Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #61 Corey LaJoie

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

Corey LaJoie is a third generation Professional Racer and a very well known name in the racing world. His father, Randy LaJoie, brought home the Xfinity Series Championship in 1996 and 1997. As a teen, he achieved 6 wins in the K&N Pro series east and 3 wins in the ARCA Series. Selected as a member of the 2012 Nascar Next Class, the same as fellow stand-out drivers Kyle Larson, Chase Elliot, and Ryan Blaney. Lajoie competed in ten Xfinity Series races in 2016 and earned 2 top-ten finishes and completed his rookie year campaign in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series with an 11th place finish in Daytona. He is currently competing in the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series with TriStar Motorsports in the No. 72 Chevy Camaro. Connect with CoreyLaJoie: Website | https://coreylajoieracing.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/coreylajoie/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/coreylajoieracing/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/CoreyLaJoie Youtube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc47tBJF4BuyrXhRyTpjHBg Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit      Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY          

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Free gifts and doorbusters are in limited supply. So hashtag get on it or you just might miss it. Check it out at on it.com slash black Friday. Welcome to the human optimization hour. I'm your host Kyle Kingsbury and check it out. We got a bonus episode for you. Corey LaJoy is a young NASCAR driver. He's a savage. He's third generation. His daddy did it and his granddaddy did it and now he's doing it and uh we take a quick dive into everything that he's doing right now his aspirations what he's gone through to get here and all the cool shit back behind the wheel thanks for

tuning in today we've got how do we say the last name? LeJoy. LeJoy. That's the Americanized version of it. It's French. I guess LeJoy, but that's a couple of generations removed. I gotcha. Yeah. Fuck yeah. And you are a NASCAR driver. NASCAR driver, man. And you're young. Yeah. 27, just turned 27 last week. That's amazing. So most people, and I'm not a huge fan of the sports. i don't want to act like i am but you have to start really young right yeah how'd you get your start i think it's you could almost compare it to fighting a little bit because you know that car control has to be instinctual like any sort of move i guess when you're fighting somebody i've never fought but

you know that's uh when you're in the race and you're racing wheel to wheel with somebody man it's uh you don't have time to really think you just got to react and you're racing wheel-to-wheel with somebody, man, you don't have time to really think. You just got to react. So I was lucky enough. My dad did it. So he stuck me as soon as I was two feet tall to stick me in a go-kart and push me along and say, hey, good luck to you. Don't hit anything.

Put a helmet on, and off I went. So, yeah, it's my grandpa raced. I raced. I'm a third-generation race car driver, and I'm, I'm trying to carry that with joy flag high. That's awesome. So starting that too with go-karts and then what, what do you, you, there's, there's gaps before you get to where you're at, right? Yeah. There's certainly gaps from a four-year-old on a go-kart to a 25-year-old cup driver. It's kind of actually structured like baseball where it's the majors,

which is the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series. The Xfinity Series is like AAA, trucks to AA, and on down the list with a bunch of feeder series. So it's just kind of the natural progression you learn with people the same age as you, right, and late models when you're 14, 15, 16. Then you move up to the K&N Series, and I was able to have success in all those divisions and and got got the call last year to uh to be a rookie

in the cup series and still trying to climb that ladder that's awesome so at any point in your career did you face any challenges like anything that was just like dude my whole life's been a been a struggle i mean it's it's weird because people think that since my dad had some decent success in this, that it was, I'm the silver spoon kid. It's never been the case. And you know, when dad was having his success in the middle nineties, race car drivers didn't get paid a whole lot, you know? I mean, they got paid well, right. But not enough to, to pay for your kid all through his journey. So people are quick to label on anything, right? So I had to work through that label. And it actually was a time to where a couple years,

it was about four years ago, where the driving stuff dried up on me. And I had to be a crew chief and set cars up for other people just to pay bills. And a lot of things happened. And I was actually going down that path. It bills. And a lot of things happened. And, you know, I was actually going down that path. It was kind of a fork in the road. I was super successful when I was 16, 17, 18 and sponsorship money dried up, had to go down the path of working on them.

So that made me appreciate that side of it and what the guys that always worked on my cars did. And I was going down that and a sponsor that i met a couple years prior wanted to get me back in the fold gave a little bit of money got me back in the xfinity series which is like triple a ran well and got the nod from from ron devine and bk racing last year to uh see what i got and that's awesome the rest the rest is kind of history i'm still uh you know i'm still paying my dues i guess you you can say, with the lesser-funded teams. However much money you got, it's however fast you go. It's a lot of discrepancy from the fast guys to the slow guys in money.

But I'm lucky enough to even be one of them 40. It's not where I want to be competitively, ultimately, but I'm learning the tracks. I'm learning just the environment and places you go. And I get to be on team on it, which is a dream come true. I've followed the brand for probably four or five years now. Always been into fitness and CrossFit and been a huge MMA fan. Never really got into it because I didn't really feel like getting my arm ripped out of socket.

It took a couple days before I had to go to the racetrack but uh i got teamed up with these guys and it's been amazing and to even be on this show man i listened to this show since the start and to be sitting here in front of you is pretty crazy so it's awesome brother it's crazy where uh where it's taken me the last couple years because i thought i was just going to be one of the uh you know one of the guys behind the scenes working on it, making the cars go fast. And over about a 16th month period, it's turned. And now I'm on the camera. So it's pretty crazy. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about what it's like in the race.

Because so much of this, and you alluded to this earlier, there is a parallel between racing and fighting. And Bruce Lee talks about this. You can't train to the point of where you're still thinking you have to train to the point where you're no longer thinking it's all reflex right because the shit's happening so fast that if you have to think about the move or what's coming at you yeah you've already fucked up right same thing on the track with how fast you guys go um what else plays a factor in your mental preparation for the race man it's uh it's a lot because from the outside looking in,

if you're just sitting in the stands, and the big stereotype of NASCAR is you just go straight, turn left, go straight, turn left. If you got to the track and actually listened to it and actually sat down there right up against the fence when we're whizzing by at 210 miles an hour, man, there's a lot of G-forces on your body. The cars are hot as shit.

They're about 140 degrees in the cockpit there the whole time. And you're in there for four hours at a time. So you're literally locked into, you're locked in seven point harness. Your feet aren't moving. The only thing moving essentially is your shoulders and your ankles, right? So like, I don't think that your body was made to sit in the same spot for four hours and literally move two joints in your body. But as much as it's physical, the physical demanding with, you talked about a sauna, to get your body used to sitting in that 140-degree car for four hours at a time, time yeah it takes training because it's uncomfortable and you just have to get comfortable being uncomfortable and it takes a little bit long it takes a little while to get actually get used to that because your body doesn't doesn't like being in that yeah

um and want homeostasis we want it nice and calm i want 72 degrees hell yeah right but when you when you hop in there and you're sweating and your brain's being noisy and you have so many distractions going on, to be able to flip that switch and really quiet your brain down and do the job at hand is what took me the longest to really understand how separate your body and your brain is to really quiet your brain down and do the job that it takes. Because if you're looking at a coffee cup, early in my career when you're not confident in your abilities and you're not confident in your own self, your cup's full, right? And any time you get any sort of hardship, man, your cup's going to overflow. So trying to, trying to take all the distractions and all the things and, and just essentially grow your capacity and make your cup bigger. That way anything changes and, you know, cause things are constantly changing, right? Whether it's track temperature or the handle on your race car, you have to be ahead of that and expect that.

And, uh, you know, the know the more area you have in your cup to to dump in those distractions that you could just take it you know second hand yeah yeah you're just like you're you're giving yourself bandwidth right for anything else that's about to come in you have more downloads coming your way there's just i mean factor exactly man like when i first started going a couple years last year was my rookie year, I didn't have a big bandwidth, right? I was a 16 gig iPhone that could only hold 15 pictures, right? Like I was so concentrated on the little things that I know that I wasn't allowing myself to grow. And it took meeting with a sports psychologist to kind of look at, step back and look at the big picture to actually, yeah, be confident in the things you do know and what has gotten you here, but also kind of look at step back and look at the big picture uh to actually yeah be confident

in the things you do know and what has gotten you here but also kind of let go of some of those things and learn you know learn how to be a professional because being a professional in the race car is what i've always learned how to do being a professional outside the race car dealing with sponsors and and people and pit crews and all that stuff was all new to me at the time. So that's been the biggest thing to me is, you know, getting a bigger bandwidth because, you know, there's so many distractions and, you know, the Bible says to whom a lot has been given, lots expected. So to try to keep growing that and, you know, I feel like I'm a pretty religious guy. So God's put me, I feel like in this situation to, he's putting a lot of things on my plate and I'm going to try to

disperse those to, you know, whoever needs them. So, you know, I try to take the back seat sometimes, but I've learned a lot and it's, man it's just crazy me just to be sitting here like in aubrey's office on it dude like it really is crazy like i'm not like fanboying here but it's crazy because you listen to joe rogan's podcast and like i'm just a regular dude man like i i it's just cool hell yeah unpack some of the uh the stuff that you've worked on with your sports psychologists. I used two of them when I was fighting professionally. One worked with me primarily on visualization because I used to fucking panic in my walkouts. And I would panic at the weigh-ins even, the day before the fight. No, I'm not going to fight the guy right then.

But it was just fucking all the fear and being in front of people half naked. Yeah. You know? So like we would walk through those things. And just standing next to some guy that wants to beat the shit out yeah and then the you know the mean mug square off all that bullshit but yeah with enough visualization like that i had already walked myself through that you know i'd done enough laps and enough um you know walkthroughs of whatever that thing was so that when i got to it it didn't matter it was cool you know it was easy and then

the other sports psychologists worked with me on breath work, qigong, different things like that. So I could quiet my mind in the storm. And I think there's a lot of parallels here. No doubt. What are some of the things that- So we did the stomach breathing stuff versus chest breathing was pretty big because I didn't have any idea. And you don't know until you've worked with somebody that knows more than you do. But the problem with that stomach breathing is as much as it's linked to calming your mind down, it's almost impossible to do it while you're sitting down strapped in. I mean, you're literally that lap belt is as tight as they can get and your shoulder straps are tight as they can get. So any sort of breath is hard to come by, let alone

a strictly stomach breathing versus chest breathing. But to try to really concentrate on that was big. And then actual, you said vision, but working on your peripheral vision was big for me where I don't know what the activity or whatever it's called, but to pick a spot on the ceiling, like the corner of the ceiling and literally just open your peripheral up and it calms your mind as well. So, you know, before I, before I get in the car or when I, even when I'm in the car, cause that's the only time you're not around people, right? Is when you get in and put your helmet on, like that's the quiet it's, it's ever going to be all weekend. And I'll sit there, pick a spot, whether it's a roll bar on

the car and I'll like actually open my vision up and go all the way to the right, all the way to the left, all the way up and all the way down. That way you're fully aware of your surroundings and anything that's coming isn't new, right? Like this, a post window with a duct in it if it or if it's a certain duct tape that's gonna that's gonna take away your concentration for a split second you already seen it right yeah so as much as it is seeing actual things around the car or the the surroundings at the track it's as much as i think calming your mind to uh you know because everybody gets in the middle of a workout and your brain's like, stop doing this to me. Like, just quit. Like, take a breather.

But you don't get to take a breather when you're going 200 miles an hour and you're trying to, guys behind you want to pass you and the 15, 20 guys in front of you, you got to pass, right? To do your job to the best that you can do. So that's a lot of stuff that, uh, like you said, parallels between racing and fighting that, uh, if you don't really dig into racing and find out all

the different strategies and all the work that goes in to make those cars go fast, uh, because you're fighting for literally tenths of a second, uh, that could be the difference between being fifth and being 25th. So those, if you're 2% off in 10 areas, man, all of a sudden you're really slow. So let alone that in the car side, if you're 10% off in your, in your mental clarity or your, your body condition of not being in shape at the end of the race, man, that guy, the next guy is going to get you. Yeah. Let's talk about that too.

So you mentioned CrossFit and some different things. I mean, obviously there's, there is a, there's a general misconception. I think when people think of race car drivers, they think of them as like, uh, it's not, you know, you're in a fucking car, but they don't realize like the heat, the exhaustion, the endurance that's required, the G force, the core stability to stay in place, like all of that factored into the fact that it's that long of a race, right? So what are some of the ways that you train specifically for racing? Uh, some sauna work helps, but when I get into like the meat of the season where you've been going for two months and haven't had off week,

and you know, you're not going to have an off week for another couple of months. You, I don't go to the sauna just because you're getting that every sunday right so i'll do that in the off season just to to keep my brain trained um and then you know it's almost like doing a thousand side bends in 140 degree sauna that's what it is because man your low back gets fired up because your hips your hips are trying to hold your body up but when you're turning your your shoulders are going away you know they're going to the right your head's going to the right you'll literally have some places you'll have tears i'll have tears run out of this eye over my nose into this eye and out you know and like it's and i don't even i I'm sure I blink, but like, I don't think about it when I'm blinking, but there's been places where you're like, you're, it's weird too, because you'll sometimes get into so much of a zone per se that you, you get comfortable. And then you almost have to snap yourself out of it because you're giving up that little bit of time because you are being comfortable you i feel like you have to always be uncomfortable to be able to reach that full

potential of the car speed so you can get you can get in a in a comfortable rhythm of lifting at the same spot right and get to the gas at the same spot uh but then all of a sudden after 20 laps you've been giving up that just that tenth and a half of speed. Man, that adds up to a second and a half on the racetrack, which is huge. Rogan's talked about that before with fighting, that you have to have a certain level of nerves in each fight. It's almost like a respect level. And if you go into a fight where you really have zero nerves odds are you're gonna get your ass kicked because you don't realize like the fucking weight of the situation you know or what

that potential is from your opponent right now but you touched on a subject that i wanted to dive into in flow like so much of mastery in any sport comes in flow states right how often have you found that you've been able to tap into that and what are the ways that you try to tap into flow i don't even know what flow is flow would be when you're in the fucking zone okay right so where it's almost like an out-of-body experience yeah man like you're there's no time you don't you're not concerned with time you're not concerned with anything and then when it ends you're like holy shit where was i right yeah every every week i get i get into that. It's soothing in a sense because this is your talent being fully maximized. Because when you're in the car, now granted, some cars can go faster than others. That's just the name of the game.

The cars that have more horsepower, more aero grip, and a better setup are going to go faster than the cars that don't. But there's a maximum velocity that the car I'm driving can go. And once you get into that zone and once you find out the parameters of what that car can take, then you can get in that zone and then you can hammer it out. And sometimes it's almost, like I just said, it's almost important to be in that for you don't want to be that in the whole the entire time because then then you get comfortable so you have to you have to ramp that intensity back up sometimes the car can't take it so so you can actually get out of that rhythm and you get a real backhand right

because sometimes sometimes it takes it calls for 110 percent effort and it calls for 95 effort so you just gotta you gotta balance that the whole day because there's sometimes right if there's if you're in lap 150 of a 500 lap race you don't want to go 110 because then your brakes are going to be used up your tires are going to be shot you're going to get your heart rate's going to get up and you have to manage that for the end of the race where it's more important. Yeah, how much of this has to do with pacing? Like, how much does that factor in? Because you have pit stops, you have times where you can come and get things fixed, but they're not changing out everything.

No, so you just put four tires on and fuel and make some small adjustments to the weight screws in the back of the car to make it looser tight. But, yeah, you don't get much time. And there's more pacing in the lower divisions because to save money, essentially, they don't give you tires. They give you one set of tires for the race. It's a shorter race, so you actually have to pace. You want tires left at the end of the race, so you have to pace 50% at the beginning of the race to get it at the end of the race you have to pace for 50 at the beginning of the race to get it at the end of the race well cup series and and xfinity series you get tires every time there's a caution essentially so anytime you get the opportunity to come put tires on you put tires on and you're making 50 qualifying laps all you got and then caution comes out come in put four more

tires on and you're all out again so there there's way less pacing. Uh, now certain tracks call for pacing on brakes. Cause you don't want to go too hard early run brakes, get hot engine. I'll get hot. Your body will get hot. Like there's, there's a little bit amount of pacing, but if you are pacing, there's somebody not, and he's probably going to be, he's probably going faster than you are. shit what else what else is going on in your life outside of racing i'm getting married new year's eve i'm excited about that wedding planning is don't do it i know i kid i kid i love my wife it's uh it's expensive to plan a wedding yeah let's pay for a wedding but she's uh she's been with me through the crew

chief in days all through this crazy journey of being back in the fold on the driving side. So, uh, she's, she's definitely the person I want to go through life with. And, uh, so there's that, that we're, we've only got two more weeks left in the season. So hopefully close that out with a bang and then, uh, trying to, trying to get myself in the best position possible for next year. Cause you know, when you're in that back 15 cars, the garage, those teams are so tight on cash that they're essentially taking the driver with the most amount of sponsorship dollars. Whether or not, you know, myself has a little more talent than the next guy, if that guy's got another million bucks, they're going to give that guy the nod over myself.

So trying to find a team that, and where I'm at now, TriStar Motorsports is great, and I'd like to stay there, but, you know, we'll see what happens on their end. Uh, so, uh, if, if you come to the race, eventually the, the trailers are parked highest in points to the lowest in points. And some right now we're somewhere around that 30th mark. So obviously my goal is to try to keep going up them trailers, right. And eventually being a championship-capable car because all the guys that I was racing with coming up,

Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Darrell Wallace Jr., all these guys my age that are making a big wave in the sport, Kyle Larson, you know, I've raced with all these guys and I've beat them a lot and they've beaten me some, but I know that my talent level is capable. Those guys just got a really good opportunity with some better teams and their career just went a different path. So mine's just been a little more of a struggle, but I don't mind a struggle because it makes you appreciate it more, right? Yeah. Hell yeah. And the struggle and the stress and the challenge is the thing that

helps us grow. Right. For sure. Yeah. And I wouldn't, honestly, I wouldn't trade at all. If you told me today to trade it in for Jimmy Johnson's car, I probably wouldn't do it because I wouldn't be sitting here today with the outlook on life and racing and a career and family and friends as I do now. So I don't take it off. I don't take any for granted. What is the age group of people when they get to the level that you're at? Are you fairly young for being where you're at? Yeah, I'm probably – there's actually just a group of us that kind of are – over the last two or three years that have came in when some older guys got out.

I would say that the – I'm probably fourth or fifth youngest guy, but the average age for a driver in their prime is 37. Okay. So that's kind of completely backwards from most of the other sports, right? That's kind of where knowledge and talent kind of – or physical ability kind of intersect, right? Yeah, you haven't lost all the physical abilities. You have that much more track experience, that much more time in.

Exactly. So, you know, Jimmy Johnson's in his prime still. Kevin Harvick's in his prime still. So those are the older guys that are at the top. So hopefully I can stick around this deal for another seven years to get really in my prime and be, you know, in a capable car to win some races one day. Because I feel like, I mean, I feel like I'm right there. And, you know, once I do get those opportunities, I'm certainly going to make the most of it. Hell yeah. Yeah, brother.

Yeah. Well, dude, it's been awesome having you on the show, man. No problem. I'm glad. I'm glad you had me it hell yeah yeah brother yeah well dude it's been awesome having you on the show man no problem i'm glad i'm glad you had me it's been a blast uh where can people find you online yeah on uh instagram twitter facebook at cory lejoy that's me come follow me i usually have uh i do instagram instagram is my favorite one i like to have fun on my stories and stuff and interact with people but uh yeah, I'm trying to grow that because social media nowadays is king, right? So I try to build that for companies like Onnit that want to help me as much as I want to be a part of companies like that. So to be doing cool stuff like this is awesome.

Fuck yeah, brother. It's been awesome having you, my man. I need to have you out to a race. I would love that. Yeah yeah, brother. It's been awesome having you, my man. I need to have you out to a race. I would love that. Yeah, for sure. For sure. You would be way more surprised on all the inner workings behind the scenes

as you would think. I just keep picturing the movie Cars. So I know that's not a good- As long as you're not picturing Talladega Nights. Okay. Because that is the worst damn movie to carry the torch for our sport. You don't want to go fast? Hell yeah, I want to go fast.

Okay, all right. But man, there's so many stereotypes in that movie. And granted, you got to take it lightly, right? It's hilarious. And Days of Thunder is probably one of my favorite movies, but that's probably a little bit more. Your mellow yellow car. Oh, yeah. So it's hilarious and days of thunder is probably one of my favorite movies but that's probably a little bit more yellow car oh yeah so it's it's cool it's a big it's a big traveling circus is what it is you see the same people every week uh and race against the same people every week so it's a pretty cool community to uh to be in for sure that's awesome brother

well fuck yeah man we'll run it back and i'll definitely love to come out and watch you race be awesome what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I don't think I have plans. Yeah. Sunday. Okay. Awesome, brother. Thank you guys for listening.

Hope you enjoyed this bonus episode. We will be having more bonus episodes coming your way. So if you enjoy the show and you like a shorter version of it, then maybe you'll see that on a bonus episode you like in that 20 to 40 minute range. Thanks for listening. If you need supplements or food products, go to onnit.com slash podcast for 10% off.