Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Navy SEAL Mark Divine on Cultivating Mental Toughness and the Will to Win

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

In this podcast I interview NYT bestselling author and Navy SEAL Mark Divine and we talk about how he developed an "unbeatable mind" that kept him alive on the battlefield and has helped him succeed as an entrepreneur. ORDER THE WAY OF THE SEAL: http://amzn.to/1tJVjGe ORDER THE UNBEATABLE MIND: http://amzn.to/1sm95Dv MARK'S WEBSITE: http://sealfit.com/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

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Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because

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about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for stopping by. In this episode, I'm going to be interviewing Mark Devine.

Mark is a New York Times bestselling author of several books, and he's the founder of NavySeals.com and of SealFit and a couple other businesses and cool things he's doing that we're going to be talking about on the podcast. And just an all around interesting dude, a really cool guy, nice guy. And he spent about 20 years in the Navy. His story of how he became a SEAL is pretty unique and pretty interesting. And I found him through one of his books and liked a lot of what he had to say. So I thought that I'd get him on the podcast and we'd talk about some interesting stuff regarding like mental toughness and other

things that are relevant, not just for getting in shape, but for doing well in life in general. So let's get to the interview. All right. Hey, Mark, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's my pleasure, Mike. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. You know, growing up, I was all into G.I. Joes and I had a military fantasy growing up. So people like you, I kind of like – I don't know. I admire people like you. There you go. That's cool. Yeah. So I think we should start with at least kind of like a quick sketch of how you became a Navy SEAL.

Just because it's a very unusual story. I know you've told it a million times, but if the readers haven't heard it, it's interesting. So how did that go down exactly? I'll just expect that nobody out there knows me, which is cool. It's always a good plan to follow. So yeah, I'm from upstate New York and I went to Colgate University, which is upstate New York, and my family is a business family. And so I was kind of like conditioned. I studied economics at Colgate. And then I was kind of conditioned to be a business guy by my family, by our expectations, by the belief system, by the fact that we had a 100-year-old family business. So when I left college, I went down to – I got a job with a company called Coopers and Libran, which is now PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It was a pretty good deal. They were going to send me – actually, it was an exceptional deal. They were going to send me and a group of others to NYU Business School to get our master's in accounting, which most of us then defaulted into the MBA program. So I ended up with an MBA in finance. Then we work. Basically,, you know, we work, basically we go to school at night, work during the day as an auditor. And then the summertime was full-time school. So two full-time schools during the summer. I got my CPA over two years,

finished up my MBA with a third summer vacation, not vacation, but leave of absence. So, you know, three years out of Colgate, I had an MBA and a CPA and I was, you know, working my way up the ranks at Coopers and Libran. I actually had shifted over to Arthur Anderson toward the end of that. And, you know, I was miserable, Mike. I mean, I just, you know, aside from the goal focus, which motivated me, right, to get the MBA and the CPA, the job itself really, really was uninspiring to me. I didn't like the work. I didn't like the people I was working with.

I thought there was a lot of greed and self-centeredness down on Wall Street. Most of my clients were Wall Street clients. Incidentally, none of them exist anymore. They've all bombed as a result of ethical lapses like Drexel Burnham and Lambert and the Salomon brothers. So it's really interesting that what I was sensing at 24 years old actually became a reality because their behaviors torpedoed them. But I saw that from my perspective. I said, I don't like this. I don't like these people.

There's got to be more to what's going on and more to life than just slogging it away, climbing the corporate ladder. And just dreaming of retirement one day so you can escape your life. Or going back to the family business. That's kind of like my option. Either I get into investment banking and make some big money. That was kind of the path I started working on. Or I stay and become a partner and still do pretty good. In fact, one of my peers is a fraternity brother, Michael Cooley. He's now running Ernst

and Young and he started in that same exact program as I did. And so, you know, that type of future was definitely there for me if I wanted it or go back to the family business, you know, and then I have three siblings who are now back running the family business in upstate New York. But none of those inspired me. And I tell this story to my, you know, quite a bit. I did in my book as well, but really what got me to shift my focus was the, um, I'd gotten involved in a, in a really nice martial art called Sado karate. The founder of the school had his headquarters two blocks from where I lived in Manhattan. And he became like my first true mentor. And what he did to me was essentially slow me down and sit me down on a meditation bench every day. I was there plus also once a week for an hour. And it was that quiet time of just sitting and watching my thoughts and trying not to think that I was able to really start to plumb the depths and to see what was inside of me that I hadn't seen before.

And what kept coming up was the first thing that came up was that I was a complete misfit as a CPA. I didn't belong there. And there was a reason I didn't like the job and the people is because I didn't belong there. And then the second thing that came up was, okay, if I don't belong there, where do I belong? And I went through all the business options,

and I didn't like any of them. So it forced me to really take the courageous step of contemplating something completely new. And that's when I started to think, okay, well, how do I define myself? Who am I? Why am I on this planet? And those are questions I'd never asked or never been taught to ask. And so I started to try to define that. And, of course, that was all done on the meditation bench.

It wasn't done by any specific exercises or thinking or classes. There was nothing like that. And of course, that was all done on the meditation bench. It wasn't done by any specific exercises or thinking or classes. There was nothing like that, at least back then. But the contemplation and the tapping my intuition, that all did its work. And so what came up was that I wanted to be a warrior and I wanted to be a leader and I had to be in a risky, kind of high stakes field. For some reason, I was drawn toward that. And then once I got- Was that something when you were growing up as well? Were you into like risky, adrenaline type of junkie kid growing up?

Definitely. And I think part of your, I have this thing I teach called your three Ps. You develop your stand in life by understanding your purpose, your passion, and your principles. And what I was defining at that point in time were my passion. Like what was I passionate about? And that helped lead me to my purpose.

And then I defined my principles around all that. And that became my ethical stand. And that stand said, okay, I don't belong as a money grub and CPA. At this point in my life, I'm a warrior and a leader, and I need to get out and lead. And so then I had to define how am I going to fulfill that new vision. So then the next stage was to look at, well, I could fly from the Marine Corps. I could go work on an oil rig. I could go around the world and just have a grand adventure.

Or I could be a Navy SEAL. That one had entered my consciousness. And so I kept coming back to the SEALs and it just really inspired me because it captured everything about what I saw inside of myself. I was a warrior. It was a leadership, you know, required intense leadership. It was risky. You know, it was extreme athletics and I was kind of an extreme athlete as you alluded

to. Not in the way that extreme athletes are today because we didn't have that mindset back then. We didn't know we could do a lot of that stuff, and tools weren't available. But I used to run up and down the Adirondacks. We would run up, a buddy of mine and I, and we would literally wrap our ankles, put knee pads on,

and then play tag on the way down, leaping off of boulders, doing flips in the air, and doing crazy stuff. It's amazing we survived that kind of stuff. So I looked at the SEALs as representing that. Long story short, I finally grew the cojones at 25 to go to the recruiter, and it took a long time. The recruiter basically said, don't get your hopes up, because I wanted to go into Officer

Cannon School, the officer route, instead of enlist. If I had just wanted to enlist, it would have been a lot quicker and easier process. But that's a whole other story. Yeah, yeah. So you went and did that. And then I think you said you were nine years active duty and then like 11 in the reserve. If I remember correctly, something like that. Yeah.

So I spent my first active tour, SEAL Team 3 and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, this little mini submarine. So that was about seven years. What led me out of active duty was my marriage. And I learned very quickly that if the Navy had wanted me to have a wife, they would have issued me one. Yeah, that's the joke, right? Exactly, because the first six months of my marriage,

I was home for just a couple of weeks. And my wife, she gave me that come to Jesus talk and said, listen, it's not going to work unless it's either me or the Navy. Yeah, yeah. And I thought hard about it, but I chose her. And that led me back into the business world, but as an entrepreneur. But I stayed in the reserves, which kind of was having the best of both worlds because I was a Navy SEAL officer. And I could continue to maintain my skills and my relationship with the teammates and that bond. You know, and I would train once a month, and then there would be, you know,

literally 30 days a year that I would plug in and do some cool project. And then, of course, after 9-11, I needed to go fight again, and so I got mobilized to go to Iraq, and I got mobilized to go to the Middle East. And then, you know, that put me at around 15 years. In the last, well, 16 years. In the last few years, I really served my last tour out in Hawaii at Special Operations Command Pacific, doing projects for them and going to the Middle East, or not the Middle East, but mostly in Asia. Oh, cool.

So it was pretty neat to be a reserve officer because it kept me in the game, but not as a full-time job. And it also allowed me to develop skills and to now observe. Because on the business side, I had started a business to mentor Navy SEAL candidates as a government contract. And then after a year, I shifted that to private. And that's another story, too, is why and how that happened. But I launched SealFit, which is our, one of my businesses, which is to train spec ops candidates and any professional or athlete who wants to work at that level of mental toughness and resiliency to develop, you know, to develop that level of mental toughness and resiliency through a physical training program. That was really my original premise with SealFit. So I shifted to training individuals and anyone who really wanted to work that hard and to

spend the time with me. And we have an extremely high success rate, actually, by the way, Mike, with SealFit. The only ones I track, and I wish I could track it even better, but it's really hard. But those who spend a week or more with me and finish my academy and Kokoro camp, I got a 90% success rate getting them through Navy SEAL training. And there was probably 50 to 75 SEALs who are SEAL fit athletes who trained with me. And that's, you know, people who don't know, the SEALs only make 200 new guys a year. It's actually, they're dropping it to 175.

That's how small the community is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've watched documentaries and read books. Yeah. So out of the 13 or 1400 people who go to buds only, you know, 175 come out the other end and that's not including the thousands who try to go to buds and don't make it. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely want to talk more about seal fit. We'll get to that. Um, so, so my last little question with your Navy experience is, okay, so how did it compare? I'm just curious. How did the actual experience compare to what you were kind of expecting going in? You know, there wasn't a ton of information back in 1989 when I went in.

I mean, I had one recruiting video. I knew it was going to be early. The legends were there in 89 just as they are today. It's just we didn't have all the resources to train and to really the mental pictures because it wasn't Discovery Channel back then. So I prepared for the worst. And part of my preparation is what I teach now. I prepared physically and I prepared mentally. And the mental training included a deep visualization program where every day I practiced, I trained in my mind to be a SEAL.

And I think that had the most profound impact than anything else because it led to a sense of certainty about it. I often relate that I had a moment nine months into my training for the SEALs when I went from, the went from you know i want to be a seal to i'm going to be a seal and i started training in earnest and i still hadn't been contacted by my recruiter my recruiter was still saying you know it doesn't look good doesn't look good doesn't look good and i said well i'm just going to press forward as if this is happening like i know it's going to happen he's going to say yes and i'm going to be a seal and so i trained my ass off every day and i trained for about a half hour to 45 minutes visualizing myself every day as a SEAL, doing SEAL stuff.

And nine months into that, I had this shift. It was like a cognitive or consciousness shift where I had this sense of total certainty that I was going to be a SEAL. I had already basically earned it through my training, and then I just needed to show up and go through the motions. And literally a week later, the recruiter called and said, Mark, I've got great news. You're one of two people that got selected to go to Officer Cannon School with a follow-on to go to SEAL training. I was like, awesome. I kind of knew that was going to happen, but awesome. Yeah, no, that's very cool.

And then when I showed up at SEAL training, it was like I'd been there before. Yeah, no, that's very cool. And then when I showed up at SEAL training, I was, you know, it was like I'd been there before. And really, I just had to, you know, make my bed, put on my boots and pants and show up and just crank it out, you know. But there was no thought of quitting. I was very clear about why I was there. And, you know, one of my mantras was they'd have to kill me to get me to quit. They tried, but they didn't succeed. Yeah, I've heard that type of mentality or that approach to really kind of taking on the being – because obviously if you're looking at anything, there are things you're going to be doing and there are things you're going to be having and experiencing because of that.

But first, you really have to make sure that you understand what the – what do you have to be, you know what I mean, to be able to do the things you want to do and to have the experience you want to have. I'm not surprised that that worked well for you because I've come across that in reading other people's autobiographies and biographies and whatever. They just kind of stumbled on it themselves in a similar way. You know what I mean? Right, and that's kind of what I did.

That's kind of become a hallmark of what I try to teach people and I try to get them to experience it. I write about it, but then if you want the experience of that, you come and train with me and I'll give you that experience. It's like a benchmark workout for buds, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Which happens to be incredibly powerful for anyone in life because if you got the knowingness that you can make it through SEAL training, that's incredibly empowering. Anything else is easy in life. Yeah, I can see that for sure. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on the show because, yeah, of course, with SealFit, there's a fitness side to it, but there's a lot more in that mental toughness and self-discipline, self-control, and all that stuff. Right. So in your book, The Way of the Seal, which is what led me to you, actually, it was on my wish list, and I grabbed it and started reading it,

and I was like, I like this. I want to get him on the show. So you talk about kind of envisioning your future me as a way of motivating yourself for what you need to do now in the present for that future. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, this is a derivative of what I did when I, you know, what I just described.

When I wanted to be a SEAL, I was super clear about that goal. I was highly motivated toward it. So I literally put blinders on, blocked out everything else, and visualized that only. So that became my daily vision, right? I was going there. I didn't know the path. The path was invisible to me, but I knew I was going there,

and I knew I could figure out the path along the way. So, you know, how do we relate this to everyday life? Well, it's the same process, right? If you've got, well, let me back up. First, it's really important to get very, very clear about what it is you need to do in life and what that is absolutely must be tied to your sense of purpose and your unique value, your unique gift to mankind.

And so kind of the step-by-step process to train this is to get clear about that first. And that can take some time. That's where the practice of meditation and my warrior yoga and all these kind of silent or non-doing practices are so powerful for folks because most of us in the West, we just don't take time to do that kind of stuff. We don't really know. We weren't taught. And I was fortunate enough to be taught at, you know, 2021 how to do that.

And it shifted, changed my entire life. So, you know, getting clear about who you are, what you need to be doing, what's, you know, the long-term vision of your life, and then how are you going to fulfill that vision now, like in this phase of your life? I call that your one thing. Like for me, when I wanted to be a SEAL, getting my trident was my one thing. There was nothing else that I thought about for literally a year and a half to two years while I was training outside and then once I got into the SEALs and was actually going through the training of Officer Canyon School and then going through BUDS, I kept my vision.

Now, I didn't say goal. Obviously, it was a goal too, but it was a vision of me being a SEAL and getting the Trident. So you were picturing it actually being pinned on you kind of thing? Absolutely. I saw myself getting awarded the Trident on that day. I made that day like a super powerful day. I would go there multiple times a week and envision myself getting pinned on the trident on that day. I made that day like a super powerful day. I would

go there multiple times a week and envision myself getting pinned on the trident, you know, down to the time of day, you know, what the sun felt like on my face, the other people there, my mom and dad in the audience, stuff like that, until it just became super believable in my subconscious mind. Like, this is happening. is happening. I was practicing being that person, if you will. It's not unlike practicing a skill in a visualization like a sports athlete, but I was practicing that future version of myself. I'm quite confident that it had a profound impact on helping it come true, even if it was just the confidence that I felt in my neurobiology.

Then I would also see myself doing SEAL stuff, and so I was gaining confidence in an operational sense by visualizing myself being confident jumping out of airplanes and running and gunning and doing the stuff that I knew that SEALs would be doing. I mean, there's scientific validity in that. What just came to mind is I've seen research, it was done with basketball players,

and it was, I don't remember the exact design of the study, so it's going to sound kind of janky how I'm going to explain it, but basically you had one group of people, they were visualizing shots before taking them. The other were just taking shots. And obviously they were on the same team, same skill level, whatever. And the people that had done the visualization exercises performed dramatically better than the people that didn't. Right. And that's just a simple thing of shooting a basketball. Right. And you know why that worked is because the guys visualizing it had perfect form in their visualization. But the guys shooting it were shooting at whatever the normal shot rate was, 50% or 80% or 70%. I don't even know.

They're probably all over the place. And so they were essentially greasing the groove of their subconscious to be able to hit that number, that percentage. Yeah. And then when it came time to tell their brain to shoot the ball, there was a difference there. There was a difference. Yeah.

Whereas the guys visualizing, they visualize with the only thing, the only thing you can do perfectly is visualize. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But that, that takes practice.

You can't, it's very difficult. Like there's no such thing as perfection except for perfect practice is what we used to say in the teams. And that perfect practice starts in your mind. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Um, so yeah, so that's cool. That's the, the, the future. And then obviously like that, I was picking things from the book. There's a lot more, you talk about finding your purpose, finding your passion. You talk about those things in the book. Um, so I know that the people reading, I mean, that's obviously a hot button.

I've, I've written about it on my website, uh, both of those subjects. And a lot of people do wonder what are they meant to, you know, what are they meant to, why are they here? What, what was really going to be fulfilling? And that definitely, I think is a personal journey. And I liked how you explained it in your book and gave some exercises where there are no pat answers. There are no, you know, Hey, just think about these couple of things. I mean, I think like you said, it really does take reflection and something people, you know, you have to work it out for yourself. Right. And the key point I wanted to try to make there is that that's critical, right? That's not just a nice foofy idea. Like that is critical to living a good life, to living a full life. I agree.

To experiencing the kind of, I don't know, your maximum human potential, let's just say. Because you can try to optimize your performance all day long, but if you're focusing that performance on the wrong things, then you're going to be leaving energy on the table. And you're going to eventually fail. Yeah. And I think it's a point of meaning. I mean, it gives your life meaning. Right. And like you were running into before, yeah, you could have gone the CPA route and you could have made a bunch of money, but money is hollow. Money is very, you know, it seems, it seems so cool when you don't have it.

And then you have some money and you're like, ah, this isn't that cool. And then maybe you think, oh, but if I had double the money, it's going to be so much cooler. Then you have double the money and you're like, it's not that cool. Yeah. None of it's cool unless you're very, you know, that money's following you in the pursuit of something you're super passionate about that's completely aligned with your purpose and you're principled about it. So it's not like you're not hurting anyone in the pursuit of the money. You know what I mean? You're helping. Yeah, totally. All right. So now one of the principles you also talk about in the book is doing today what others won't. And you kind of break that down into a few imperatives.

Right. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I think it's especially relevant even if it's just for getting into shape. I mean it's relevant to a lot more in life. But even if it's just getting into shape. Sure. It's one of my favorite quotes. Do today what others won't so you can do tomorrow what others can't.

I believe it's the smokejumper's creed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I highlighted it in my Kindle. Yeah, such a cool quote. So we use that all the time because what it speaks to is that you're making – through that process, you make the uncommon common, right? or you make the exceptional common and doable. It's still exceptional to other people but to you it's common. Does that make sense?

What that means is you do an uncommon level of work today and that uncommon level of work in the context of fitness is you work harder and smarter. How do you do that? Well, it means that instead of just working out, you have a very specific training regimen that has the right tools and it's functional and it's ratcheted up in intensity and it's methodical and it's comprehensive, which is really what I try to do with the SEAL Fit training program. It's like, okay, what do we need foundationally to live a very, very long and powerful life physically? Well, we need strength and we need stamina and we need to be durable people. We need to have endurance and mental toughness and we need the ability to work super high intensity for short periods of time when there's a crisis.

So I call that work capacity. for short periods of time when there's a crisis. So I call that work capacity. So I build the training around those six principles, and it's incredibly rewarding. It's very challenging, but if you start doing it on day one, you're going to be doing more work than you did yesterday, and then tomorrow you're going to be doing more work and more effective movements

and maybe get through more of the workout than you did today. So every day you're doing a little bit more and working a little bit harder and learning some new skills. And you're doing essentially every day what other people are shying from because most people are either not doing anything or they're going to the gym and stepping on the treadmill or going to the Pilates studio. And again, none of that is bad, right? I'm not putting that down. I'm just saying you leave stuff on the table if you don't push yourself hard.

I'll give you an example. I was in a shangha yoga. A shangha yoga is extraordinarily challenging. And when I found it, I was like, oh, this is like my new martial art. And after a few years of doing it, I felt weak because it was such a narrow range of movements. And there were certain things that I could do that were extraordinary but then you know I couldn't come and lift up a barbell or do

snatches or cleans and jerks or muscle ups and handstand push-ups and you know all the stuff that I do now I just couldn't do and so here's you know eight years later when after starting CrossFit and then SealFit program I am far stronger and far more functionally fit than I was. I'm 51 now than I was in my early 40s, even in my early 30s. Actually, I'll make that bold statement. And I still do yoga five times a week. I don't do the full hour and a half long Ashtanga practice, but I do yoga now more for the durability and the recovery aspects and the mental control aspects yeah rather than as my workout yeah so that's what i mean and when you do today

whether it's well that you're essentially um developing the uh a comfort level with discomfort you make pain um you develop relationship with, so you realize that pain is something that you can manage and you can actually get intimate with it and you can learn to control it. So those things – Yeah, can you tell – I mean that's an interesting point. It's something that's kind of – I've thought about that just in terms of – I mean not even necessarily physical pain. Working out is such a – you just – for me, it's – I've been doing it for a while and yeah, my workouts are tough, but it's, I can't really, I guess maybe I've come to that point where the discomfort is just normal, but, but even relates to, to, to just life, to doing the things, the amount of work and what it takes to succeed is, uh, there's, that is a

different type of discomfort. You know what I mean? That you have to just learn to just deal with and not run away from. Yeah, exactly. That has to do with the ability to be in control of your mind. And that's why mental toughness is such an important part or mental control is such an important part of physical training. And they go hand in hand. Where the mind leads, the body follows. Where the body leads, the mind chases. And so if you are experiencing workout-related pain, the resistance to moving the load or to running that long distance, then I'm not saying to go into denial about it. I'm saying to acknowledge the pain, to recognize the benefits that it's bringing you, to recognize that when you bump up against the thresholds of that pain, you can ride there for a while and you'll know, your body will tell you whether you can push through and then it's up to your mind to decide to push through to a new level, a new threshold.

Yeah. And when you reach that new threshold, then you have a new reality around that pain as it relates to that particular exercise type so that then the next time you do it you can get back there quicker and push through to even a higher level of threshold and in this way you essentially learn that you're capable of 20 times more than you thought you are because and there's two ways to find that and one is the incremental daily press higher and higher levels of performance by pushing through pain barriers one in knocking them down one at a time. The other is through what I call a crucible experience,

which is why I designed one of our programs called Kokoro Camp, which is modeled after the Navy SEAL Hell Week. And that crucible takes you there in like a rocket ship, right? It's so intense and so acute, and there's so many failure points, but you still don't quit. If you don't quit and you just keep driving forward, you realize that your body then gets to the other side of all pain. And it almost becomes like a mystical experience where pain subsides. You're fatigued.

You're sleep deprived. You're cold. You're completely physically exhausted. But then all of a sudden you get to this place where you magically, like a phoenix, start rising up and just dominating and conquering. And you're getting stronger. And your body starts adapting and getting stronger. I actually was growing muscle mass by Thursday of Hell Week when I went through SEAL training. That's really uncanny. People would never have expected that.

And I didn't expect it. But it taught me that the body has far more power than we like to think it has. And obviously driven by the mind, if the mind is the executive agent of the body, is focused and clear and can make good decisions and believes in your potential, then your body will step up take notice right and so instead of instead of um you know breaking down and and leaving you crushed in a 50-hour non-stop training you know it can um build you up and make you stronger it's really cool and so that those are the two ways that we develop mental toughness and resiliency is the daily embracing the suck and doing something different that other people won't do every day. And then really challenging yourself beyond measure periodically, you know, like once or twice a year in a, in a barn storm event, which is going to, that you're scared, you know,

it makes you scared. Yeah. I mean, I can imagine it's whenever, like I said, I mean, you see just documentaries of hell week and if you're recreating anything like that, I'm sure it's pretty much a brutal shock to the people going into it. Yeah, it is. People train for over a year or sometimes two, more, and a lot of people have their finger hovering over the enroll button for several years before they even have the courage to push it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I bet. courage to push it you know what i mean yeah i bet yeah i think uh there's i mean just bringing it down to even just everyday type stuff of where if someone's feeling a bit tired like oh it's the end of the day do they really want to go do that workout or right you know or if it's work related

you know work those extra hours for the late night working and whatever and that you get the you get the mental resistance of the reasons why you can't do it and whatever. Right. And that kind of speaks to the relationship you have, your ability to control your mind and keep focused on what I call the courage while frightened. So we all experience that resistance. I do too. I have a practice that's very – I call it integrated training. So I do the seal fit training operator wads two to three times a week. I also do an additional strength regimen that doesn't have the intensity level to give my nervous system a break two times a week.

I'll do some sort of run or weighted ruck, you know, try to do that once a week. I do yoga a minimum of three times a week. I also do Tai Chi three times a week. And I've got a self-defense based on Sansu Kung Fu that we do here at our training center in Encinitas. I try to do that twice a week. Sometimes I only make it once. But the Sansu is in the evening.

It's at 5.30 p.m. I used to train when I was younger all the time in the evening, especially in the martial arts. But for the last 10 years, or actually I've been married enough for 20, but since my son, he's 15, just turned 15, but since it became really important for me to be home with him and be home at night for the family, I've gotten out of the habit of training in the evening. And I also work out really hard in the morning, right? So I train from 7 until 10 every day, every morning. And then I'm able to really focus on those tasks and projects that are highly critical,

that are going to move the dial forward on my business or personal goals. And then, you know, so starting, you know, I just started the Sansu training. I shifted it from morning to evening because I was just running out of time in the morning. I meet that resistance at 4, you know, 5 o'clock or 5.20. I'm like, oh God, you know, I really want to go home and, you know, see my family and everything. And, you know, and then eat some food, you know, I'm exhausted. But, you know, of the this whole idea that we're talking about is um you know i i want to do today whether those won't so i understand that once i get once i

commit to stepping foot inside that uh the studio which is right here in my training center so it's pretty easy for me once i you know but this is no different than committing to getting in your car and just start driving toward the dojo or the yoga studio. Once you commit to taking that action, then everything else starts lining up. So you get control of your mind and say, okay, yeah, I'm committed to doing this. I'm doing this. Okay, that's the hard part. But how hard is it to say I'm doing it versus I'm not doing it?

It's not that hard when you really think about it. It's just a series of words. But once you say the words and then you're committed to them, then you start moving that direction. Then your mind, and this is a skill too, your mind goes to work to condition yourself positively for that experience. Like, okay, this is going to be great. I'm looking forward to this. Not only is it going to feel good, I'm going to start sweating again. I'm going to learn some new skills. I always feel like a million bucks when I'm done. And then once you start going, like I found whether it's a,

whether it's a work thing, that's just going to be boring drudgery and you're like, Oh, whatever, just got to do it. Or it's going to be a workout when you're exhausted, which can feel like you start thinking about it and it's going to, you think it's going to be drudgery, right? You start going and that's in my experience. And then, and then you just get into it and then you put all, you just focus on it and all of a sudden now it's interesting. Okay. It's not interesting. And the energy starts flowing and you're, yeah starts flowing and your mind collapses now to the present moment of the training. And that kind of speaks to a whole other part of mental management is that most people spend their time mentally in the future or the past. And they don't allow themselves to be in the present.

And in the present, pain really dissipates. Pain has a linear construct to it. I'm not saying there isn't pain in the present, but the pain that you experience has already happened. So in the present, you ride a razor's edge where you're in a much more intimate relationship with that pain, and you can tell if it's leading you to injury or if it's just something you need to embrace and embrace the suck and move on, right?

Yeah, I guess there's the difference. If we're talking about working out, there's a difference between discomfort and pain. Right, exactly. Yeah, and I use the term pain kind of to mean discomfort. But truly, if you are – my yoga teacher used to call it integrating pain and disintegrating pain. So integrating pain is pain that's leading to a stronger you. Disintegrating pain is pain that's like disintegrating part of your body. So you want to learn the difference between those two.

Yeah, yeah. That's a good way of putting it. I think it's also worth saying that keeping your word to yourself is an important part of this. I think so. When you say you're going to do something, doing it so you can come to almost trust yourself and not, because I mean, I know people that have gotten to a point where they've tried and failed at so many different things where when they try to take on anything new, I mean, even if it's a hobby or it's something that hasn't, doesn't have that much of a purpose or anything behind it. They don't, when they say,

even to themselves, I'm going to do this, it's very hollow. It almost doesn't mean anything because you know, their experience has taught them that they're probably going to give up and that's in the back of their head. You know what I mean? Right. And you're right. They've already given up before they try. They're just going through some motions, you know, but yeah, it's the habit of staying in the course is something that you, you develop by staying the course. Yeah. Commitment. The way out is the way through. by staying the course. Commitment. The way out is the way through. I don't know. Yeah.

Now, this is something that I've talked about a lot, but I just got back from a coaching session I'm part of with this guy named Dan Sullivan, strategic coach. So I'll give him credit for these words or this exact sequence of this concept of confidence, which is really cool. So the idea is that if you want to start something and you actually commit to it, that doesn't immediately lead to confidence. In fact, it doesn't.

The first experience you have from that is fear of resistance, fear of failure. And so you need to then activate your courage muscle, right? So both commitment and courage are things that have to be practiced. They are values, but values are nothing unless you practice them and they become part of your character. So the commitment to something, that's why warriors and leaders and what I teach is you don't commit to something unless you're really sure it's the right thing, right? Because too many people take on commitments that they really are lukewarm. They don't really aren't hair you know, hair on fire, you know, excited or passionate about. And so you're right. After a few days, weeks, they just kind of fall off, you know what I mean? And they think, oh, no big deal.

But for a warrior, commitment is everything. You know, you're committed to protecting your teammate with his life. I mean, that's the ultimate form of commitment. And when you live with that, then you choose your commitments very carefully. And then when you decide to commit, let's say you're finally at a point where you say, okay, I've got to get off my ass and start doing something different with my workout regimen because I'm 35 or 40 years old and I just feel like my body's going to decline and just going to the gym and hanging out in the treadmill and pushing some weights around and the Cybex machine isn't doing it anymore. And I say, hallelujah. Okay. So you commit to going across the gym. So you don't, basically that commitment is, is a 100% commitment. I don't, it can be time bound. So I think that's

a good idea. Take that and say, okay, I'm going to commit to this for six months. And then if you want to be smart, pre-commit and go pay for your membership for six months. Totally. Totally. And that's the smart business people to get people to do that. Commit to six months, pay for six months, and then commit to doing at least three sessions a week. That's easy. Now I'm like, okay, three one-hour training sessions a week,

anybody can do that. All you've got to do is show up, like we talked about earlier, and the environment, the coach, the WOD, your peers, they take the energy, just infuses you with boundless enthusiasm, boom, you just crush it. You feel great. That becomes a self-reinforcing cycle of success.

Six months later, you've completely transformed your body and your concept of what it means to be fit and functional fitness. All your health measures have fallen in the line. It's amazing. You've gone from the commit part was the first step, and then the courage to show up every day with a great attitude was the second, and you develop that courage. But that still doesn't lead to total confidence, right?

The total confidence at the end of six months isn't there in the beginning. So you have to then, the third step is develop competence, you know, or the capacities to do the work. And so that's where, you know, you start out with an on-ramp program. You learn how to do the Olympic lifts, you know, slowly. You're an infant at them. You know, you know that you got to do them slow because otherwise you get hurt. You don't want to get sidetracked with an injury early on because that can debilitate you.

That kind of highlights the importance of if you're going to do CrossFit, you better make sure you have a good coach and somebody sure. Somebody that is going to work you into it on a good gradient because otherwise, you're going to get hurt. You start trying to throw around heavy weights doing Olympic lifts. You will get hurt. All the criticisms around CrossFit are about that particular issue. People go jump into it either without a coach and get injured or they have a coach who literally has done no more than two days cert and they let the ego get in the way and boom, they get injured. Those are all good critiques. We try very carefully to bring people slowly along

the list to go much slower than they want to go actually to develop that foundation. That's it. You start out with that commitment to get in great shape, to do something, to change your life. And then that leads to, you feel fear about it. You feel uncertainty. And so you need to then have the courage and the belief to always connect back to that why. Why am I doing this? Oh yeah, I'm doing this to transform my life because I want to be as, I want to be stronger at 60 than I am at 40. Yeah. And I want to go play, you know, whatever sport with my grandchildren. I want to be stronger at 60 than I am at 40. Yeah. And I want to go play whatever sport with my grandchildren. I want to live to be 100 and be healthy and enjoy every day of it and all that.

Totally. And to me, what you just said there, that should be part of everyone's why, especially if you have a family. You may have some other whys, but that one right there, that's one that drives me. It's like I want to be, when I'm 100, I want to be there for my kids and my grandkids and someday maybe my great-grandkids. And I don't want to be sitting there as that kind of strange old guy drinking the martini. Talking to the wall. Talking to the wall, exactly, drooling on himself that they fear going to see. I have a vision of them jumping on on me and, you know, like

they do now and just wanting to play and still being able to roll around with them and do cool things. You know what I mean? And so that, that's your why. And so that, that's gives you the courage to like, okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to commit to those three days. I'm going to take the crawl, walk, run approach to learning. I know that in a month I'll feel better.

And then another month I'll have even more skills and confidence. And another month I'll be even more, have more skills and competence. And then ultimately I will feel confident about this to where I can then even step it up further. And that cycle, you know, is just an amazingly self-reinforcing, you know, positivity loop. Yeah, definitely. And then it'll spill over another as your life too. So then when. When you start contemplating, you know, some other, you could be going after the girl or the guy, or it could be going after the job or whatever. You start to think about it differently in that when the, if you do commit to it, you can see it through to the end, just like you did with that other thing, you know? Correct. Absolutely. All right. So talking about mental toughness, that's, um, you obviously you've been, you've talked a bit about it, but I want to kind of address it directly, obviously.

So like being a big part of kind of being an effective person, whether you're talking about like a special forces operator or just a worker or entrepreneur or whatever, is this point of mental toughness. Obviously, few people ever need to become as – or at least need to test their mental toughness or train it as much as a Navy SEAL does. But, um, what did, what have you learned along the way in this regard that has helped you not only just like stay alive on the battlefield as a warrior, but now off, you know, as a businessman or just kind of making your way through life? Okay. Well, I've learned a couple of things. One is that mental toughness is a skill and that resiliency is part of mental toughness. Mental toughness is more than the mind. It also includes being physically tough, being emotionally tough, being spiritually tough.

That's one is that it crosses boundaries, right? The body-mind system is intimately, intricately, interrelated. And so if we just ignore those other aspects, that could be the point of critical failure, right, that will lead to a cascading failure. And so what I noticed through my own training and then through training of thousands of spec ops candidates is that you can train mental toughness and resiliency back when i went through seal training you know i trained through that martial arts program with nakamura inadvertently to me i didn't realize that i was training my mental toughness resiliency he did but he you know he's japanese and speak great english you know he just looked at his character development and he developed our character through just whompingly hard workouts and then sitting in silence and then taking us on these retreats where we went to like Zen Mountain Monastery. And we did integrated training, but we didn't know it.

Like we were training physically doing scary things. We were training emotionally by getting held accountable by the team and by having to expose yourself in front of other people by performing these advanced katas and fighting in front of the class and all that kind of stuff. That develops emotional control and awareness. And then the spiritual development from sitting on the meditation bench for 45 minutes and really contemplating deep questions that he would pose us in his little lectures afterwards. I mean, it's really, really cool. So it went well beyond the physical training.

And so that was one of my biggest ahas when I started training SEAL candidates is I can't just train the physical. I want to train mental, emotional, and spiritual, just like I got trained back when I was in the 20s and what allowed me to sail through buds and become the honor man of my class. And so that became kind of my mantra, that mental toughness can be trained if we train in an integrated manner, physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual. Those are my five mountains.

I call them the five mountains. And so through that, you develop greater awareness, more mental control, more mental focus. You learn to win the event in your mind. You learn to take really achievable short-term goals and just nail them and develop momentum, positive momentum around that. And you learn to be super positive because you understand that negativity destroys performance. So you maintain a real positive mindset and mental and also emotional state. And through that positivity, you also learn to be an incredibly good teammate. And you realize, and I teach that you can't do it alone.

You know, no rambos make it through buds. So you have to kind of set your ego aside and become a good teammate. You have to develop humility. And in a team setting, you have to be able to ask for help. You have to be able to give help, especially if you're cold, tired, wet, and you want to like lick your own wounds. That's the perfect time to take your eyes off yourself and to turn them on someone else and start serving them. And then that has an energetic blowback that's like 10x of giving you all this energy. So you can't be negative in an act of service.

So I boiled those down, these principles. Oh, and breathing, that's critical. So you get control of your body through the breath, which allows you to control your mind. So then win in your mind, and then you can win on the field. So I boiled these down into what I call the big four skills of an ideal mind, and that is, first of all, is breath control. So I train people to control their breathing, and there's a real art to that and science to it. And then through that, they develop more mental control. So I train people then to work with that mental control to develop a greater awareness of their thoughts, to understand where their cognitive mind is leading them astray through improper thinking or judging. I give them mental models or mental tools to make better decisions.

And I teach them a process to really shift their mind into and keep it in a positive momentum kind of oriented fashion by helping them understand how to use the future and the past more effectively. But then to stay focused on the present action, a present action which is going to get them to victory, you know, but in a very deliberate way, you know, a very deliberate step. So those, if I could just summarize those four, it's breath control, it's what I call positivity, it's being able to visualize the win, the victory in a positive manner and to maintain that, you know, vision in your mind while you're working toward it so that it has an energetic effect on your body. And also to set micro goals, to know which goals to go after and then to go after the shortest possible variant of that so that you can just knock it down and then choose

the next one and knock it down, choose the next one and knock it down. So in that way, halfway toward the target, you've already accomplished every single goal that you've put in front of yourself, and your confidence has gone through the roof. You've developed that cycle of commitment, courage, confidence, and confidence to such a level that you can't fail. No. In fact, one of our sayings in the SEALs is failure is not an option. It's because we follow this process where you literally fail your way to success until you just can't fail anymore.

Like you were saying, embrace the suck. where you literally fail your way to success until you just can't fail anymore. It's pretty cool. Like you were saying, embrace the suck. I like that concept because that's anything. That's learning. I'm learning to play golf, and golf is a tough sport. You suck at the beginning. It's not like take basketball. You can probably learn to shoot a basket on your first day.

Golf, you're atrociously bad for your first three to six months. So it's something you just have to – Keep chipping away at, so to speak. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I like that concept. I mean I think there's also probably something to be said for just the overall kind of mindset where I think of luxury and kind of like soft times make soft people kind of thing. And with our modern lifestyle, there's almost like a curse of how convenient and easy it is to,

you don't even have to move anymore to stay alive. You could just sit, you know what I mean? Like you can just order some pizza, they get delivered into your mouth and you can shit in some diapers and throw those away. You know what I mean? It's where I think some people will get funny ideas about what should and shouldn't be normal

or what they should and shouldn't have to do or experience or whatever. You know what I mean? Right. You're absolutely right. Essentially, my belief is the human being thrives on challenge and grows through challenge. If you don't challenge yourself, then you're not growing and you're dying. You're essentially backsliding. And guess what?

The world is going to challenge you anyways, right? Because that's just the nature of things. So one of the concepts in the book is you go to the challenge. You don't wait for the challenge to come to you. Yeah, I like that. And by doing that, you develop the mental toughness, the resiliency. And essentially those other challenges, they usually avoid you.

You know what I mean? It's like there's a big kind of register in the sky that says, okay, Mark's challenged himself and done it in an honorable fashion so many times that we're not going to give him the cancer that was planned for him. He's avoiding that one. Let's cross that one off the list. If he gets weak. If he gets weak. Right. Yeah, that's avoiding that one. Let's cross that one off the list. If he gets weak, if he gets weak. Right.

Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. So, all right. So you're not only a bestselling author and you're also the founder of NavySeals.com and US Tactical, which you're talking about, which trains spec op candidates, but you also are the creator of SealFit. And you've talked about it a bit. Is there anything else that you think we should know that the that the readers and the listeners should know about seal fit how it

works and um like is it like for instance the the super hardcore stuff is that is that for anybody that wants to come try it or how does it work how does the whole thing work well you know just like the seals you just got to start somewhere if you're not already an elite athlete. If you're already an elite athlete and you're looking for a challenge, like if you're the kind of person that would just go and run a Spartan race or a go-ruck challenge, then the Kokoro Camp, which is our 50-hour nonstop training, is extraordinary. And it's not a camp where we're trying to attrite people. We do have people quit, maybe 20% of every class. But you have to be fit.

The standards are on our website. But it's really about developing a concept of teamwork, a greater sense of what your potential is, and an ability to tap into a reservoir of strength that you didn't know you had. So we kind of think we have a saying that you meet yourself for the first time at that program. It's extraordinary. But a lot of people, you know, and admittedly they self-assess improperly sometimes, but a lot of people just say, I'm not ready for that.

And so, you know, where do you start? Well, you know, over the past couple of years I've developed kind of the other end of the spectrum because so many people are like, I just can't do that. Well, yeah. It needs an on-ramp, of course. Yeah. So I wrote an on-ramp program in my books and then eight weeks to SealFit. And then the on-ramp program in real life starts with either doing the program yourself

and then coming to, we have a three-day academy at SealFit called the Fundamentals Academies. And it's really you know 75 skills and 25 hard you know hard work so it's really you know i mean i had a 67 year old guy go through it last weekend and he had an extraordinary time now he was he was pretty fit but i've also had you know 67 year old woman with no cartilage in her knee go through it so it's not meant to be like just for elite athletes now it's scalable so the elite athletes knee go through it. So it's not meant to be like just for elite athletes. Now, it's scalable, so the elite athletes who go through this academy get their money's worth. Let's put it that way.

I mean, they're super challenged. But that three-day academy is to learn the whole physical and training model, and we train long days and sometimes into the night. And it's just a really, really cool program. It's over a weekend. And the second one, like the next intermediate step is the 20 X, which is a 12 hour event. It's kind of like a Kokoro light and it's 12 hours of nonstop training.

It's super cool. Again, nobody should quit. I've only had one person quit ever. Um, he just didn't know what he was getting himself into. Right. But again,

it's not meant to like be like the go ruck selection where, you know, only one person is going to survive this. It's really about teaching you through the team, through the experiences, through the training, and through the content and the lectures. And I always try to provide some level of the mental toughness training content in the class setting at all of these events, either myself or one of my coaches, so that you understand the tools that I'm trying to get across. Then we work with those tools. We drill them with you all day long under load, under pressure so that you can take those big four skills that I alluded to earlier.

You take them home with you and start using them. You should read some of our testimonials. They're extraordinary. People breaking through and doing crazily cool things or major changes in their life because of those four simple tools they start to put into place in their life. So that's kind of it. You start there and then you kind of walk the talk or walk the path. And then there is a five-day academy and also a three-week academy.

Actually, it's 21 days for soft candidates, spec ops candidates. And then we're kind of starting to create the What's After Kokoro. So we have a mentor program. We're certifying people to be seal foot mentors. And then we've got a program called Turning Steel, which is like the team experience, the tactical team experience, where you do self-defense and shooting and shooting as a team and then working as a team to go through a kill house and then putting a whole mission together and executing a mission.

They're very small, 12- to 14-person classes, and we do those around the country. That's a new program we started last year. It's really cool. That's very cool. Yeah. A bunch of cool stuff. I want to look into it.

Yeah. Hope to see you out here. Yeah. You'd love it. Sounds like it of cool stuff. I want to look into it. Yeah. And hope to see you out here. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it'd be a lot of fun, all of it. Uh, and I'm assuming seal fit.com is where people can find information on that.

Absolutely. Seal fit.com. Okay. Awesome. All one word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Of course there's Google, but Hey, we might as well give the URL. So is there anything else you'd like to say to listeners? sure. You know, one of the things that I would say is that even though I just said that, you know, anyone can do seal fit, what I've experienced is that there's still a lot of resistance. You know, people are like, wow, you know, sounds good, but it's just not for me. You know, or women, like I'm not really, you know, inspired by the military style training.

Yeah. You know, the academy,style training. Two points. One, the academies are really like a professional warrior-athlete academy. It doesn't have a military feel to it. You can see some of the videos on the website. And two is I created a program called Unbeatable Mind, and I also have a book by that title that's self-published, which really is the entire philosophy of the integrated training

and the development of all the five mountains. And in the program, it's a self-study program. In that program, I introduce of the integrated training and the five development of all the five mountains and in the program it's a self-study program in that program i introduce all the physical training and there's physical you know the eight weeks to seal fit stuff is in there and all the mental training tools starting with the big four and you know it's a 12-month program you can get out anytime you want even the you know just the first three months are extraordinary and that is called unbeatable mind and unbeatablemind.com is the website. So if anyone's sitting there going, you know, I don't know if it still fits me, but there's been about 3,000 or 4,000 professionals, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, investors, executives, athletes, warriors even,

who have gone through or are part of Unbeatable Mind, and there's a community around it of mentally tough and resilient people who are trying to develop together. It's just really cool, and it's a big part of where I want to go in the future is to develop more, take this to a bigger, bigger, broader community because I think so many people could benefit from the things that we teach about just how to think better and how to be more focused and more confident and, you know, courageous and to live by a real creed like the

seals do where they're just super clear about what they do and why they do it. And then step up to a higher level of awareness and consciousness where they're sheepdogs and they're starting to solve the world's problems instead of being, you know of reacting to them and being victims to them. So it's kind of my mission is to influence a million people who influence a billion people and to help change the world because it's go time, I think. It's really kind of falling apart. It's not going to change until every freaking individual who can

steps up and starts to take responsibility. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's awesome. Unbeatablemind.com, you said, right? Right. every freaking individual who can steps up and starts to take responsibility. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it's awesome. Unbeatablemind.com, you said, right? Right. Yeah, I have that book on my wish list too. I'll check it out next.

So if you wait a bit, I'm actually doing another edition, which I hope to have published by the end of December. Oh, okay. I'm doing the same thing. I'm releasing second editions of two of my books, kind of rushing to get it out for the December, January. It's cool to do that. I tell people self-publishing,

I've got two published books, one with St. Martin's Press and one with Reader's Digest. And the self-published book, I've earned 10 times as much money. Of course. There's no question the marketing of the other two books is exposing people, which is probably why. But the other thing about self-publishing is it becomes a living document.

You can change it anytime you want. Absolutely. I've made multiple updates just because I get a lot of good feedback and suggestions and whatever, staying in touch with so many people. Yeah, it's funny. I mean I had a couple big publishers wanting to do these books. But it's just with where things are at now, for me, it just didn't, it didn't make sense. Even, I mean, they, they, one in particular was offering her what is a really good deal. It's a very unusual deal. But when I really sat down

and looked at the numbers and even my agent was like, yeah, that deal just doesn't make sense as good as it is. And as unusual as it is, you're probably just going to lose money over the course of the next five years. Well then why, why do it then? I'll just do it myself. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Thanks a lot for taking the time, Mark. This was awesome. Um, I know that, uh, my, the listeners are going to resonate for sure. This is a lot of stuff. I get asked about all these questions. That's why I chose it. So cool. Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. So, uh, let me know if I can help out again. And it's really nice to meet you. Yeah, you too.

All right. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release kind of four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.