Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 618: Spartan Races 2017 with Yemeni Mesa of KNOW Foods & Joe Di Stefano of Spartan Coaching

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

The Mind Pump Crew travels to Lake Tahoe to the Squaw Valley Spartan Races World Championships. There they interview and are interviewed on 12 different podcast episodes. In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Yemeni Mesa of KNOW Foods & Joe Di Stefano of Spartan Coaching. KNOW Foods is taking on the junk food industry by producing healthier versions of popular desserts and snacks. Spartan Coaching is taking a hardcore approach to OCR certifications to make them truly legitimate. Two very interesting interviews in one episode! Thanks to Joe DeSena and the Spartan Races for an amazing weekend! Check out the video on Mind Pump TV on YouTube. How did Yemeni get his name? (5:53) What is KNOW foods? (6:40) What makes their foods healthy? Growth in the company? (7:56) What is the problem with gluten? Why their products stay away from it? (12:46) Yemeni talks about his old bodybuilding days / Going keto (14:30) Highly palatable foods and how they make their products (30:41) Intuitive eating and fasting (35:08) Who does he consider a competitor? (43:25) Metabolic truth or metabolic disasters Are they doing anything on the exercise side of the industry? (46:46) Joe Di Stefano talks about Spartan coaching (47:33) What is SGX compared to their coaching program? (52:30) How did he gets connected with Joe De Sena (55:15) How did they create the Spartan Race (1:00:56) How many people do they have in their coaching program? How long does it take to get? (1:02:40) What are the backgrounds of the top performers of these races? (1:05:23) In the future does he see adding more obstacles to the races? (1:06:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned: Yemeni Mesa (@keto_head)  Instagram Grain, Gluten, Wheat, Soy, Dairy, & Guilt-Free Foods by KNOW FOODS (website) Spartan Race Training - SGX Certification Spartan SGX Coaching; Official Spartan SGX Training. Spartan Coaching Spartan Up! Podcast Organifi Discount Code "mindpump" Continuous Glucose Monitoring: A Review of Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities (study) Fat for Fuel: A Revolutionary Diet to Combat Cancer, Boost Brain Power, and Increase Your Energy - Dr. Joseph Mercola (book) Ketogenic Diet for Optimal Health - Dr Mercola articles Too Much Protein Triggers Aging and Cancer - Dr Mercola articles Wired to Eat: Turn Off Cravings, Rewire Your Appetite for Weight Loss, and Determine the Foods That Work for You – Robb Wolf (book) Official Lenny & Larry's Site - The Complete Cookie® 360° Dangerous Honey Hunting (4K) | Explorer | National Geographic (YouTube) Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report (study) Real Good Food – Portland Califlour Foods - Healthy Cauliflower Pizza Crust- Gluten Free! People Mentioned: Quest Nutrition (@QuestNutrition)  Twitter Peter Attia (@PeterAttiaMD)  Twitter Dominic D'Agostino (@DominicDAgosti2)  Twitter Dr. Joseph Mercola (@mercola)  Twitter Dr. Terry Wahls (@terrywahls)  Twitter Robb Wolf (@robbwolf)  Twitter Ben Greenfield (@bengreenfield)  Twitter Dr. Rhonda Patrick (@foundmyfitness)  Twitter Dr. Michael Ruscio (@DrRuscio)  Twitter Joe DeSena (@realJoeDesena)  Twitter Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Prime Pro, which shows you how to self assess and correct muscle recruitment patterns that cause pain and impede performance and gains. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Also check out Thrive Market! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Oh, here we are. We are. We are slowly putting our headphones on, getting in the mic, except you are. Things are getting interesting. We're done texting, and we are here at the Spartan World Championship in America. 2017, excited to do something. I think we would have knocked the Spartan World Championship in America. 2017. Excited to do something. I think we would have knocked out 14 interviews or so in four days.

Oh, at least something crazy. Something. Something crazy. We did something a little special for you guys today. We've never done this where we actually have combined two short interviews. So they're about what, 20, 30 minutes apiece. It's a one, two punch. You get to hear two very interesting individuals.

We have Yemeni messa from Nal Foods, or excuse me, no foods, I was pronounced that wrong. They're a grain-free food company or product. So they make those cookies that we actually got some samples of them. Yeah, they're non-gymograin, gluten-free, low glycemic index alternatives to traditional grain-based foods.

They're basically really delicious treats that are alternatives to the, not as healthy. They're addressing the junk food market in a different way. We have a great conversation with them. We talked to them about engineering food so that it tastes incredible and what that means and fighting fire with fire when we're talking about the food industry. We talk about his past and bodybuilding.

It's a really interesting episode. This was really interesting because we weren't ready for it, right? They were kind of all over the place with the different interviews and we had to- You wasn't ready for us either. Right, so we sat down. You guys get a chance to hear an interview like, we did not even know who he was.

He sits down at the desk, we put our headphones on and you guys actually get to listen to this conversation, go from there. And so it was interesting because- We're like, who are you? You get to listen this conversation, go from there. And so it was interesting because they make cookies, describe yourself. They make cookies, right? So you gotta think, you know, us guy and talking about waffles

and so that, but I thought he handled himself extremely well. We asked him some tough questions. Yeah. And very smart guy. Very, very smart guy. Yeah. History with Tom Billiou, he worked with Quest. He was a part of their run to a billion dollar company.

And then he also was part of Nestle. So the guys got some pretty cool history. And I'm not gonna lie, the no foods cookie that they gave us. Because we all got these bags because we were one of the official podcasts there, whatever. And in the bags are samples and stuff. And these cookies were really good, like really good, almost too good. Might have had something to do with the 40 grams of fat and 30

grams of carbohydrates, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I'll have to check them out. It's definitely a meal. Calories there. Yeah, exactly. Right. But a much better alternative than others. But you get to hear us talk about that. You guys can also look into them at nofoods.com that spelled K-N-O-W foods.com. So that's the first one. Then we talk to what I think is my long lost relative. Oh, sure, your brother, cousin, maybe. What's the relationship?

I don't know, Joe DeStefano, he's the co-founder of Spartan Coaching. This is the world's first international obstacle course race, training certification program. Now I'm not really related to him. I said that because his name is, his last name is same as mine. Spell just like you.

Just like you. I've never seen any of the time I see you. I'm in the same area of the world. Exactly. Very, very smart guy. There's, I didn't even realize that they had a certification course, but they do, he helped put it together and he talks about how they put it together

and how other certifications work in this particular market. Very solid background. Very interesting. Here's one of the interesting things about this is I did not know this but when you put a certification course together, let's say you're a business and you want to certify trainers, one of the things that they tell you to do is to design a testing system that has at least a 90% pass rate because if it goes below that, you lose money. People don't want to take your certification.

The Spartan coaching certification program totally different. Joe DeStefano and Joe Dacina are like, no, the people who pass this need to be bad asses. So they're pass rate something like 50%. So if you get the certification, and you have to be certified to get that mentality. Yeah, so if you get this certification,

you're probably a bad ass. So we talked to them about how they design it, what it looks like and why they may. One of the things too that we got, we talked a little bit about programming, is we'll hear that in here. And you know, we were talking about a lot of the bad programming out there.

And we talk about, you know, we encourage people to a lot of the bad programming out there and we talk about, you know, we encourage people to go through all of our programs, which is our maps, Superbundle, where it's over nine months worth of programming. And you definitely, you can hear it in the conversation where, you know, our, as far as our philosophies of training and periodization and all that right on the same page So I have a lot of respect for this guy definitely think that you guys will enjoy these these interviews You will and in other words with the super bundle when Adam says over nine months of exercise programming What that literally means is from day one till

Reality it's almost the years worth of exercise program until Until the end, you have everything programmed out for you. The workouts, the phases, whether you're using trigger sessions or focus sessions or mobility sessions or AMP sessions. It's all planned out for you. Each month looks different. Each phase is different. The workouts change. Your body progresses the entire time.

It's really the only, I don't know of any other program, fitness program online, that plans out a workout that long and progresses you through different forms of adeptations. And you're like, there's that many different adaptations. It's incredible, there's nothing else like it. The Super Bundle is available at mimepumpmedia.com. So without any further ado, here we are talking to

Yemeni messa from No Foods and Joe De Stefano from Spartan. We're recording live from the Lake Tahoe at the Spartan Up Podfest, part of the 2017 Spartan Race World Championships. Where was Yemeni Mesa from No Foods? How'd you get your name? Yeah, Yemeni, by the way, because you said there's an interesting story. So I got to ask him. Yeah, because you said there's an interesting story, so I gotta ask him. Yeah, people typically assume it's something to do with worm, worm, or something like that,

but I am from Columbia South America, but there's nobody down there named Yemeni. I had hippie parents, I was born a Gemini, and they named me Gemini, which is how they actually pronounce it, it's with a Y in Spanish. My sister's a Sagittarius, they call her Saji, and their names are Ruth and George.

So, just got funky name, that's all. Alright. So, tell us a little bit about No Foods. What do you guys stand for? What do you do? What's the business all about? No Foods is an amazing company. I'm really stoked to be a part of it.

Join the team less than a year ago. The company's less than a year old. It's a startup that's tackling what a few companies have started to do recently, which is the growing junk food category that comprises most of the calories that people consume nowadays. And for years, we've been telling people, eat less exercise more. And that only works, but for an aerobahn of people, perhaps like you guys, like in myself,

we like to work out or we're disciplined, it's kind of like something that we're into, but most people, it's just not their thing. And so asking them to just eat last exercise more, it's not been working. And I think that the only real solution to something like this is to give people what they want to eat, but just have it make it tasty, make it something that they actually enjoy eating. And for that to actually work, you've got to rival the true junk food counterparts. So this is a company that's on a mission to bring bread back on the table for those who

have no longer eaten bread, or for those who are, and it's doing its damage, but it'll taste like real bread in all its forms. So you're trying to basically fight fire with fire, make something taste good that's healthy. So let's talk about the healthy part. What makes your foods healthy? What are the sources? Sure.

So one of the things that we believe is causing a lot of the health conditions that people are dealing with today is from diabetes to type three diabetes, which is Alzheimer's, and a whole other metabolic disorders is the overconsumption of simple carbohydrates, gluten, and grains. And so, unfortunately, some of these foods are the tastiest foods of all. They're the ones that we most enjoy eating, so it's very difficult to just give up these foods. We are bringing foods to market that tastes like those things. For example, one of our products is a waffle.

Typically, if you were to eat a waffle, it's made out of grains and gluten and very simple carbohydrates. So after you eat a waffle, you have a very intense metabolic response. You have a big insulin spike and a big insulin and a big blood sugar drop. And that causes all sorts of problems

that you and the Pavement to deal with throughout the day. Our waffle is not made out of simple carbs or grains or sugar, it's made out of protein, fibers and healthy fats. So when you eat a waffle, you have no metabolic response. You gotta taste amazing. So if you love waffles and you don't want to give up

waffles in your life, you not have something you can replace them with. That's one of many products that we have. You guys have been around, you said for just less than a year, or how's it been growing? It's been amazing. There's a huge reception for products like this. If you can imagine, there's a lot of people already

who have given up gluten as part of their paleo diet, for example. There's a lot of people who have given up carbs as part of the paleo diet, for example. There's a lot of people that have given up carbs, part of their keto diet. And so when we bring products to market that deliver amazing taste without grains, without gluten, and without other carbs, you can imagine how well I would see that is. So it's been growing amazing.

We started just on our website initially. We then ventured into Amazon, and now we're going into retail and it's been going. It's been going great. You have just a couple staple foods. Are you guys have a whole grocery list? I mean, how many foods are you dealing with right now? We have a broad product assortment.

It's over 20 different products right now. So we have everything from the waffles that I just mentioned to an amazing chocolate chip cookie that we recently launched. And let me tell you, it's like a soft baked chocolate chip cookie, but it only has four grams of net carbs for like a really big cookie, so it's. Really? That's the one we got.

How do you do that? That sounds like magic. Yeah. It's a big cookie. I think it's a 400 calories cookie. Yeah, it's a big cookie. So it's like a meal right there. Yeah, so it's good you mentioned that

because not only is it front of calories, there's 32 grams of fat in this cookie. So a lot of people, when they first see that, are scared, there's still a lot of people thinking that low fat is the way to go. And a low fat diet is a healthy diet. As it turns out, it's quite the opposite. It's a combination of a high fat diet and carbs that leads to a lot of these problems.

But when you have very low carbs and good healthy fats, you end up having a very healthy meal. But to answer your question, how do we deal with it? And is there magic? It's really fascinating. Right now, it's a good time because there's a lot of effort being put into food innovation. And there's a lot of cool new ingredients

that are hitting the market. And one of those happens to be a sugar called alulose, which we use in our product. There's another company out there called Quest Nutrition to use it in their bars. Alulose happens to be an actual sugar. It's a naturally occurring sugar that's found in nature, fruits like dates and raisins. But it's a very unique sugar in that, different from normal sugar in two ways. One, it's got a fraction of the calories. So sugar would have four calories per gram This has point four. So one tenth the calories that normal sugar has. Program, program. What is the rest of it fiber? No, it just doesn't have that many calories. Okay.

Program just like, you know fat has nine calories. Right, right. This particular type of sugar only has point four And then even more exciting than that, it has no metabolic response. So when you eat allulose, you get no blood sugar spike. In fact, a lot of people get some sort of a blood sugar drop. Now, where do they come up with that? Because that's fascinating to me because, you know, yeah, what's the test group? Because the sugar, because the carbohydrate by nature is four grams. Well, not only that, but we've also, you know, we're finding out now too that even what we used to think about the glycemic index is kind of crazy because we're seeing that

some people respond to a cookie or a sugar bomb one way and then another person eats that and has a total different response. Right, so. Have you seen some of the studies that they've done with these glucose, these continued glucose monitors? So have you seen some of the studies that they've done with these glucose these continual glucose Modders faster and stuff where you'll have somebody will eat like a macadamia and have a spike in insulin and they think it might be some kind of an immune maybe an immune response so that's that individual variance You you you mentioned several times like gluten-free like what is? The problem with gluten. Why should people? why do you think people should avoid it?

Now I do know that lots of autoimmune issues and lots of people have reactions to gluten, but there's other people who seem to not have a reaction or at least they think they don't. What's the problem with it? And why do you guys stay away from it? It's a good question. And I'm not the guy to give you the super technical answer

on the mechanism slow, which gluten does damage. I know there's association with leaky gut and all that good stuff. But for my own personal experience, I have been experimenting with diet and nutrition my entire life as long as I can remember. I tell a story that I, my earliest memory of anything to do with fitness and nutrition is drawing muscles on my body when I was six years old in front of the mirror so I could have muscles and flex.

So it's been something that I've been doing for quite some time. About 10 years ago or so, I stumbled into gluten-free. I happened to be trying everything I could to figure out why all my joints were hurting all the time. It was in my 30s. I thought, okay, maybe I'm starting to get old. I'm in my 40s now, by the way. But in my 30s, I'm thinking, am I getting old now? I've gone to every kind

of doctor you could think of, even rheumatologist to do tests and everybody said, you're fine. You're fine, everything. You're good. On a way, I tried a gluten-free diet, felt amazing, felt amazing. All my joints stopped hurting almost immediately. And I don't know why I hadn't made that connection in the past when I used to die as a bodybuilder in the old competitive days, technically going to gluten free diet by going solo carb. And I remember feeling really good during those types

of nutritional programs. So your background is bodybuilding. You have a background in bodybuilding. I do. And you competed and did that little thing. I did. Now did you compete naturally or were you enhanced or did you do a whole world of like

the whole thing? I did complete both naturally and enhanced. I don't think I've ever publicly talked about that but I'm happy to share that now. Yeah. In the early 90s, I competed both as a teenager and in my early 20s in the NPC. Oh, I ended up winning the Mr. Huntington Beach light heavyweight and overall titles, which was like, I guess my biggest grand accomplishment. And I competed in the LA NPC placed fifth and then never competed again.

Now, do you think that the, because we, you know, Adam's a IFBB professional physique competitor, I grew up in that world, not as a competitor, but just as a, as a admirer and we're all in a fitness forever. And all of us at some point, over the last 10 years, have experienced an autoimmune reaction of some sort. I had horrible gut issues that now I've solved through nutrition, and I think I can link it back to that lifestyle, that bodybuilding lifestyle,

especially the consumption of the crazy amounts of supplements that we consumed and all the artificial sweeteners and stuff. Did you notice this as you were progressing like you were cool and then all of a sudden get more issues as you got older and now, Stan, what do you think that played a role? I would say so through my 20s, I felt indestructible

and I didn't really have any kind of health issues in terms of my joints or anything like that and my 30s I felt Old and the crap it like my whole body was falling apart on me in my 40s now. I feel like I did back in my 20s And I do think that probably the crazy extreme type of dieting that you know You need to do to get in and out of shape for bodybuilding contests play the role but I you know I grew up also in a single family home where we were eating like, you know, twinkies for dinner and stuff like that because that's what we had to eat. So I think I ate a very crummy high sugar diet through my teen years.

That was me. And muffins from Costco and ice cream for dinner. Yeah, so that kind of stuff. So I can only imagine, you know, what what I did to my insulin and why today, I can barely touch carbs, I get fat. So I do really well on low, low, low carb. And so for me, I, by the way, I used to work at Quest. I ran sales at Quest for a number of years

and we started that company as a high protein low carb company. And one day, somebody came to visit us and turned our world upside down, Peter Atia and Dominic Diagostino and we started paying attention to fat. And I had dabbled with the ketogenic diet in the past but not in the way that we started playing with it a quest and that was transforming. What did you experience when you went keto? The first thing was I don't think I had ran on ketones in many, many, many years. So getting off glucose and suddenly running on ketones,

appetite was suddenly completely under control. All the cravings went away. So the obsession over having to get food every two hours has just disappeared. Joints again, I had already, you know, I'd kind of given gluten up for the most part, but going full keto, there isn't a gluten in your diet and that just made me feel all around better. Digestion improved tremendously, so no issues with GI discomfort at any moment. This is just, you kind of have a flat belly and it feels good all the time.

And then oddly, I got crazy, crazy lean. So I did it for about a year straight, almost a year straight with no like refeeds or anything like that, just straight up keto. And it was very easy because there was lots of us getting, we're just ridiculous. I've never been that lean, no cardio in my 40s. This lean is, I wasn't my 20s, it was super crazy. And then it kind of stopped, by the way. And then I started to see some muscle loss. And then body composition wise, I realized, not the best for the long term. Health wise, damn, yes.

So I do go in and out of keto throughout the year, I tried to do like four or four weeks. I'm glad you say that, because some people get on the, we all went through, we all went through the ketogenic diet, like, it got us a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. It was actually after we hung out with dumb

And he's doing He's influencing a lot of people. Well, you know, and you know what I didn't want to so I was at that time I was competing and I was eating anywhere between five six hundred grams of carbs a day Okay, and and my thought process was like why the fuck would I want to stop eating all these carbs? This is awesome. I could fit stuff like cookies and shit in my diet. It's still look leaning. You're one of those if it fits your macros guys right? Well, I kind of had that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, initially I was like that. And I think that's a lot to do with the issue. I have auto I have psoriasis that I deal with and stuff too. So when we, I don't know what was I just telling you about that with the

competing and dumb with the keto, oh, we all went ketogenic. And I mean, we all had amazing results from it. But I also think that there's, I really like the way Dr. Mercola talks about it. Like, I'm not sure if you're familiar with his fuel for fat, but the cyclical way of doing it, where your keto for a while, come out of it for a bit, and then go back to it. From an evolutionary standpoint, it only makes sense.

It really does. Humans probably were ketogenic sometimes and sometimes they weren't. And it's probably most of the time. And it's switching those energy sources maintains what they call metabolic flexibility. I'm probably the most keto-ish out of the group, but I also had the worst autoimmune issues with food.

I had lots of gut issues. And keto- And keto- And keto-solved that for me, but I think of gut issues. And keto, and keto solve that for me, but I think by nature, a keto diet is, it's anti-inflammatory. Obviously, if you have issues processing glucose, which can happen from, again, immune response. In fact, things like Alzheimer's,

they'll call type three diabetes. Yeah. All of a sudden, you feel sharper, you feel better, mood feels better. But over time, a ketogenic diet literally is simulating almost like a slow starvation. So over time, you can notice things like muscle loss and stuff like that. And so we interviewed Dr. Mercola. And even now he's one of the most, he was one of the most ardent supporters of ketogenic diet. Like he that half his career was made on that. And he even says, yeah,

no, on the weekends or once a week, it's a good idea to have some carbohydrates to kick yourself out and then kind of go back in. I completely subscribed to that. So if you guys ever stumble into my Instagram account, it's a Keto underscore head. So that's how into the Keto diet I am. Oh, wow. That's literally my Instagram name. Oh, wow.

Keto underscore head. And if you see it, you'll notice that I pretty much live that lifestyle almost year round. So I'm very much ketogenic four days or so a week. And then I'm off on the weekends, and it takes me about a day or two to get back into a ketogenic state. What are your carbohydrates, the choice,

when you do have them? So it depends if I'm gonna have a refy day or a cheat day. And I differentiate between the two and that if I'm to have a refeed day or a cheat day. And I differentiate between the two in that if I'm going to have a refeed day, I'll have clean carbs, what I'll call clean carbs, things that I do well with, rice does well for me. So I'll have rice. I'll also do a lot of fruit. And I'll mix the fruit with yogurt and a lot of honey.

So I take advantage of that refeed to put stuff back into my gut that I know. It's good for my gut. And things that I normally would be able to have when I'm trying to stay keto-genic. But when I have a cheat day, that actually beats a nice cream. Oh, so you go off off. Yeah.

So it depends on what I'm doing. So that's why I have a differentiation between the two. So if I want to be very disciplined in, and I'm not necessarily trying to stay keto, but I'll be very low-carb high fat. And then on the to be very disciplined in, and I'm not necessarily trying to stay keto, but I'll be very low carb high fat, and then on the weekends, very disciplined, I'll do like a meal that's a very high carb, clean carb kind of a meal.

If I'm not, and there's months out of the year, where it's not a priority for me because I'm flying around all over the place and work and being a dad and all that kind of stuff, so it kind of takes a back seat. It's very easy for me to do low carb high fat, and then to have a cheat meal on a Saturday. Now, what would you consider for you now is high carb?

Because I know being a guy who was doing 600 grams of carbohydrates after my experience with the kid of the day, it forever changed my macro profile. Now high carb is 250, right? Yeah, it's crazy. And you get the same feeling. Oh, I get the same anabolic. I feel like the same thing,

which I'm sure you get to in the gym. It's amazing. When you've been keto for a while and then you feed yep, and then you train It's like you fill out and you get glycogen back into your muscles. It's good Yeah, you're right. So I mean for me low-carp Personally is 25 under 25 grams per day. So that's how I am most of the time and then when I do refeed some I actually not even counting the carbs to be honest with you if If it's a cheat day. It's a lot of ice

I mean a lot of pizza. I don't know how many I don't know what it is up to and I know I have a big glucose Bikers result of that and I think I benefit from it just in general Resetting all the hormones or two I think if you have if you have control that you understand what you're doing I think there I think there's lots of benefit of it I think the problem with most people and they hear that and then that's where they spiral out of control, right?

And once she day leads the two. It's that and Keto diet in general, it's just crazy confusing. I was just talking to somebody who in my mind is relatively educated and does nutrition and competes in all that. And she shared with me that, this Keto thing hasn't worked for me

and whenever I had fat to my diet, I just get fat. I was like, okay, well, what are your macros? And she kind of broke them down for me and I'm like, okay. And then when you added fat, what did you do? And she's like, well, just buttered my coffee, yeah, avocado. Just added a bunch of extra calories. Yeah, so have you ever thought about taking on carbs,

like equal amount of calories and just maintain your calories? I was like, oh no, I hadn't thought about that. I'm like, you know, isn't just adding fat to your diet. You actually you can't have glucose in your diet. So Or you have people that do the other one which I get a lot which is just pull the carbs out and then and then they don't have fat Now they're in a shitty situation. And other bodies going like fuck I get no key tones I get fat and it turns the protein in the carriages, a bunch of, you know, gluconeogenesis going on. So that's another one that I see a lot of.

And I've tried to explain this one to people. So I guess you can go into ketosis by having a lot of protein and then doing a chill at a cardio, but you don't have to do hours of cardio. You could just back down your protein a little bit and then I don't save a lot of time. I don't do any cardio anymore. We don't either.

Talk about all the time. Just go walk. And let me tell you, me too. I just occasionally walk. I live in Manhattan Beach. I walk on the beach every now and then. It's anything as strenuous, but I used to be one of the people that had to do all kinds of cardio,

just to mildly see some abs. And I don't do any cardio anymore. And I'm pretty lean. So crazy. Yeah, no, I've definitely identified carbohydrates that seem to really work well with my gut. One of them is buckwheat. I don't know if you ever eat buckwheat.

Oh, yes, I make buckwheat. Oh, man, I tell you what, you could buy buckwheat, like cereal and you can make hot cereal with it. And it's like the easiest thing I've ever digested in my life that's a carbohydrate. I used to carbub when I competed with buckwheat pancakes. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I actually never tried that. I can't believe a lot of people don't eat them here. I mean, it's super positive.

Oh my God, I actually digest that and have no gut issues with us. So yeah, that's good. No, what about your protein intake? I'm sure there's a body builder. You ate a shit ton of protein. Did you reduce it now? Because we're not, we're not, we're one of the few fitness podcasts where high protein has got benefits for muscle building.

But not these ridiculous amounts that body blooms promote these one to two grams per pound of body weight. Which is just so. Yeah, I was blown away by how low I could take my protein and still maintain muscle and or add muscle. I've blown away. When I first went keto, I just kept taking lower and lower. I think at one point I was under 100 grams of protein per day

and still maintaining some good amount of muscle mass. But today I, gosh, what's my protein intake? It's 150 grams to 180 grams per day max. Yeah, high protein even. Now there's a lot of evidence showing that it promotes accelerated aging and in the right context is even potentially pro-cancer. I've read so people eat in these ridiculous amounts of protein, not really good. High protein may even be, Mccola told us, he thinks that over-eating protein may be as

better worse than over-eating carbohydrates even, which is pretty crazy. It could be, there's an insulogenic response from drinking white protein, right? So you're spiking insulin when you're drinking white protein as well. Yeah, but I don't even I think it's more than that. I think it's the you know constant high levels of m-tore and all these other you know muscle building signals that you're sending that also tend to drive aging and and cancer so it's kind of interesting as we've you know we've had we've had the podcast now for about two and a half years and we've had the pleasure of interviewing just brilliant minds and we've had the podcast now for about two and a half years, and we've had the pleasure of interviewing such as brilliant minds, and we've all been in fitness for a very long time,

and little by little, it looks like having a high plant intake is very important, especially your non-starchi vegetables, and fats are good, proteins are good sometimes, carbohydrates are also good sometimes, and just kind of work in a man, and eating these natural kind of foods, these unprocessed, you know, unadulterated natural foods. And that seems to be the best advice for most everybody. And that's pretty manageable.

I mean, you could put together a relatively delicious meal plan around those general principles and do really really really well. I think the big thing to do is to get the mass majority of people to move away from, you know, a low fat mentality still that believe it or not, it's still pervasive today. And I live in a world where pretty much everyone around me knows that that's not the way to go. But when I step outside of that, I very quickly reminded that people are like, oh, yeah. So it's, I mean, it butter and oil changed my life Like I was not a

I wasn't a vegetable leader because I grew up on the the so the low fat mentality also for such a long time that you know Vegetables were steamed and they were boring and it was like shoveling them down I ended up but now I'm gonna you to big old thing full of vegetables That was the second that was another interview that James was making. Dr. Terry Walls. Dr. Terry Walls, who, I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she's brilliant scientist. At EMS.

Was stricken with MS and through her own process, was able to essentially reverse, very, I mean, she had very, very bad case of it. And she's developed the Walls protocol, which is a six to eight servings of vegetables a day. But it's a very high fat lower carbohydrate, even lower protein, but lots and lots of vegetables after we interviewed her, I was already

in lots of vegetables. Now you do more, that made a massive difference. And how I thought you guys liked you, I was not a vegetable eater. Well, because vegetablesables don't have proteins carved a fat, right? It says the bodybuilder, like, why? That and I just thought I didn't like him. Like I would force myself to eat broccoli, believe it or not, because I remember thinking or knowing that, you know,

I just get some greens. Just supposed to, so it was like, I'll eat that, get it out of the way and then enjoy my meal. But one of the meals, maybe the meal I'm most look forward to every day is the salad that I have at the end of the day. And it's like, you know, a lot of kale and there's like macadamia nuts in there and Marco and almonds and peppers and there's a bunch of vegetables and it's a big salad and then I mowed that thing down and I love every bite of it.

And I don't know if it's because I've changed how I eat but I crave that now. Yeah, I do too. I remember when I first got into competing, I went around, I was talking to buddy, so I did it all myself. I didn't have a coach or anybody like that. I have lots of friends that were already pros. And I went around and I started,

I wanted to hear their diet philosophies, like, okay, well, you know, what do you guys do? And I was telling them that I love eating salads and they all kind of like laughed and mocked me and stuff like that because I do that. And I thought, okay, this is crazy. But I mean, you've been probably removed from it from a really long time. It's crazy how bad it is.

It's still really, really bad, even at the professional level with the dieting and the bro science that's still going on there. It is. I occasionally look and then I very quickly turn away. Because I can't jump in and I don't know where to start on those kinds of things. I'll tell you what though, the kind of wellness movement, when we started the podcast, we called it,

and we said, look, we got wellness over here, we got fitness over here, they're gonna merge at some point, and it's starting to happen now, even with that whole muscle building fat loss market, because you see now protein powders organic, no artificial sweeteners or colors. Grass fed.

Grass fed, it's already starting to happen. Yeah. Which I think is a good thing. Heck yeah. So it's, it's very, very cool, very interesting. One of the things that we also talk about on the podcast is we talk a lot about something called intuitive eating, which is just really a process of understanding how to relearn because we've, we've been taught for, since we were children, to

ignore the natural signals of our body, which humans evolve to help direct us in our eating, both to eat the right amounts, not to overeat and to seek out the right foods. And one of the things that has taught us to ignore that, or one of the things that's made, turn that into a problem are these highly processed and engineered foods that combine tastes and textures and colors in ways that hack our brains you know systems of satiety. Yeah, you know, and we see this with, you know, we interviewed Rob Wolf a while ago and he told us about why it's a great book if you have an excellent book and we he talked to us about these, you know, these professional food, you know, competitors or eaters

when they would eat, you know, a food and they would switch back and forth. They would have to switch back and forth in order to continue eating. And so what's interesting about- It's actually what we do when we eat, right? Yes, so we can keep eating, right? We're learning how to ignore that, yes.

So what's interesting is your company is doing that You guys are engineering these foods to hijack these systems because you're fighting These other people that are doing it with with with you know bad products very perceptive very perceptive so I will I'll take a step back in and Go back to the quest days. So I spent four years there with some pretty amazing people, Tom being one of them, you guys have interviewed Tom, and we understood that. I come from a food industry background. I've worked with Nestle. I've worked with some of the biggest food companies out there. So I

understand there's no malicious plot by the way. They're just all competing with each other over who's gonna try to get you to buy their first. Yeah. And that's the best with each other over. Who's gonna get you to buy their foods? And that's the best way to do it. Who's gonna make the best tasting ice cream? Who's gonna make the best? The same thing you guys are doing in tech, you get you addicted to their tech. It's no different from what food.

Correct. So, if you can only imagine the amount of effort that goes into making like a Doritos chip taste the way that it does, and the amount of residue that gets left on your finger, and all that is... Most of the money that goes into those foods goes into that. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a guy that we wrote a book and I'm not going to think of it right now, but perhaps I'll give you guys later. But he talked about this. He spent all these years working in the food industry and he talked about, if only somebody in the health food industry would hire me, I'd love to share all these tricks with them. And so we hired that person at Quest. It's one of the many people that was part of the R&D team over there.

And so we developed products with that in mind. So there's all these fun tricks to make things taste better. Let's talk about that. It's just fascinating shit. I would love for our audience. I'm like, how do you make your stuff? Yeah, how do you engineer it? Yeah, what did you guys do with your stuff to make it? I mean, I don't know. I don't want you to double your traits, secret sauce. Yeah. But so, I mean, it's because it's everything. People don't realize it's not just the taste. It's also the texture, the smell, the way it feels in your mouth, the way it crumbles on your fingers,

all of that. All of that, very, very true. So at Quest, it was a pretty robust R&D team of people who were pretty much focused on just that. At No Foods, we have an interesting approach to it. So we have a true culinary chef who has a lifelong career in making amazing, delicious food. And then we have an amazing R&D team that works along with this person.

And so they're bringing together all of the little science tricks that come with making foods taste amazing with an actual chef who is working on the culinary side. And then together they bring something You know forward like the cookie that we have and so the cookie that we have I'll call it version 2.0 because we've already had one version that's already improved from the one that we have right now But our goal is to get that as close as humanly possible to experiencing a biting into a soft baked chocolate chip cookie And are we there yet? We're getting close, but it's pretty darn good.

I mean, we're trying to mimic all those same things with our chocolate and our flowers and finding a way to do all of this without actually using grains or gluten. So I'll do those, for example, of something that ends up working there because it has all the properties of sugar in many ways, both in flavor and then in texture. And so there's a lot of innovative things you can do with alley lows that allow you to give really amazing texture to the foods. Fasten it.

So I want to challenge a little bit of a thought process. And I want to hear what you speak on this is what do you think? Because I think what you guys are doing is amazing. And I think you've got to kind of fight fire with fire, right? But what about, is there any fear that, because obviously your intentions are pure and good and the ideas that we're going to provide a better, healthier product, and hopefully we have a healthier world

because of this, right? So what I have found with so many people is the behavioral patterns that they've caused from the eating, right, from the liking it so much. Yes. I even catch myself with the newest quest bar out right now. So it's like, I'm a hero bar. Dude, that's good. The caramel Bakon hero bar is to die for. Look at it. Dude, I'll go through, I could go through four of those, right? Back to back to back.

Okay. So I have to, like I would I do, I have a refrigerator all the way down to my garage. I like them cool, because they're really good. You cool, you let them room temperature for about 30 seconds, I love them, they're really good. But I could nail a whole box, if I don't, if I don't pay attention to that.

And I know being a health fitness conscious guy, I care about that shit. Right. How many other people probably struggle with that discipline? And I used to, I remember I used to date this girl, used to find those skinny cows about that shit, right? How many other people probably struggle with that discipline? And I used to, I remember I used to date this girl, used to buy those skinny cows all the time, right? My actually, it was my girlfriend Ben Greenfield. He used to buy those, yeah.

He used to, he does skinny cows all the time to try to... He used to, he used to, he does skinny cows all the time to try to... Did I use to say that one just? Yeah, yeah. Oh my god, I helped launch that brand many, many years ago. Oh, did you do your skinny cow? Oh, yeah.

And what happened? What's yours? These people that struggle with weight, and normally what they do is they buy that because they feel better, because they're making a better choice. But then instead of just eating one that's 130 calories, they fucking five of them, that's 700.

So you're touching a lot of really cool stuff. I mean, let me impact some of that. So yes, if you make the, everything tastes so amazing that people just eat all day long, and that's problematic. No, no question. You also touch something like a skinny cow-type product where people are buying things that they think are actually good for them.

When in reality, it's a metabolic disaster. Lending layers is a good example. I mean, to pick on those guys, but it's a cookie that's supposed to be good for you. It's got 34 grams of sugar. It's a full-blown metabolic disaster every time you eat it. It's an actual cookie. Yeah. It's actually, I don't have a real cookie because I think it's lower in sugar than...

It is. I've seen people do the comparisons before they put a real cookie next to it. It's like, something. Right. Agreed. So, but the first point you made is one really worth thinking about. And we're not, we don't seem to be as wired to crave eating protein and fat non-stop the way that we are carbs.

There's no stop mechanism there. You guys may have seen a video, it's on YouTube, it's an old video of this tribe that still lives in the Amazon jungle very much like Wonder Gathers and Hunter Gathers, whatever. It's a really cool video because it shows how they occasionally do get sugar in their diet. You know, they live almost the entire year, no sugar every now and then they find honey at the top of these very tall trees. And they'll climb to the top of the canopies

to get the honey and they'll risk their life on limb and often get hurt. They get stung from head to toe every time by bees. But they do it nonetheless. They risk their life to get sugar. And when they do get their hands on the honeycomb, they devour it, right? And they eat every last bite of it. They don't just have a few bites.

They don't have some later. It's like all of it. And so we're wired that way. And so if you can somehow make healthy quality proteins, fibers, and healthy fats, the things that we should be eating taste like that sugar that we love. I'd rather overeat on that end than overeating on the sugar-y stuff, which is because of the metabolic consequences to come from one versus the other. So that said, there's still that one, like, the overeating component, and I'll fall into that category.

I mean, I'll eat all kinds of stuff all the time. I don't have a stop mechanism on a lot of things. So for me, keto really helped me on that one. Oh, keto changed me for that. Yes. If I'm keto, I see more struggle with like the process stuff, the bars, the things like that. If I introduce those into my diet, if I mean a pure keto diet, I won't do that. If I'm just eating fats and things like that. But even for me, post keto, so if I get out of ketosis, I somehow sense originally doing it. I have a lot more control over my cravings. I think what happens,

and it's like, I'm just way more sensitive, you're way more sensitive, right? I mean, we're way more insulin sensitive, and now what used to take 600 carbs to give me that system that, okay, you're really full on this shit, it happens now at 150 or so. Well, I say the best thing that system that, okay, you're really full on this shit. It happens now at 150 or so. Correct. Well, I say the best thing that I've ever done and I've ever recommended for people to

kind of reset those systems of satiety and to kind of reconnect to some of the signals of their body is to fast. There's nothing that does it any better than fasting because once you fast, first off, you get to feel hungry for the first time in your life, which people laugh when I say that. And I'm like, we're talking about feel hungry every day. It's like, off, you get to feel hungry for the first time in your life, which people laugh on when I say that, and I'm like, we're talking about feel hungry every day. It's like, no, you don't. So true.

You've never gone longer than probably eight to 10 or 12 hours without food, so you need to know what that really feels like. You can work through it. And you need to realize that most of the time when you think you're hungry, it's an emotional connection to food or it's a connection to anxiety.

You're different than checking your phone for your latest IG post or whatever. It's that same kind of weird craving that you're just getting a quick fix from it. But the fasting component is a big one for me. And I do a lot of intermittent fasting as part of what I normally do. But I do. I've had this ritual for many years and I'm glad that I've done it. And I'm learning a lot more about the benefits that are coming from it. And that's a three day fast how I start my year.

Yep. And I used to do it simply because the reasons I did it is because it's my way of kind of understanding all the little crutches that I've been using throughout the year. Like they start to add up, like the little things that you do to that are non-productive. And for three days I remove everything. And food just happens to be one of those.

But as it turns out, like true fasting for three days days plus if you guys have seen all the random Patrick's other She's been working on good Lord. I mean there's nothing but It is part of her say when I start hitting three to five This is the sweet spot right? I'm cell boost production I mean it one of the most anti-cancer things you could possibly do to the point where the FDA right now is researching Fasting is an adjuvant therapy, tachymotherapy, because in their studies, they're finding that people will use far less chemo if they do a fasting protocol with it and it's more effective, which means less side effects, better effect on the cancers.

Fasting has been part of the cancer treatment in Chinese and Eastern medicine for thousands of years. That was how they treated cancers. They didn't know what it was cancer, but that's how they started treating it. And so I recommend that to any healthy person to go for a prolonged fast. At least I like to do it once every six months.

I'll do a 48 hour, 72 hour fast. And I respond better to protein afterwards, better to carbs afterwards, better to fats. I'll tell you what I did for my gut. So we have a friend of ours who's a gut health specialist, Dr. Mike Ruscio. And he talked about how many times people with gut issues have just this dysbiosis going on where they have these

overgrowth of certain bacteria as in maybe something called SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And he recommended that I do a prolonged fast and then supplement with natural antimicrobials, going to very low sugar type diet and do that for like a 14 day period and then see how I felt. So I did that two times, not in a row, I did one

and I did it, it took like two months off and I did another one. And I'm telling you right now, no joke, I feel like it, literally and I don't use this word lightly, telling you right now, no joke, I feel like it literally, and I don't use this word lightly, almost cured some of my issues to the point now where I was so sensitive to gluten, and these guys will tell you,

I'd have a little bit and I would be ruined, I'd be fucked. Now I could have gluten every once in a while, and it doesn't seem to bother me. That's all right, flexibility. It was that, it was that what I did right there. It was that fast with the antimicrobials and for about 14-day period.

And I think it just kind of reset my body. And it's something that people don't do enough. So, but I'll tell you what, I'm glad we have someone, because you have a history of working in the industry developing foods and engineering them to taste so fucking good that we can't resist them. And I'm glad you're on this side. Yeah.

And that's why you're giving me a review. I've got to be super excited about that because there's probably not a lot of health companies in like, well, because there's not as much money going to that as there's a... For sure. ...and that's what... ...and that's... Well, yeah. ...I bring them over here. When you think of other companies like organic companies that are out there, like, is there as much research?

I feel like Quest is probably one of the companies, too, that's doing good work like that. I mean, is there a lot of other companies that you would consider a competitor or are you guys kind of stand alone? There's not a lot of people doing what you're doing. You know, it's funny. I don't really ever think of competitors. There's a lot of companies out there that are doing similar work and I think of them more as companies to collaborate with, to be honest with you.

So I'll say there will be two types of food companies. Those that have metabolic truth and maintain metabolic integrity and those that are metabolic disasters. I'm going to put them into those two camps. And so anybody who's developing products that taste amazing and that maintain metabolic integrity, they're on my team, whether they're no foods or not. And anybody who's making and To be honest, I like the junk food industry so keep making hog and does keep making bad injuries love that stuff But it's really the stuff that's positioned to be better for you

That really isn't better for you. So it's the ones it's slightly better for you. It's like you know smoking cigarettes with the filters better for you than not But it's still bad for you So there's a lot of things that are bad for you that are being promoted as better for you I want to expose all that and there's billions of dollars being made on those types of products And so on on this other side of the equation you have companies like Quest for sure They're tackling the whole anything to do the bar. They're gonna own right cereal bars candy bars and bars in all their forms And I'm sure there's more stuff coming from those guys

There's a really great company out there called real good food to make a protocol real good pizza It's a pizza that's got 25 grams of protein four net carbs and actually four total carbs because it's made out of chicken breast and cheese That the crust believe or not chicken breasts. Yeah, chicken breasts Yeah, so in fact, I'm the only like so probably he was talking about on the, we just fell into Callie flower food, which is really good, which is it's pizza crust made out of Cali or cauliflower. So that's a fun one right there, right? So so cauliflower pizza has been a thing for a while now. So if you go online, people have realized that

how do we, how can we enjoy pizza without all the problems that come with pizza? So somehow figured out someone figured out you can make it out of cauliflower. Cool. Now you've got all these people launching cauliflower pizza products out there. One retailer in particular, I won't name them on here because I don't want to mad at me. But I see everyone posting this cauliflower pizza out there. And I'm like, okay, that's kind of cool. It take the work out of it. I look at the ingredients. It's a metabolic disaster. It's like the whole reason to add cauliflower is so that you don't have the carbs in it. And then they added a whole bunch of other carbs. It's like the whole reason to add cauliflower is so that you don't have the carbs in it.

And then they added a whole bunch of other carbs. It's worse than normal pizza. So it's not going to surprise me. We start with flour. And then we add cauliflower. Yes. Yes. Cauliflower pizza.

Well, this is actually motivated these ladies who started this cauliflower foods was exactly that was. Even the cauliflower pizzas out there had all these preservatives and all this shit in. It's like it's not even good for you, but they promoted that way. The entire gluten-free category is like that. So it reminds me of the vegan category. Like, oh, it's meatless sausage.

And you look at the back and the ingredient list is like, you know, 100 lines long. You're like, this is not healthy. Just think of it as having meat to it. Almost every gluten-free bread that's out there that I can think of other than ours. Mayver will be gluten-free, but they're also adding tapioca starch. So they're like highly glycemic.

Yeah. So if you want to get on a path to diabetes, like eat that stuff, it's just because it's gluten-free. It doesn't mean it's correct. Are you guys doing anything on the fitness side? Are you because it's kind of like health food, right? Do you work with anyone to develop fitness programs or promote exercise or anything like that, or is that in the future?

That's not something that we're doing at all, perhaps sometime in the future. I mean, we do think of ourselves as trying to solve some of these grand problems and we're doing it through nutrition, but certainly something that we'd be open to in the future. We are heavily involved with the influencer community and have a lot of great relationships in that space and so perhaps you know working with some of those folks. Man, I'm glad we got to know you then. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, that's awesome.

Well, no, appreciate you coming on the show, brother. It's my pleasure and I look forward to listening to the podcast. To my part, yes. We'll be your favorite podcast. Yeah, it'll be the little. Excellent. Thanks to our host Spartan Race, Joe Dessina and the Spartan Up podcast for setting up a great weekend here at the 2017 Spartan race world championship

We are recording live from Lake Tahoe at the Spartan Up pod fest part of the 2017 Spartan race world Championships fucking awesome out here, and we are with I don't know man. I think we might be related. Yeah, you are kind of handsome, so I'm like, okay, there's gotta be something there. Joe is Stefano. I've never met another Stefano. I know that's all that happened. I don't know, man. We're both DI. DI space? Do you space it?

Yeah, I swear to God, man, as we gotta be related. We must have it separate. Are you really smart, too? Yeah. Depends on contacts who you ask. I'm good at faking it, but... Definitely. Definitely related. So you're the co-founder of Spartan Coaching.

Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, well, very early on in Spartan, back in the day, it was this thing where it was just kind of bored triathletes. Like, oh, is it like a triathlon? Like, what is it? And then, there's obviously a lot of general population people that were getting into five Ks and things like that.

And when we would try to explain what OCR was, and I don't even think we call it OCR at the time, it was like, well, how do I train for that? What do I eat? What do I eat? What do I wear? And so we started Spartan coaching, which at first was actually kind of an adjacent vertical,

like an adjacent business next to Spartan. And it focused on kind of preparing people for really getting them to understand what Spartan race was. And so yeah, now we call it SGX, which is our Spartan group exercise program. So do you give people like specifics like this is what the workout should look like, this is what you train for in order to get ready for these races. Yeah, so a lot of the coaching program that we created is actually based in psychology, kind of getting people to understand, to see the race for more than just a bunch of walls, water, and fire, right?

Joe created this thing, you know, as a metaphorical kind of experience. We don't really care if you can climb a wall. We want to see if you can kind of conquer something that's in your way. And if you can't, you're willing to pay the price to get around it, which is 30 burpees, right? So the big thing with the coaching program is getting people to see the kind of back story and the reason why we created this thing. And then beyond that, it's about training, right? And so it's less like, here's our favorite workouts and it's more,

how do you create a 12-week program? You know, the average person that signs up for a Spartan race is going to sign up 12 weeks out and then start taking it seriously and train a little bit. So you walk out of the course with a kind of a 12 week template on how to prepare somebody for the race. And now, is it like beginner to race or is this more for intermediate 12 weeks?

For all. Yeah, all of them. So, you know, it's really interesting where it's kind of an undulated program where the first four weeks the program focus on body weight training, the next four weeks focus on sort of like carries medicine ball stuff. And then the last four weeks is more kind of hardcore conditioning. Let's get race ready, right? And so whether it's a beginner, a coach potato,

or whether it's an advanced triathlete, four weeks of body weight training can kind of really get anybody a little bit more athletic. Anybody, you know, have ever seen like animal flow like the stuff my fish does. And so we can incorporate that scale and make it as difficult as possible. But I think the general kind of rubric

for training for Spartan is get super comfortable in your own skin, get fluid and get your movement down. Get connected again to your body. Get connected exactly. I like that you start out with the body weight training specifically because a lot of people like yeah, they get that disconnect from their body and they're not really aware of like their joints and like what they're capable of.

So that's great. Well that's the big thing right? Is that, you know, let's say you're going to climb a wall. It's like one person can approach a wall and, you know, let's say you're going to climb a wall. It's like one person can approach a wall and they've learned they take all the dysfunction from sitting at a desk or what have you or are not being comfortable in their own skin not being able to move virtually But they learned how to climb a wall and this is what it looks like, right?

You take somebody that's you know done a lot of animal flow or done a lot of kind of movement stuff and maybe the wall is slanted now and it's a little bit different. They're going to figure it out. But the person that took a dysfunctional body and just learned how to climb a rope or climb a wall is going to be much more like, whoa, what am I going to do here? I'm going to figure this out. That is a very, very good point because you can definitely train adaptation.

You can get very specific with your adaptation, very specific with these movements in this pattern, in this plane of movement. And if you change that just a little bit, I don't think people, we talk about this on the show all the time, people don't realize just there's carry over, but it's not a whole lot. You know, if you're really good at, you know, squatting a particular way and now we front load you or now you put yourself in a split stance, like 80% of your strength and stability is gone.

So your training is geared towards getting people to be able to move better period and be able to scale all these different things. So it's not specific to the obstacles, or is that also included? Yeah, that's a great question. So SGX is mostly about creating a versatile body, right? That can kind of conquer anything.

Above and beyond that, we've created a class called Obstacle Specialist, which is specifics. This is how you do an SRAP. This is how you do a J-Hook. This is how you climb the wall three different ways. This is how you flip over the wall like some of the pros do. So the actual coaching program is more based in creating a body that's kind of capable of

whatever you want it to do. And then the capstones are more specifics. When you have a pro team athlete that wants to be the absolute best rope climber on the planet, what are the steps you take to do that? How do you train for a race like this at altitude? High heat. So as you kind of add, we have a level two program as well and then we have the optional specialists that gets into the more nitty-gritty stuff.

Is this all online based or how does this work? It's everything. So we have, we teach the workshop occasionally, mostly at our stadium races. It's a two-day live workshop. It's also around a 30-day online program. So, you know, as we've kind of expanded globally just exponentially, right? You know, we've got 200 races just about 30 countries. The interest in this program was far greater than we could, than we could get two day workshops propped up of train instructors.

So we were really, really late to putting it online just because we were really afraid to do that. We didn't want to be lumped into that, you know, log in and get a cert. But it's hot just like a college course. It's actually taught by one of my professors from exercise physiology undergrad, taught just like a university class, takes part on the very crew. So it's no joke. And the past rate, you know, it's funny too, is I took a class and how to create, you know, kind of the business of a certification, right? And one of the things that I took home is if

less than 90% of people are not, or less than 90% of people are passing your cert and it's too hard. We're like 50%, we're like 55%. Because what you want to have, I mean, you want to get integrity behind it. Right. Exactly. You could take a class on how to develop a certification. Yeah, I'm very interested in that. We're also, they say in that class. Yeah, yeah. We're like, we're working on that. Yeah, I'm very interested in that. What else have they say in that class? Yeah, we're like, so. Because we're working on that. We're talking about creating a certification

for online coaching, because it's such a big, we all have decades of experience in the fitness industry as trainers and then training trainers. And I see your background, your corrective exercise specialist through NSM and you've got a check into your training and all that stuff. So you definitely know your shit. But what do they tell you to do?

Like how do you develop this certification? So that's one of them, right? A whole bunch, everybody has to pass, basically. Right, everyone has to pass. And in this course, it was really a more robust fitness business course. That was just one element of it. It wasn't a full weekend on how to create a certification.

But yeah, that was just one of the takeaways. How did you and Joe get connected? You know, that's a funny story. Yeah, tell me I can say it on the air. Oh, this is my fucking walk. Oh, yeah, we're our show. We're coined as the Howard Stern of fitness. All right. All right. So this is a hilarious story. That's spicy. Yeah. So, all right, I just told you that, you know, one of my college professors actually teaches that class, right?

Well, when I went to school in the early 2000s, you know, I, you know, I played baseball growing up and I was an amateur skateboarder. I was never really into endurance sports at all. I maintained like a sub eight minute mile so I could be on a baseball team, but that was about it. And in my brain, when I went to college, I was undeclared in what I wanted to do.

In my brain, I'd never really, I didn't put a lot of thought into it, but I was, you know, a marathon, it's like, that's like as far as the body goes. Like, you know, the first guy to do it died, and your nipple, like, no one runs more than a marathon. Nipples bleed something's happening. Right, you know, that was it.

And so I never had any interest in running a marathon, but I also didn't really think that there was anything beyond that. And when I went to school, I bumped into a guy like a dining hall or something, and he was one of the professors in the exercise department. And he's got this thick Boston accent and he goes, yeah, I got a hundred mile of this weekend. I'm like, what does that mean? What is 100 miles? I have a buddy who's an ultra marathon runner. Right, and he goes, I'm around 100 miles. And I'm like, that's not even a thing. Like, what do you mean on your feet?

Like, yeah. For like a week. In a day, like, yeah, I had no idea. And what was funny, I was like, looking at him and judging him. I'm like, if you can run 100 miles, like I wonder how far I can run. So I did, I signed up for a half marathon and did it like, you know, a week later just to see if I could do it. But him and I are still great, great friends. We ended up doing a few races

together. He got me into triathlon eventually. And so maybe it was 2004. He's like, hey, I'm doing this race. It's called the death race. I'm like, that doesn't sound appealing. I don't know what that is. You're gonna die. He's like, bring me back. Yeah, I had no idea. I think that was the first year Joe did it. He couldn't tell me anything about it. He said it was gonna be around a 24-hour race. I was like, I'm not interested. I'm in the zone right now. I'm an exercise science student. I want to know what I'm up against so I can type in it and just make sure that I'm in the zone right now. I'm an exercise science student. I want to know what I'm up against so I can type A it and just make sure that I'm trained

and I call it a place. Right, I don't want to sign up for something you can't tell me anything about. And he made it like five hours I think he walked in and it was like 3,000 burpees at the start line and then you can start. And Dr. J, I call it reasonable. Right, yeah, I call it the wounded buffalo

because he's a guy that runs 100 miles but Dr. J, I called the wounded buffalo because he's a guy that runs 100 miles. But Dr. J, I love you. But like, watch him do a burpee at that point in time. We talked about your adaptations. If you run 100 miles, you got no hip mobility because you don't need it. You got no strength in the up body. You don't need it. You got no hip strength.

Right. You're controlling it. It's such an ugly burpee, what's it not happening? Oh, man. I, you know, until 2013, I don't think I ever saw Doc do a barbed wire crawl and not need to stand up. At some point in it, right? And I love you, Doc.

But what happens is your mobility is just, you don't need it to run a hundred miles. What you need is just, you just need a bobble head and some strong ankles. And so anyways, I don't think you made it through the 3000 burpees. He came home, he's like, dude, it was sick, it was awesome. 2005, he's like, you should do this with me. No, 2006, 2007, 2008. And I just, I don't want to go hang out with this lunatic Joe. Like, I don't want to do that.

And then he's like, whatever it was, Amesbury or one of the very early Spartans, he's like, all right, that guy, that you know, the death race guy, he's putting on a race and it's called Spartan. And you're gonna love it. It's a 5K, you'll be done 45 minutes. I'm like, all right, I can handle it.

That's the reason why. And the rest is kind of history. And then Doc and I both got involved with Joe and. Now, because this is the early days, and we interviewed Joe, got like six months ago, great story. Probably one of our favorite interviews. Great story teller.

Yeah, no. Oh, yeah, great story, man. So was this super small? Was it just, was it an intimate, a group of guys or how big was the very first one you went to? Oh my gosh, yeah, no, it's, I mean, it was not small. I mean, now I think we would probably consider it

very, very, very small. But at that point, I was running a lot of local 5K. I was running a lot of turkey trots, and I was used to seeing 300 person races and, you know, so I don't know what the number was. Yeah. But it seemed cool. There was that like coming from conventional endurance sports,

there was that little bit of edginess like you know There was fire. We had you know gladiators at the time like just these buff Malice like you mean mugging you are right. Yeah exactly. Well, I don't know if you guys know it's at the finish line We used to have actual like American gladiators that would actually hit you You'd have to rest hit you. And you'd have to rest. Why did they take that out? I didn't. As you grow.

You know, you know, you know, in the real reason is, I remember a race I watched and it was Hobie call on Hunter McIntyre. It might have been 2013. They were both coming in full steam heading into the finish line. I think Hunter got hit and Hobie didn't. Well, there's the race. Wow. Oh, that's well. So from a sport perspective, it makes no sense. Yeah. And I can make a few arguments for the open wave

why it's not a good idea. Yeah. But yeah, back in the day, it was funny, because when you come into the finish line, you're all excited. And then you see this just guy just staring you down from the yards. Yeah.

Ready for you. Oh, that's fun. So now, and I know Joe's personality. So I'm wondering, you guys meet, was it like instant connection right away? How'd you guys even start talking? How did this develop into a business? Right, right. So another funny story.

Joe, Joe's really an interesting guy. And he's the real deal. And I was intimidated by Joe at the beginning, especially since I'd been hearing these stories for almost seven years about this death race. And I'd always avoided going up there and meeting him. And so it was kind of a slow build. And I remember it might have been 2012. He invited this group of us up to Vermont. It was Dr. J me Jeff Finicello who is a he's an Olympic wrestler. He teaches in Arizona now. I think in Arizona state Mark divine you guys must know a few other studs and like just put us in a room and

We ended up putting a big group of coaches through an event later that weekend But that was really the kickoff of this thing. And Mark Devine kind of given his two cents, like what it means to be Spartan and Jeff Finicello. It was funny actually. So Joe was like, with this weekend, this group of coaches that's going to come in, they have to be smarter than you, Dr. J. And Mark, they have to, you know, they have to chop wood with you for six hours. And Mark, they have to, you know, they have to chop wood with you for six hours. And Jeff, Jeff, they have to wrestle you like you're an Olympic wrestler. And so, yeah, it's pretty funny, but we ended up doing like, you know, seven hours of

Bikram yoga in two days. We hiked them out. And, you know, I actually did wrestle Jeff in a cello. There was a photo of it. Within about a second, I was upside down. But, uh, but that was really the kickoff. And that's when kind of friendships really kind of created and then the rest of the history. That's excellent. How many people do you guys have in your coaching program now? There's about a thousand certified coaches right now. Um, which again is a slow build.

That's, you know, it's been a lot more than that. It've come through the course, whether whether online or live and then there's obviously the attrition every year for people that that don't meet the requirements to keep the third another year so about a thousand right now how long does it take to get the cert if someone who were start and say hey I want to get certified 30 days and he said it's just three days 30 days 30 days yeah so you can come to a live two-day workshop there are prerequisites you got to be a coach you got to be you got to have your CPR, you gotta be a certified trainer,

anybody can take the class, but if you wanna exit as a certified. Oh wow, so you actually have to be a nationally certified trainer before you even go to your courses. Right, right, so we see it as a specialty, right? So we don't wanna teach you guys A and P, we don't wanna teach you guys. You know that's a lot of integrity with that,

because I feel like- There's a lot of other certifications out there that I won't name any names where you show up for a weekend, doesn't matter what your background is, and now you're programming Olympic-Live services. Well, you see, like, when we look at interesting... Well, you're looking at... I know you're talking about it. Yeah.

Exactly. Well, you walk into some of your biggest chain gyms. You always, I mean, where you see most of the people in these group X classes, you know, these are the people teaching 50, 100 people and they went through some weekend certification course and they have no real understanding of physiology, metabolism, any of that should. Right. And so that's pretty cool that you guys do that, that you got to have a national cert before you can even go through your certification.

So, right, right, man. And you know what's so funny is again, the first certification we did, so Dr. J is, I mean, he's an unbelievable guy, and he's a college professor, he's a PhD in this stuff, takes it super seriously. The first training, the first exam to be a Spartan coach was, I took four years of exercise physiology with Dr. J at university, and I got a 72 or something right you know so the

first test is just insane and we've backed it off a little bit. Yeah, but that was kind of like with with Joe's intent Joe was like if someone's a Spartan coach to the best they bet we the smartest fuckers in the world you know know, that was his thing. And again, he entered David Russell, Jeff and Acello and hang with Mark Devine. So now, are you, do you and Joe work day-to-day or how often you guys even communicate? Because I'm sure you're super busy doing what you're doing.

Do you guys see each other that much? Yeah, well, he's in Japan now. So, you know, we don't, I wouldn't say we work day-to-day together. We're on email. He's over there working on that hello kitty deal Yeah Sure he's sure

It's very important that he's over something he should sell those shirts So when you look at the like the top top performers who are are the best of the best in these particular races What backgrounds do they usually come from? Where do they look like? Because I know everybody can do it. I see people from all walks of life competing in these things. I don't mean by everybody as in everybody, but you know, everybody gets something out of it But then you've got those top performers.

What is their background typically? Are they marathon runners? Or are they, you know, like what do they look like? Are they smaller, bigger? Right. Well, that's, I mean, like, what do they look like? Are they smaller, bigger? Right. Well, that's, I mean, that's a loaded question, man. And I think I've gotten the question about 400 times in the past 24 hours, like who's gonna win.

And you know what's hilarious? Is if I were to guess, maybe Hobie, maybe Hunter, they got 40 pounds between them, right? Hobie's 130, 5-round marathon runner. Hunters, I don't know if he's 185, he's 195. They got 40 pounds between them right. Holdings 130, so I found marathon runner hunters. I don't know if he's 185, he's 195. It's really hard. I think-

That's what makes this cool is that you can't pigeonhole it until like, okay, this is the body type. This is the person who wins these races always. Right, right. And I think we're at a point now, you know, this year with the US Championship series, we made it all supers and then a beast at the end. I think if you looked across everything, like the best runner is going to win. You know, bar in, you know, over, over course time, the best runner is going to win.

But I think over time, if the sport goes in the directions that some of us want it to, there's going to be opportunities for the heavier, stronger dudes and gals. I was gonna ask you that. We were talking to, who's the athlete that we're talking to from Kuwait? Kuwait, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great guy. Talking about all the areas right there. That's fun.

How fun is that? We just summoned him. We just summoned him. Literally, just that is name. How cool is he? He heard you. Yeah, so talking to him and he was saying that, you know, right now he feels that the race is

kind of favor typically more the runners and that, you know, some other obstacle courses that are way heavy on the obstacle side. Do you see in the future putting more emphasis on the obstacle side? Or maybe just changing and not offering different kinds. Right. Right. And if you look at this course today, you know, we've got a new obstacle up at the top of the mountain. That's a double. You guys familiar with our Atlas ball carry, right? It's you look at this course today, we've got a new obstacle up at the top of the mountain that's a double.

You guys familiar with our Atlas ball carry, right? It's 115 or so for men. Well, we've got an obstacle at the top of the mountain. That's two of those and they've got a handle bolted into the ball of concrete, right? So that's a 200 plus pound farmer carry. You got to go 40 feet with, you know, at mile, seven and a half. Oh, there you go a 9,000 feet. So yes, and we've got two hercoyce here.

We've got, you know, this new rig we've got is just, you know, that's a lot of grip strength. So I think, given any race, this is a 16.5 mile race, we'll call it right now, that's gonna favor a runner, but I think if you look at our stadium races, like if we can start jacking the weights on some of the obstacles in the stadium series, which is a 27-minute race anyway, and then if it was heavier weight, so we started to get distinct to your point body types. So the stadium race, you've got 175 pound, a little bit of a burlier athlete, and then in the beast races, the obstacles are a little heavy,

but you've got the 140 pound guy and the 108 pound girl or what have you. So we'll see, I hope that that is kind of the future. Exciting, man, we're happy to be here. Yeah. We're pumped to have you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

It's super cool, yeah. Very cool, thank you very much. We want to thank our host Spartan race, Joe Dacina and the Spartan podcast for setting up a great weekend here at the 2017 Spartan race world championship. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com.

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