Mark Bell's Power Project - Jim Galvin - Royal Marine Explains Why Masculinity is Suffering || MBPP Ep. 791

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Jim Galvin, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Jim's experience as a Royal Marine, breaking a Guinness World Record and what Jim feels is lacking in men and today's society. Follow Jim on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jimhgalvin/ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm-7Z74ikrd4vaVGpTe8vYg Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Is a soccer ball a football? I think to most people in the world it would be. I mean, one like legit question for you guys then, in terms of what is American football, how did that get to be called football? Team of 12 to take part in a 12-hour deadlift record. So the most amount of weight that 12 people could lift in 12 hours. Was it a broken record or was it a made-up record?

It was. It made a difference. No, it did already exist. There it a made-up record? It was. It's a big difference. No, it did already exist. There was a number that was already there. You've gunned somebody down. Yeah, basically. So that was the one, the 12-hour one, which is the first one we did in November 2017.

I can deal with that. Yeah, exactly. I thought you were making some shit up. One rep and it didn't exist. You just put our feet up. 12 hours just playing cards. How did you get into the military in the first place? I actually wanted to be an athlete and I just kept getting injured.

So that's kind of one of the reasons I joined. But I was... What sport or sports? I was a decathlete. I wanted to ask you guys, so what he was talking about, we'll just call it like the bro's journey. Yeah. You watch a YouTube video, it's like, all right, cool.

Monday's chest. It's going to be the push-pull legs split. That's what, I mean, that's where I started. If somebody had this like mindset or they had this in the beginning and where they weren't focused on getting bigger muscles, they weren't focused on getting as strong as they possibly could, would they have ended up in a better spot? In terms of injury prevention, like probably.

But there's almost like a, I think there's a charm to going on that bro journey i think it's almost like a rite of passage and even though you might end up a little bit more kind of bruised and battered by the end what are some of the main things that you think are lacking maybe in some people's lives that could really help them especially from a male perspective well one of the things that's interesting is that men and women the the way that they experience happiness or the prerequisites for a level of not happiness in terms of pleasure but in terms of like contentment what were you saying the uk would look like earlier yeah so we're chatting in the gym earlier and i was basically saying if you looked at a world map and every country in the world was its own like caricature

like they took the culture the behaviors and all the kind of the nuances of the way they think and do things and they basically put it into a caricature, the UK would just be this grumpy old man. Sipping on some tea. Yeah, exactly. Like change a verse, don't want to do anything. Like, oh, look, there's someone over there. They're happy, stupid bastard. Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we've partnered with an amazing brand, Bubz Naturals. We actually have some of the products on the table. They're MCT oil powder, they're collagen protein, and this f***er. Yeah.

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Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Janking? Is that it? Jelking. Can I move this down a little bit yeah yeah do whatever you got to do just make sure you stay on that mic you want to look at jelking real quick actually what is the internet definition of jelking uh that it's uh penis enlargement right oh yeah that's the yeah that is the is that like uh like don't you like upside down?

Yeah, you really kind of tug and lean. It's just. Didn't Larry Wheels talk about like beating off too hard or something? Did you ever see that video? Really? Yeah, he really liked those cam girls. So that was, he became open about that. It's like, yeah, he had a cam girl addiction.

Yeah, joking. That's just a penis stretching exercises. So like massaging the tissues and stretching it out oh but it's not a particular technique there is a technique yeah there's yeah it's it's a whole thing pull up some videos it's way you know you definitely know what you're talking about you're like oh guys i'm telling you there's a fucking technique there is technique way less convenient than the penis pump so yeah just do that instead yeah link in the description by the way no joke that penis pump shit that and some info on why it works so have you been to uh some soccer games whilst we've been here no like uh professional soccer games yeah i've been to a couple of england games i went to a couple of i used to be a big chelsea fan supposedly crazy right people go buck wild

like the hooligans and shit yeah definitely more so for club football so if you so i've been to a couple of chelsea games uh probably about 10 15 years ago now and that's always a lot more sketchy the england games actually the national games are normally uh kind of a little bit better why is it sketchy is just because people are rowdy yeah basically because there's just you know fucking stupid people in england that just uh that's their thing that's their tribe and they're like it's a status game right everyone kind of attempts to rise to the top of the dominance hierarchy whatever whatever hierarchy they place themselves in and in football hooliganism it's like how can i just be the most disruptive in any way I can for the rest of this podcast

let's actually call its correct name it's football it is the football that's what we're talking about here Z football I can dig that I think why Americans hate it so much is because everywhere else in the world we call it football

right and America football is American football and if you call if you come here and you call football football you're disrespecting our American our American sport is a soccer ball a football I think I think to most people in the world it would be I mean one like legit question for you guys then in terms of what is American football how did that get to be called football does no one know this is this just like that i know someone just don't know the mystery someone just stole it it makes no sense too because the only time you use your foot in american football is the kicker yeah right yeah that's it yeah i know how soccer

got its name though i believe i could hopefully don't butcher it but it was football association and then it was football as like a sock and then they just started calling it soccer so it just broke down like they just abbreviated just like we do everything with fucking text messages and emojis and shit we just came up with a shorter version of football association from what i understand but yeah why is american football american football i don't know i can look that one up yeah try to look it up it is crazy though like everywhere else i think we just stole it i think there was a game in brazil and this it's happened multiple times in brazil where there's been a game and somebody has like killed somebody

because the results like i heard there was one time years ago when a referee like did something horrible and people stormed the field took the ref and cut off his head oh oh shit yeah yeah yeah everywhere else in the world football they're into emotional yeah uh the only thing that came up on google was um there isn't that makes no sense um it was widely assumed that the word football referenced the action of one kicking of the foot kicking of a ball. So that still doesn't make any sense. There is an alternative explanation, which is that football originally referred to

a variety of games in medieval Europe, which was played on foot. So because they're on their feet, they called it football. Everything you're on your feet for. Fucking stupid. That doesn't make sense. Tackle ball.

I think you used to be able to drop the ball and kick it through the uprights and stuff, too. I don't know what some of the original rules were. It's like rugby, right? Rugby. Yeah, a little bit like rugby. So maybe you were able to use your feet more in the beginning. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know why it's not

popular here. I don't know what our problem is with it. It's just not as manly as American football apparently. For some reason. The flopping. The flopping happens in every sport though. I know, but I'm just saying when I would ask this question, people would always go to that.

It looks like people get snipered when they just get touched. I think sometimes for for some sports there's a lot of like learning that has to happen for people to enjoy it like mma right it took a long time like joe rogan and uh dana white and the ufc did a good job educating people so now people will cheer when somebody else passes someone's guard but no one knew what that was before right okay so maybe soccer here in the u.S., maybe just, I don't know, maybe for some reason we were too dumb to get the rules or to understand it or something.

And the points, there's not that many points. Yeah. But there aren't any points in baseball either. Baseball's real slow and that's America's game. I can't watch baseball. It's good for naps. It is. Baseball's great for sleeping. So is golf. Yeah. When you start to like baseball, you know you're getting old.

Like, wow, that was a great pitch. And it's like, you know, you're getting old. So strategy in this game is unbelievable. It's like a sedative. People are like, man, I'm really, really struggling

with insomnia at the moment. There we go. Yeah. Cut the baseball. Catch the Giants game. That shit's a background game for sure. Down some of this mystery Kratom with me.

Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. This isn't the black label shit, no. This is the. Down some of this mystery Kratom with me. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. This isn't the black label shit, no. This is the... It's the black label Kratom. Shake it. Shake. Straight in the eyeball, yeah?

Mm-hmm. Half of this, and see what you said? Yeah, do half. I think half would be a good idea. Half is good. Good luck. Describe the taste after. Tastes incredible.

Tom Segura loves the taste. shit tastes like ass man yeah it seems like it's tasting worse it's getting something's happening where it's tasting worse so what so what is in this am I allowed to ask this are you guys allowed to say yes we actually don't know it's called kratom and it's in a family with coffee it's a tea leaf yeah i've been taking the the capsules and these have been working way better for the vasectomy oh really yeah it helps with pain yeah um it is an opioid so some people get super concerned about that but i've never noticed like uh anything crazy off of that I haven't had any like negative side effects that I've noticed but there could mate. The transition was great, but it could be. Between that and the nicotine gum, I don't see any problems.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. No, my brother has actually experienced some withdrawals coming off of Kratom. I just like to be totally transparent with it. But my brother has also taken high dosages before. If I'm to take one of these guys, it would be extremely rare for me to do more than two of these in one day. And more often than not, I'll take this throughout the day. So I think it depends on how high a dosage people go with. Yeah. Well, we've all done it now, haven't we?

Don't get nervous. Let's get the ball rolling. See you guys in Valhalla. Let's go. Oh, man. But let's first start with this because we have people in this room that have broken multiple Guinness Book of World Records, and it's only actually one person. None of us because there's like five people here, but you broke three.

How the fuck did you get into the Guinness Book of World Records three different times? It is the Guinness Book of World Records from Guinness, the beer drinking company. Yeah, no, it is linked yeah it is linked yeah i'm not i don't know whether or not they're like the sponsor of it or something or they kind of popularized it i don't know but they seem to be like the i don't know overarching great sponsorship yeah is that the fuel for every fitness world record yeah um so i was in the military about for about five years uh left about 10 years ago and as i'm sure it's kind of the same here a certain amount of time are people very rarely

get ptsd kind of five minutes after leaving so it seems to be a mental health thing that really seems to kind of rear its ugly head a certain amount of kind of years later and uh there's a buddy of mine colin kelly who i served with only for about a year. He was in my commando unit and just saw something on Facebook a certain amount of time ago. And he was, I think it was the end of 2016. He was putting together a team of 12 ex British Royal Marines commandos, which is kind of the part of the British military that I was in. Team of 12 to take part in a 12 hour deadlift record. So the most amount of weight that 12 people could lift in 12 hours. So

we kind of trained for that for about nine months and kind of messed around with a couple of different strategies. And then we ended up doing it in November, 2017, I think. So that was the first one. And that was to raise money for a PTSD charity. And you were mentioning like some things that ended up happening during that world record that you didn't expect to happen. Because, okay, so there's 12 of you guys and you're trying to see how many times 225 can be lifted in a 12 hour period. So first off, how many times was it lifted and what were you not prepared for? Great question. I have absolutely no idea how many times it was lifted. I can't remember.

So basically what we did over the 12 hours, I think we all did, all 12 of us did the first, I think it was the first hour and the last hour. And then the 10 hours in the middle, we basically broke down into teams of four and then basically kind of rotated through it. So we had a certain kind of time domain, an hour or 45 minutes or whatever it was on the bar, kind of rotating through the teams of four while the other guys, while the other kind of two thirds of the team were resting and then kind of rotated through there. But as we were kind of speaking about yesterday, there were certain kind of weird kind of physiological results, weird niggles that we were picking up.

Guys, he said niggles. Yeah, be very clear. Niggles. Yeah, that L was present. Can you pull up the dictionary definition, please, so that no one in the audience gets uncomfortable? Yeah, let the death threats begin. So basically, one of the things I wasn't prepared for

that we were talking about yesterday is people were like, oh, I wonder if my back or kind of my glutes or the top of my hamstrings are going to hurt because it was kind of touch and go. So on the impact on the eccentric i wonder if that's going to start to ache and that stuff was there but one of the really weird things that's happening is everyone had to kind of change their grip hands became really really painful which we again we kind of expected one of the things we didn't expect was the the skin on uh kind of the inside of your forearms and on the outside of your knee started to bleed and come off because although it's only kind of a tiny amount of like friction as it kind of passes on

the way down on the way up the pure volume of the number of times that you're doing that chafing yeah exactly just started to just started to kind of fall off so everyone almost by the end of it was like snatch gripping it because that was like the most painful thing yeah so it was like your wrists are going to hurt regardless your back's going to hurt regardless we might as well deficit the lift slightly and try to not flip in sky yourself just by going a little bit wider on the grip yeah and so that that was the first one i got a question let's go was it a broken record or was it a made-up record uh it was uh it did a difference no it did already exist. There was a number that was already there.

You've gunned somebody down. Yeah, basically. So that was the one, the 12-hour one, which is the first one we did in November 2017. I can deal with that. Yeah, exactly. I thought you were making some shit up. One rep and it didn't exist.

You just put our feet up. 12 hours just playing cards. Where am I going to put my certificate? Hey, go get another rep. Put that sandwich down. Put your 13th Guinness down? Hey, go get another rep. Put that sandwich down. Put your 13th Guinness down and let's go do another one. No, it was a record. So we ended up, we beat that one quite convincingly.

We had a training session about a month before, so we were kind of fairly confident and we'd worked out the numbers and stuff. And that was a 12-hour world record. I think we broke the world record in hour seven. It's a lot of lifting. It's a lot of lifting, yes. That was the first one we did five years ago.

And then the second one was a bit of a controversial one. We actually went for a... This was in April 2019, and it was deadlifting again. Pretty much the same team of 12. There had been two or three guys that had left, two or three new guys that had come in. And it was a double record. We were going for the one hour and the 24. So the kind of the tactic tactic was we or you have

to kind of go out the gate fairly quick uh for the first hour and then basically hour two was a lot more chilled out and then the beginning of hour three was when we started the kind of the rotations but this is the time that was the year in 2019 when guinness started making up minimum standards for world records exactly kind of what we were just joking about then. So you couldn't just do one rep and then just get shit-faced in the corner and then just leave it and just keep the camera rolling. And we broke the one-hour world record, but the really random, arbitrary minimum standard

that Guinness had put together for the 24 was over double our own 12-hour world record. So basically they didn't award us the 24. And we kind of said to them, we were like, we understand the theory behind putting together a minimum standard. That completely makes sense. But we're the current 12-hour world record holders. How is, you know, you can't double the timeframe and expect people to go quicker.

That's not the way that fatigue works. So we didn't end up getting that one. So we only got the one-hour world record for that attempt. So ironically, we went through the whole 24 hours and it was only a couple of weeks later we found out we didn't get it. It was pretty tough. You were talking about PTSD. Have you experienced that yourself? Not complete transparency, not in the way that I think most people would believe it would manifest. I did struggle more than I thought I would do readjusting to civilian life because I had a very, very short career in the military,

but it was quite busy in that I finished commando training, which is the longest kind of basic infantry training in NATO. Finished that, basically went straight on pre-deployment training for Iraq so my commando unit based in Plymouth in the southwest of England had 780 marines attached to the unit I think and they basically there were 23 of us that went to Iraq so it was a really really small group so went there came back straight into pre-deployment training for Afghanistan went out to Afghanistan for kind of seven months uh and then basically saw out my kind of my last year so it was a very very busy time with two tours in pretty kind of seven months and then basically saw out my last year. So it was a very, very busy time with two tours

in pretty kind of quick succession in two different operating theatres. And I always kept in contact with my civilian friends. It was never, I think there was, I don't know whether or not it was a level of ego or just kind of ignorance from me thinking that I wasn't really affected by the military that much so I wouldn't struggle readjusting. But I did kind't struggle readjusting but I did kind of struggle

readjusting in the way that everything felt kind of underwhelming and everything felt kind of I don't know not nihilistic it wasn't that bad but just kind of a little bit just just kind of boring like everything didn't really feel important there wasn't anything that felt appropriately stimulating when the bar for what meaning and purpose was for your own kind of physical endeavors and the brotherhood that you created was so high and it's, and it's so hard to kind of to, to replicate that in civilian life.

So that's the, that's the way that I struggled. Yeah. And people really rely on you and you rely on them and you're a team and you all work together and there's high standards and then you're out in civilian life and you see people uh because we're more free we have more freedom um people they don't have to adhere to a code so you're like who the fuck are these people like what are they it's probably hard not to be almost like judgmental in a way, right? Yeah, no, yeah, very, very much so. And I think, and that judgment used to manifest itself in quite an emotional reaction towards

kind of like civvies, civilians in general, and kind of the modern Western world. And now I don't, I don't have, I don't have negative emotional associations with it. I'm just aware that it's different. I was exposed to a certain world. I can't. They never saw that. emotional associations with it. I'm just aware that it's different. I was exposed to a certain world. I can't. They never saw that. They never saw it. And even though I knew that intellectually,

that they never saw that, so I can't have expectations on them to behave and act a certain way. Intellectually, I understood that, but emotionally, I was still like angry. I was like, the fuck are you moaning about? Like, because, you know, like some woman called Deborah

didn't get the right temperature of coffee that morning. I was like, you taking the piss? Has anyone tried to shoot you? No. Then it's a good fucking day, Deborah. Wind your neck in, mate. Like, and it was, there was kind of, there was a level of that. And now, and now luckily I've kind of, I've, I've introspected and I've done kind of a lot of self-work and, and I'm very grateful that I no longer feel angry towards people that operate kind of within the domain that it makes sense that they would operate. What does it look like for some friends that you know? Are you aware if they've shared things with you before about what PTSD kind of looks like?

Yeah, I mean, I kind of had this prophecy when I left. I was like, I don't think anything's going to happen straight away. Because again, like we kind of spoke about a minute ago it doesn't it doesn't manifest itself straight away because I think a lot of PTSD kind of comes not necessarily from purely from your experiences in combat but from the contrast of combat to the to again that under stimulating just underwhelming kind of pseudo nihilistic viewpoint of the rest of the world. And I kind of prophesied that it would be like, I don't know, between seven and 10 years that a lot of the guys, a lot of my buddies that I served with would start to struggle. And that was kind of, that was, uh, almost flipping bang on. And there were a few different

things I'd heard from different people. And I reached out to a few different people and everyone's kind of, you know, kind of continuing with their own lives and it's quite quite kind of hard to pin people down but the worst thing is a buddy of mine that was pretty badly addicted to marijuana even before he joined the marines and we were in training together and then we got deployed um or drafted sorry to the same troop within the same company within the same unit so it's really really good we went to Afghan together he was actually on a separate kind of really really remote kind of checkpoint but he was struggling a little bit there so he got kind of brought back to my patrol base

in Helmand and he was he was he was struggling and he went missing last year and I was like fucking hell because I was actually the last guy to see him so we got we were in it was summer 2011 that's when we were um that's when we were stationed at helmand and i saw him in 2018 and again he had kind of a really really really bad kind of weed addiction beforehand um he was even he even smoked weed a couple of times when we were out there which is like impossible but he'd like made friends with some locals and stuff yeah don't they like test people because they don't allow guys they literally they don't like the drug testing in the military in the uk like kind of ben was talking about with sport we're just strict generally like they lock down camp like we're a military base and they bring in separate

uh kind of collectives of guards to like lock down a base there's an alarm goes off you all must 500 people just in a queue to get tested yeah like it is strict like one of the guys i knew uh actually got this on it was only temporary luckily because they appealed it but he was uh he was what's called a king's badge man which is when you pass out as a raw marines commando it's like an award for the best recruit and it's really really really hard to get and it's a badge that you can wear on your arm for the rest of your career on any uniform phenomenal guy commando sniper and he was a free diver and he got dishonorably discharged because he took a substance that slowed that allowed him to slow down his heart rate when he was free diving

and uh and then like loads of people all the way up to like colonel level like this is literally one of the best people we have in the royal marines right now you need to i know you want to kind of set an example but you need to bring it back so you kind of long random anecdote but yeah losing his uh no no they brought him back no they brought him back like it was all kind of pending but luckily they saw reason and was like this is not the right person to make an example too much of a badass yeah exactly yeah don't kick this guy because it was like he wasn't a party animal it wasn't doing anything stupid yeah um so they do so they do test you but yeah my my buddy um smoked a little bit when we were out there and me and him were uh were the um the godfathers to our other friends two sons and we saw him back in 2018 and it was obvious within like five ten

minutes that he was just a level of paranoia just kind of taken over like he was he was talking about the fact that you know the families of some of the um basically kind of taken over. Like he was, he was talking about the fact that, you know, the families of some of the, um, basically some of the guys that he killed out there were like looking for him and stuff. And he lived in like rural Wales. And we were like,

mate, this is not the case. Like, you know, I deployed to Iraq and Iraq feels like a different country. Deployed to Afghanistan, central, like rural Afghanistan doesn't feel like a different country.

It feels like a different time. Yeah. And I was like, these guys are not hunting you, man they don't like they don't know like we found one guy that had never seen a tv screen before and thought a picture of someone in a tv screen they thought it's demonic possession they're like the devil's done this and shrunk him and put him in like like that's not obviously the whole of the country at all but that is you know in some of the rural areas that are kind of, that are more untouched. So we saw him in 2018, paranoid, obviously, taking over,

found out last summer he'd gone missing from his, he was living in a van at the time, but he parked his van somewhere, they'd found the van, he'd gone. About two weeks later, they kind of reported him missing. This was last August. And obviously Ben, who you heard on the podcast yesterday, my buddy's sitting just over there,

he was one of the first guys I told, because we were away in Spain together earlier in the year, came back and the day I got back, me and a couple of the other guys found out they'd found his body. So it's just one of those things now. It's like there's a level of... I'm lucky that I don't feel as though PTSD has truly kind of affected me directly in a way that's been too debilitating. Yeah.

But it's just a level of sadness when you know that it affects people that once you looked up to and thought were like these absolute fucking physical and mental warriors. And it's just, it's a slow burner as well, which makes it really hard to track. Are there things in place now probably to help people a little bit more with that? Maybe when you went in, maybe it wasn't talked about as much. Yeah. I mean, I think when I was in about 10 years ago, it was kind of the transitional period where people did start to talk about it a little bit more. And there was a lot of stuff offered. Like as far as I'm aware, I've got access to free therapy for the rest of my life if I want it. And that's the same for everyone that served on my tour. But a lot of people aren't going to. This is the thing.

Right. So when it's so deeply ingrained in the general narrative and the culture of. I'm not hurt. I can keep going. Exactly. You know. Is therapy still looked at as like, as far as men in that area, is therapy still looked as like, oh, you need therapy?

Is it still that type of deal? Or do people understand this is actually pretty helpful? I think it's a double, I think it's a bit kind of, I think it's a bit of a paradox because I think people would hear that someone that is, that might do a conventionally masculine job like be in the military. And then they're seeking help for their mental health. I think people will be like, Oh man, that's fantastic, brother. Good work. It's great that you're, you're being so open about this. But I think in addition to people like to virtue signal to a point so they're like i know a guy that was in the marines and he's now in therapy and they're proud of that and they like to say they like to almost showcase that they think that's good but

there might still be an undercurrent of judgment there so i think it's i think it's a difficult one and i think And then from yourself, like for, you know, from your own self, you're like, I don't need that. I think, I think that's the thing. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that's, uh, that's it. And, you know, I'd be really interested to see the statistics generally in the UK, because again, you know, there are kind of the masculine ways of being and feminine ways of being kind of everywhere. But in Britain, we're still, in the UK, it's still very stiff upper lip culture. Like there's not, we're very change averse. We're not very emotionally expressive.

We're not very kind of keen on sharing things and kind of any kind of emotional experience. What were you saying the UK would look like earlier? Yeah, so we were chatting in the gym earlier and I was basically saying, if you looked at a world map and every country in the world was its own like caricature,

like they took the culture, the behaviors and all the kind of the nuances of the way they think and do things and they basically put it into a caricature, the UK would just be this fucking grumpy old man. Sipping on some tea. Yeah, exactly. Like change a verse, don't want to do anything. Like, oh, look, there's someone over there. They're happy, bastard like it's like you they don't like it when other people are happy and we we use we use being american almost as a verb but then if you guys know this in the uk oh that's so good oh god they were like they were they were like i saw this guy the other day and they were like all these people and they were like they were happy they were clapping

at something and they're enjoying life it's so american yes and i was like if we use i was like we literally use an expression of happiness as a bad thing in the uk that's like what terrible way to look at life like oh my god look at them enjoying their existence i've heard people talk about like in russia if you're walking down the street with a smile out of your face people think like you're a crazy person. Like they think there's literally something wrong with like, why are you smiling just for nothing? You know, like it's fucking freezing. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, um, yeah, so that's the thing. So I think if you kind of tie that general, general kind of cultural outlook into, uh, into the kind of the realm and the domain of male mental health

in the UK, it is increasingly kind of pushed and on the face of it superficially, it's very kind of celebrated when people, when men do speak up about it. But I think it's still, I think it's still very, very kind of hushed hushed. Yeah yeah as far as like when guys come back because a lot of people have talked about how and i don't know the intricate aspects about tours and all of that but one thing that people talk about is like some people are put on tour they come back for a little bit tour back tour like it's just back to back to back to back and how sometimes people don't have the ability to decompress that's been something that's been talked about with like police here in the United States, how, you know, they have these, they go out, they do their thing, but they never really have time to decompress and they're just perpetually

on the job. Right. Which is why maybe so many. That's a really good point because maybe you go get deployed and then, you know, three years later you're deployed again. And what you're saying, the PTSD from the previous thing might catch up, some of the mental health, the wear and tear, right? Or you don't even have time to potentially, again, this is somebody who's not been in the military, and I have been a police officer. So there's massive ignorance coming from my point of view. But I just think about like, if you're constantly put under stress, right, you don't have time to actually think about what you just did or the things you just did and how to navigate that. Then you're just right back in it again. Um,

over there, do you think that they have good enough programs to help some individuals come back and deal with potential things that they've had to go through? Or just like you have free therapy and some other shit. Live your life. I think in the US, the turnaround between military tours is quicker. I'm not even sure you guys have a policy on how long you can be. This might be wrong, but in the UK,

I think there is a minimum amount of time that you need between tours. Okay. And I think that is true for pretty much everyone other than super specialist jobs. Like I remember there's one guy i was talking to out there that was a dog handler like a and the dogs that were kind of you know did the search stuff and did some of the kind of the id search stuff uh and they were

basically sent out flipping back to back because there was so few of them but i think generally there is um that there's a minimum time or i believe that was the case when i was in anyway and the other thing is you actually get sent on a deliberate decompression period so we flew back from afghanistan we flew to cyprus for 10 days and they basically they get everyone drunk and because they're like you guys are gonna get drunk and when you are socially disinhibited through the medium and vehicle of alcohol that's when this shit's gonna rear its ugly head so let's fucking do it now before we send you back to lond London and you guys just go mental. So they basically just get everyone absolutely shit-faced.

Wow. Which is a really weird way, but you actually kind of, it's kind of logical. I mean, everyone just goes a bit mental. A clear out kind of, yeah. Yeah, basically it's like, it's a bit of a top slicing.

It's like a bleed of the, it's a bleed of the stress. And I think that's, I think that's one of the other things with kind of decompression is decompression kind of comes, it can kind of happen naturally, possibly through time. But the most productive way is actually to educate people

on different strategies of how to decompress. Even if someone was like, I went on a, because I know the military tours in the US are a bit longer. That's more long-term, yeah. Yeah, it's like if they went for a year and then they came back for six months and then went out for a year and then came back for six months. In the six months, again, it's probably easier said than done. But I think what would be more helpful is if they educated people on how to decompress within that six months.

Specific steps that you can take to begin actually processing what happened. And I think that's kind of the big thing of why this stuff kind of rears its ugly head years later is because it was just never dealt with. How'd you get into the military in the first place? I actually wanted to be an athlete and I just kept getting injured. So that's kind of one of the reasons I joined. But I was... What sport or sports? I was a decathlete.

Oh, wow. Yeah, so sprints and jumps kind of similar to Ben. Decathlon is 10 events. 10 events over two days. What are all the events? So 100 meters, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 meters. That's the first day. Jesus.

And the second day is 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1500. Is that right? And high jump. jump yeah high jumps on the first day second day second day there we go god damn yeah damn okay so you got into fitness for that just to try to train to try to yeah i mean a little faster yeah i mean i was always fairly sporty but the military had always kind of uh it always kind of been an attractive option i don't think it is i don't think the patriotism side of kind of enlisting and enrolling in the military is nowhere near as big in the uk as it is here people that are in the us like being in the there's a there's a level of kind of pride of being and kind of gratitude of being American. Yes.

And everything that is kind of represented in that. In the UK, it's kind of less so. So in terms of the way that you kind of advertise the benefits and attempt to get people to kind of buy into that is going to be different, but there is still, you know, there is still a level. You know, you look in kind of pop culture in Hollywood, it's like this stuff, you know,

and every action film makes you want to be a soldier when you're a kid, right? Yeah. So there is a level of glorification of in kind of pop culture in Hollywood, it's like this stuff, you know, and every action film makes you want to be a soldier when you're a kid, right? Yeah. So there is a level of glorification of that kind of lifestyle. And I, like kind of a lot of other people that were, a lot of other kind of like young, physically active kind of boys, men, I was kind of drawn to that.

And I've done a lot of introspection since over the last kind of 10 years. I was like, the military in in theory objectively doesn't really make a lot of sense because you just get cold wet and tired all the time so i was like why do people buy into this and i think there is kind of the common things of um you know there's a level of brotherhood a level of kind of solidarity i think guys that that are kind of slightly pseudo adhd that are super hyper do want to feel free, but kind of within a container. And there is a level of safety that structure and, um, like when Ryan Fisher was on here,

he was talking about, he wanted to be a helicopter pilot or something. Right. And he was saying he kind of liked, and remember you kind of said that it would be like your idea of hell, but likes the idea of that kind of structure and that level of kind of, uh, disciplining kind of regimented lifestyle. It's like, at least that I know at that time I'm doing this, at this time I'm doing this. And I think for some guys, me included, there's kind of a level of safety there. But I had a very turbulent relationship with kind of both my mum and my dad

and I had quite a physically abusive relationship with my father. So I think that kind of in retrospect, I had no idea or wasn't particularly conscious back then, not that I am now, but in retrospect, I believe that that probably had a big part in it. Do you think that gave you some fight to go, like you maybe had a chip on your shoulder from something like that?

Or were you more patriotic? I don't know. I'll be honest. Selfishly, but full kind of transparency, I don't really know if'll be honest, like selfishly, but fully, but full kind of transparency. I don't really know if the patriotism side was kind of even remotely relevant. I think there was a chip on my shoulder.

I think it was the time, so I lived with my mom until I was about 10. And then I was just such a nightmare. I kind of had to go and she was like, kind of tagged my dad in

and went, right, it's your fucking turn for a couple of years. See how you handle it. Good luck, pal she was like kind of tagged my dad in and went right it's your fucking turn for a couple of years see how you're doing good luck pal and uh, so I I live with my dad from like 10 until about 15 and I think I haven't seen any kind of data on this or spoken to kind of too many people about it, but I wasn't uh, kind of

You know knocked about by my dad at the age of like five or six. It was more at the age of 12 to 15, where there's a level of I'm becoming a man into this. I'm becoming a man, I'm becoming stronger, I'm becoming bigger, yet I was still unable to defend myself. So I think I developed a very different narrative with my own kind of performance, with my own ability to feel capable, with my own ability to feel masculine with my own ability to feel masculine

i didn't know what that meant but i just knew that i didn't have it i just felt constantly emasculated by this by the behavior both physical and kind of mental from him so i think i was like i literally i can't i can't i feel so unbelievably inadequate that i can't defend myself in this situation um what would help that what would solve that problem what would put me in like an objective dominant hierarchy gloat like and the raw marines are very very very well respected in the british military um specifically specifically the kind of the raw marines more so than areas that kind of the british army uh and kind of again yeah in retrospect i think that was a big that was a big driver behind me kind of joining that group. With that specifically, I'm curious, did you see that, you know, because you joined the military because it gives you a way to number one, feel masculine.

But also, did you see like any type of parallels with the way you handled anger and discontent as an adult? Did you do any type of or like, what I'm looking for here? Were you abusive at all? Or did you find that you had tendencies towards physical aggression when you were in your twenties? Did that rear its head? Because for a lot of individuals that were abused as children or that hitting was a normal thing, when they become adults, that becomes a normal thing for them to do. And they don't realize it. Some people realize it early and they're like, Ooh, let me fix this. And some people just let that repeat itself. So how was it with you? Um, fortunately, and again, myself and Ben had kind of spoken about this, uh, uh, kind of at length on bobsleigh season and stuff. And

luckily, no, I think that I wasn't very well behaved when I was a lot younger, when I was kind of, you know, five,, 567, just kind of a hyperactive kid. Parents are breaking up. I think there's some repressed memories of my father being quite violent with my mother then. But I don't like even now I don't really kind of consciously remember much. It's very kind of sketchy, but I was probably just a confused kid, right? But from kind of a teenager onwards, I was just so I think I was so terrified of being a violent person because I was like, God, that's just so bad that I kind of a teenager onwards, I was just so, I think I was so terrified of being a violent person because I was like, God, that's just so bad that I kind of, I completely pulled away from it.

And I actually, because I was quite badly behaved again at like effectively kind of junior school. We have like primary and secondary. So we just have kind of two. Up to the age of 10. And then I got kicked out of a couple of schools when I was super young. And then when I was 11. You sound like me, man. Well, there we go. It sounds like my school period. What did you do to get kicked out of a couple of schools when I was super young and then when I was uh 11 like me man well there we go it sounds like my school period what did you do to get kicked out of school um

yeah just kind of just fighting and bad behavior okay but not overtly violent I don't think actually it was just kind of a little bit all over I was just angry not necessarily at not necessarily purely violent at people I think it like, I was just annoyed that something was happening. And I remember feeling kind of really confused about life at that age anyway. So I'd like smash a chair or something. But when I was 11, I went to a school just in the suburbs of London,

specifically for people who had been expelled from schools. And I went there being like, man, I'm the toughest fucking kid in the world. Do you know what I mean? I was not. Jesus Christ. I just went in, looked at all of these Goliaths being like man i'm the toughest fucking kid in the world you know what i mean i was not jesus christ i just went in looked at all of these goliaths that were like 15 and i was 11 and i was like shit i need to and it was like the most sobering like humble moment of my life and i was like wow

i need to i need to get shit sorted because i still thought of myself as a kid but i thought of these guys that were like 14 15 16 i was. I was like, these guys aren't kids. These guys are like becoming men. And I was like, I cannot be like that. Why are you here? I knifed my teacher. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, I just kicked over a chair, man.

You're the boss here, man. I'll do it. Well, that's good though, because I have friends that have ended up at, well, they're not friends anymore, have ended up at like continuation schools where it's like, well, fuck, what do we do with with this kid just put him in with the other bad kids and it just made him worse so it's really good that you actually had that realization and be like ah i

don't like that future that's ahead of me if i stick with it that's cool yeah well that was kind of exactly what happened and i remember being quite cerebral about it literally within my first few days was like right man i need to i need to stop being being angry is not i'll say that again feeling angry is not a good enough reason to behave angrily and i think if you believe it is you're going to kind of go down a bad path and i see that and i see i see the parallels in in a lot of kind of components of behavior and i think it was because of my you know my childhood with my father my childhood with my father and then seeing some of the other guys in the military. I've kind of always been a fairly keen observer of the human condition. And I think we now do generally just have that.

We have a very different relationship with kind of discomfort. And it was like, well, again, I worked in fitness for years and I was dealing with kind of a lot of the general population. And I was like, yeah, I know I tried that, but I but i was hungry and i was like you're a grown-up being hungry is not a good enough reason to eat if you're supposed to be in a calorie deficit and i was like there is a level of and i was actually at a seminar once and they were saying right it's really really important that we stay for kind of a bit of a tangent kind of anecdote but it's true and the woman on stage was a woman called Lucy Johnson, absolutely unbelievable speaker. And, uh, and there was this, and she was like, right,

it's really important that for the next two hours, everyone stays here. And this one kind of like a 50 year old woman put her hand up and said, what if I need the toilet? And, uh, and Lucy Johnson just, it was, it sounded kind of brutal, but it was actually kind of rational. She went, you're a grownup, hold it. And I was like, oh shit, actually, that is a very good point. And it kind of, and again, I think that's, I don't know whether or

not it's just a lost skill or kind of a narrative that we don't have with a lot of things in this day and age. That right there is something that especially, okay, in the United States, there's all this, we have different problems, acceptance, and everybody does have somewhat different problems and issues. Now, when it comes to food, a lot of people do have different problems. Maybe they use food as a crutch or maybe it's, you know, it's tough for some people. But when you kind of say what you just said, they're like, oh, you're a little hungry. Just don't eat and learn how to deal with that. That gets a lot of people up in arms in the nutrition space because they're like, you need to be eating every few hours and people have different appetites. And if you, if you, uh, uh,

if you limit yourself in that way, you could be causing an eating disorder. And it's just like, they're finding all these ways. And don't get me wrong. When some people start this, they need to be able to do it in a way that they can take this step by step. You can't go off the deep end because you can't stick with that. But there's also an aspect of you're a grownup feeling a little bit hungry sometimes isn't going to fucking kill you. Yeah, that's it. And I think intellectualizing those sensations can actually be a really good process. And, uh, I heard someone talk about this. Uh, I think it's Chris Williamson on the modern wisdom podcast that we spoke about the other day. And he was talking about getting an ice bath because ice baths are such a great vehicle

for this kind of narrative and learning that lesson generally because ain't nowhere to hide. Like it feels the way it feels, right? And someone's like, and I think in the going through the process of becoming almost like really, like kind of emotionally detached

from the sensations and just walking yourself through it. And it's like, well, okay, how does it feel? Oh my God, this is horrible. It's so cold. How does it feel when it feels cold? Okay, What does that feel like? Well, it feels like lots of like tiny little pinpricks on my body. Okay. What else? And you walk through it and then you just kind of intellectualize how you're feeling. And I think you can do the same with

hunger. It's horrible. I'm really, really hungry. I need to eat. Okay. Take a breath for a second. Explain to me what that sensation is. Well, you know, my stomach, I feel these kind of like these weird cramps on like, you know, the left left hand side and it's kind of like pulling up and then okay what else and you walk them through it and they just if you can develop a way to remove the emotion behind that sensation you'll realize that the sensation itself is completely objective it's not good it's not bad it's just whatever it's just something that's happening in that moment in time yeah uh and i think that can be a really good kind of practice to just take people's kind of fear away from feeling that way.

But being hungry doesn't mean you've got to eat. It's nice to have a target, you know? So if someone's like, if they have a hard time doing something and you say, hey, you only got to make it till noon, then they'll be like, okay. I can, you know, it might only be 9 a.m., but they're like, okay. It might only be 9 a.m., but they're like, okay, I can figure that out. I found the same thing for myself with running.

I started out just running maybe 10, 15 seconds at a time, which is a really short period of time to run. Then I'd walk for maybe two minutes, and when I started running a little bit more, I was like, I think I can run to that stop sign or I can run to that garbage can or whatever it was. And then it just turned into, as I started running towards something, I got there and I was like, I think I can go a little further, but it was really helpful to have a target. It's like, I'm just going to run to that. So I think a lot of people, they get excited, they're starting their diet on Monday, But along with the diet, they're also starting,

they're going to run Monday morning and they're not going to eat until two. And then as soon as they get off work, they're going to lift or whatever it might be. And they got all these plans. And a lot of times, a little bit what we talked about in the gym, a lot of times people are under eating. They don't have the nutrition. So they don't have the power

and they feel like they don't have the nutrition. So they don't have the power and they feel like they don't, they feel like they don't have willpower, but it's like, I don't think that you have enough substantial calories to carry you through what it is that you're about to do. And then somebody might look at someone like yourself, military background, very fit, doing a lot of things in one day. And then someone's like, how does somebody get to that point? And then they just think that you're an alien and that you're a completely different person and that they could never uh aspire to do half the things that you're doing because they just they can't make sense of it but it's like well if you just started out with small targets and you started to have uh some disciplines that allowed you to make it to some of those targets over a period of time your target can your goals they can be bigger and bigger and bigger yeah i agree and i think one of the best

vehicles for that really is cold water exposure and i think one of the reasons for that is it's again there's nowhere to hide it's the same for everyone it's like basically you are static so there's no like applicant there's no increased application of effort when you're in there you're in the cold water you're in the cold water so there's not really an awful lot more you have to do to get the benefit other than just literally kind of time it out. And one of the things it does is it basically just reinforces this truth. It reintroduces you to this truth that the overwhelming majority of experiences in life where you feel uncomfortable are incredibly temporary. It's going to be over soon. Yeah.

Oh, I feel hungry. Okay. Well, the good news is that's going to dissipate soon and we get to eat soon. And even though you feel hungry now, it's 9 p.m. You're not going to feel

increasingly hungry up till midday. It's only temporary. It's exactly the same with running. And I think that is one of the good things about the military. Like you just kind of, you learn to kind of almost continually reinforce this affirmation

that this will end. This will end. You're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. The guy next to you is doing it. Yeah, exactly. And you think he's a pussy, right? So you're like, he made it, so I can fucking do it too.

There we go. Well, that's definitely the power of doing things in a group, in a collective, which I think is, depending on the way you're wired, I think is a huge benefit for a lot of people. When did you start doing cold water exposure? Like we, you know, we've done cold showers. We have plunges that we use. Andrew really doesn't go that cold. I mean, I shouldn't have said that on the air probably, but. It's 55 degrees. It's still pretty cold. It's still not. Okay. Dude, I got a DM the other day from somebody that was like laughing, right? They're like,

oh, I put it at 55 degrees. I'm like, Andrew's such a pussy he's like i got in and it was way colder than i expected so i was like shout out to that guy warm he does warm plunge room temp room temp exposure basically you have balls is what he said yeah yeah i do i do put the bubbles in there in the little ducky just to just to make a little bit more comfortable they did put the duck in there too. They did give us a duck. Yeah. I use that duck a lot. He walks me through, or he swims me through it.

He floats me through it when it's really cold. Yeah. You know, like when the bubbles aren't so big. If you replace the duck and put a penguin in there, it will feel colder. Surely that'll do, right? Yeah. There you go.

Because then you feel like you're... It's all about the mindset. Yeah, there we go. There we go. A couple of years to answer your question. I think've been doing it doing it a couple of years now so uh i actually had i actually bought like a big chest freezer and had it in the the little kind of the garden of my last apartment you did the ghetto plunge yeah basically sealed the panels then got a friend of mine to come and check that it was actually good and i wasn't going to flip

and die yeah uh filled it up with water and then went from there But the downside of that is the water just gets dirty like super quick. So you need to change it pretty often. Yeah. But I mean, it's like what? How much is that? What was that? Like a thousand bucks? 800 bucks?

Probably equivalent of about 800 bucks. Yeah. So like for those of you who you can't get a plunge and you, let's say cold showers, take cold showers. But if you want to do that, uh, the, the chest freezer route, I think there are YouTube videos that explain how to do it. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Loads of them. Loads of them. Loads of them. Yeah. Yeah. And things will need to change the water, but if you're okay with that, you'll be good. Yeah.

And I've seen, like, we've talked about this before about like, just like the, the, the mind state or head change you get from like a quick like plunge. But I, I've seen people,

um, recommending like even just like a sink with ice and just dunking your head in. Oh, yeah. I mean, that could definitely, like, oh, fuck. You're not going to get the same anxiety buildup when you jump in and then the amazing euphoria you get when you're actually in it, but you will get a little bit of it. At least start kind of prepping your body or your mind, I should say.

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Yes, you guys got to head over to viore.com slash power project. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash power project. And you guys will automatically receive 20% off your order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast. What was the business that you sold?

You recently sold a business, right? Yeah, I recently sold a business. So I left the Royal Marines at the end of 2012. I literally had... God, that sounds good. The Royal Marines. Right?

Doesn't that sound like some... Really? Yeah. Yeah. Badass. Sorry, I know this probably sounds stupid coming from you, but do you guys have something? Because I think Marines, they say hoorah.

Do you guys have something like that? No, we don't. Again, we're British. We're very non-expressive. So we had... We actually had... It's like I had none. Yeah.

Even that's too much. Just that. Just that. Yeah, yeah. Even that's too much. Just that. Just that. Yeah, no, yeah, we don't. We actually had a US Marine come over and take us through like a training session once. And I remember, and some of our like hierarchy. Oh my God, he's a bit loud and enthusiastic, isn't he?

I'm not really sure how I feel about this. Why is he so excited about fitness? Yeah, exactly. Why is he so happy? We're in the military. This is not a good thing. So, yeah, so we're not particularly expressive. We don't do that.

But yeah, the business he sold. Yeah, the business he sold. So I left the Marines at the end of 2012, did bobsleigh with Ben for about kind of two years. And then at the beginning of 2014, I moved back to my hometown to start a fitness business. So a little bit of kind of one-to-one stuff, mainly kind of group exercise.

So we had a couple of different clubs, but a couple of different arms of the business as such. But the main one was something called the Athletic Development Club, which is kind of my own independent take on kind of functional fitness. So I love watching the CrossFit games. I'm a big kind of fan of kind

of elite crossfit but i think the exercise prescription for a lot of the stuff things that i'm not a massive fan of like what well i think when it claims that it's super functional i think if you spend more time uh teaching people how to walk on your hands as opposed to run properly i think you need to ask yourself some questions i don't like i don like it. It blows my mind coming from like a sprint background that things like running mechanics aren't touched, but they will teach you how to do handstand walks over gymnastics bars. And I understand the, actually I do get it,

the appeal to like high skill stuff. But just being able to, just being able to move and kind of be remotely athletic is something that I think that a lot of those guys don't have. So we, we injected that into the athletic development club, into the ADC kind of arm of my business. We, uh, we basically had kind of, it was the same objective as kind of CrossFit and functional fitness to basically develop all components of fitness together, to be a good kind of all rounder. But we made sure that there was a good foundation of athleticism and power stuff in there. Yeah. When it comes to running, what have you noticed when you see crossfitters run?

Because I've heard multiple people kind of say this, that their running technique just kind of looks wild. People that know how to run. Some of them are kind of stumpy. You got to keep that in mind. That's true. They're thick. They've got like a squatter body.

Substantial. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. Substantial. I think there's just, there's a level of kind of like cadence and fluidity that they don't have so it's like every step they run they might kind of plant their foot a little bit in front of their body which basically just acts as like a break so then they have to kind of almost like re-accelerate every single step um they're super

tight in the shoulders so one thing that every sprinter kind of has to go through when they when they come in is basically there's you try to maintain as little tension as possible through pretty much that's why you see the slow-mos kind of on tv where the head like the drive fades and kind of the arms are going back and the heads come up and their jaws like wobbling all over the place cheeks and everything yeah and everywhere and i think it's an evolutionary thing that actually if you have uh ben will know more about this than me but if you have tension in your jaw or your shoulders that basically creates tension pretty much everywhere else so that's why you really have to focus on keeping the shoulders kind of nice and loose and have a little bit of a bubble that's tough yeah it really is tough because it's completely counterintuitive to

trying to kind of push hard um but yeah just some of those things i also think that the way that they tried to um that crossfit generally tries to develop an aerobic engine i think there's a few things that aren't particularly good in there, namely the idea of doing high rep plyometrics as a tool for cardio, I think is fucking suicide. And I really think long term it's going to be really, really detrimental, especially when you do high rep plyometrics, loads of eccentric load, not teaching people how to land, and you do it laterally.

So people are jumping from the side up on the box jumps for box jumps for 300 reps is not a way to develop an engine. It's the way to develop an injury in my opinion. Okay. I would agree with that, especially the amount of times you got to get back down from it. And you see the, the really high level people, they're really smart and they have a bunch of coaches in their corner.

But the people that get hurt the most are the people that are kind of in the intermediate, the people that they want to do well, they want to get good scores, so they'll do anything and everything to try to be better, but they just can't keep up and they're running into injuries. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, and I've done a couple of YouTube videos on this actually about kind of looking into and assessing a few of those things,

but I think overall, on the whole crossfit is a very positive thing yes for for community for one of the things i actually really love about it which i don't think is spoken about uh much when you compare it to other areas of the fitness industry is it's one of the it's one of the the first kind of environments and platforms that i've seen where they actually celebrate women looking almost a little bit disheveled and like hair stuck to their face covered and that's a good thing and it's great because that's that's that's representative well it's representative of effort right and I think in a lot of other sports to a certain degree there was still a bit of pressure on women to maybe stay

a little bit pristine whereas it's like no they can kind of get their hands dirty with this and kind of really get stuck in and I think that part of it is great. That part of it is wicked. That is really interesting. And not just that, but the just overall CrossFit community aspect, the ability to go to a gym and everyone's doing something and it's like there's a team aspect. It'll make people want to go back. I mean, that's the same similar thing with jujitsu. It's a community. So you're going there, you're rolling with people you know.

And it's different from just doing something like bodybuilding. Uh, or, you know, it depends on if you go to a powerlifting gym or a commercial gym, but like you're alone, you go in there, you're alone, you train, you come back. And for some people training is their time to be alone with themselves. But a lot of people don't have community outside of their training and the things that they do. So that's, that's, that's really dope. Yeah. I mean, I think the, I think the draws to CrossFit are, I think there's a plethora of them. I think there's loads of them. I think one of them is that there's an opportunity. There are so many opportunities to PB to like to get a PR because there are so many different metrics, metrics of success. Whereas if you're a hundred meter sprinter, the only true metric of success

is are you flipping running a hundred meters quicker? quicker yeah and same with kind of power lifting it's like well you know you've got a few different options there but in crossfit there are so many well i got a better murph time or my back squat improved or whatever uh and i agree and i think that for some people when we were all kind of chatting about this off a yesterday that training generally is can be like a refuge and a sanctuary for people who have super busy lives and they want to go in they want to switch off they don't want to talk to anyone but in my opinion there's probably a and a sanctuary for people who have super busy lives and they want to go in, they want to switch off, they don't want to talk to anyone. But in my opinion, there's probably a much larger group of people who possibly feel a bit lost and don't feel as though they're kind of, you know, part of a community and part of a tribe. And I think, I think, I think CrossFit

and different other kind of other functional fitness groups are phenomenal for the, for kind of ticking that box. And that's why people such die-hard lovers of it yeah are you still proficient at many different things like you were when you used to train for decathlon um i mean probably like hurdles would probably be hard since you haven't probably done those yeah i'm not i'm not gonna try pole vault this week uh i mean yeah i'd say so. I'd say overall at 34, because I'm kind of, you know, into a couple of different kind of biohacks and stuff. I'd say in terms of general health, in terms of certain performance metrics, they've gone down. But I'd say other performance metrics have definitely gone up. And I'd say overall, I'm probably healthier now than I was when I was 24. Actually,

you can maybe go run a 400 pretty well, maybe run a couple miles pretty well, maybe demonstrate strength pretty well. Yeah, I'd like to think so. So kind of the standard lifts, I'm similar to Ben. I've got anterior pelvic tilt quite badly. I've got very long femur, so squatting really isn't for me. But other than that, my deadlift's okay, running a mile's okay. The workout you guys did today looked fun.

You guys were benching and doing pull-ups back and forth, right? Yeah, 10 to 1. So that's a really good kind of... I do that a lot because I travel quite a lot generally. So when I kind of arrive in a new place, it's a really good way of not putting too much load through the system. Trying to get that pump. Yeah, basically. That's what I said. Pre-podcast

pump. PPP, man. That's what you're going to get. Only on my right side. My left side is like half the size side so i know where the cameras are um yeah so i think i think uh kind of proficiency proficiency in the basics and when you're kind of safe and stable that's kind of what allows what we were talking about yesterday fitness and training generally to be something that is isn't just the means to an end i'm not really chasing a particular objective right now but i want it to be playful i want to chat to you guys see what you guys are doing kind of you know Do a few sessions based on that and then it should be this fun

Kind of explorative thing and I think you really see that that pathway for me and Andrew talking about this off air yesterday that so many men it's like 15 16 they Google Fitness the first thing that comes up five by five so they do that for however long They do a typical kind of bro split and they do that for however long. And then they're like, they want to mix it up. So they do upper and lower or push pull legs or something. And then they're like, actually, I don't want to feel heavy and slow. So I'll get a little bit more into some functional stuff and I'll get into CrossFit. And then they might pick up a few kind of, uh, a few aches and pains. I'm not going to say that N-word again.

Just say niggle. If you avoid the word niggle, it makes it worse. Andrew, please tell them the definition of niggle. I'm scared of saying it wrong. It's like a Freudian slip. I'm like, oh God.

Little niggle. It was, here, I'll just put it up really, really quick. Cause a slight persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety. So there it is.

Yeah. Well, I'm feeling pretty anxious now so it's working yeah so it's like so the guys might move into some functional stuff and crossfit and then and then they might kind of and they move out and i think there's i've seen this thing talking to a lot of kind of my male friends that have competed a certain level there's this ascension with with men that generally year on year you become probably slightly higher in the dominance hierarchy.

You're a little bit more financially stable. You're probably considered a little bit more attractive because you're more successful. You're hopefully a little bit more kind of self-educated, knowledgeable on different things. You're probably better able

to kind of handle yourself in a conversation on various topics. You're becoming stronger, you're becoming faster, you're probably better able to kind of handle yourself in a conversation on various topics you're becoming stronger becoming you fast you're becoming more powerful and then especially when a lot of your self-esteem is wrapped up in performance there's a resistance when obviously there's a level of like weightlessness when you kind of maintain and then at some point there's a level of inevitability that that's going to start to drop as a guy right and when so much of your uh your feelings of self-esteem and who you are and your identity are wrapped up in that particular domain that is physical performance yeah there's a level of like resistance when you start to move through that and it's like well who the fuck am i outside of my ability to do x with

my body and that can be a really kind of difficult thing and i think it's this and it's this horrible kind of i just kind of see it visualizes this horrible kind of like resistance and you're trying to like you're confused and you don't really know what to do and then you're trying different things to just try and keep and then you make the realization that there's probably there's more to life than just your power lifting total or something else and then you kind of break through it's a bit like a phoenix effect right you kind of break through and actually there's a lot more to me than x and you start to explore that and and and in different domains other than fitness and within the world of of fitness and training it can become super playful again when you don't hold yourself to a standard of having

to of i'm not going to go for a hike because i don't want to lose my gains because i've got a powerlifting or whatever it may be. And it's almost like after that resistance, there's this beautiful kind of crescendo of everything breaking down and you give yourself permission to fuck about with it again and to start exploring

like you're doing with running. And I think that's kind of a beautiful position to be in, but it is often a struggle to get to that I've seen with some of my male friends. Fuck about. Fuck about. I like it. Andrew, i sent you a picture oh see if you can pull it up did you i emailed it huh i emailed it yeah i'm ahead of the game son i think this is a dope picture when he was talking about what he's talking about about the women i thought of this this image this is pretty sick this is This is Brooke Wells after running like a

trail run of like... God, her hamstrings, please zoom in. Like 5K trail run, I think it was, and then a deadlift ladder, and I think she's like... I'm pretty sure she's kind of like... Oh, was that at the games one year? Yeah, I think she's kind of barfing in the corner there, but shout out to Brooke. She finished fifth this year at the

CrossFit Games after coming back from a... Oh, as soon as you zoomed in, we got like... I'm zooming on the hamstrings, by the way. I'm not being... I just want to see those hamstrings. Those are wild. She's so fucking muscular. It's amazing.

She's outstanding, yeah. I think she, speaking about CrossFit is running, I think she comes from a track background. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah, there's actually a video of her. She's running and the other girls are behind her and she just has this big smile on her face yeah because she's just like this is my thing yeah there's a level of cadence and kind of

effortlessness that compared to the other guys kind of tensed up yeah right i wanted to ask you guys kind of kind of like uh so what what he was talking about we'll just call it like the bro's journey right you you you uh i like that yeah you watch a youtube video it's like all right cool monday's chest it's gonna be the push pull legs split that's what i mean that's where i started and then what we were talking about yesterday is like where i'm at now it's like well i don't really care about my like barbell squat i want to be able to get into an ancestral squat like that kind of gets me fired up because it'll probably allow me to do both much better squat like that kind of gets me fired up because it'll probably allow me to do both much better but my question is like do you guys think that if somebody had this like mindset or they they

had this in the beginning and where they weren't focused on getting bigger muscles they weren't focused on getting as strong as they possibly could would they have ended up in a better spot than having to go back because they have the n words say niggle stop it you can't keep saying because they had because when you say that you're like they had the niggas like no that's not what we're trying to say here so they had the niggas eventually you have a bunch of niggles yeah and then you say it proud with your chest you revert back and say with your chest you revert back right and you're not revert back you start exploring you start uh you know start playing with these other things in the gym because you're like well fuck

now i kind of have to but do you think that doing that in the beginning is the better route than exploring and doing all this other shit that kind of puts you in a weird position of where you have to now i don't know uh in terms of injury prevention like probably uh but there's almost like a i think there's a charm to going on that bro journey i think it's almost like a rite of passage and even though you might end up a little bit more kind of bruised and battered by the end i think it's uh i think it's kind of that's that i think that's kind of part of it right that's almost like like we were talking yesterday about kind of, you know, healthy masculinity, feeling part of a tribe

and the lack of kind of rights of passage of young men. I feel as though that's such exploring the world of fitness through kind of five by five. You know, you've got your training buddy. Oh, my mate's like older brother knows a little bit more. He's got massive arms. Let's listen to him. And all those, it's kind of super clunky, right?

It's a really clunky exploration. But I think there there's kind of i think there's a beauty to that i think that's kind of a nice uh even though you might end up a little bit more bruised and battered by the end i think it's i think for me i'd personally be grateful that i underwent that journey yeah you gotta throw your hat in at some point so yeah yeah and how you're gonna do it like i think most people are gonna start out maybe training like the, I guess, quote unquote, wrong way. But there's no wrong way. You just need to get started.

Fortunately for me, where I started was, you know, I had two older brothers that were already lifting. So they showed me stuff, the kind of right-ish stuff, you know, bench squat, deadlift, and taught me that those are like the fundamentals. And then I had like a powerlifting coach at a pretty young age. So I was very lucky to get around all that. But, you know, I think if I was just tearing out,

you know, shit from muscle magazines and like hitting the gym, I think things would have probably worked out very similarly. Cause I, even though I knew the right stuff, I still went off and did my bro stuff. Still had my normal bro journey. Even after knowing different stuff and after,

you know, they would tell me like that, don't train that way. Like, like the bodybuilding was like, was like using foul language. They were like, no,

don't, don't fucking bodybuild. Like stick with this stuff. This is what you're good at. And I would go, I'd still go off and like do my own thing at a certain point. So. Yeah. Regardless, you need to like kind of fuck around i like this bro journey thing because you

you hear about the hero's journey but this is this is the bro's journey you know what i mean but it does all start with like you know i when i started training it was because i couldn't play soccer but i was like i want to get big like it all starts with you want a physical transformation you want to look either like one of those cartoon characters or like a fucking superhero so when you start to Have that physical transformation over how many or so years you get to a point where you're like, hmm I like this like I like the way I'm looking and then that may You may try to compete in bodybuilding or any of those things or you might

Want to do other things you might want to try something else. You might want to try something else that might allow you to move better or whatever. But I think a lot of guys, it just starts with wanting to, every single guy, every single guy that's in self-development or trying to become stronger or trying to become better,

they all want to have a good body. And a lot of that comes, most people look at it like, I want to be kind of big. I also want to have a six pack. That's like the basic thing, right? But yeah, it does evolve from there. But yeah, that bro's journey, it's dope.

Yeah, the question, it comes up because I'm thinking about like my son, right? Like with my knowledge, you know, I might want to steer him a certain way. But then like I see Jake and all his buddies, Mark's son, Jake in the gym. And like you kind of stay away from him, right? Like you let him kind of figure it out on his own. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Yeah. He's, his favorite thing is like our preacher curl machine. Yeah. Have at it. Fucking hang out on that preacher curl machine, you know? And someday someone's going to be like,

how'd you get your arms that way? He's going to be like, I don't know. When I was a kid, for some reason, I love the preacher curl machine. So I just did that all the time. Yeah.

I think the injuries are great, man. Like as long as you don't fuck yourself up fuck yourself up right but those injuries like every single injury that we've all had we've had it and then we've learned how to not have that happen again or just how to mitigate the damage yeah it's part of a learning process I think actually isn't it it's like oh that didn't feel too good that kind of pinged a little bit now now I learned something, especially kind of in the early stages. I've really changed my philosophy about this, actually. Up until only a couple of months ago, I was attempting to kind of like biohack my, because obviously, because again, like marine training, Iraq, Afghan, straight into bobsleigh. So super, like super, super, super masses of like volume of like heavy, heavy marches for four or five years and then straight into

bobsleigh which is completely opposite super acute like 100 pounds on your back type yeah yeah yeah exactly that yeah something like that so so so so much load and then straight into bobsleigh which is again nowhere near as chronic but super acute so it's like my legs my knees my achilles have been bad and i was trying to kind of biohack my way into a position where I felt like no pain. And I think it was kind of a slightly naive way of looking at things. And I actually heard on a podcast, the diary of a CEO, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that podcast, Stephen Bartlett. I've heard of him. Yeah, it's really, really good. So he had Bear Grylls on there. And one of the things Bear Grylls said, he said, I don't want to turn up to the grave being clean and pristine.

I want to be skidding in there, bruised and battered with a smile on my face, knowing that I live life properly. And literally in that one quote, I was like, it hit me like a sledgehammer. I was like, that's so right.

Like, it's like, that's a demonstration that you fucking live life well, and you had fun, and you played, and you explored. Like, if you turn up with, you know,

without a scratch on you you probably weren't doing something right yeah the it's an interesting thing because we had this guy kudor ziani on the podcast and then there's another guy edo portel who was on hooverman but these are guys who've done a lot of wild stuff as far as movement is concerned and edo's worked with tons of people as far as movement and same with Cador, but they're like, when injury happens, like that's, that is a good thing, right? Pain is a good thing. And it's funny, cause like we'll do all these things to try to avoid pain. But if we, if we really think about it, I always have something like that. I'm always sore to some extent, or I always have some little thing I'm dealing with. You always have something, but you continue to work through it.

And you probably also have- How do you block it out? Someone's like, how are you doing? You're like, I'm great. I'm good. And it's doing a sentence like you don't want to continue to train through something and just be stupid about it. That's not what we're talking about. But there is an aspect of all of this, even when it comes to cold plunging of being able to deal with discomfort and being able to be okay with that discomfort and work through it despite feeling a certain way. Yeah. You know, so. And to always be working on it and to wonder like if you have the same thing that hurts all the time, maybe you do need different strategy. Maybe you do need to try something different.

You know, and there's things like for me, my calves have been insanely tight for a really long time. I don't know exactly what the deal is with them, but I didn't know exactly really what to do for them or with them. But more recently, I'm just like, let me just roll them out. Let me just kind of roll them out every day and see what happens. So far, nothing's happened. It just fucking hurts. But it's only been a short period of time so i just got to keep gutting through it but it's just odd like any contact with

my calves and this is even before i ran they just have always hurt like i used to get massages and massages and i would just say just don't even bother to touch my calves because i'll fucking like jump off the table it's always like tight for whatever reason so i don't know we all have our stuff, you know. I ran with somebody else this morning and he had some of his own things going on that we had to kind of like work through and just you got to try to coach yourself through it

and coach people through it and just say you're pretty much okay. You know, the urge to eat, you don't really need to eat right this second. Like you're fine. And just to try to check in with yourself and second, like you're fine. And just to try to check in with yourself and make sure that you're okay. And if you are okay, then try to continue onward and work on and fix the root cause of the problem when you have an opportunity to.

Yeah. I mean, the discomfort thing is kind of an interesting thing for me and it's something I've introspected on a lot recently. And I think something, again, that in one paradigm of like super acute localized discomfort that's constant it's probably a warning sign for something at the very least it's worthy of investigation might doesn't mean you have to stop but at least at least be aware of it it's telling you that for a reason yeah but more kind of generalized discomfort is again kind of uh linking back to to what i kind of said at the beginning i I think that I just kind of, I regularly anchor into this narrative that if something, if we as a species, like with people being hungry or people being

tired, and these are for some people worthy of then changing or being hungry means that you have to eat, being tired means you have to stop. And it's that kind of narrative that I kind of attempt to bring up and change with people when I speak to them. And I think as a species, if something being difficult was a good enough reason not to do it, we'd be fucked. Oh, yeah. We wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be here, right? It's like, I can't do this because it's hard.

No, I understand. But that if generally someone's individual approach to something being difficult is instantly equals, well, that is a good enough reason that justifies why not to do it. I think it's just going to be such kind of a such a barrier. And I think for me, obviously, we spoke about this stuff yesterday. I think 80% of my approach to training and living healthily now is based around kind of exploration and playfulness and experiencing new things and different ways that my body can move and kind of getting a bit of a pump on and a bit of functional bodybuilding i really like some strongman variations

at the moment i kind of like but i also do some like obstacle course race stuff so it's like completely kind of parallel things 80 of it to 90 of it is that but the 10 to 20 of the rest of it is i do have this strange inclination to put myself in positions that are a little bit more uncomfortable not not in a damaging way but as an example one of the things that uh is really really good has kind of really helped me is getting back into nature putting a heavy bag on my back and just kind of and just going on this hike through it and my feet start to hurt and my back start to hurt. But it really does help you review your relationship with comfort

and your own association with capability. And I think the transfers for that are almost immediate. I could go on a walk in the Marines, we call it, yomping in the army, they call it tabbing, tactical advance to battle. So it's like a heavy march. So you're going over the hills. I think here they call it rucking.

Yeah, rucking, exactly that. Yeah, same thing. So if I went on a ruck for like 10, 12 miles, came back, my feet would hurt, everything else would hurt. There would be a moment early on, like in the first half, like mile three, where I'm like, God, this sucks. And you start to become aware of all these little chattering mind narratives of actually,

it's probably a good idea if I stop because of X. Actually, I don't want to do damage because I've got a leg session tomorrow. Actually, thinking about it, I could do with going home now and getting on with, and you see all these things and you become aware. And I observe these tiny, these kind of chattering voices but i detach from them knowing them knowing that it's basically my brain just kind of attempting to convince me to be safe and attempting to kind of convince me to be comfortable which is a very useful skill but only to a point and then when i push through my feeling of what i'm capable of thinking fucking hell i really don't know if i'm going to finish this and then when i do finish the the reassessment of that narrative of capability changes so quickly

I'll have like the most productive day at work straight away and I think just pushing yourself in a position where you get exposed to that thing where you're like bloody hell I really might not actually be able to finish this and then you do it's so quick it's so quick to have a positive effect on everything else that you do. Where do you think you developed the, I don't even know if one might call it a skill, but like as an adult, it's, you see a lot of people don't necessarily seek things that are new as adults because they're aware of like how bad they can be at it. And they think about that a lot. So they're like, it's not for me.

I'm just going to avoid it. Right. For me, I think since I was able to play sports as a kid and my mom put me in so much shit that I'm just used to trying things, sucking at it and really just wanting to get better at it. Right. Where do you think that developed for you? How did, because like, as you do that more as an adult, it becomes something that you kind of want to seek. So for you, where did that start? If you think about it, I think I'd, I've always had a fairly comfortable relationship with failure. I haven't felt that embarrassed if I'm not very good at something the first time I do it.

I think I'm just blessed with that. Some people hate the idea of looking stupid if they're unable to do something. Whereas to me, I'm like, well, it's completely logical you can't do it if it's the first time you ever tried. And I think maybe there's just a bit of neurological wiring and I'm fairly blessed that I'm just not really that bothered about not doing something well the first time. And I think that's kind of been a really useful asset. But if you combine that with, it's just like repetition is key, right? that with it's just like repetition is key right so it's reinforcement of the more frequently i've done stuff that's hard and then come back and i just feel capable and brave and i'm like i might

want to reach out to someone for a youtube collaboration i've just been procrastinating and putting it off because i'm scared because they're bigger than me blah blah yeah and then i go on one of these rucks and i come back or i go for an ice bath and then i'm like uh and i'm and then i sink my head under and i hold it down for like 25 seconds whereas before i only did 15 i'm like fucking hell man actually i can i can do and i'll come back and i'll feel braver with the way that i conduct myself in life so it's not just based on productivity if you see what i mean yeah it's just my internal state i feel more capable and i feel more kind of content with uh with who i am in a weird way it's just my internal state i feel more capable and i feel more kind of content with uh

with who i am in a weird way it's a big kind of ethereal thing but it does it has it has that effect and the more frequently that i've done those uncomfortable things and it has equaled feeling more capable that reinforcement now is now so strong that i have that direct association between oh feeling uncomfortable is good because it is just temporary. It is just temporary. And I know that there's an amazing like bleed of the next week when I'm, when I'm just going to feel like a badass and I'm going to be, I'm going to do things that I'm now brave enough to do. How'd you get into bobsled? Um, when I was in the Marines, I was still sprinting a little bit and my first kind of 30 meters, uh, was, was pretty good, but then my top end was a bit rubbish. So my kind of my 30 meters was pretty good, but then my top end was a bit rubbish.

So my kind of my drive phase was pretty decent and then I just got scouted. So I got asked to go along. So myself and Ben, we both got involved at the beginning of 2012 when they did a massive kind of talent ID push. So he kind of alluded to it yesterday. There was like about a hundred of us initially,

I believe, that went to a couple of different testing days and then there were different processes of selection and they chopped it and they chopped it and they chopped it and they chopped it. And I think it was six or seven of us that made ice later that year. Wow. And then you were undersized, right? I was tiny. Yeah, I was absolutely tiny. So normally the guys in the back, so in four man Bob said, obviously you've got the driver, you've got two like side handle men, one on the right, one on the left. And then you've got a guy that's basically on the brakes which is and he's the last guy to get in so he's the guy that doesn't need to be as kind of powerful off the block but

he's able to kind of carry the velocity a little bit more going down because by the time he jumps in you're like you're going quick his main goal is to be able to keep up with it um and normally the smallest guys at the back but I was uh I was on the I was on the side and on the back but when I was on the side on one year in the world cup I was on the side on one year in the World Cup, I was the smallest side handle guy in the world by, I don't know, 15 pounds, something like that. So by quite a bit. How did you have to make up for that?

Did you have to get strong? Yeah, basically. And I was bigger then than I am now. I was probably, I don't know, maybe 20 pounds heavier then than I am now. But I probably, I don't know, maybe 20 pounds heavier then than I am now. But I didn't feel particularly good though.

Like my kind of 40 yards and my velocity and stuff I could kind of maintain. But just general, general life of moving around, I just felt heavier. How long is that run with the sled?

Like eight seconds, six seconds? Yeah, something between that in that bracket, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was good fun. It was a good fun sport until he crashed and then it's a bit shit but but no it's good good couple years you know we were talking yesterday about uh men and friendships and like building community and one thing that i've found especially as an adult is that it is like i like i have some of these guys and have a few friends that i've had uh since i was younger,

but developing new male friendships is something that's particularly, I wouldn't say it's too difficult, but I find that like, it does take work, right? So you going to the military, coming back, you have that brotherhood, but have you noticed like, have you noticed other men that you know,

do they have issues developing bonds with other men uh deep bonds yeah so i think i think there are different levels and different depths of friendship yeah and one of the things i i learned about recently is the fact that men develop friendships and bonds and kinship very differently than women so the way that the way that women develop that is much more cerebral it's much more emotional it's getting together and there's a level of like sharing of experiences gossip yeah yeah but a bait well that could be it right so there's a level of kind of and the interaction is very kind of communication but literally verbal kind of communication basically yeah and that can forge

deep bonds between women the way that men develop deep bonds isn't necessarily through just interaction or just that kind of interaction, just verbal communication and much more based on things like applying effort to a common goal together, overcoming adversity together. You know, guys that go train together, guys that do a particular sport or activity together. Again, people might be like, oh, the guys are going to do that again. But that is the way that we're neurologically wired from an ancestral standpoint to develop those strong bonds. And again, I think that's something that

I don't necessarily know if it's lost. I just think it's interesting. It makes sense to me because again, a lot of men have friendships. They have bonds with certain other guys, but they might not be particularly deep. And they might feel as though there's something missing, but a true like fucking brotherhood is wicked. And if you start to look at, well, what, where's,

why is it, why have I got that with that guy? And then, but why don't I with that? So, so, so myself and Ben, like 10 years, the first season that we were on bobsleigh, so the least glamorous season ever, we were basically the athletes. We were moving the sled every day. We were the mechanics were up till two in basically the athletes we were moving the sled every day we were the mechanics were up till two in the morning like sand in the runners like it was hard graft right and uh it's that it's overcoming a level of adversity together and that that shared experience where you are applying effort for something that will be good that's the that's that's the kind of thing that that develops strong bonds with strong bonds with guys it's not just being aware enough to try to seek that out yeah exactly exactly that

i think being aware of it i think that's all it is i don't think yeah i think i think that's key just kind of understanding the fact that um why we do the things the way that we do what we're actually looking for again i'm it's a big thing now like i did because i do a couple of public speaking gigs and i did one with them with barclays back in the UK at the end of last year. And one of the things it was based around is we are really kind of maladapted to exist in this modern world. So we've evolved to need certain things and to crave certain, to be nourished and fulfilled by certain things. And a lot of those things are lacking in this modern age and it's not like this malevolent plan of like they're flipping illuminati so it's no one's fault it's just the fact that we live in a world now that exists in a certain way is instructed in

a certain way yeah and uh unfortunately a lot of the things that we that we might need to to feel a little bit more kind of content at a deeper level might just not be there so we need to we need to as you said deliberately seek them out you mentioned having some speaking gigs um what are some things that you're working on now from like a business perspective uh business perspective i it's a good point because i sold my business in january i'm doing a little bit of online coaching uh at the moment uh i've got a YouTube channel, Jim Galvin on YouTube. And at the moment it's a lot of, it's kind of the beginning of my own kind of investigation into this

stuff on what exactly does, there are I believe a lot of men out there that are kind of unhappy and um on what you know what i call unglamorously unhappy so think they just don't really feel as though there's something missing life's not crap and on paper it might tick a lot of boxes when i've got a good partner and i truly do i truly do love her i've got a good family actually my job's pretty good i don't hate it and not hating something is unfortunately for a lot of men meaning that it's not bad enough for them to actually elicit a change um so i think now in terms of business it's on my youtube channel what i'm hoping to kind of do is just uh is do a little bit of traveling speak to some kind of you know really really kind of interesting distinguished people like yourselves in different

fields and work out what exactly healthy masculinity is. And, um, and again, if we don't naturally innately get that just from the way that we live and we do need to deliberately seek out certain things, uh, like kind of some deeper tribal bonds with other men, what kind of activities are going to help us live a more kind of content, satisfied life? Uh, what, what those kinds of things might be. You talk about fitness and nutrition and stuff like that too, what those kind of things might be. You talk about fitness and nutrition and stuff like that too on your YouTube channel or not so much? No, I do.

I mean, primarily at the moment, it is about kind of all things performance, health and physique really. But it's kind of moving more in the direction of exactly that. So it was absolutely still kind of have that content on there. There we go. Who's faster, you or Ben? Absolutely Ben, no fucking question asked.

This is the thing, so funny with that. What if it's a little further? What if you go like 400 meters? Yeah, there would be a distance where it would be like, it would become more aerobic and I'm like,

I wonder what the distance would be where I overtook him. Maybe 800? Or have to go a little further? I think it would be further. I think it would be like... He's a tough bastard, huh? He is a tough bastard, yeah. And he's got a big back which I think it would be a further. I think it would be like, he's a tough bastard, huh?

He is a tough bastard. Yeah. And he's got a big back, which means he's hard to overtake. He's got fucking long legs. He's got long legs. He's gobbling up the ground. But yeah,

to answer your question, mate, I mean, yeah, a hundred percent there, there'll still be a lot of content on, on, you know,

different training methodologies and a little bit of functional bodybuilding, a little bit of strong man, a little bit of a little bit of nutrition stuff, kind of different biohologies and a little bit of functional bodybuilding, a little bit of strongman, a little bit of, uh, a little bit of nutrition stuff, kind of different biohacks and things that might help. Um, but again, in terms of with a, with a, you know, an undercurrent of message of, you know, challenge yourself, engage in some challenge, you know, go through some, if, you know, enter something that's going to require a couple of guys to get together and go through something together for about 24 hours. Again, I think those longer, slightly longer events, I think if men undergo those kinds of things together, I think it's just such a great way of developing an amazing

flipping bond. What are some of the main things that you think are lacking maybe in some people's lives that could really help them, especially from a male perspective? Well, one of the things that's interesting is that men and women, the way that they experience happiness or the prerequisites for a level of not happiness in terms of pleasure, but in terms of like contentment is different. So from a kind of an evolutionary psychology point of view, women are thought to require, basically, they like to to be loved and they like to, uh, feel needed or wanted by the ones that they love. Um, and, and that's a huge thing for men is, you know, there's a, obviously there are those things and it's a spectrum and it's not just kind of two buckets,

but one of the things for men are, um, there's a level of purpose and there's a level of deep community and trust. And, and and i think that i think that the purposeful thing the need to feel as though that the works that you do are benefiting you your family or tribe everything else i think that can kind of be lacking so as an example you know kind of going back to a time when we used to look at what's going to give us serotonin what's going to help us kind of feel as though we're part of a group i might be like man like there's the three like there's the five of us in a tribe and I might be like, right, well, Mark's the guy that fixes all the roofs.

I can't fix roofs for shit, but I'm fucking awesome at catching fish. And you would see the results of your hard work. It would make your effort feel good when you are able to do something and see that other people around you, your kind of tribesmen, your kind of, you know, your kin, your family, your group, you would, you would be given the opportunity to see them benefit from that, from that endeavor. And that that's the way that you would kind of feel purpose. And now with certain kind of, you know, multinational corporations and stuff, if you're

working for a big bank, and again, you might enjoy it, you might not realize that that's the thing that's missing, and you might enjoy what you do. But I think seeing the effects of your hard work benefit those around you, I think that's a big driver for men. And, you know, especially for younger guys, there's a lot of different things that people can do, but really developing a skill is super important because if you, if there's not something that you're really, really good at, there can be a big hole there. Like there can be like, you know, I noticed this with a lot of younger guys, like in their late teens or early twenties, if they, maybe they've gone through school and they've gone through

college, but they haven't developed like a really good skill for themselves, they feel somewhat like incompetent or useless. You know what I mean? So it's just, that's a very, very important aspect of that. Taking the time to do that. Yeah. Competency in a particular craft is again, another big, big, big, big driver for men. Are you guys familiar with something called Dunbar's number? Dunbar's number. What is that? So Dunbar's number is this anthropological phenomenon that is basically the idea that human beings have always caught, whether or not you're like Eskimos or, you know, Ethiopian or from Patagonia or Philippine Viking

or whatever. So any kind of ethnicity or ancestral background, even though obviously life would be very different, diet would be very different, everything. One of the common denominators about the way that human beings have always interacted is they've always um basically clustered into groups of around about 150 so that is what dunbar's number is so military companies are 150 usually around about 150 so there's some there's awareness of this and there's a certain level of like deliberate like departments and certain big corporations put themselves in 150 stuff and in terms of competency of skill which is what you just kind of talk about then, like men need to feel good at something.

Even if they were in like little tribes or little groups of about 30, they'd basically group into bigger clusters of around about 150. In agricultural communities where there might be like 5,000 people, kind of back in the day, a couple of thousand years ago, they'd splinter off into groups of around about 150. And one of the interesting things about the fact that

obviously everyone's talking about kind of the plight of social media and the fact that we compare ourselves to other people, it turns out that comparing yourself to someone else is a feature, again, another kind of modern wisdom articulation here, but it's a feature, not a bug of the human condition. It's not just something that we do by accident. It used to be very adaptive, like there's a purpose for it. It used to push us a little bit better, even when we were like, they're really, really, really good at this. I'm not as good, but even seeing that,

and that kind of annoying thing that I see, they're really, really, really competent, and this is going to make me be competent in what I want to do. Yeah. The difficulty now as a man in feeling competent in your particular craft and the echo chambers that the algorithms of social media create. So if you like on your explore page, if it's mostly CrossFit or if it's,

or if you're a carpenter or a furniture maker or something, let's be real. If you're a guy, most of your feeds are filled with ass. Yeah, very true. Yeah, I was being kind of diplomatic there. But it's good. I like these feeds.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I haven't seen them because mine's full of ass. But one of the difficulties now, again, me kind of talking about the fact that we're kind of maladapted to exist in this world and be super kind of content because we're lacking some of the things. And to answer your question of what's missing,

the need to be competent and really really good in one thing and again i might be like again i'm shit at fixing fixing the huts but i'm fucking awesome at catching fish and the chances are when you're in a group of 150 when you're in a group of that is dumb bars number the likelihood of you being the best at something is pretty high. Yeah. Or at the very least in the top three, or known for being competent is pretty high. Now, because not only with social media generally, but because it creates an echo chamber of you, you are exposed to everything else that you're interested in.

You are now no longer comparing yourselves to 149 other people. You're comparing yourselves to every fucking person on the planet. So the likelihood of you feeling competent of experiencing yourself as competent on a global scale is now unbelievably low yeah so the feelings are the feelings of kind of being lost or confused or pinballing between different hobbies and something because you want to be super competent and the best or near the best uh in in particular endeavor, like that pinballing is going to be super high because the likelihood of you being the best in something out of a pool of 7 billion is super low. Yeah. We got to evolve because this shit ain't going away. You know,

you could just get rid of it. And for some people that's difficult, but like you can look at some of these people as motivation. Instead of letting the competency of all these different people that you may follow cripple you and make you feel as if you're inadequate and you cannot move forward. We have to somehow see we can reframe the way that we look at people who are extremely competent at things that they do. at people who are extremely competent at things that they do. Use that as motivation to improve in whatever way you can and become just the best version of yourself in whatever it is you're trying to get good at. That's all you can really do.

And that's why I think these slightly longer, I say events, literally someone can go for a rock on their own. I think that's why exposure to something like that where you feel capable of being at a hand to yourself in the wild, even if it's literally walking, flipping two, three miles through the hills yeah and then coming back that really does help reinforce that there is a level of competency there and i think there's a what i think one of the things to answer your earlier question mark one of the things that i

see that i experienced myself and kind of only really own my story and i experienced myself but i do see in other and other kind of male friends that I talked to is that there's a level of like adventurousness and almost wildness to Matt to a lot of men that they kind of feel as though is missing and they kind of don't really know how to rediscover that because a lot of things that might make them feel wild, like particular kind of like playful behaviors can be very easily labeled as toxically masculine. And that's a big thing as well. Like masculinity is kind of like playful behaviors can be very easily labeled as toxically masculine and that's a big thing as well like masculinity is kind of demonized in shape enough to do half the things yeah well that's it yeah bodies in pain yeah very very true yeah so that's again

that's why training you know building the foundation getting yourself to a position where you're where you're able to play a new game that day that's a really really really good flipping objective i'm i have the i'm not i'm not elite in anything but i have the foundations where i can where you're able to play a new game that day. That's a really, really, really good flipping objective. I'm not elite in anything, but I have the foundations where I can, you know, we can kick a ball about in the gym as part of the warmup or, you know, do something and being playful, being able to explore and having a body that can handle that.

That's a really, really, really good physical objective. Is toxic masculinity as big in the UK as it is here in the us like is there some because like here in the us there are some things that are just masculine that there's some cats some some ladies and out here who like that's toxic is that as big out there now i don't know if i don't know if it is as big i think it is it's probably big in certain like woke circles in the uk uh but i don't i don't think i don't think it's I don't think it's as big. I don't think it's as big, but it does still exist.

But I think it's, I don't know, the way that I just kind of, I attempt to kind of explain this and I was like, men and women are, in my opinion, absolutely foundationally equal,

but we are absolutely foundationally different. And thank God, you know, and I think we're, I think that we're, men and women are, I think,

more beautiful, more amazing, more everything because of the contrast between the two. I think that's great. I think the fact that we're different, I think that should just be interesting. We should learn,

we should look at it as an academic exercise to learn what it means to be feminine or what it means to be masculine as opposed to trying to make men and women the same yeah what are some things that piss you off on social media you have some things some gripes on there or are you pretty chill about it interestingly i thought it's pretty chill but there's one thing that fucking shot to my mind then let's fucking go so the one thing that that really, really annoys me is when certain, and I would say this in the circles that I move in, this is more with women,

when there's like this emotional outpouring of something that I believe is bait so that they will get like applauded and celebrated for being vulnerable. Do you know what I mean? Like they're like, oh my God, I mean? Like, they're like, Oh my God, I had a really bad day. Cause like, Oh my, you know,

cat got run over by a tank. And then like, and then my grandmother knocked me out in a jujitsu fight. And they're just like, they want to be seen to be beat. Cause vulnerability is like being celebrated. Yes. That they're faking being upset.

So they get a pat on the back for being vulnerable. Uh huh. And I'm like, shut the fuck up. I see stuff i hate it look at all this cellulite on my i'm just like you right i have all this cellulite on my super thick thighs sitting on the box a particular way booty cheeks out she's like i really just want to lose three pounds yeah i'm just like you just like you it's different for us'm just like you. Just like you. It's different for us big girls. Big?

I understand the struggle. Yeah. I love that shit. There's also a lot of, I was going to say, I don't know if you guys get it. I imagine you guys do get it as well with a lot of,

because obviously Instagram is primarily like a visual platform, right? And then like the captions are completely secondary, but you can't be no, like when there's a caption, that's like some fucking quote from Gandhi or something that's super like esoteric, super, wow. That's so deep and like existential.

And it's just like a picture of their ass. And I'm like, there's literally nothing that links what you're saying yeah there's no context like link at all and that's like that's quite common let's not diss the girls because hey the the insta men be doing the same shit yeah shirt off abs fucking flexing and then a fucking martin luther king jr quote white underneath freedom let's like what you just want us to see how shredded you are bro bro. Get the fuck out of here. It's true. It's true.

It's true. It's true. It's that IG trap. Hey, man. Thought and thought and thought every day. We're still zooming in, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Zach, yeah. Zooming on his abs. Oh, that's disgusting. Hey. That's how it works. Andrew, take us out of here. All right. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode

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