of different ways you could go. And I fell in love with orthopedic surgery because I was taking patients in and out of surgery.

I'd bring a guy in who could barely move from from his bed because his hip was busted and and get him on the table. And the doctor's like, oh, they're there. And then he puts him under and they turn him into shop class. It's the craziest thing. It's the craziest thing, man. You're like, this guy, he's there. He's covered in iodine.

And they've got this giant rod and his hip. Capang, capang, capang, and I was just trying to be nice. And, well, now he's getting beat up. So I thought that was so cool that they could actually take the human body and put it back together as if that's a machine you were in shop class. But something crazy happened to me. I was helping people in the hospital, but moonlighting as a personal trainer working at the local Gold's gym and helping people reach their fitness goals. And the craziest thing, I got to work with people all day long who didn't want to be there at the hospital. They didn't want to be there.

problems they didn't appreciate obviously talking to doctors who knew their patients weren't going to do the homework to get better and then I would go to my personal training job and people were willing to pay me out of pocket to make changes in their life and they were saying things like thank you Alex you changed my whole life this and this is amazing and I would see actual progress in these people and so I was like do I want to do this or not so you know what I did I asked every doctor I worked with, 28 of them. If they had it to do over, would they do this again? Hmm. And 27 of them said no. 27 out of 28 doctors said, nope, don't do it. I wouldn't do this all over again. Wow. And they had the reasons. But, but for me, I was like, I'd be stupid. Yep.

If I did that, poured, poured, poured five years into school, five years into residency, mountain of debt, and then go, wow, this was a bad idea. How wild. So for anybody listening right now who comes from an immigrant family, and I come from an immigrant family, so I know what it's like, when your parents tell you to be a doctor, tell them to shove it, because if you don't want to do it, don't do it. I'm sure there are a lot of doctors who love their work. I'm sure. But the surgeons that I worked with had very compelling reasons for why they wouldn't do it again.

So you clearly then shifted away from the idea of medical academic. academia, medical surgery, into something else, exercise science, or you can define it as something else. And that shifts came at a similar time as your Eler's Danlos, that's exactly right. Diagnosis. But it wasn't the reason. Like Eler's Danlos wasn't the reason you changed your life. No, no. So I was actively in the process of helping people with their health and fitness on the non-medical side when I was diagnosed. What happened afterwards? Did you just drop out of school altogether and then just go into full-time personal training?

Or did you do something different? I'm one of those like eternal students. I'm always going to take some sort of course for sure. But I had focused very hardcore on climbing the corporate ladder in the large health and fitness company that I was working in at the time. And so I had my hands full. I was probably working 80 hours a week helping people with their health and fitness goals, training and coaching trainers. actually got to meet my wife while I was there. I helped the dietitians at the time read the blood metrics.

Oh, because you had all of the medical school background. Exactly. So it was very interesting when people meet my wife. They're like, oh, you're a dietitian. They'll ask her nutrition question. She'll be like, you need to talk to Alex. He taught me everything I know. You're like, you're the one with the master's degree in nutrition.

She's like, yeah, but that's medical nutrition. You're very, very different from what the average person needs to know. So that explains a lot to me why it is that you can, I'm going to put this politely, why you can speak with big words that I don't understand. That's the polite way of saying when you bore me to have no end and I don't know how to interrupt you. But it explains why you can do that, but you can also break it down into like into caveman terms, which is what I need, right? Andy do this, don't do this. And then you only go into science terms if I say, Alex, explain the science behind that, but you always can. And it's been something that's really been transformative in my own journey because CIA never explained the why.

They never explained the why. They never explained the how. They only ever told us what to do. This is what you do on this day. This is what you do on that day. This is your workout. This is your diet. This is how long you'll be on R&R.

This is where you're going for your next operation. And we just ran with it. why you're such a good client. I'm like, I do this, do this, do this. And you're like, bang, like done. Execute. I can do that. I can do that.

So now you're struggling with, maybe you're not struggling because you've always lived with it. So you've got your own joint issues, but you're also dedicating your life to a lifetime of fitness. How are those two things complementary or are they not complementary? If it's possible, I will find the way. That's my attitude toward it every day Because, and, you know, it's not just Euler-Standless. If you wrestle with a chronic issue of any sort,

you wake up every morning and you get to make a decision. Is this going to beat me today? Or am I going to beat it or do the best I can with it? And those are really the options. You know what's cool is you just said, we get to make a decision? Which tells me a lot about your mindset because that means that as soon as you wake up,

you are already grateful for the fact that you're waking up at all. Yep. How many people take waking up for granted every day? So you wake up and you think to yourself, today I get to make a decision. Do I let this beat me or do I fight? Yeah. Yeah. For me, that's a spiritual thing.

So like you can wake up and you say same stuff, different day. Or you can say this is the day God's made. I'm going to rejoice and be glad in it. And for me and my journey, exercise science has been a helpful part of how do I make that joy and gladness? Not a fake thing. Because if you wrestle with something chronic, Like, you know, you can put on a face, but I really want to make the most out of the hand I've been dealt. And so that matters to me.

Can you, I appreciate that? I don't want to marginalize how important that is, but I do want to get to something a little bit deeper. Can you objectively describe what it feels like when you exercise, what it feels like when you stretch, what it feels like when you do weight-bearing routines? objectively is it painless is it easy is it is it wobbly like what is it like you have good days and bad days so in in eilers danlos you have multiple different things that that are a result of this whole collagen synthesis problem and in for me you know wrestling with it for a while I would hope I had made some progress in it so I it seems to get better for me every year a couple of things are working in my favor for that but but on good days

I love exercise just as much as anybody who loves exercise, like get to move and feels great to put your body to work. I love the feeling of crapping out on a hard set, you know, like, oh, man, and you work to failure and you get to push past it. I love the feeling that comes from thinking you have a limit and then pushing past it. I love that. But I also have some really crummy days too. And, you know, I probably exist on average. I'm probably between a two and a three on the pain scale from one to ten. There were times in my life where I was a seven every day, but on the bad days where the whole body's in pain or I have a specific injury I'm wrestling with or maybe I've got some mast cell activation, which is a, you know, a problematic symptom or POTS that's called osteo-orthostatic tachycardia.

That's a mouthful. But that means you get really dizzy when you stand up or when you change positions. which is what you do an exercise all the time. When I'm in a day like that, it's just a drag. It's the worst. Like it hurts. I don't want to do it. It feels like crap.

I'd much rather be on the couch or like laying down for a nap. But I don't give myself that option because I know that those days it counts extra. So I do it. You said that your average day is a two to three pain scale. Mm-hmm. What is the average person's average day pain supposed to be? There's a really funny shirt. It's like when the doctor says like what your, how much pain are you in today?

And you're like, oh, the normal amount. And the doctor says the normal amounts is zero. And the guy's face is like, oh, that's weird. It's supposed to be zero. Your daily activity in life should be a zero. And maybe you'll get uncomfortable now and then. But that's just not my normal. So I think this is a very important point because my day is truly a zero.

I go through my day. I'm 44 years old from as far back as I can remember, it doesn't hurt to move. It feels great to move, right? When I stretch, I get a little bit uncomfortable. Like, that's where I would say a really good stretch is pushing me like to a one or a two. When I'm lifting weights, nothing hurts. The weight is heavy, but muscles don't hurt, joints don't hurt. Like it doesn't hurt to lift weights.

It doesn't hurt to run. Right. When I get an injury, that injury might bring me to a three, four, five somewhere in there, right? I would say in my life, I have been above a six less than a handful of times. And most of the time that I'm above a six, something very, very bad just acutely happens. Right. Like an injury or something. Yeah.

And it goes away. Like, you don't sustain that six or seven for very long because as soon as you have 600 milligrams of Tylenol or as soon as you sit down and take down and take it. take a break and put your weight off of your, you know, twisted ankle, the pain goes away. Right. That's normal. That's how the body's supposed to work. Yes. And there are, I completely agree with you. And I want everyone to understand if you're not at zero, if your life doesn't feel like my life just described, there is room for improvement. Yes. Because the human body wants to be, was built to be at zero pain. Yeah. Even when you're active. Yeah. And the exercise science literature

bears that out. One of the most powerful and effective treatments for chronic pain is regular exercise, specifically resistance training. And that doesn't sound like it sounds counterintuitive. It sounds like if I'm being pain and there's something wrong with my body, if I go move, if I go exercise, I'm just going to make the pain worse. But there are mechanisms in our body that reduce, not just the pain response, but also improve the tissues that are damaged. You know, what comes to my mind right now is CIA always focused on finding the pain point, which is a very sales term, finding the pain point in your target. If you can find the pain point in your target, you can manipulate that target because pain

is an emotion and emotions are predictive. Great motivator. It's a phenomenal motivator, right? So if you know that they have some kind of pain point, they feel they feel poor, they feel unlisted to, they feel like their wife or husband doesn't care, they feel marginalized, at work. They feel like incredible pressure from mom or dad to perform. They feel like it sucks to be Iranian and they wish they could be American. Whatever their pain is, once you isolate it and you find out what it is, you can basically lead people anywhere you want to leave them. And when we talk

about physical pain, my mind immediately goes to all the incredible fitness marketing that's out there promising solutions to the pain. I was watching an infomercial the other day. I was I was uplaid at a hotel having a meeting. And this infomercial popped on the bar TV screen. And it was this little old lady, the classic little little grandma, the classic aging mother that we all picture in our mind. She was mildly happy, but she looked a little bit consternated, a little bit uncomfortable. And she was sitting on her beige couch with her perfect library behind her. And she wanted to watch her shows.

But her knees and her hamstrings and her legs were bothering her. And there's the blue and red pain that they draw in the graphic over the video, right? So then she sits down and she puts her feet into like this little device that shakes her legs. So she puts her feet down and this thing vibrates. And then it starts talking about the incredible benefits of this machine that moves your legs and gets your blood flowing and increases the pace of blood flow and blah, blah, increases the natural friction in your muscles and how it's supposed to help her. And I look at that and it's laughable. to anybody except the person who's in pain, the person who's in pain, the person who can relate to that old woman, the son who sees his mom in that advertisement, the grandchild who sees their grandparents in that advertisement, instant sale.

Instant sale. And all of a sudden they start thinking, how do I get that? And then when the phone number and the buy one get one is free and the huge 70% off pops up, you take action immediately. That's how it works. Yep. That's how it works. That's how the marketing world works. I am using that example because it's so clear to me how easy it is to manipulate people who are in pain. But the same thing goes all the way down the age food chain, right? The 21-year-old who sees an Instagram ad of a guy who's got great shoulders and great pecks and great lats and he's standing next to a beautiful girl. The 21-year-old who doesn't have that body and doesn't have that girl feels pain. It's the same thing as the blue. blue and red lines. It's the same thing as the person you want to love to be or the person you want to

take care of and feel sad when the brother or the friend or the father sees their son with a small bird chest and no no physical build. Do they see them all hunched over from a childhood of looking over screens? Too many screens. Too many screens. Like they see that and they want to help them so they send them this fitness program or they send them this, you know, supplement or they send them this dietary pill. Yes. That's all CIA stuff. That's all influence.

That's all marketing. That's all manipulation. And that's why that industry is, how big is the fitness industry? Do you have the number off the top of your head? It depends on which aspects of the fitness industry you add into the number. But $4.8 billion was spent last year on weight loss supplements alone. On weight loss supplements alone.

What is the real solution? What is the real solution that marketers know they can't say and that salesmen know will kill the sale, but that real people need to actually understand? Yeah, yeah. Life is hard. It's hard to be fat. It's hard to have diabetes. It's hard to be in pain. It's hard.

However, exercise and nutrition change on a regular basis, intelligent. can make the hard things less painful over time. So there's no getting away from the life as hard thinged. You're not going to get away from it, but you can choose your hard. And so the question is, if you have an industry that will place all of these, let's call them temporary pain solutions, six-week workout program for six-pack acts. Yeah, yeah.

And the pretty blonde you want as your girlfriend or the, the shaker leg thing on the couch. You have an industry that will sell you these very short-term solutions that you're willing to try because you're in pain, right? But you ride solution to solution to solution. When the real solution is that you stay intentional and active with your nutrition and with your exercise on a regular basis over time. and what happens is some of those pains will go away. I said that there were times in my life that I existed at maybe a six or seven every day.

Life is hard. I'm a two or three every day now. That's still fucking hard, dude. It's still hard, but it's better. And I'm in a much better place. Health-wise, I can keep up with my kids. I don't have to take any medications to deal with pain. I can do the things that I like to do.

I feel much better than I used to. All of those things are true, but that wasn't a short-term solution. That was a lot of hard work over a long period of time. Why is it that when people hear that message, they either don't believe it or don't want to hear it? What have you seen in your experience? When you communicate that message and then the person does not move forward with you, does not move forward with your recommendations,

does not move forward with your suggestions. on the plus side many people who by the time they come to me they've tried so many of the short-term solutions that they're like all right fine maybe i'm maybe i'm looking at the wrong time frame true story but but the the reason that that's not a very attractive message is because we i believe culturally speaking i believe that we exist in a time where where things happen so fast i'll give me an example nutritionally speaking you and i both know that that good healthful a good healthful breakfast with your family. Takes a little time, right?

Takes a little time. Like, we cooked eggs this morning. We cooked eggs, had some blueberries, took a little time to scarf them down. Not a lot, but a little, right? But if I'm driving to work and my kids need to eat and I got to drop them off at school

and we didn't take the 15, 20 minutes to make breakfast this morning, I can pull in somewhere where they can give me a sandwich with sausage and cheese on it, right? And I know that's not the best option, but everybody got fed, right? It's a shrinking of the window of desire to make a difference over time.

But if I told you, if you ate, let's say, eggs and blueberries every day for the next seven days, you will stop having migraines by the end of this seven days. I'm not saying that that's true across the board for everybody, but let's say we find that you have a choline deficiency and a difficult to metabolizing be 12 and we do this thing and you go oh my gosh i don't have to live with migraines anymore that's a big deal there's no magic pill there's there's no urgency to that is just the fact that you change to have it consistently that was good for you over time so i believe it has to do with the shortening of the time window we think things should be urgent now and immediate and i also think it's i think

it's easier to look at the shaky weight thing on the edge of the couch or the pill that you're taking go, man, this is going to fix it. This is the stuff. It's easier to do that than to give yourself credit for trying something new and better over time. So we've been friends, like you said, six years. Thank you for remembering. As I said, half that number. We've been friends for six years. And for anybody who's watching right now, they recognize that we are not in my normal studio. So we're in a house. This is a house that you and I are living in for the weekend. We're in Miami. We were invited to come speak at a big health expo. And I've got my topic, you've got your topic, and of course we geek out in between on the margins. For those of you

who are not watching us right now on YouTube, go ahead and make a note to yourself to pull this up on YouTube because it's worth seeing Alex's fantastic face. And it's definitely worth seeing what a nice Miami, comfortable Miami home looks like. But my point is we really did make eggs this morning. We really did have strawberries. We really did have blueberries. We really did have blueberries. We really We did have toast. We've got real avocados. We've got real fruits. You were munching on a pear right before we sat down.

It does take time. And this morning, as an example, we knew we had some place to be. And even as I came out of the room and I was like, we've got someplace to be, wheels up in 30 minutes. I am, I have not eaten yet. I want to eat. I want to eat my three eggs because that's what Alex recommends. I want to eat my fresh strawberries and get my antioxidants because that's what Alex told me to do. and I have a seeded bread that I want to eat with some with some fresh preserves.

I remember the thought going through my head like this is going to take time. But then I also remember the thought going through my head where it's like, this is worth that time. Yes. This is worth that time. Because if I cut this down to just eggs or if I cut this down to two eggs or if I cut this down to just toast or if I cut this down to just coffee, whatever I do next is going to pay the price. but I know that I want not just the next 45 minutes to an hour to go well. I want the rest of the day to go well. So I have to invest this time.

And I made it through the eggs. I made it through the berries. I made it through one piece of toast and jam. I ended up having to discard the second piece of toast. But I got 85% of the way through breakfast and was fueled the appropriate way. Yes. I can 100% give you credit for what was on the plate. but it was my own experience as an operator that taught me to fucking eat

any time you have a chance to eat because you never know when you're going to eat again. Right? So I have been able to continually refine my process with you. I want you to talk about the clients like me that you have had, not the chronic pain clients, not the diabetics, not the people who have tried everything and come to you in desperation. What makes a professional athlete come to you?

What makes a former Navy SEAL come to you? What makes a former Delta operator come to you? What makes a former CIA officer see you and say, well, shit, I'm going to work with you. Not any of these other people that I see everywhere all the time. Because why? What do they see? What did I see that other people seem to miss? Well, I was hoping it was my good looks, but I'm pretty sure.

That helps. It helps. I'll say you what. We don't do enough video calls. That's great. So, so what, that's, that's so important. That's the other end of the spectrum, right? The other end of the spectrum in, in your experience,

and I'll just speak to your training because it's relevant to that people group, that there was an intelligent person telling you what to do, and so you did those things, right? But that was over a decade ago, right? Like the intelligent person and their nutrition practice and their understanding of how to do things is, is for a decade ago, great. But many, many individuals are operating on crummy science

from 50 years ago. And then when you exit the CIA, you look around and you go, like, who can help me with my health and fitness? And you got people, you know, whining at you about your calorie intake. And it's like, that's not them. I know it's not them. Like, haven't we learned anything? Like in the last 10 years?

So what draws people to me oftentimes on that end of the spectrum is in my Euler's Danlos journey, I recognize I'm an outlier. And if I can stay on the cutting edge of exercise at nutrition science, then I can make the most of myself as the industry, not the industry. Let's say the underlying substructure and the academia continue to learn. I'll give you an example. So for instance, in my travels through Eilers Danlos, one of the things, I've learned about myself is there are certain foods that are very helpful to me. I didn't know why. But recently, we have the science to actually sequence the human genome and find different variations

in how everybody is coded. You have certain genes variants that I don't have. I have certain gene variants you don't have. It's like your fingerprint. Not all of them are same, right? And we only differ a little, but in the ways we differ, it really matters. So I have a variant in the MTHFR gene, which means that I don't metabolize folate the same way other individuals seem to metabolize folate. Again, it's with that one to do percent of the population thing. It's not Euler's Danlos, but it's a thing, right? Yeah. And so when I work with somebody like you and I can say, hey, for your build, your body type,

your leg, your genome, your genome, exactly. Here's what we're going to do because this is what we understand, nutritionally speaking, now. that's that is that's very very sophisticated compared to what we had 10 20 years ago right and so the reason people come to me at that point is is I used to have somebody telling me what to do who was intelligent and helped me to make the most of myself yeah I would like to continue that but I'm not an operator anymore right so I'd still I still have operations to execute it just not with you know an agency telling me how to do these things so that's what usually brings people to me on that level. You know, it's funny because that's exactly what

what I was feeling and looking for when we first met. And I remember, I remember on my hunt, I was doing everything I could. I had all of my experience, the agency, all of my experience of the military to help help me write my own workouts. I had all of my historic workouts from when I was in my mid to late 30s, but I was not in my mid to late 30s anymore, right? And I had all of my experience and I had all my knowledge and I watched as gyms would transform. I've always worked in world-class gyms, always. In the military I had top-notch gyms. At the Air Force Academy, I had top-notch gyms in college. I mean, I've always been in super sophisticated, cutting-edge gyms. And when you're in a gym not sophisticated, you see things change, right?

It's not like your community rec center where the same thing has been there for 35 years. Right. You see how things change. You see machines come. You see machines go. You see different techniques come up and down. You see different classes come through. You see different experts give different lectures. So I know how fast science, especially science of a human body evolves. So when I went to go find my solution, what is going to be my continuation, my continual exercise solution, I was blown away by what was out there. People crawling around like monkeys talking about natural movements, other people who were talking about like only eating raw foods, only eating fruits. I mean, I saw people who swore that they could somehow like skip sleep and unlock some new, some new chemical in their brain.

Yes. And even as I see it, I know there's the possibility that all of those things could work. There's the possibility that all of those things could work. For some subset of the population somewhere, there's a possibility that thing could work. But the probability was it wasn't going to work for me. Most of it, yeah. I if that had a high probability of working, the first time I learned about it would not be on Instagram.

If that had a high probability of working, the first time I heard about it would not be on an advertisement in Facebook. Yep. That would have been coming from somebody somewhere, a brother or a sister who's also a current operator or a recently retired operator. Somebody would have told me this before a sponsored ad. Because the things that really work have always worked and will always work. And it's not a matter of turning a lot.

light switch on or off. It's a matter of optimizing, finding an extra 7%, an extra 12%, an extra maybe 20% of improvement that you could get out of it. Right. And that is what I was looking for. I knew that I could keep myself fit and trim and healthy at about a 75% on my own, but that's not what I wanted. What I wanted was to optimize it further. And you're totally right. Whenever we cross paths and I started hearing you talk about my body and my bio-individuality, a term that you taught me, it all started to make sense to me. Because again, when I look back over my time at the agency,

that's how they saw me as a bio-individual when I was inside my exercise scientist's office. Right, right? When I was taking my VO2 max test, when I was taking my body fat test, when I was in the dunk tank, that's what they were looking at. Me as an individual, a biological mass as an individual,

that's what I felt like I found when we started working together. there is a huge element of your personal faith that plays into this. And I am Christian, you are Christian, not everybody listening is Christian, and that's totally fine. One of the things I really appreciate about you is that you find a way to speak openly about your faith without making anyone feel pressure or forced to believe in your faith. How does your faith intersect with your fitness journey and with your personal professional mission.

It's actually something I'm exploring a lot right now because I would say that in my exercise journey it's been guided through pain, trying not to be in pain, right? And so for me, learning how to pursue the best version of the body I've been given. So I think about this from a Christian perspective, God made me, made me with all. all the tweaks and changes and, heck, even Eelers Danloves. All the challenges. And so the question is, how do I make the most of that? And there's a, the Christian perspective is, if Jesus said to his disciples,

if any man wants to be my disciple, he will deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me. And so there's this idea that the challenges that you face are part of the necessary process of becoming who you were made to be. And so for me, the faith aspect comes in where all these things that I'm doing from a health and fitness perspective, you know, keeping a certain amount of muscle so my joints work well or I ran this morning so that I can be on a sharp as attack for not right now, not what I'm saying, but sharp in our conversation. And so that, you know, my body was in a good place and cardiovascular condition, all that stuff. I understand in my faith, this body's going to be food for one someday. So why even do anything with it to begin with? And what I've understood in my journey is that if my physical body becomes an impediment to my spiritual journey,

let's say I'm going to go play with my kids because part of my spiritual journey is to be a good father for them and show them the way and enjoy that. It's very meaningful to me. But if I'm too much in pain right now, or I don't have the energy or there was something that I could have done to put myself in a better position to execute this thing that I get to do in my journey that makes this whole ride meaningful. Right. That I have a responsibility to steward my physical body so that I can do the things

that are meaningful to me. And so for me, that's where faith and fitness intersect is that honestly, all the other fitness goals are vanity, meaning meaningless. That's what the writer of Ecclesiastes would say vanity, meaningless. All of those fitness goals are vanity, if not pointed in the direction of my personal journey and purpose. You inherited a genetic disorder that causes you perpetual pain from your mother. you then had to ask yourself the question, would I become a father? Fully knowing that the opportunity was there for you to pass the same life of pain onto children. What did you choose and why?

Well, we got two kids, so there's the choice. Part of it is because my wife's super hot. If you want to know what takes our mind off a pain, ladies. It's done, done, yeah, it'll do it. It wasn't much of a question whether we should have kids or not. I'm just kidding. So, so for, for me, I am grateful that I exist even though it's painful sometimes. And, and I loved having three younger siblings growing up and in a fatherless home.

I was the, I was kind of the dad. I wasn't their dad, but, but I was the one they wrestled with and the one who got in trouble when they did things wrong and all that stuff. So I always wanted kids. Before I even knew I had a genetic disorder, I always wanted to have kids in my own. So having children for me is part of my life purpose. And whether or not they inherit the disorder,

again, that's a faith thing. It's really up to God to decide how that goes. It's not a surety. This isn't one of those genetic things that definitely gets passed on. can. And so, so I watch my kids really closely because the way I see it, I have forged a path with with this disorder that I believe is good, as good as I can make it. And that if one of my children does have Eilers Danlos, they can watch my example and follow in those steps. And so, so that's another thing that makes it meaningful to me is like, man, if I can't figure this out and one of my

kids has this, like, what are they supposed to do? I want them to be able to go, ah, I see why dad did that, oh, I see why dad did that. And I'm going to do that too. Did my question make you uncomfortable? No, no, not all, just emotional. Like, these are really deep, deep and meaningful things to me. So you have an interesting tell because when folks are faced with an emotional question, and we teach this at everyday spy, when folks are faced with an emotional question, they are often, they have a response that they have to work through. Are they going to be immediately transparent or are they going to vent some of that emotion. And I say that because you immediately vent emotion. You event it with humor. You event it. You vent it with comedy. You vent it with a distraction. Right.

So I ask about passing on a genetic disorder of your children and you make a joke about your hot wife. Not a joke. Not a joke. I know. But you didn't have to lead with that first. Right. So, and I say that because this is another part of the pain that you are dealing with. I see as a professional, I see talking about these things is not easy. And acknowledging the decisions that you've had to make are not easy, especially when you know that judgment might be just a fraction of a second away. Why would you do this? Here's why.

And then you have to wait for them to agree or disagree with you. And they're not going to tell you. It's going to be judgment that's passed silently. Yep. And that's the world that we live in. So I just, I want to express to you, there's no judgment for me. I love your answer. I always wanted to be a dad.

I also grew up in a fatherless home. I had a stepdad. My stepdad was the kind of 1990 stepdad that was always barely there, right? Either barely working or barely present or barely knowledgeable of your existence. But like so many of us who grew up in families with stepdad in the 90s, we know what that feels like. So I would have never missed it for the world. And I hope that I would have had the courage, even if I would have known that I had some sort of genetic disorder that I would have still taken the steps. to engage in this incredible joy called fatherhood.

Yeah, it's literally the hardest but most meaningful thing I've ever done in my life. So you are sitting here with me today. You're wearing an everyday spy shirt. Yeah. And you've lent your talent, your time, your skill set to help us build the company. You train Jehi, you train me, you train all of my executive team. Everybody benefits from you. Why have you chosen to put so much of your effort and your time behind?

what I'm building with Everyday Spy. First of all, I really like you. I do. You're a very high integrity guy. I love your family, and I want the best for you. I love the mission of Everyday Spy. The idea of breaking down barriers with the techniques that you learned in CIA could be used for very nefarious purposes. But the idea that you learn those things, and then you're like, you know what, this could really help the world.

And I want to make it available. that I can really get behind that mission. So I love to keep you guys healthy. I love to chastise the members of the team who need to get healthier because it's such an important mission. It's like, hey, man, I want you to be healthy. I want you to take good care of your family. Be a good example in all those ways. And that mission is something I can get behind.

I want to help people break barriers as well. I've seen you do it for me. I've seen you do it for multiple people on the team. I've seen you do it for my wife. I want you to know that when my wife falls off the fitness wagon, she very much knows that she is disappointing Alex. She is thinking about you all the time because she's like, I know I can do this.

Alex believes in me. I need to get back on the wagon. And that is the right kind of motivation for her, right? The kind of motivation for me is much simpler. Do the thing, feel the pain, be proud. Or don't do the thing. Don't feel the pain and be not proud. And that's why I love it when my ass is sore after leg day.

and I love it when my shoulders are sore after shoulder day and why I am super excited about our next phase of endurance training because I already know everything is going to be tired all the time. Yes. And there's something very rewarding about being so tired when you go to bed with your hot spouse that you're still like, we're not going to have sex. I'm just too tired.

Let me wake up tomorrow with energy and we will try this again. Morning sex is way better anyway. That's hilarious. There's just something nice about, very rewarding to feel the pain, feel the pride. Yes. And then you don't need anything else, right? Yes. Where can people find you, Alex?

If people want to learn more about you, if they want to hear more, learn more from you, see what you produce, see what you do for a living, how do they find you? We've got an awesome Everyday Spy link below that you can click on. It's got all the stuff that I do with Everyday Spy and then some. So if you'll go down to the show notes, you can click Everydayspy.com slash Alex. Beautiful. And where is there anything that you are currently working on that you are super proud of, super jazz for?

Well, you asked earlier about how the faith and fitness thing really intersect, and it's something I'm working to explore. It's not an easy thing to articulate very well, Christian or not. And so I have a podcast called The Faithful Fitness Podcast, and there I'm exploring the idea and finding people on both sides of the fence. Fitness people who really could care less about the faith thing, faith people who could really care less about the fitness thing, and then some people who are right in the middle. And it's great to have those conversations because I, I, I just, believe it's necessary to bring back meaning into fitness. And we say train hard but pray harder. That's the idea. You're one of my favorite people in the world. I am so blessed to have you in my life. I am so blessed that you are touching the lives of my wife and my children through us.

And that now you're touching the life of my whole family through your contributions to everyday spy. And I just want to make sure that you know how genuine I am being because this will live on forever. And one day my 12-year-old son will be a 40-year-old man. and he will know that you contributed so much to the reason that dad could wrestle with him, ride bikes with him, play on the floor with incredible flexibility and strength and mobility. And I am eternally grateful for the years ahead

that I haven't even lived yet because of what you've done with me in the past. That means a lot. It's an honor to be in your corner. All right, folks, please click on the link below, get to know Alex. He is an amazing guy. He's doing amazing things. Many of you already work with Alex through what our program's here at Everyday Spy, and you know that I'm telling you the truth.

I want you to like this, comment, let us know what your thoughts are, subscribe to the channel if you haven't met us before, and share us with a friend. We will see you on the other side.