Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #84 Scott Stallings

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

Professional golfer and Onnit pro, Scott Stallings stops by to discuss his health journey over the past three years and how he gained control of his diet, sleep, breath, training and recovery to lose over 40 lbs. and get into the best shape of his life. We also discuss how he got started in his golf career, Parenting and his plans for life after golf. Connect with Scott: Instagram | https://bit.ly/2JXnQwI Twitter | https://bit.ly/2VcPg2y Show Notes: Scott Holtzman | https://bit.ly/2FO9Elm Rich Froning | https://bit.ly/2Uf2v6N Jason Khalipa | https://bit.ly/2JU3iFj Eric “Primal Swoldier” Leija | https://bit.ly/2F5yMAV XPT | https://www.xptlife.com/ 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 on: 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

What's up, y'all? We have an awesome guest today, Scott Stallings, who is a PGA Tour golfer, the first golfer that I've interviewed ever. And he's super legit. I found out that we actually sponsor him and on it. And it's not a paid infomercial, so don't fucking worry about that shit. But he's into all sorts of cool shit. He's down with a lot of the same things that I utilize,

from the whoop watch and analyzing sleep into cryotherapy and cold plunges and just a wealth of knowledge. And it's cool to see his arc and how he's really healed from pretty gnarly health issues to where he's at now, where he's in the best shape of his life. Looks incredible and probably can do this game

as long as he wants to. There's a lot of stuff, if you're not a golfer, that goes way outside of golf, so don't worry about it. And if you're into golf, it's pretty cool to see a deeper look into what goes on into the training of the modern-day golfer, which has certainly changed from pre-Tiger era to what it is today. Thanks for tuning in.

Let me know what you think at Kingsboo on Twitter and Instagram. There we go. We're dialed. We're rocking and rolling. So you were saying we should wear this armor during the podcast? Yeah, for sure. If it wasn't as old as I think it is, I would definitely let you have it on right now. No, I think you should have

it on like shirt off and just sit here and just be ready. That would definitely like fit the mold here. Ready for war. Ready for anything war ready for anything except an arrow i think it's i think it wasn't designed for that it's got a pretty big neck it's almost like a v-neck yeah well shit we got you here well finally and you got you came in with the trio last time talk about all the people that you live with and then we'll backtrack i like that uh what is that and the other guys yeah the the bad guy he talks about the best way to tell a story is to start from the middle start

from the middle work your way and work your way back and then peace to the ending and then come back and then follow all the way through yeah it's been an interesting journey like the last few years but i think you know we you know on it's been a pretty integral part of that and you know trying to come back here as much as we possibly can. And we came in December with kind of a mix of guys. We had a doctor. We had our PT that we work with, trainer. And then one of my best friends is also Onnit guy, Scott Holtzman,

which is a UFC fighter, which is an odd relationship in itself between a professional golfer and a professional MMA fighter. But we had a chance to come down and train, and that was my second or third trip down, and just tried to come and basically we'd hit everything that Onnit had to offer from training, recovery, nutrition. The relationship with Exos was really cool to kind of learn from them and just try to optimize every part of our day.

And just little incremental improvements was really kind of the key and learning from a training standpoint. And anytime you have John Wolfe kind of take you through a bunch of different stuff. We spent almost four hours with him yesterday afternoon and just trying to learn as much as we possibly can. So every time we come back, it's a long couple days, but it's something that you just take so much from it and try to come back here as much as I possibly can.

Yeah, it was the first time I got here. Aubrey was like, I want you to have a workout with John Wolfe. I was like, oh, cool. He put me through a workout, and I was like a kidney candy store. I come back to Aubrey, and I'm like, where the fuck was he when I was fighting? It's like the worst thing to fucking figure out this shit after your career ends for sure we had we came in december we had seven guys in the class and i mean it was like a two-hour just you know cram session of club mace kettlebell and you know there's so many of those things from a rotary athlete that can be utilized

in not only like strength training but just mobility and you know learning how to kind of train certain patterns and so on so forth and and obviously you know he's very well educated as far as to educate people that are you know i mean i couldn't tell you though if i'd ever picked up a mace before and next thing you know it's like i'm in my garage like you know sending videos like what is it what do you think of this what do you think of that and and then to be able to come back and you know five or six months later and just see just how much better i've gotten and just what i learned from that time and um it was interesting this time we had a josh kind of take us through some instructional and john just kind of went around and, you know, just taught and, you know, didn't have to really do as much demonstrating,

just kind of came by us as we were going through all the different movements. And, you know, not very people are, not very many people are fortunate enough to have that kind of time. And man, it was awesome. Yeah. That's incredible. The pain room for four hours. Well, let's back up. You grew up on the East Coast in Massachusetts. Yeah, I was born outside of Boston. And then my parents were sick of cold weather. And we moved down to Tennessee.

And that's kind of where I was raised. And my sister was born down there. And we grew up in East Tennessee, a small town called Oak Ridge, just outside of Knoxville. And I grew up there, just me and her and my parents. And I played all kinds of sports growing up as a kid. And then Tiger won the Masters in 97 and I quit everything. I was on this competitive baseball team and, you know, Tiger was the first guy that made golf cool. And I remember watching the Masters and was like, I want to go do that.

And, you know, not very often people get a chance to play golf with or compete against the guy that encouraged them or motivated them to want to do what they do for a living. And, you know, he's nowhere near like he was, but he's still, I mean, he can do something out there to a crowd and to a tournament that no one else has the power to do. And it's pretty cool to still be out there with him.

Yeah. Yeah. It's something I mean, they just had in fighting Anderson Silva fight this young guy, Adesanya, who's from New Zealand. But it was like the passing of the torch. And it was still just a badass fight to watch. But for sure, like Adesanya grew up watching Andersonerson silva yeah a lot of people you know and then you get to get in there and compete against them it's a different thing i remember i got paired with them uh like third third or fourth year on tour uh we're in the second to last group on a

saturday you know obviously just tons of people out there and the very first hole we're walking down the fairway and you kind of get over the fact of like you're actually doing it you know you visualize playing with you know someone that you've you know looked up to in your career and so on and so forth and it actually happens and i said hey man like they don't need to be strange or odd or this and that i just want to take the chance before we get out here and start doing our thing because I don't really care what you do and you don't really care what I do. But, like, I just want to take the opportunity to say thank you.

And I said, you took a small kid from Tennessee and motivated him to want to be out here and chase a dream to play on the PGA Tour. And, like, I don't want anything from you. I just want an opportunity before we get out here in the midst of this just to say thanks and, you know, that kind of appreciation. I think it kind of took him back at first. But, you know, now, I mean, you look back and, like, that was the experience in my career that, like, I'll never forget.

And definitely not necessarily passing the torch, but, like, I remember being that kid at 11, 12 years old watching the Masters. But I want to go play against that guy. And now I get a chance to live it out every day. Yeah. Pretty awesome. The dream come true for sure. So when did you get into golf?

I was that kind of in that moment. And I look back at it now. All my friends thought I was nuts because I mean, people played golf, but not really like to the point of it now. Like now kids are just, you know, this one sport mentality when, I mean, you played baseball and soccer and basketball and all every other sport just kind of as the season flowed. And you never really had like this one sport you keyed it on. And, you know, golf was by far my worst. And I just, you know, saw something in the tournament. And I told my dad at the moment, I was like, I think I want to do that.

And just kind of dove in headfirst and started getting after it. And, you know, had a fairly decent junior career and, you know, kind of put all my eggs in one basket thinking I was going to the University of Tennessee. And maybe a little overcommitted on my part and maybe short-sighted in terms of not making sure I had everything taken care of and ended up not working out where, you know, I didn't have a spot and like I thought I was going to and really ended up in the last place I ever thought I was going to be at Tennessee Tech University just down the road in Coot-Wool. And, you know, to be honest, never in my life ever thought I'd be there. And looking back on it, that was maybe the best four years of my life. Learned so much about

myself, you know, as a man and understanding like what it takes to, you know, to work hard, you know, the facilities hard, you know, the facilities we had that we had to make the most of it and just kind of figure it out. And, you know, look back on it and just like, man, I can't believe, like, to look back to where I came from and to where I am now. And you tell people, like, I play at Tennessee Tech. It's like, is that four-year school?

Like, what's going on? I remember going to the ncaa tournament as an individual and they asked me if i was at the right place like you're showing up like oklahoma state's flying on this private jet to this we're in the middle of oregon i had like 37 layovers to get there and showed up and like register for the tournament like uh are you confident you're supposed to be here it's like like, yeah. And finally they find my name and, and figure it out and play the tournament. But it was definitely like, you know, kind of the first step into, you know, the big world of golf and kind of the upper echelon. And, you know, that kind of spurred me on to kind of work a little

bit harder and, you know, hopefully, uh, you know, pursued something to be able to do what I have a chance to do today. Oh, yeah. You touched on a topic that I think is critical. And we have, I don't actually don't, we have a mostly male audience as expected, but I have no idea how many of them are parents. A lot of the parents talk seems to resonate with them. But one of the things I remember reading this in a book by Pavel Tatsulin, the kettlebell guy, Russian dude. Is that the 300 kettlebell swings a day guy? I think he has, I'm sure he has something like that. Yeah, I did that.

It was wild. It works, right? Yeah. Holy shit works. Greasing the groove. Absolutely. I mean, I did the, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but there's like a certain way to pick your weight.

And somehow I ended up with a 62 pound kettlebell. And remember it was like 300, took me like 18 minutes. Like, holy cow, how am I going to do this? And I got, after 30 days, I got down under five. Wow. It was like, like I was doing like sets of 10. Like, am I ever going to finish this? And then you just, you know, catch the groove and kind of go into there.

I forget how you figure the weight, but we had some guys at the gym I work out in Phoenix and we all did it and a little bit of body weight weight height and so on and so forth and figure it out. But yeah, sorry. Continue. Yeah, no, no, no, no apologies. That's awesome. I, I, he's, he's done a lot of cool things, but, and he, and I've learned a lot from him. He's got books on stretching and all sorts of shit, but he, he talked about this concept cause he's from Russia where the former Soviet union would basically select you from a young age.

Like your parents are such and such height, they're broad-shouldered, you're going to be a swimmer. And they'd force that kid to only practice swimming his fucking entire life. And you're short and strong, you're going to be good at this, right? And whatever the case was, they would try to make Olympians out of kids from a very young age. And the case was, they would try to make Olympians out of kids from a very young age. And the problem was burnout. For sure.

By the time they reached 18 years old, they didn't give a fuck about that sport. They hated it so much. They'd rather work on a coal mine than play that sport again. And so it's really interesting that you had that kind of not super late start, but just a different start where you did have the variety. Because that's one of the things that he really cues in on is as children, we need variety. We need just a number of different things that we can get good at because that teaches us the general play of all sports. And then we can specialize as we have something we're really attracted to, or we're really selling at. Yeah. My parents never really had that. Like you're going to do this and,

and, and commit is like, no, you said you were going to do it. Like we're going to ride it out. And there was never this mentality of like, Oh, you picked it. And I guess the, the specialization has definitely become more and more frequent as we go on. I do a lot with junior golf and so on and so forth. And for the most part, when you're at a junior event or so, like you do a Q&A or something like that for the kids, but I also do one for the parents. And that's the biggest thing. Like, man, like get your kids out.

Like this isn't, I mean, they're gonna have a chance to do this for the rest of their lives. Like this can't identify them at 14 years old. And it's crazy to see the kids that get to the point like that I grew up. I mean, I'm 34 now. I mean, there's kids that grew up playing junior golf, college golf with it.

I thought I'd won majors. They don't even play golf anymore. Just from that same thing, the total burnout, like I don't even want to look at a golf club. I don't want to go to a golf course. I just want to go be a normal, you know, 22 year old kid. Like I've done this for the last, you know, 15 years of my life. Like I'm out and it's crazy to see, you know, how that transcends just over the course of sports,

but golf can definitely have a tendency to kind of get that way pretty quick. Unfortunately. Yeah. Well, I think too, that's just the nature of where, kind of where our society is, you know, they're like, Oh, Tiger Woods started when he was two or four or whatever, you know, and they show the old videos and it's like, well'm gonna do that for you you know it's like uh in the water boy when his dad is like no dummy we're gonna go to the nfl and be like tiger wood than his daddy yeah the amount of people that ask me like my son's six and i was like oh is he playing

golf it's like ah no, is he like running outside? Yes, like he's told me the other day, he's like, I want to learn how to, like, I want to swing kettlebells. So we got him a 10, 10 pounder. He's just hammering it out. And you're just trying to like, I don't care what he does. I just want him to feel like whatever he chooses

and, you know, strives to be like he can, you know, well-rounded enough to where he could go do it. You want to see something funny, go take a football to a PGA Tour event strives to be like he can you know well-rounded enough to where he could go do it you won't see something funny go take a football to a pga tour event and throw it to someone and watch them get out of the way like i can't hurt and i mean that's not to make fun of my you know fellow tour players but more often than not you would see the animosity come from i'm not going to put myself in the way of this i'm going to get away from it and it kind of goes into the idea we spoke about this morning at breakfast. Like the number of people that actively go into something seeking discomfort in

order to try and like gain something out of it or learn something is so minimal. And I think that's why like a company, an organization like this is so attractive because everyone's in it trying to figure out, I'm going to put myself into the grinder. I'm going to figure out and I'm going to come out on the other side of like man that was awesome i can't wait to go do it again yeah and there are there's a lot of ways we can do that right for sure i want to dive into because i heard that you're into cryotherapy and some different things like that and we used to have one here obviously i'm fucking huge proponent of cold

therapy but um you know i think tiger was also that first generation where it was like, golfers are going to look different now, not all of them, but a lot of them are going to start to look different. And I think you've certainly fit the mold of that. So like how, how has your training developed over time and what are the different things that you've added in that are really probably not common in the sport? Yeah, I think it kind of goes back like maybe to go into a little bit of history. I mean, it wasn't like this always. Like, I wish I'd say that, man, I was in great shape, but the unbelievable good care of myself, you know, I was a great steward of my body. I ate clean, you know, whatever. And I mean, that'd be a total facade, you know, about three years ago,

you know, had a fairly significant health journey you know kind of had some health problems come up and it was just a culmination of you know some maybe some food allergy stuff you know some bad sleep habits and just overall just general unhealth just lack of well-being i guess just everything was kind of screwed up and, you know, through the, you know, some doctors through Adam, my trainer, and just kind of being able to find the bits and pieces and kind of figure out how to incrementally improve every part of my life and, um, you know, relationships on it and, you know, whoop and, you know,

just kind of all the people will put the pieces together and kind of figure out like, what is the best health story for me? And kind of what that looked like. And, you know, obviously a lot of things you just touched on are a huge part of that. You know, sleep habits was the biggest part. I went and had the sleep study done.

And the lady basically, she's like, I would, if I had to diagnose you, I would diagnose you as a functioning narcoleptic. I did this two back-to-back sleep study and i didn't touch in two nights of sleep i didn't touch it was like less than 10 minutes of rim didn't even remotely know what deep was ended up in this uh doctor's office and he's like yeah man if you're like sinus cavity i broke my

nose a couple times as a kid and it never got repaired or anything like that. And just the entire left side of my sinus cavity was caved in and had a surgery and kind of like, while it was brutal and I would do it again in a heartbeat, basically. What they do, they go in there with the, cause I had that done too in fighting, cane broke my nose in training and they went in and burned out the polyps and all that. I had throat and nose. So tonsils, adenoids, they cut my uvula out, make my, you know, just be able to breathe a little bit better. And through, it was looking back at it now, like my cardio training and so on and so forth has always been pretty good. But you look at it now, and now that I had that all cleaned up, like it was like, I operated in like an elevation mask almost.

And, you know, just through that whole part, being able to kind of figure out like what my body responds well to and understanding like how to train through the course, our season is super long and, you know, we, you know, roughly spend, you know, 250, 280 days a year on the road. And, you know, just kind of figure out like what that looks like. And you don't really have a training cycle to like, you know, I'm going to be in a strength training mode or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to, you know, whatever you kind of building block hypertrophy. Yeah. You got a lifting block. You got to kind of go into like, all right, how can I fit that into a week? You know? So basically our, our week goes is like, you'd almost do a training cycle throughout a

year. Long, slow, heavy into short, fast, and light. And that's basically through the week. And your recovery is just as important as the training cycle, as the eating, as the sleeping. It's all put into this plan that we just kind of figured out over time. It was like, oh, man, you dialed in. It's like, man, we made so many mistakes that this wasn't like, oh, we did it one time and we're good. It's like, man, we're just slowly but surely figuring it out, figuring it out, figuring it out. But being able to learn from as many people as we possibly can too.

I don't want to ever be the guy that walk in like, no, i'm good you can't teach me anything i don't already know like i'm trying to take in as much as i possibly can and figure out like what little part i can put in to make myself just that much better hell yeah so you talked about a bunch of shit that's really important that i want to dive into recovery obviously being just as important whoop which i'm a fucking massive fan of yeah those guys are great to work with yeah they're incredible and i think they're coming out with something new soon that's the word on the street so i'm really excited to see what that is but their first generation stuff is is just amazing how you know like first let's talk about recovery and then

i want to get into some of these aspects maybe whoop is a part of that obviously because it can detail a little bit more than the twice that you were in a lab. You can get a little bit more consistent results as far as data looking at the sleep. The recovery aspect is understanding sleep habits too. Cold is dark and you can get a cold shower before bed, understand the blue light aspect and so on and so forth. I actually reached out to a couple of here trying to figure out like the red light therapy and infrared and so on and so forth. Actually, we juved at the audit house. Oh, you did? Yeah. That's awesome. I can set you up with those guys. We're good. Okay, cool. They got you. We had our own room and if the door was closed, you didn't want to walk in because you didn't know what you'd walk in to see. Pretty much. But, uh, you know, just trying to learn, I mean, all that stuff,

like if you'd have told me five years ago, Hey man, you'd be into this or you're trying to learn from, I'd be like, you're totally nuts. And now look into it, like just part of the day and understanding like, you know, my house in Tennessee got a horse trough with a, I bought from Tractor Supply and we just dunk guys in there, you know, as much as we possibly can, you know, as ice bath. And just understanding like you just get to the point where you almost crave it after a hard training session. And how many guys that, you know, come in and out of my garage and it's like, I'm never getting in the ice. I'm never getting in the ice. Six months later, they're showing up with their own bags like, let's go. That was the same way I was. Do a lot of soft tissue and stuff like that in terms of with Adam

from the PT side and just having someone there to kind of be aware as far as, you know, what, maybe I'm not aware of some limitations or, you know, maybe this and just have someone to kind of peek over your shoulder and, you know, maybe we need to look at this and so on and so forth. And maybe that's a, uh, increasing cryo, maybe it's a cold tub, maybe it's a, you know, understanding like, you know, maybe let's look into the whoop and figure out like, we're having a little slight decline and so on and so forth, and what's truly causing what. And I think a lot of people look at the grand big picture as far as, oh, you have low testosterone, you need to go testosterone replacement. No, that's like a symptom. That's not a cause.

And so many people look for the quick fix and the number of conversations I've had with people over the last 18 months, like, what'd you do? What'd you do? Like last January, I was 232 and 26% and, you know, went to 184 and 10. And that was just one better decision, just a little bit more often every day and figuring out so many things that I can do to just improve that little bit. And I was telling Craig earlier that it's pretty hard to improve 10% in one area of your life over a period of time, but it's pretty easy to improve in 1% over 10 areas.

And that's kind of what I did. And just figuring out little things and so on and so forth. The recovery aspect was big. And we had a pretty big leg session this morning with Juan, which is very appropriate. Fucking Juan is so jacked. Man, I actually saw him do arms yesterday. And I want to take a picture just to show people it's not just quads all day.

He had that arm blaster going on. And we were in the pain room with Wolf. And I was like he he's doing upper body like what's happening out there and uh we would train with him and then right in the sauna you know just understanding like how that's the biggest part and you know food food intake before food intake after and you know supplementation uh man the exos lady here is incredible i mean i sent her emails like what i i'm doing this you. I'm about to go on the road for five weeks. Like, what do I need to add in? What do I need to take away? And just having the access to be able to ask people the right kind of questions. Because I mean, I don't have it all figured out, but I know the people that do. And I definitely want to ask people as many questions as I possibly can throughout the process. How has your diet changed? What are some of the ways that you, because I mean, most weight loss, obviously with training and things like that, but a lot of it has to do with what you're putting in your body.

A lot of it was understanding like what my body didn't respond well to. Found out that when I went through that first, have you ever done MRT? I have not. That, you know, basically like it's a, you know, what your body responds the best to and so on and so forth and simple blood tests. It basically gives you this printout as far as things you should totally avoid and then things you might have mild responses and things like the mass majority of your diet should consist of. I remember the first time the doctor got the printout, the question, he said, how many beers a day do you drink? I said, sir, like, I hate beer. Like I haven't had five beers in my life. And he said, well, your barley is off the chart. So what in the world do you have in your diet that's just shooting it off? And I was on this protein supplement that, you know, clean, no problems,

but the main two consistent parts were as far as the complex carb was barley and sweet potato and found out that I was like deathly allergic to both of them. And so like when your body's so broken down from training, I was putting in like something that I was, I mean, for lack of a better word, poison, you know, my body just responded super negatively. My inflammatory markers were off the charts. Testosterone, all the adrenal fatigue, everything you could think of from a performance aspect in an athlete or whatever was just as whacked as you could possibly imagine. You ever seen that thing where you test your biological age?

Telomeres? Oh my gosh. I was 29 years old and my biological age is 42 yes i was like i got a similar response the first time i took it how how am i going to how first of all how am i going to be an athlete on the pga tour playing against the best players in the world and i'm supposed to be in the prime of my career, but technically I'm 13 years older than I am. And I feel awful. And now look at it. Now I'm 34. My biological age is totally flipped to 28 and just little tiny incremental improvements and, you know, kind of slowly, but surely figuring out. But I had a guy I went to college with big CrossFit athlete, Rich Froning. I know you had Cleep on here, too.

He's great. Froning called me probably last December, shot me a text, and he said, hey, I started working with these diet guys, and they really helped me, and I think they can help you. I'm like, you're on a diet? You literally have the title of the fittest man in the world. Why do you need a diet and he goes no man they've really helped me with my training and my travel and and so on so forth

and uh the renaissance periodization guys the rp strength guys and i reached out to him and called and he's like man we you you need us bad and just kind of went through our schedule and understanding like when to eat and how to travel and how to properly hydrate. And cause I mean, our schedules are never the same and, you know, slowly, but surely I went on a three month, uh, pretty strict, you know, clean eating, trying to clean as much as I possibly could and then maintain for like four and a half months. And then I went back on again and that kind of got me to where I am now. You know, 185, 190 and 10% is pretty manageable. I don't think I could really manage much lower than that, but I feel great at that. Yeah, no, that is,

that is great. That's one thing I've had to let go of from retiring from fighting is that it's, I'm not going to be 4% body fat again. I was when I was a fighter and that's okay. Yeah. But I can, I can hover around hover around 10%. I'd be happy there. I feel good in that 10 to 12, and I feel like I can sustain that. It'd be interesting as we start getting in the warmer months as it's March now. I haven't had that issue in terms of the sweat and dehydration in terms of body fat percentage and just overall body weight. So it'd be interesting to see of see how it fluctuates. Yeah.

I think it really becomes an issue in the sub 5% range, you know, but as long as you're eating stuff, that's not problematic. I mean, that's another thing people, everybody's looking for the thing to add and it's really, what can I take away? That's exactly what it was more. Not like I went on an elimination diet. It was like I took away some of the stuff that maybe I didn't respond best to. And I just filled it up

with as much as I possibly could that I knew my body thrived off of. And truly, I know you guys promote a bunch of keto and so on and so forth. But truly, I increased my protein, I increased my fat, and I increased my veggie and decrease my carb. And my carb intake has a hundred percent to do with my training and my playing. Yeah. We really don't know that you could be fully restored with glycogen from carbohydrates in your liver and your muscles and be well under a hundred grams of carbs a day. Totally. Yeah. You know, and it's all based on of, you know, when I know when I'm training, when I'm traveling, when I'm playing and so on and so forth. And it's all that balanced relationship as far as just being a little bit more prepared and just being willing to have,

just have a touch more discipline to kind of know when I can and maybe when I shouldn't, and then kind of know what to fill the void with. And. Well, I want to talk about a few more things. What is, you know, like in your sport, and I'm starting to think about this now with archery that I'm getting into, is repetitive stress injury, and it's always the same one side, right? So you have the same swing, and obviously those are common. What are some of the exercises and mobility things that you do to balance the body? Yeah, I showed Wolf this video from, it was probably, it's probably closer to two years now,

but I remember the first, Eric DeSwolder sent me like a flow, he's like, you get this down, then we'll like talk. And I remember like the first time I did a halo, I couldn't go around, I couldn't go around the left side of my head. My shoulder mobility was brutal. You know, just. And I remember the first time I got it and I was like, oh man, I got this. And now I look back on it, it's almost cringeworthy. It's my head moves forward and

you can tell I'm just cheating as much as I possibly can. And we were at the gym four or five months ago and a buddy of mine's like, man, you should like do that video again and like push it side by side. And obviously my body looks significantly different, but you see shoulder mobility, hip mobility, everything. And that's, you know, a lot of kettlebell movements, a lot of mobility and just a lot of just integrating a bunch of different training variables, you know, throughout to where my body can adapt to it. And, but it is funny, like I, as much as we swing one way, there's just literally not enough time in the day to swing the opposite. So, you know, I can't, you know, go swing a thousand times right-handed and go find the time to swing left-handed. So just building up resilience in those other parts of the body and, you know, core, low back, you hear about Tiger and his glutes or whatever, but people give us a hard time. But really I try to make my lower body and from the ground as absolutely as strong as I possibly can. And that's the, the main part

of my training. And, you know, from powerlifting, Olympic lifting, you know, long cardio, whatever I possibly can. Cause once these things go, everything goes. Cause that's my connection to the ground. And that's where I produce all my power. And you get the pushers and the sliders or rotators. And I'm a pusher. I shoot out of the ground really hard. And you see the 150 guy, 150 pound guy that can hit it three 30. I mean, he's a rotator, you know, super fast hips, like a Roy McIlroy or Justin Thomas or something like that. And then you see the other guy maybe have slightly sore swing speeds or whatever, but they push out of the ground so hard. And that's kind of more on the area that I am.

So understanding that my hip work is, you know, big importance. I literally, I swing a kettlebell as much as I possibly can from as light, as many reps as possible to as heavy and slow and kind of whatever you can think of in between yeah and then hitting that long slow endurance and then the high intensity intervals yeah just covering all the bases literally as many training variables as you can think of is what i try to accomplish i'm not great in any of them but i'm pretty good at all of them is that the good way to look at it i guess yeah and i've incorporated a little bit more running you know into i'd never loved running and it's not like anything super impressive you know four or five miles max but something where i go clear my mind and you know knock it out in an hour or whatever and you kind of get away from the you know where i can it's so counterintuitive because

golf is long and slow and so on so forth but to kind of get away from it all where i'm just running coming back and that's why training's too it's been great for the because it's total opposite of golf i can go in there for 30 minutes and knock out some high intensity thing and feel great and kind of get over the fact of you know know, whether good round, bad round, it's just, I know I'm going to go in there and deal with it. Yeah. Talk a bit about the mental aspect of it because it's, that's more of it than anything. Yeah. And you know, when did, when did that really start to become a factor for you? Because I'm sure as you were starting out as a kid, there's a lot on the technical side, how to swing, you know, how to, how to see the ball,

all these, you know, see the ground, all these factors. And then the, the closer you get to the level that you're at now, how did that transition go? And what are the, some of the techniques that you've used? I think a lot of it, you start to realize, especially being on tour, like I know guys that are significantly more talented than some people on tour, but the guys on tour, they just know that they're good. And you know, you, you can see a guy on an off week and watch him play, but man, there's no way that guy plays on tour. And you go watch him tee it up on a Thursday morning when he, and it's like the light switch goes off. And I completely agree with that. Like I can go, you and I go play golf today and I could go shoot the easiest 75 you've ever seen. Like that guy plays golf for a living and then turn around, you know, four or five days later and the gun goes off and it's time for me to go tee it up for my job. And it's like, I'm

ready. And a little bit of that is understanding that too. And kind of the, you know, it's not always game mode and understanding like how to, like some guys struggle with, you can't play casual golf. It's grind all the time. And I'm the total opposite of that. And, and understanding like what I thrive best in, and I'm not a, a big long practice session and, and understanding I'm way more game mentality. Like what, uh, you know, whether it's a competitive with a friend of mine or a, um, you know, against myself or so on and so forth, and just figuring out like what truly brings the best out of me. But from the mental aspect, putting yourself in stuff where like failure is inevitable. And I think human nature kind of would take you away from that. But in

terms of like to build up resilience, like you have to put yourself in that situation and learn how to deal with it. And, you know, golf is a perfect example of that because you have so many more failures and you do successes and learn how to incrementally, like I almost quantify that. It was like, well, you know, I finished this in this tournament, but I feel like I'm trending that. I was like, well, you know, I finished this in this tournament, but I feel like I'm trending in the right direction and understand kind of how to take small successes out of each and every week instead of looking at the overall result.

Way more process-oriented, and I know that you can definitely get in that mental perspective as far as process versus outcome, but golf's the perfect example of that because there's one winner every single week, and if you look around and you finish second, have a great week and a guy outplays you, how are you going to take away a negative? But unfortunately, some guys do. And they put themselves in the situation where if I don't win, I was unsuccessful. And I don't think you're going to have a very long career if you continue to put yourself

in that certain mind frame. Yeah. Nobody's, nobody's worse than your own inner critic. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you can, the inner critic is great, you know, cause that's the, the self-motivating factor. And I just got done reading Goggins book and, you know, listen to a couple of podcasts that he did and, you know, talking about like staring at his shoes, like that was his favorite part of the day, but also the part of the day that he did and talking about staring at his shoes. That was his favorite part of the day, but also the part of the day that he hates in terms of he puts himself in the situation that he doesn't want to do, but he knows that he's going to do it.

Every morning he wakes up, looks at his shoes, and he knows he's going to go run. But just the time it takes him to go do that, I mean, that's one of my favorite parts. I pull my clubs out and I'm like, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to put myself in a situation that, A, first, I probably don't want to, but I know I'm going to do it and I know I'm going to overcome it.

I know I'm going to succeed. And I think that's the kind of stuff that I look at. Every single part of the day, I try to put myself, whether it's training, whether it's recovery, whether it's chasing my kids around, whether it's travel or so on and so forth, just tiny little things every single day that I learned from and just little mental improvements. And to be honest, I wasn't great at it for a long time and I can still get a lot better, but at least it's something that I strive for every single day. And, uh, practice is way more, uh, especially off week and stuff like that. You can put yourself in

way more stressful environments tournament week it's way more make sure i'm dialed make sure i got the course and when the gun goes off thursday i'm ready to roll oh yeah and kind of being cognizant of that and you've won the whole thing three times is that right yeah three times on tour that's amazing pretty wild man it's been a it's been a But, you know, it kind of got to the point, like we talked about earlier with my health stuff, and I definitely don't want this to be about that, but you kind of get a new, fresh perspective

when you feel like the game was kind of taken away from you. And, you know, good day, bad day, indifferent. Like the fact that I get to go out there and chase my dream and play against the best players in the world and be out there competing is, I didn't have the appreciation for that when I first got on tour and I definitely do now. And, you know, the good days are great,

but the bad days are a little bit easier to deal with, you know, kind of with a different perspective. And I feel like, you know, carry on to definitely a longer, more fruitful career, I guess. And longevity is key. I mean, our seasons are long, our careers are long and understanding just kind of how to deal with the ebbs and flows that comes along with, you know, playing a sport that can be somewhat unforgiving. So how long do you plan on, on doing this? I don't really understand like the, I've watched

golf before and it looks like there's some older folks out there, but then obviously you see a lot of these young, young bucks coming up in the game. Um, it does remind me of MMA in a lot of ways, because, you know, you've got people who don't retire that you're like five years ahead of time. That guy should have been retiring. That guy should have been retiring. And then young, young people coming up in the game and you're like, damn, I never even heard of this kid. He's amazing. How far do you think you're going to take this? Yeah. It's an interesting comment. Cause we, I fit, did my wife text you? Cause I feel like she put me in a spot to work. Cause this is a question that we talk about a lot. I'm third. I just turned 34 last week. And, uh, like I would like to get

in a point where my career, where if I turned, when I turned 40, I can about do whatever I want, you know, financially or, you know, family wise or so on and so forth. I love my job. I love my career. I love the chance to go out there and compete. But also I want to get to the point where so much of that time is taken away from them that I want to get to the point where I can go invest in them. I want to be in my community in East Tennessee and do things for the people that gave me the opportunity to be able to do this for my life. And, you know, that may or may not happen, but, you know, that's kind of the general idea is just to get to the point where I feel like I can walk away and be like, that was good enough for me. And, um, if it's, is that 40, is that 38, is it 42? You know, my wife's kind of, it's like, what about 40? But yeah, we'll see how

it goes. We've had a crazy ride. Both my kids travel with me on the road since they were four weeks old. I've got a six-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. And so we're definitely getting ready to get in that transition. We've split time between Scottsdale, Arizona, and Knoxville, Tennessee for the last six years. And we're in the process. My family actually just had their last day in Phoenix today and making our home, building a house in Tennessee.

And that will be where our family is based out of. And so it'll be an interesting transition these next few years, just kind of seeing how that goes with them not being able to travel as much with school and so on and so forth. So the decision to have one home base was based around them entering school age. And you guys before were splitting time between,

I didn't realize you were out in AZ. Yeah. You mentioned it earlier. Yeah. That's awesome. So have you done any of the training at Exos? I have. I have. I have. I did during the, before Onnit and Exos even started working together,

they were pretty welcoming to the PGA Tour guys and so on and so forth. And during the Phoenix Open and stuff like that kind of opened their doors. And so I was familiar, but then the Onnit thing and exos and so on so forth and adam my my therapist uh pt their company was acquired by exos and then the partnership happened and it kind of all culminated at once and it was like this is great so but the the time that we're in phoenix is their big combine time so okay going there going there going there do a yoga class with some offensive line myth like what in the world am i doing in here but uh they're very welcoming and you definitely learned a lot but it's just more of a timing thing too got a cool gym that i work out their

premier fitness and scott steel they've been great and they train a little bit more uh mobility based more ground-based. They're running around with their shoes off and so on and so forth and trying to utilize. It's been a unique relationship because they make me do the things I probably don't want to do. Like, let's get on the assault bike and deadlift. Let's roll around on the ground.

It's a happy balance between the two of them. Yeah. Damn, I would set you up with a spot out in Scottsdale that Ryan Bader takes me to. and and you know so it's a happy balance between the two of them yeah damn i would i would i would set you up with a spot out in scottsdale that ryan bader takes me to he's the bellator light heavyweight champ so we use the same uh like cryo place and so we're okay and that's our seasons are kind of counter but uh but we i'm familiar with some of the guys that he works with out there yeah do the is that the place where they have the altitude room? Absolutely.

I did a rowing workout back and forth. I don't know why they choose to do the water rower, but when you're so used to Concept2 or something like that. I did like a thousand meter for time, and then they kept incrementally doing the elevation. It was like, holy cow. Man, I felt like the most unfit human i've ever met in my life it's brutal it's like you're rocking like a like a 330 you know a thousand

meter you know no problem start increasing the altitude a little bit so it's like man we start creeping around the five minute mark it's like holy cow what's going on here and they just kind of you know suck it all out of that room and then they put it all back i'm good to go now yeah the panic starts to settle down yeah but they have that uh um the pod too where they can do the shoot you way high yeah like 22,000 yeah yeah drop it back down and it's pressurized too absolutely you get like that who knows what all physiological adaptation comes from but certainly pressure would be one of those things so it's better than just putting a mask on i did my VO two there with some of the guys from the Diamondbacks and, uh, a couple of testing things that they have. It was a cool spot,

but I'd never met Ryan, but I knew that he worked with some of the similar guys out there. That's cool. So did you, you have done your VO two max post surgery, but not pre-surgery? I did it pre and then I did it post. and then I did it post again after, you know, the, you know, got in probably arguably the best shape of my life, if not, no question, the best shape of my life. And with the doctor, Kevin, that was here with us there, he ran me through my VO2, and we did that lactate threshold. Okay.

I truly thought I was like bleeding to death. Is that a pretty gnarly test? It is. threshold okay it's truly thought i was like bleeding death is that a pretty gnarly test it it is it's just more it's uncomfortable because you do it at the same time like i did bo2 and lactate so i mean you're running with this thing on there and then you get to like i think i ran for 48 minutes or something like three minute rounds and just you know continually increasing and then you finally get to the point where once you hold a certain threshold for that, they start incrementally increasing the speed. Then some guy's trying to prick your finger

and run it through, and you're just trying to breathe and so on and so forth. I would definitely like to see, I didn't really know what to expect because I'd done VO2 before, but never with the lactate and be crazy to see the difference. But it was wild to see pre-surgery to post-surgery, like how much better it was. But we, that place in Arizona, they do VO2 on a bike. And if you're not a bike rider, I don't think that is, I would prefer to run. Yeah. And yeah, my legs just ride a salt bike for 30 seconds.

I'm not going to go ride for this, you know, 45 minutes or whatever I was on that thing for, but I'd go run there and be okay. The lactate is a unique test and kind of, especially if you use any kind of heart rate variability or heart rate training or anything, it's pretty wild to start figuring out like what that threshold is to like when you can really push it when you maybe need to drop back a little bit. Yeah. Dr. Peter T is constantly talking about like that, the forgotten zone too, you know, and

we had Mark Sisson on the show recently. He wrote Primal Endurance, which is one of my favorite books on endurance training. But there's so much of that. Like when we have competition, that's where you push it long and hard. But other than that, the long should be easy and the hard should be short, you know? And just not forgetting about that zone too, where you really can't have a conversation

while you're running or no breathe through your nose the whole time. Yeah, we started, Adam just did the XPT and we started incrementing a lot. So Wednesday of a tournament week is our like reset. So lower body strength training Monday, you try to get as far away from Thursday, Thursday's when the tournament starts,

try to get as far away from Thursday as a possible get. So like we play Thursday this week in San Antonio. And so we, you know, whatever, 9.30, 10 a.m. Strength training lower, and then tomorrow be more more upper-based, and then Wednesday is more of like a cardiovascular reset. You know, so whether it's energy system training, whether it's nasal breathing or, you know, just more rotary component, way more kettlebell complex, landmine. What was the rotary component? All of it. We'll incorporate.

What is that? Rotational cleans, landmine work, on-the-ground work, single arm, stuff like that. A little bit more, not golf specific, but trying to incorporate the right pattern of this is what I'm doing for a living. This is what I'm trying to ingrain. I'm trying to get as strong in this moment as I possibly can. And then some cardio intervals throughout. And do a lot of kettlebell complex with treadmill treadmill sprints and you know back and forth and

and so on and so forth the landmine is actually you know give me a 53 pound kettlebell and a landmine set up and we can make something happen and you know that's as the tournament goes on that's what we kind of camp out on that's good do you travel with gear do you have people travel with it uh throughout the course of the last few years i can basically tell you like where i'm gonna be and you know you're kind of all right i'm gonna be in you know hilton head in a few weeks i can already tell you where i'm gonna train i know what they have and and so on so forth and we kind of base our training you know we'll have a you know an off week We'll basically go through a schedule like this is where we're going to be,

this is what they're going to have, and this is what we're going to plan. Instead of walking in the gym, be like, all right, what are we going to do today? We kind of have a base idea, but have you ever had like a training partner that say you guys are set in a separate room and you train together for a really long time and, all right, we're going to do lower body strength training and we're going to go heavy. Like you kind of set the parameters and you put together for a really long time and all right, we're going to do lower body strength training and we're going to go heavy. Like you kind of set the parameters and you put yourself in a separate room and you guys had to write out a workout. Have you ever had that guy that it would be pretty similar? Yeah. So Adam and I are very much the same. Like if you give

us some parameter and an idea of some equipment, more often often than not it would be pretty dang close if not the same some of the intervals may be different or so on and so forth but the overall training methodology just because we train together so much but it was funny we lifted with uh one day and adam was joking he's like did you write this workout this is like exactly what i think you would tell him to do you know there's a lot of five by five you know pulling off the ground a lot of front rack step ups and then we ended with uh front rack walking lunges sled push and then 20 calorie intervals on the bike and there's like brutal all the stuff that i did like i was getting middle fingers from everyone in the group it's like you

told him to do this you told him to do this it You told him to do this. It's like, I had nothing to do with it. I just texted Juan. I said, we want to do some lower body strength. And he said, I got you. Yeah. Juan definitely has you. Yeah. He got us taken care of. That's awesome, brother. So you're going to be up in San Antonio next week. And you guys just played in Austin last week? Yeah. So that's part of the PGA Tour, but it's the top 64 in the world. So you get Europeans, Asian tour guys, people from all encompassing. That World Golf Championship is the World Golf Federation that encompasses every professional golf tour at one time and culminates in the World Golf Ranking System, which that's a whole different subject.

But in terms of the PGA Tour, we'll play next week in San Antonio and then for the rest of the year. So pretty wild, especially the length of our season. Oh, yeah. Got any plans for post-career? I don't know. I definitely like the relationships I've built

over the last couple of years in terms of the... I don't think I I definitely like the relationships I've built over the last couple of years in terms of the strength. I don't think I'd ever want to do any kind of gym thing or anything like that. But to've got to go tell this 17 year old kid that's going to come on your team like man you're really good like i know what the best looks like i've played against the tiger woods and the you know dustin johnson's whatever i i don't think i would do very well in the recruiting aspect of collegiate golf but i would do great in regards of helping some 17 18 18, 19 year old kids, you know, figure out to become the best version of themselves. So that appeals to me. I started helping out some, uh, college golfers in the area and just, that's a pretty vulnerable time to you go from the junior aspect to the collegiate aspect. And there's a lot of appeal to that for me. And, but I did such a poor job as far as being a good steward of what I had for such a long time and trying to help people just learn from my mistakes, not go tell some sob story. Hey, I took terrible care of myself and look where I am now. But just like, man, don't go down that road like I did. You know, every day is a blessing and learn from every possible situation you possibly can and, and figure out what ways you can improve upon everything and i feel like i could do a pretty good job as far as helping you know people through that

you know make them down here and help you guys out and on it and learn whatever i possibly can from you we need a golf coach hell yeah brother i've seen aubrey play man he needs some help we took some guys out and played when I came down last year. And it was me, Aubrey, Ian, and Andrew. And we got done. It was so hot. We played nine. I was like, guys, I know y'all don't do this all the time. I play golf every day.

So this doesn't really have appeal to me. Do y'all want to go work out? And they're like, yes, let's go work out. And we came back here and got a session in but um but you know just anything i possibly can to find the best version of myself whether on the golf course with my family you know whatever that's why the relationship with honored is very appropriate for me and i feel like it's appropriate for a lot of people and just you you know, the message you guys preach, I mean,

total human optimization is kind of speaks for itself. And, you know, it's something that we're trying to learn and incorporate in every aspect of our, of our lives. Well, awesome brother.

It's awesome having you on the podcast finally, and awesome that we are having you as a part of the Onnit family. Yeah, it's awesome. I've learned a lot and i appreciate the the time and uh trying to be the best version of myself and the relationship has been mutually beneficial and i've learned a lot from i appreciate the time yeah brother where can people find you online social media any of that stuff websites twitter

instagram just my name scott stallings and trying to do a little bit better job as far as incorporating that sometimes it's a priority sometimes it's not and uh you know kind of be a slippery slope you know kind of getting sucked into that but for the most part uh that's pretty much kind of where i camp out and uh but that's about it man cool brother the PGA Tour man awesome we'll be looking out for you alright thanks fam thank you

thank you guys for tuning in to the HOH Human Optimization Hour podcast we had Scott Stallings on hit both of us up online let us know what you think and as always 10% off

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