The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #5 with Don Saladino! The evolution of the fitness industry, the role of coaches vs. influencers, understanding individual needs in fitness a...

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Tune in to The Dylan Gemelli Podcast featuring professional fitness coach and celebrity trainer, Don Saladino! Dylan and Don engage in intriguing conversations about all aspects of health and fitness. Don provides insight into his health and wellness training techniques, the evolution and continuous changes of the fitness industry, the importance of keeping up with the changing science, fitness coaches vs influencers, becoming a celebrity fitness trainer and so much more! . This video provides expert advice and guidance from start to finish and is one you do not want to miss!!   Check out Don's Homepage: https://donsaladino.com/   Follow Don on social media instagram @donsaladino facebook @saladinodon   ______________________________________________________________________ Today's episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro!   Get the Apollo Neuro for $90 OFF!! USE CODE GEMELLI to save https://apolloneuro.com/gemelli _______________________________________________________________________________ To PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN to save 20% OFF!! https://shop.timeline.com/DYLAN     TONUM supplements for the MIND AND BODY!   USE CODE "DYLAN" to save!!  https://www.tonum.com/DYLAN     THE BREAKTHROUGH MIMIO HEALTH FASTING MIMETIC SUPPLEMENT!  20% OFF with code Gemelli  https://mimiohealth.sjv.io/c/6588260/3323599/30611     TRULY Increase Your NAD LEVELS with WONDERFEEL NMN: https://getwonderfeel.com/?utm_source=DylanGemelli&utm_medium=podcast     MESCREEN: The world's first and only at home mitochondrial efficiency test   Save $100 with CODE   DYLAN   https://mescreen.com/cart/47561239626013:1?discount=&ref=DYLAN       HIRE DYLAN ON THE MINNECT APP HERE: expert.minnect.com/@DylanGemelli     Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelli and PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and leave reviews!!   MAKE SURE TO GO TO DYLAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL for MORE video content!!    https://www.youtube.com/@DylanGemelliBiohacking Email Dylan for booking, collaborations and/or to apply for the Dylan Gemelli Podcast [e-mail] Visit Dylan's Homepage https://dylangemelli.com

Today's episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro. Apollo is the leading doctor recommended wearable technology. Apollo's award-winning smart vibes AI works effortlessly behind the scenes, automatically integrating into your life to deliver gentle, personalized vibrations that activate your vagus nerve, helping you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up balanced, focused, and ready each day. Not only that, but the Apollo Neuro is the first and only wearable that improves your HRV. Apollo is effortless. Simply wear it throughout the day and night and let it do the work

for you. It's safe for anyone and everyone with no side effects and is the only wearable that can be worn anywhere on your body. Optimal health requires both the mind and body to be in line and Apollo is the key to establishing that connection. Check the description below to save $90 with my special discount. Take control over your health today with Apollo Neuro. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Jameli podcast. So I am super pumped today for my guest. I have followed him. I relate to him on a lot of things.

And he is well known and tremendous of what he does. He is a professional fitness coach. He's an entrepreneur. He does it all. My friends, this is Don Saladino. Thank you. Thanks for the intro. Appreciate it, brother.

It's great to be on here. Love your background. I'm like a shoe sneaker fanatic. So that's very cool, man. That's a long time collection, man. So it's taking you all to work at it. So I appreciate it. Thanks again for taking the time today.

I want to get as much info out if you have like, and so we're going to rock and roll. Well, first, you're very well known in the fitness world. You've done some tremendous work. I really like a lot of the things that you talk about that you get into. I like your methodologies. But, you know, we all have a backstory. I'm curious, you know, how young were you and what motivated you to kind of go this rock?

You know, when I get asked this question, I probably start, I go all the way back to the second grade, because I had a bad hearing problem, I had a stuttering problem at that age, and I was trying to find my, I was trying to find my lane, you know, at that time. It's like, God, schools back then. They would take, you know, kids who had issues and throw them into a class and, you know, hope that they figured it out and think that that wasn't, you know, a bad thing where they were, you know, getting their finger pointed at them and made fun of them at that age. But like, you know, back at that time, you know,

though I was looking at it as something that was terrible and ended up being a blessing, it was the best thing that could have happened to me because, you know, pushed me to become an athlete and we're off to play, you know, college baseball and got really into working out at a young age. And, you know, I think it was because of that, I realized that I could be physical and I could make up for my stutter, my hearing. And it was something that allowed me to feel significant. So I think it really comes down to, you know,

that I found, you know, what was allowing me to feel significant at a young age. And that happened to be athletics and it happened to be, you know, exercise. And then I started, just like you probably did, was, you know, admired certain, you know, figures on the covers of magazines that now today I'll be friends with. And, you know, college, I went off to play division on college baseball, had a great four-year career there. But throughout my college career was so immersed in training and nutrition and supplementation that I was, I mean, my college coach even told me at one point, like, do what you want for your

workouts. I don't even kill. You know, you know, it was, it was back then. I'm looking at it now, I'm like, no, I should have been doing what the team was doing. But, you know, he just kind of told me he's like, the guys don't want to work out with you. You're a lunatic. So kind of, you know, live in your own world. But again, I think that's where it started for me.

And then finding when I graduated college, finding my lane and finding, you know, where my profession's going to be, you know, becoming a coach back in 1999. I wasn't thinking about, you know, how am I going to make a career, you know, how am I going to be able to support a family one day? I just, I'm really lucky my approach was trying to become the best coach out there and getting as educated as possible. And, you know, I'm flying all over the country, taking as many courses as possible. Remember, there was no online courses. There was no webinars. There's none of this stuff existed. So there was no social media that literally you'd hear about a course. You'd be on a plane. You'd be in California, you'd be in Texas, you'd be in Florida, you went wherever you could go to to take a

mentorship program and a coaching program. On top of that, every year I would always hire some form of a training coach. And when I say that, it was like, all right, what do I want to get exceptional at? Let me find the best chemobell person. Let me find the best Olympic lifter. Like, who's the best bodybuilding coach? Who's the best sports performance person? And it was always nutrition-wise. You know, I got into, you know, assessing bloods back when I was 16, 17 years old. I was going to Dr. Gary Wadler and who was on the congressional hearing for the whole baseball steroid scandal. And he was the one looking at my bloods at a very young age. He was at my wedding when I got married, right? He was, this was, you know,

so many years ago. But I was definitely ahead of my time in that sense. And nutritionally, I can list dozens of incredible nutrition coaches, cultural medicine doctors. And I worked it throughout the years. But, you know, I think that was kind of my school. And now, you know, proud to say I've been a coach for roughly 26 years. I probably trained over 40,000 one-hour sessions in my life. I no longer take on one-on-one clients. I mean, I've got a great online community. It's much more of a scalable business now. So I sell programs in 80 countries. I host challenges. The last three, four years, I've rented an island off the coast of Mexico and I host my retreat. So, like, we've really built up a great business.

We've got a great team working for us here at the barn. This is my facility that I built in 2021. And I just let my friends come in here and it's a place where we shoot content and do work. That's amazing. And you started so early coaching. I can't imagine you would have ever dreamed your thought of, like, where it would have gone for you to do like, you know, everything just, I remember because I was 18 when you, where I was 17 when you started like becoming a trainer. So I remember just like the new gyms and like

Hammer Strength just came here, for example. And we're gone to what you're able to do now with online and everything. I mean, I can't imagine what that's been like for you going through the evolution. Fascinating. And that's why, like even when I occasionally give some business talks to to coaches and, you know, this stuff didn't exist back then, right? It's like there was no, like, we're doing Riverside right now, right? This is, you know, this is an online, like this didn't, like, if you explained this to someone back then, it didn't exist.

The web back then was an Ethernet cable that you plugged into the wall. Used to hear that loud dial tone. The web was this black hole of secrets. No one really knew what it was. It was, you know, this is a long time ago. There was no, you know, online webinars. retreats, there was no paid spend, there was no social media. And that's why I always explained to people. I'm a believer in going after what you're really passionate about.

And if you are lucky and you go after what you're passionate about, you can turn this into a very lucrative career. It's something that, you know, you are, you know, excited to do every day. And I'm as, I'm as passionate about what I do now as I've ever been in my life. And I try to continually educate myself as much as possible. Like I'm talking about. I'm talking about. to an energy systems coach today at like 530, right? And it's just to be able to dial things in. So I've just been this student throughout the years when it comes to nutrition, recovery, and training.

And it's great to be able to pass that knowledge along to people now who, you know, they can get access to so much, so much, you know, so much now that it's such a quicker fashion. So, you know, back then you had to get on a plane. Now you can, you know, download a program or download an e-book. or whatever it is, and you can learn a lot for some good people. Yeah, there was no, no YouTube content, no, no audience, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no, text book or go sit in paper a class like you said. So oh my God. Yeah, I started working on my

master's degree at one point and I actually discontinued it because I had an opportunity. I got funded to open my first gym back in 2005. So you know these are you know, sometimes you just kind of jump on it right. It's just there's never a perfect time. It's just like well now's the right time and I may not get this opportunity to get it. It was, it was a good move for me. So, well, and I never talked to you about you playing college baseball. So it's kind of similar. I can't believe how much I relate to it because I was, I played college basketball and then I, that's how it got into the, you know, more fitness. And I got, I started studying blood panels and everything because of the baseball steroid era. And that's how I started like research in PEDs and everything

that I was doing videos on, you know, beforehand and all of that. And that's what fascinated me. So it's wild how similar because I didn't know, you know, the route. So let's go back to your college. So where did you go to school? And what did you major in when you were? Yeah. Well, I went to school called Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. And I majored in business.

So. Me too. Yeah. Well, back then there was no degree in exercise science or exercise phys or the stuff didn't exist. And I didn't even think twice about it. I was, you know, it came from a caterer. background. My family, you know, we did weddings, Sweet 16s, and Barbas, so I started working at the first day they ever put me, you know, to work with seven, but I think consistently, I started

working at about 12, which is when I was regularly working and sweeping, you know, sweeping, maintenance, doing all this stuff. And then by the time I was 14, 15, I was working overnight with my father and you were going in at 10 a.m. on a weekend and not leaving until 3 a.m. the next day. You know, first kosher and non-coacher cater is a Long Island. Wow. My grandfather opened this business in 1973. So I really, I understood people. I understood diffusing situations.

And I understood that, you know, you can go to work one night and there might be five parties going on. And there's going to be problems. And, you know, I saw guns pulled on my dad. I saw a knife pulled on my dad. I've, you know, I've walked into some pretty crazy stuff with banquet staffs, orgies going on. People leaving. No, seriously. people leaving, you know, their party during the day with another woman and then coming back

at night sitting at the exact, or what they thought was the exact same table in the exact same room. It could have been, I'm going to make this name up. It could have been the O'Reilly wedding during the day. And that night, it was like the Fino, you know, wedding. And each someone, they would sit down and eat someone else's meal. And I'd be like, oh, God, we recognize you from today. What are you doing? Like, there was the craziest stories in this place that I've ever seen. It was bananas, but it was fun. And looking back on it now, I'd say that was, for me, that was a former school. Yeah.

Just, you know, I was the minority at work. One of the very few white people at work, you know, just being around that type of grit and that type of, you know, the people I was around really were working. They were, this was like paycheck to paycheck. So I think being around that allowed me to really respect the dollar and respect people and understand service. and understand when you're working a party sometimes. Someone's not paying the bill. You're going to be traded it a certain way and they're going to have too much a drink

and how are you going to handle that? So I really think at a young age, if you ask me now, what was some of the best education I ever had in my life? I'm putting that in the top three category for me. And that was something even now, my son at a young age, I've got them working at the exact same place.

I love it. My daughter's working at the because I understood how the service business, I it's my opinion someone might bark at me for saying this I feel like every human people every human being should work in service at some point I think everyone should be working in the service business they should understand what it's like to deal with people and no see that it's not always roses no and and I totally agree with you I started bartending at 18 and I yeah wow situations I lied about my age to get the job because

here you have to be one and and I agree with you because it's It's good to, first of all, it's good to see what it's like to wait on people and to serve other people and what it's like. And then maybe, you know, better understand how to treat people, you know, because you've been there. And it does develop grit and personality. So I totally agree with you. So when I was in school, and I want to compare this to you, because I was in college in 2000 to, you know, on, and they started doing more exercise science as physiology. So I started taking nutrition, physiology, kinesiology, and then I decided, you know, I can get all these certifications. So I better get the business because I'm going to run a business regardless of what I do. So I did NASM.

Back then it was like ACENASM and a couple and that was it. Is that kind of the route you went or what did you do for your? Yeah. Well, for my, for my, when I graduated college, I think the first certification I might have gotten was East Coast Fitness Training Institute, which doesn't. exist anymore. Ironically, it was like, it was incredible because it was actually a six-month training course. I had to go to class for.

And it was the only one I've ever seen that was like that, that was non-accredited. You know, it wasn't being offered in school. So to have to go take this course and even looking back on what I learned now and I remember some stuff, it was, it was good information, right? It was, it was solid. And then after that, you know, yeah, I took a, I took a, I took a, I took NASM. Like, I took all that stuff.

I actually, I think still think I maintained my NASM. And then I took a couple of, um, kind of mentorship programs. And then I went, obviously went through all my kettlebell training, my RKC, my SFG, my SFG 2. My TPI was the first one to go through all three levels with Titles Performance Institute. Did all my FMSs, did, you know, all my kid stretch courses. My, my functional range condition courses. I mean, I've taken, I go on and on pre-importance.

NETO courses, I've had to take it dozens and dozens and dozens of courses. And I don't know what I'd maintain now, probably three to five of them. I maintain if you even have to maintain them. But I don't think the certification is not, that's not really where the magic is. I think any coach turning around needs to should hold a national certification. You should have insurance. You should have a CPR. These are things that you need to have. But I think I think the continuing ed piece for me, when I was hiring when I owned my first club that I had 495 Broadway I had for 15 years from 2005 to 2020 it was one of my two I was less concerned about the certifications and more concerned with the continuing had so if someone told me they went and they worked for like Eric Cressy or Mike Boyle

and they did an internship there you know and then they started mentioning certs that they had that weren't really nationally accredited but it showed me their mindset was in a good place out of nowhere I'm like, oh, wow, like this tells me a lot. Like, when someone would come into a certain, to meet with a server, like, I'm at ASM. Like, I never really, not to knock it, but it didn't really tell me anything. But if someone's like, yeah, I took my SFG and my RKC and my FMS, I'm like, oh, wow. So this person understands the importance of a functional movement screening. That's a good place to be.

I'm not saying they're a great coach. This person understands, you know, hard style training and the kettlebell and tension techniques. It's great place to be. This person went off and took Mike Boyle certification. phenomenal place to be. It shows me that their mindset is often a good place, and they're not these big name certifications where most people are like Googling and going to.

You're almost like, oh, wow, this person knows that they're doing if they want to go take that. So that's really kind of more of the things that I looked at when I had my clubs in the city. I'm with you 100%. It just shows initiative like you're digging deeper and looking more. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. I agree 100%.

Now, I don't think, and I think, you'll attest to this. I don't think people understand what it takes in terms of what you do to constantly be studying so many different things that change. I mean, we could just, we could just sit here and wrap about the diet changes and things that we've seen change from the year 2000 and now, and we could talk for like six months. Yeah, you wouldn't sound. I mean, we'll go from low fat to low carb to this, to that, to this, to that. And I know for myself, I always go to bed three, four hours after my wife, most nights, reading, studying, listening, learning several nights a week, just because I can't do it during the day.

Yeah, you know, enough time. Because your upkeep, like, how constant are you in reading and learning and studying? Every day. Every day. Like I said, it might not even be today. Maybe it's not a book, but today maybe it's a call or I'm going to spend an hour on a call with someone picking their brain. This morning, I was on the phone one of my best friends, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. And we're always, you know, I was actually talking to her about some training stuff.

she was asking me the questions this time. I normally asked her the good questions. So, yeah, this is something that it's an evolution. But that's why most people are so confused, right? That's why, like, there's not this one book in the store where you're just like, here, take this and do it and have a healthy life. Like, good luck, right? This is why people start things and then it starts working.

They're like, oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. And then months later, they're like, oh, I'm not getting the same response. They start a new diet. They feel amazing. They're like, I feel incredible. And out of nowhere, they're not receiving the same, you know, response from that. And I think that's why, you know, what people need to understand is, body's always changing, seasons change, stress levels.

Thank you. You're just, you're not, I mean, I'm always trying to find a way to be optimal, right? And I'm always trying to find a way to do better and feel better. And it's been, I can't tell you, I don't know if I know anyone on the planet that's committed to more programs than I have. I'll go do blood work. I'll go, you know, I'll test things six months later. Like I just, this is like what I love to do.

So for me, it's fun. But out there for most people, you know, if they're listening, they're like, well, I'm not a coach. It's like, all right, well, find someone that's good. You know, find someone that's actually coach, you know, and, you know, who has some experience on the floor. Because a good coach is going to have the education, but they're also going to know how to navigate things. And when I tell everyone, and you know this better than anyone, this is all like a big giant puzzle. Like, where you're being handed to your puzzle and your puzzle is going to look different than my puzzle. And, you know, we, we could have the same goals, but it's going to be a different puzzle

to get there. It's just how it works. And you know the classic questions that you, that I'm sure you get. What are we got to do to look like you? What are I got to do to lose weight? And it's just, yeah, it's the worst question ever. I don't mean to be, no, it's not, it's not a bad question because it's what people know to ask. It's like, I think a lot of the people out there who are like, highly educated in this. And they're like, oh, well, it depends. Like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, It's, I can understand how certain people, as a coach, you can't get annoyed at that question. No, it's not that I get annoyed. It's that I want to stress because I think my annoyance is not with the person asking the question.

It's with the people that put it into their heads that it's like a one-trick pony answer because. Oh, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. They know that idea and that concept and it pisses me off because it's just not accurate. It's what you just said is what I agree with is that every single person is different and it's an ongoing change. as you age and as your body adapts to certain things. And I think that if more people like yourself and myself got that word out and didn't sell this, you know, because people try to do scammy things or sell this thing that just doesn't exist.

And it's constant. It takes a lot of dedication and it takes a lot of effort to analyze and understand the data, right? And you come in or I come in or a coach comes in. That's what we do. Yeah. Yeah. I think you got to recognize between. the coach and the influencer, right?

Yes, a coach is giving influence, right? Like, we are, we are influencing people. Like, I understand that. But I think it's very obvious when you look at someone online and they're like, this is what I eat every day to get ripped. Yeah. And you're like, okay, like, fantastic. Like, that's, that's great.

That works for you. And that's awesome. And that might be the worst thing for someone else to do. So that's also why if you go through my social media or you go through any of my content, I'm never saying like, this is the best thing. I might say like, hey, you want to take a look at my morning routine? This is what I do. Or like I put up a post today on three supplements, right? And what were the three supplements? The first one I said was protein. Well, hold on. That's not a supplement. It's a macronutrient. But you may need a supplement

if you're not getting enough. The next I said was creatine, which we all know the benefits of that. And then I was like, then I'm throwing a wild card in there because I'm almost like, do we all need fish oil? Maybe not. Do we all need vitamin D? Like, well, well, sorry, we need it, but we may have enough of this in our, we may have enough of this in our body to where we don't need to supplement it. So I threw out a urolithine supplement that I've been playing around with and it was genuine and I have noticed, you know, a lot of return on my skin and certain things. I'll be 48 April. So like, I have been noticing certain things and I'm like, yeah, I'm big on this right now. That's, that's me being honest. It's not, it's, you know,

it's not a push. But again, I always get very nervous with coaches when they're like, This is what you have to do. Because a good coach is going to know that, you know, it's not always about, you know, it's not, I never turned anyone in like, here's my A plan. Right. Like, I find out, like, where are you? And then it's like, with most people, it's minimalistic approach. When I have an actor who's got to get ready and they're like, I've got four weeks. I'm like, your mind.

Like, you've got four weeks and we have to do what? Your mind. Like, this is it. Like, this is no, there's no compromise here. This is you giving me feedback and be making a. adjustments and us getting you there because this is your livelihood and you have no choice. And guess what? I hate doing that. I hate short term. I hate short term like we have four weeks. I like long term investments. I want to turn around and I want to help educate someone

and I want every year for them to turn around and say, I keep learning from this guy. I keep improving. My health, my body composition. Everything keeps improving. God, there's no way I could have done this all on K-1, he had to rewire the way I I approve these things. That's what I enjoy doing more. I'm with you. I'm a big long-term thinker long-term process. It's

a marathon, not a sprint type of guy, but I also want to do that, you know, you're going to get people that need that, but I'm totally with you. Let's go back to the three supplements that you listed. Now, I do mention I am actually going to interview, I'm real big on the Eurolifton A.

And that's why I want your opinion. actually, I've been talking with the people that might appear who do the Yerlithin A, and I'm actually interviewing one of the scientists there because I'm fascinating. I'm absolutely who are you speaking to over over there? Jen. Is who? Oh yeah, Jen?

Yeah, Jen's great. Yeah. You know her in about two or three hours, too. I got a call with her, but her and Ian. Ian's great. Tell them I was on your podcast. I was just on with them and phenomenal, phenomenal people. Again, it's one of those

This is the thing about supplementing and the thing about some of these newer products coming out is you're going to have a science-backed coach. Yes. Immediately turn around and say, there's no evidence. Or there is evidence, but the research is inconclusive. Or, you know, I know my, I know timeline keeps developing and they keep bringing more and more research to the table. I think a good coach, if there's no question mark on, like, if this is a product that had a question mark on health, like, I'm not messing with it. Me either. If there was any arrow pointing in the direction that this could be risky, I am not messing with it.

But a lot of these science that, you know, coaches or whatever they want to refer to them as, scientists, biohackers, whatever it is, I don't care. Tuchess, I'll call you. Whatever you feel is right, they also have to form their own hypothesis. and they have to go out there, and I think they have to put things to the test. And I think this is what a lot of these people are missing. They want to regurgitate what they're reading online constantly. When I have been doing this 26 years and I cannot tell you the amount of highly respected coaches that have turned around 10 years later and contradicted themselves.

And I'm like, wait a second, you said this 10 years ago. And they were like, change my mind or the research pointing a different direction. and then I actually committed to something and I saw. But it's very easy for someone to say, well, how do you know it was your all with a lot of your skin got better? Dude, I'm so dialed in with what I put into my body. I'm so dialed it with my bedtime. This is the way that I love to live that when you start taking something and you begin

to notice a difference and then get off of it and then take a long time off and then get back on it and see it again, you start forming your own assumption that like, all right, like there may be something there. So I think that's another thing. That's another thing a lot of these coaches need to start doing is like stop regurgitating what is being, well, this scientist or Stanford has, you know, came to this conclusion because we've seen this stuff is wrong. I think that information could be a segue for us to now to begin to experiment.

And then I'm really interested in that coach who's been in the industry for a long time. Who's like, yeah, I have been doing this for a while. I started taking creatine monohydrate 30 years ago. I was, what's the math? 16 to 17 years old. It was longer than 30. Yeah, the math would be longer than that. Yeah.

And I remember I had Dr. Wobler at the time was being like, get off creatine. It's not good for your liver. Yes. Okay, remember this? Your liver enzymes were high. You know why my liver enzymes were high? Because I was drinking with creatine. When I say I was drinking, at the time, I was binge drinking maybe one night a week

or one night every two weeks. my liver enzymes were hot. You know what I did at one point? You know how I figured this out? I stopped drinking. I'd lie to him. I told him I got off creatine. And he came back to those, I told you it was to creatine. I go, why? He's like, your liver enzyme count is completely in a very healthy place now. I never got off creatine. Right. So it had nothing to do with that. He was so set in his ways that at a young age, I was like, I'm not stopping this supplement. Like, everything I'm reading on, It's amazing. And it's not even, you know how much more we found out since then?

I was like, it's fine. I'll never forget reading the line. Well, it's in the amount of 13 you're getting from 5 grams is what you would get in like five pounds of raw uncooked meat. And I'm like, well, how can that be bad? I'm 16, 17 saying that, right? But you know what? At that age, probably naive because it could have been bad.

We don't know. But it ended up being probably one of the most highly recommended supplements in the world right now. Everyone now suddenly like, your grandparents should be taking it. oh, you're 15, 16 year old kid. There's cognitive function. There's cognitive benefits to this and all this stuff. So, you know, again, you've got to, you know, take this stop and form your own opinion by committing to, you know, a process, never jump into anything that's dangerous, of course.

And that's also a reason why, like, I've never, I've never experimented with any type of performance and enhancing substance. It's never in my life. Like, just not like, why? My blood works, I've always been phenomenal. My energy level has always been great. I've always held a good amount of muscle. So people are like, wow, why? What's wrong with it?

I'm like, I just don't, I don't need. Why would I mess with something that I don't need? That's not to devalue my friend who is in Afghanistan that was literally blown up, had his jaw blown off his face, his nose blown off his face, his arm blown off his body. Jason Redmond, good friend of mine. And he had to get on stuff, and he's very public about it now. So I know there is a time and a place for certain people that need to go down this route.

But I also think that's become the Wild West where this is a big, big cash grab for a lot of doctors. And you better be careful because, again, we have not, let's see what are the words I'm looking for here, we have not spent enough time with these things to understand the long-term ramifications from it. I spent, you know, and I told you this before, when I started on YouTube videos, it was more on the steroid education and that type of eating. And that was my background. And I was more really trying to get people to not do them, really, and explain all of the problems. But then if you're gone, who hears how to do it properly. But, you know, I have come to the conclusion. Well, first of all, my years of using it were small.

And I told my wife, I said, I don't even, you know, I've done this. I've experienced it for my, my content. but there's no point or avenue here aside from shortening my lifespan. And so what I always tell people is this, and I'll see what you think about this. And we can talk about supplements, not really steroids. But I always tell people it's, I think that in conclusion when you're looking at results for you and I or whoever, I would put diet almost 70 to 75 percent training 20, 25 at supplements or steroid or performance enhancing, maybe five, maybe, but it really run diet and training.

Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. I mean, I don't know what the percentage is. But I do know that, you know, what is going to really trump nutrition and rest and training. And those are the hard. Those are the things. You remember the last couple years, everyone's like, I try to do something hard every day. Right? Like everyone's like, I want to do something difficult. I'm looking at half these people. And they're like, wow, they all want to do something difficult. But none of these people I've seen, not all of them, most of them. they've got like 20 to 25% body fat. Like they're out of shape and they're all like, do something difficult today. I'm like, do you something difficult? That's waking up, you know, and having to go through that morning routine that you have. But I don't mean meditation. I'm not talking about that. I don't meditate, right?

I'm not to meditate if I'm taking a cold plundra. I'm called meditation. I'm just sitting there trying to breathe and count slow or relax. That's, you know, but I think the hard things are having that discipline to be consistent. I think that's where that's where this becomes a challenge for most people. You took the word right out of my mouth. I was going to say the difficult thing every day is consistency because anybody can get there. But once you get there, then what do you do with it?

Right. And that's the hard part. Diet is the hardest thing to stay consistent with. I think training is far easier to stay consistent with than diet. I think training is so easy. And I think training's fun. And I think there's, I think that with that it's like discipline over motivation, like just show up and do something type of thing. and every time I do a new training program,

it's like I'm doing a new project, right? It's like fun. It's like I'm building something or I'm driving a new car or going on a vacation. It's like I literally look at a new program when I'm committing to something or a new block of training. I'm going to every session like I'm thinking about the night before.

Like it sounds, if you're going to be like, I have a great life. I have two amazing children. I have a beautiful wife who's my business partner. We got a successful business. We have a happy home. I love what I do. I love the fact that I'm

disciplined and I like to put my time into these sort of things. That's what makes me happy. Do I go and I have pizza? Yeah, I had one last night with my, with my, with my son and my wife, we sat around the table eating it. Like, do I, do I once in a blue moon? Do I ever have a beer? Sure, I know the next time I'll probably have one is when I'm on the slopes, snowboarding with my, with my family and Mark. Like, do I have a lot? No, I don't. Like, it just doesn't make me feel good. But there's, there's times I do let my hair down and do those things. And that's what allows me to really enjoy my life because I never abuse it. I always feel good.

And that's how I like to approach it, right? Do you remember this guy? I remember this guy, Brian Johnson right now, this like biohacker, this, like, he's out of his, yeah, I watched so myself the other night wanted to watch his documentary and I, and I watched it. And I was fascinated on how many people were like, excuse my language, shitting on him. Yeah. Like these women on the view jumped on and they were like, oh my God, like live a little

get a life. And I was like, I actually felt terrible for him. I'm like, this actually seems happy and he seems, you know, and he's not like, do I think he's a little kooky? Sure. Do I do I think his lifestyle is a little unusual for most? Yes. Can I relate to him? Because he is just, you know, and then you had other doctors going on being like, this is in science. Fine. Fine. He is still trying to push the envelope in his own life. He has the money and the resources to do this sort of thing. So he's going for it. So I actually had this, this newfound respect for the guy when I finished the documentary because I was like, Donald Cure's personal life, that stuff, whatever. But like how he's approaching something he's passionate with and the amount of discipline and the

monotony. And it's like when I watch a bodybuilder on stage, most people would say, oh, steroids. Like bullshit. Get on steroids. You ain't going to look like that person on stage. It ain't happening. When I'm watching, when I'm at the Olympia watching these competitors, I've never had the urge to compete, but I admire them for the amount of discipline and the amount of years and hard work. Contest prep is one of the most miserable. I've gone through it and I haven't competed. It's one of the most, as you know, miserable, disgusting things you can ever do. Talk about feeling terrible. Talk about boring. Imagine for, you know, 8, 10, 12, 16 weeks eating the exact same foods at the exact same times over and over. People would go crazy.

They can't do that. People can't even get, you know, one healthy, meal a day, let alone do with these. So when I look at them, there's almost this respect that I find for these people who have to put in this hard work, like this guy, Brian, do I think he's going to live longer than most? Who knows, life is weird sometimes, but am I looking at the process of what he's going through? And do I think he might open the eyes for people to think a little bit differently? Maybe. And if people are getting healthier, then, you know, the good for him. I agree. And to touch on what you say, you know, the best parts of my day are one, first day in the morning, I get up and go walk. I'm a spiritual guy, so I do my prayers, but I walk.

Sure. Take you grease. Walk 25, 30 minutes. That just starts my day. And then the next best times of my day are when I'm training. Because you feel good, you feel free, and you're pushing yourself, and you're learning about yourself and what to do and what to do and then you can help others too. And it's amazing. But I look, you too.

Look, I think that Brian's a little cookie, too. But he's really trying to learn different things that could possibly help others expand her lifespan. And maybe it is not. Maybe it's not. But, I mean, let's learn from it and kind of put it together and utilize that as knowledge. I think, if anything else, I mean. Think about how many people started on trajectories where others were like, oh, he's crazy or she's crazy. And then, you know, then they find something out.

They're like, genius. Oh, like, give the guy break. But I was more turned off by how critical people were of him. And it's just, you know, you should be able, what they should be saying was like, listen, if this is what makes this person happy, fantastic, about go live a little. Maybe, maybe he's living. You know what? The amount of joy, it sounds like he's getting out of, you know, slowing down his aging process.

If he even is, is, listen, he's happy. Knock yourself out, buddy. You just said, the people that push the envelopes that were thought to be crazy are the ones that figured everything out that we have now. I mean, falling in line is never going to get you anywhere. It's just not. I know. I know.

I can't go to that concept. But, you know, hey, everybody's going to live different and people are going to have their opinions and that's fine. I try to stay away from the negativity as much as I can. And I try to learn. You know, I always say you can never know too much, but you can always know too little. So I take people like you, people I respect. And look, I try to give what I can. But I also know that the only way to advance is to take time to learn from every.

You have to. I mean, I can't believe the amount of knowledge out there now and the amount of access we have is extraordinary. You know, on the other hand, there's so much of it that, you know, confuses the living hell out of people. So I can understand why a lot of people are confused. But, yeah, the access that we have now, the fact that you can't turn around and if you forget something or you have to look up, you know, I can't tell you the amount of times. Like, I love watching documentaries. I'll literally sit there with my phone next to me and I'm like, oh, this person's still a lot. Google book. Wow. How many teams do they play on Google? Wow. It's like it's just like encyclopedia that you have next to you. God, we didn't have that 30 years ago. It's like it's amazing. So I want to get some of your your diet thoughts. Sure. Sure. And like we were talking, things are subjective to the individual. Yeah. You do better with lower high cart, lower high fat. But do you have like a, do you have a belief in your mind like where you focused? You have, shift more towards like more protein intake like how's your what's your thoughts on carbs and everything yeah yeah so i think most not all most um should lean to more of a high protein and um let's just say

abundant carbohydrate fat diet like i do believe in metabolic flexibility i do believe that you know we all need yeah roughly that gram of a protein per pound of body weight i'm not saying we need this to survive. Like you can go way lower than that, right, to survive. I'm talking about all of us out there. Most of us listening to this, we train, we're hard on our bodies. And I also know that if you're consuming a gram of protein per pound of body weight, you know, how much of that is from animal, you know, is that animal protein? And then how much is that from collagen or how much of that is from nuts or seeds or whatever, you know, so most people out there when they think they're getting, you know, a gram per pound of body weight, they're actually probably getting less of that animal

protein. So, yeah, so, and I, and I do believe I've always been, I'm someone that's always been very lean for a very, you know, for a long period of time. And, you know, every cover I've been on probably a dozen covers. I've been on, I think four since 2018. I've been on muscle and fitness three times, that's helped once. And every single cover I've gotten ready for, I've had four to five weeks to get ready. And, which isn't a lot of time. So, you know, how can I go around all the time being lean, being in single digit body fat, but keeping my energy level high, I'm an athlete. I play ice hockey. Right now, I play three days a week. I play Tuesdays, Friday, Saturday morning, it's early. So I like to skate. I like to play, but you're out there burning. And I need fuel.

So, like, how is it that I'm able to stay lean by consuming higher carbohydrates? Also, because one, the carbs I consume are good carbs. They're fibrous carbs. I think fiber is something that we overlook a lot and where everyone's just looking more towards macronutrients. I always say the fourth macronutrient is fiber, and I think that's something that we should all look at. But I also know that if you're someone that is, every time I have carbohydrates, I gain weight, right, which is a very common thing for people to hear, you know, what's the sign? For every gram of carbs you're pulling in, you're probably drawing in, what, two to three grams of water, roughly, right? So it's normal that if you go on a low carbohydrate diet, you're going to dehydrate your muscle of water,

and then you're going to go out and have a couple of margaritas or have a couple tacos. whatever it is, your body the next day is like, oh my God, I just gained five of the eight pounds back. Why am I doing this? And, you know, I also believe that these things need to be built in time. So a lot of times when I'm working with someone who has consuming a low calorie diet, they've been in a deficit too long, and we've set a path that we're going to try and get their calories up, I will take weeks, if not months, to do so. Right. So if you're going to a macro tracking app, like Chronometer. There's a new out, one route right now that I really like called Carbon.

I have no affiliation with them. I'm just giving my two cents. But a lot of these macro-tracking apps, what it will do is it'll ask you, you know, your age, your height, your weight, and your activity level. Are you sedentary? Are you lightly active? Are you moderately active? And based off of that, it'll use whatever.

I know Chronomity uses like a MIFLen equation. And it'll use an algorithm that will get you, you know, into a good range of probably where you need to be for your maintenance calories. And I'm saying that's just, you know, without saying that we want to be in a surplus or deficit. So let's say someone comes to me and they're at 1,200 calories a day, but they go to chronometer and chronometer is telling them 2,200 calories a day. Like the biggest mistake people make is that like the next day, when they, after they get this information, they're like trying to hit 2,200 calories and they end up getting to like 1,600 and they feel sick and they feel bloated. They might be able to maintain this

for a few days. And then they get on a scale. They're like, I can't do this. I just gained five pounds. I'm done. Where, like, what they should have done is maybe take an incredibly conservative approach.

And I might do, this is really conservative. But if I have to raise someone a thousand calories, I might do that 10 weeks. Yeah. And I might just take 100 calories a week and I might just bump it, which is so easy to do. Oh, my God.

Like, you could do, you know, what's the math of that? I mean, 20, you know, 25 grams of protein. That's 100 calories right there. You're done. So think about that. You could slowly start bumping up your macronutrients and you can slowly start reverse dieting into a process. And what I have found, and this is my testing, this is my, this is me putting this out to tens of thousands of people online from very scalable is that if they commit to the process and

they are resting and hydrating and they focus, you know, I've had people, I've had women, on this group in this group go from 1,400 calories to 3,200 calories and lose 30 pounds, you know, because now their energy levels increased, their sleep quality is increasing, and all these good things happen. It's taken them two years to do that. Like, let's be very clear. So I think that's part of the problem with most people is that they jump into these things, thinking it's going to be this automatic body composition change. And when I say body composition change that doesn't always mean weight loss. You could change body composition.

You could burn body fat without losing weight. Like we've seen it. Of course. No problem. You could put on weight and not increase body fat. Of course you can. These are hard things to do, right? But they are possible.

So I just think it's this level of patience and it's this lack of education. And it's people always listening to you, well, you have to be in a deficit to lose weight. like, well, what happens to the person that's consuming a thousand calories a day and starving themselves and then every once in a while, binge eating? Like, I'm going to try and bump their calories. I'm going to try and keep them more satiated, right? I'm going to develop their muscle building block. I'm going to increase their fiber and I'm going to over time watch a body composition change. And we'll do this over a long period of time to wear it through the coaching process. How are you feeling? Energy levels increasing. Great. How's your sleep? Sleeping better than I

ever have. Wow. I weighed myself. I haven't lost weight. Keep going. Like, let's just keep going and you understand what happens at that point. But it's, it's difficult for most people to trust the process. It's hard. I'll tell you this, it's hard for everybody, even going to coach. I mean, I've battled like an eating disorder dysmorphia for my whole basically since I was 11. That's when I started studying nutrition because of the issues I have. And, you know, even what I coach, which falls in line pretty pretty close to what you are, I have a little, I like a little lower carb but not eliminate the carb, right? Sure.

Similar. And just so you can have some doubt on me, I have done this just destroyed myself with the amount of training and the under eating. And I'm talking 1,700 calories a day when I'm burning like 35 to 4,000 with the work. Tough. And super low fat when I know how important fat is like no fat. Just peanut butter. So recently, I finally got to the point where I was like, I can't do this anymore. I just can't take it.

And I went from like $1,700 to $2,700, and I increased my fats from like $1,500. Wow. And I got more cut and more shredded than since I was taking PEDs. It's amazing. I went from feeling like maybe a 30 every day to like 100, you know, every day. Energy, attitude, fleet, everything. And so basically I'm doing like a 45 fat, 35, or I mean,

35 protein 35 fat, maybe 15, car, maybe 20. And maybe I'm going to try to work on increasing the cards. But my point is, is what you said, you can kill your metabolism and ruin yourself by under eating. You're not going to lose weight. And if you do, it's going to look bad. And I was just miserable. And doing this, I'm having, I didn't eat ground beef for like 15 years.

Dude, I'm having it half a pound every day of ground bison or venison. I'm so happy. And like, I just can't, you know, it's amazing. So those are, and I'm first of one, I'm so happy. happy for you. And it's like to be able to make that type of drastic change and to reap the benefits and feel that way is really a special thing. I was just fortunate enough to, you know, when I got into nutrition, every time I'd learn something, I'd be like, oh, it's just like what I have to do. And it was funny because I think back to when I really started lifting weights at like 15, 16,

I remember my buddy mind looking being like after a workout one night, he said, we got to get some protein now. And I'm like, what's that? And he's like, you know, it's in like chicken and meat and like, well, we're, okay, where do you want to go? He's like, let's go to D'Ramos. D'Ramos is a pizza in my town. He's like, we're going to get meatballs and pasta. I said, great. So we go eat meatballs and pasta. And then like, out of nowhere, you know, you're hearing that to get super shredded, like is white pasta the best thing? Maybe not. Okay. Well, oh, now we're going to start eating egg whites. We're eating egg whites. Well, now we're going to start eating whole eggs. And you start eating whole eggs as you understand the importance of the fat and the amino acid, etc.

etc. But every time I would hear something that I needed to do, I was like, oh, I'll do it. The one thing I never, like, have I ever done a ketogenic diet? I did it for, I think I got in ketosis for like three months, purposely, not because I was like, this is what I want to do. I'm like, I have to do this. Like, everyone, too many people are asking me questions. Have I ever done intermittent fasting? Yes, I have. I've done it probably for the same amount of time because I had to answer questions. Have I done, did I ever experiment with going raw vegan? I did it for about a week and then I was like, the hell with this.

This is something, and there's no way. I mean, even that was absolutely miserable, raw, vegan. Like, you know how hard that is? I read this book by this guy, back race. And I was just like, all right, I'm going to try. And I was like, and I can't believe I made it a week. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I hated it.

But yeah, have I tried being a vegetarian? Sure. Have I tried pesk? Yeah, I would. But it wasn't because I was like, oh, this is the healthy thing to do. It was always because I was like, I need to understand what this is like and I have to do this by trial and error. Right. The entire time knowing and understanding that the way that I eat now is the way that I always should be eating.

Like I kind of always knew that. But I think where my diet has evolved throughout the years is understanding about rotating. different foods in seasonally and getting different shades in. And, you know, if I am on the road eating and there's access to different types of foods that I don't have access to, jump into that, right? There's just, you know, understanding the importance of fiber, right? Like, when you're younger, you're just eating like brown rice and chicken and broccoli. Like, is that food really nutrient dense and really powerful? No. But all at all, like even looking back on the last 20, 25 years, pretty damn good. It's not like I went from, you know, being a vegetarian,

and doing that for a couple of years because I watched some documentary. And then what they don't tell you is a few years and how many of those people converted back to eating. Like you said now, now you eat red meat. Why? Because your body feels good from it. It's not bad for you. But if you're eating McDonald's, sure. Like it's a crappy quality of meat with all this other crap in it that your body doesn't need.

So, you know, I think sometimes they generalize it too much. What was that terrible documentary out? Game Changers, remember that? Yeah. Yeah. So this is my thing on that, right? And I don't even know why I'm bringing this up. But a lot of the, a lot of what they, like they went to a fire department to,

they said, see what happened. These firemen like went from eating a terrible diet to a vegetarian diet. And they lost a combined. Remember when they gave all the data at the end, 50 pounds and X, Y, and C. And it was like, oh, my God. Like, what would have, they should have went back in and been like, we're going to give them a diet of. organic, you know, grass-fed, you know, whatever, like proteins and slow burning carbohydrates

and veggies and fruits and like, what they have seen even more progress. Like, that's what they didn't do. They removed the Doritos and the beer and they threw in bean patties and they said, well, this is why it happened. Okay, you removed the Doritos and beer. What would have happened if you ate the way that you and I eat? Like, I would have, my assumption would have been that they probably would have seen even better results. Yet, I can't tell you how many people, that I work with are vegetarian, my daughter's a pescatarian, that are carnivore. I never really talk people out of these things. I say, well, why are you doing it? I want to understand. They give me the reason. I'm like, you sure you want to do it? They're like, well, what's your viewpoint of

nutrition? I said, well, this is what I typically recommend, but if this is something you really feel like committing to, let me help you do this in the best way possible. So I don't even like try talking them out of it. The times I start talking about it is when they turn to me and they're like, I feel terrible. My energy level has dropped. Look at my skin. There's things that are going wrong with it. Why? And then we try and do a deep dive in to figure out why. And even most of the time, I'm not even the one that could give them those answers. Because we're going for blood. So I'm turning to like a Dr. Gabriel Lion or a Dr. Dwayne Jackson. And we're doing a really, you know, a much deeper internal dive into their life to understand. I'm not just going to say,

well, it's because you're not eating meat. There might be a problem that's way worse than that. right so you know i try not to jump to the conclusion there but i think it's understanding you know why people are doing things is very important i'm interviewing dwayne thursday man he spoke so highly of you when i talked to him yeah he's oh highly he's a good dude man i'm looking forward to that one so i just wanted to bring that up to you tell dod dot said he loves it did say don't he loves you that's what he said i will you know what you were talking about you know what i notice is that you never see like in these documentaries and things you never hear two things you never hear of talking about blood panels you never hear of talking about sustainability you know and just it's frustrating because those are the two most important things is how does your blood panel look because something might work initially but your blood panel might be thrown off and how sustainable is this to do long term because if it's not sustainable and you literally fall off the wagon a lot of people end up gaining more weight back or or hurting themselves and the process of doing this. And it's very frustrating, man. It really is. I agree with you. And I'm laughing

right now because I'm looking, my phone just buzzed and it says Dr. Duane Jackson on it. What if the shit? Is that crazy? But yeah, I totally, I totally agree with you on that. Sustainability is a huge. It's even with program designed to. It's like not understanding the client, not understanding, you know, how are they going to respond to this program? Why are you giving them a program that's 90 minutes when you know their attention doesn't go past 20 minutes, you know, it's, again, that's coaching. Designed for the greatest 19-minute program on the planet. Let them do that.

Let them feel good about that. Build progress. Build consistency. It's very easy to see. People are going to say, what are you talking about? It's so easy to keep motivation high when someone's seeing progress. Yeah. That's what most people aren't realizing.

If you're unmotivated or you have an, you feel like you're not disciplined to do this stuff, you probably would be a lot more motivated and a lot more disciplined if you saw a good return on your investment. Of course. And it's like, and that's the problem. It's like, well, when someone is actually turning around going, oh, my God, my body fat's improving. Oh, my God, I'm getting stronger. Oh, my God. My sleep is improving.

They're not going to turn around and want to go out and bury their head in a pizza and a keg of beer. They're going to want to build on that. And that's what a good coach helps him do. Absolutely. I totally, totally agree with you on that. So, you know, when we were talking about, one of the things, honestly, like, and I know I'm getting older, but I look forward to like Sundays with my wife going to Whole Foods and picking up new things and testing out new things and spending time over at like the fish counter, you know,

and learning about new things. But I have a question in terms of like protein intake. So I was actually, I was interviewing JJ Virgin a couple days ago. And one of the things we were talking about was she gets all of these people that will say, I just don't know how to get that X amount of protein in and my point and her point, the same thing. Like I told you, so I have a half a pound of bison and I have normally 12 to 14 ounces of either sea bass or

or salmon every day. I mean, boom, right there, I'm looking at 100 some grams of protein, just like this. Yeah. And do you find that you get that question a lot? And do you kind of explain to people? It's really, it's not that difficult to get the protein in if you're looking at the right sources.

Or how do you feel about that? Do you feel it's... Yeah. Yeah, so there's two different approaches, really. Like, I was listening to Paul... I was listening to Paul Check the other day, who, you know, I've learned from Paul for the last, you know, probably 25 plus years. He's the one who kind of introduced...

I've never met him in person, but he's the one who introduced to me, like, biodynamic and organic farming. And I remember, you know, he was teaching courses on how the tractor opposed to the horses hook, right? and how it's not going to denature the soil. And I was learning about soil quality from him, you know, back in 2000. I mean, the guy was so far ahead of his time. But he was talking the other day about how, you know, tracking is, you know, not good.

And the trackings, you know, well, you should be able to eat. Yeah, I get it. Like, you're Paul or, or Dylan, you can do that or maybe I could do that. But I do believe that tracking removes a lot of the guesswork. Yeah. And with protein, it's, I'm a lot of. I stole this line from my buddy Pat, Dr. Pat Davidson. It's just math.

Right. It's just math. It's like if you know you got to get 200 grams of protein in a day, and I'm making this number up for math purposes. You're a 200 pound person and you have to get 200 grams of protein a day. It's just math. Well, how many meals are you doing? Four meals. Well, that's 50 grams a meal, right?

Four times 50 is 200. Five meals? Well, it's 40 grams a meal. It's just math. Three meals, well, you're going to have to bump up that protein consumption. Intermated fasting and you're someone that gets two to three meals in the day, well, your window of opportunity to consume nutrition, those bookends have really come in. And you don't have that much time, but you better make sure that you get the nutrition

that you're getting. Because if you do IF, right, and you don't start eating until 12 1 o'clock and you're going to bed at 9 o'clock at night, how many opportunities do you have to turn around and get the nutrition and the fiber and the protein, the carbs that you need in there. And that's where I really believe that tracking can be beneficial. When I'm working with someone, I won't even bring up tracking if they're like, oh, well, never committed to this and let me dive into it. And I'm like, great, let's, let's start here, right? And I'll just incorporate maybe one meal in. Or, oh, I haven't had breakfast in years. And I'm like, well, I'm not hungry. We'll have one egg and a piece of fruit.

Well, that's not enough. I know it's not enough. But let's start. working there, right? This is, you know, part of a process of kind of building someone back, you know, up to that point. So, um, I do believe sometimes when you're sitting here and you're scratching your head and you feel like you've been eating really well. I eat great though. And I eat beautifully, but my body won't change. It's like, all right, can it be a training problem? Sure. It could be. Like, maybe your training's complete garbage and I never like saying that. But, you know, maybe you're not walking enough. Maybe you're not moving enough. Maybe your sleep's terrible. You know, maybe you're going to the gym, checking your phone every two seconds and

not actually approaching a set with some intention. Maybe one day your protein consumption is at 200 grams. Maybe another day is at 120. Maybe one day your fiber is at 15 grams. Maybe one day it's at the 38 grams minimum that I need to be at. When you have that much volatility and it's inconsistent, yeah, I think sometimes people have a very challenging time changing. But for someone who needs to get to 200 grams of protein a day, if you're getting in 80 grams of protein in a day, jumping up 120 overnight for someone like you would be easy. But for someone else on the street that's not used to that,

maybe we have to slowly start tapering them into that. Maybe I would recommend, you know what, hit 100 for a few days or a week, and hit 120 for a week, and hit 140 for a week. And then out of nowhere, activity level, recovering, you're getting up out of bed, you're feeling better, you're feeling stronger, you're moving more weight. And all these things happen that really, prove your motivation. And I think that's, I think that's the right way to, to, to approach it.

It's tough because, you know, we do. And I, shit, I'm not saying anything on people because I do this, too. We're in kind of an instant gratification type of lifetime right now. And that's kind of what people want. And it just doesn't work that way. And it takes time. And I think it takes here and like what you said to people is, look, you can do it, but you can't just go try to do it all at once. And it's hard to to convey that. But I think the more we try to do that in a more rational way, like what you explained, what you said sounds very

common sense about it's just math, but it's not. It's not. I've never even broke it down that way, and it's so common sense to me, but it takes me here from somebody like you to go, well, shit. It's that simple to explain. I mean, it's basic. But you're dealing it. That's, that's the thing. It's also something that's become so habitual to you. It's just like, this is

you waking up every day and going through your routine and getting your nutrition in. You look forward to this because you also know the return you're receiving from it, right? It's like, all right, well, did I enjoy that pizza last night? Yeah, 100%. I'm just delicious. The place I get it from in town to, they make it with like sourdough bread. Like, it's delicious.

It's freaking delicious. They don't like fry any of their stuff. They use like avocado oil and beef tallow. But it's like delicious and light. You can go have like a bit of a. cheat meal and the next day I wake up and I'm like baby and I'm like I feel great and like I'm not like no digestive issues it's awesome but these are things that like people who the hell's going to know this right who the hell's going to know this like you just you're on overdrive right now man like you're an

incredible shape you love this you're a big dork about this stuff like I am like we just love it we can turn around and listen to people who know what they're talking about we're like we you and I are so in common with that like we get so geeked up but most people out there aren't like that. So I think sometimes, you know, breaking it down in a simple way and like, when I say it's just math, like it's just math, but I'm full. Well, what did you get into that? I got in a hundred. You're telling me I need 200. Do me a favor. Spend one week at 100. But you said I had to be at 200. Spend one week at 100. Get really good at 100. Because guess what? The hundred that you got today was probably last week, 101 day, 60 another day. And then after the

seven days, I'm like, how is this? I'm used to it now. Great. Let's bump it up. Let's get around once in one. Yeah. They're like, all right, now I know what you're doing. And now it took us five weeks for us to get up to that point. I really think that slow, steady approach is the right way to do things. I agree. And I have a big data guy. And look, I mean, I'm well in tune. And I couldn't be more in tune. I still keep track of things daily.

So every once in a while I have a day where it's just so packed and I just like a meal or I miss maybe 100 calories or something. but I keep the data just so I can go back and see and remember. Like I have a Lumen and I'm testing all the time and I have a CGM. I'm monitoring my book. I'm a data guy. But I think not everybody's going to do that, but I think the more data you have and the more you keep, the more interested you get because you'll take a look at it and then you'll learn, wow, that this really does make a difference.

Because a lot of times, you know, like for instance, like for me with supplements, people, it doesn't matter what time of day or whatever, but it does. it might not make a million percent difference, but if you want to maximize what you're doing, it really does make a difference. And I think that just slowly getting into it, you'll appreciate it more, you'll learn more,

the more data that you really get. At least that's how I see. If that's what you're into, right? Like I worked, I actually worked for Lumen for at least two years, right? Really? Yeah, I did a lot of work with them. Good product, right?

But, you know, it's also one of those things where that was like my carb cycling solution, not for a bodybuilder, but for most people. Because Lumin is, it's a form of carb cycling because it's going to adjust your carbs or your fats according to how much carbon dioxide you're breathing into this little chamber. So, yeah, again, but like most, some people would go buy it and I'd be like, you don't want to track. Right.

And they'd be like, oh, I have to track if I'm doing this. I'm like, well, yeah. Yeah, but they said you don't have to. I'm like, yeah, that's when you get really good at it. Then you don't have to. Once you start understanding, like, what your meal portion sizes should look like and like, oh, I'm having a piece of salmon. This is around the size.

Or, oh, it's telling me that I need a, I have a boost day or I got to have more fats. I can go in this direction. Yeah, that's when you get, you're like you or me where you can start making those decisions. But for the newbie out there, like if you tell them, we'll have more fats. They're going to be like, what the hell does that mean? Right. Right.

Like, what does 180 grams of fat mean today? Like, how much fat is that? How much fat that is? So, yeah, I'm 100% with you. But again, the data for you, which comes so easy, you know, I'm finding a lot of people get overwhelmed. I think, you know, I think it would be something to ease into, like with a, like, a, my fitness powers. There's just something to just ease into it and learn and slowly.

And some people need more consistency or coaching than others. But in the age, I just, I just. find that beyond being intriguing and interesting it would just be helpful you know just to try that and just see so you can compare and contrast longer term but totally great i so you know i want to talk to you what you're one of the things that you're well known for is being somebody sought after that's trained a lot of important or famous people quote and so um obviously that says a lot about the level that you're at which i already know without you having any of that and i think most people would know just on your credibility alone results. But in terms of that, we don't have to get in anything personal with it because I know that it's kind of private. But, you know, how did that,

what struck that for you? Yeah. Yeah. So my first club that I opened into, so I went off, became a trainer in 99, worked at Equinots for a year, left there, opened my own training business,

my own one-on-one training business. Did really well. Young adult made some good money. Did my first fundraise. 2003 raised like $5 million to open my first club. Yeah, I had that for 15 years. My 15-year lease expired May 31st of 2020. We were told that we had to close March 16th, Monday, March 16th at 8 p.m. We were forced to close. I was already in the digital business, so we kind of rolled off into a company that I own now called Dino Brands. By the time we were allowed to reopen, which was

September, I was resigning the lease. I went to the landlord. I'm like, this doesn't make sense. Like, I'm, you know, doing, you know, in my profession, what I do now, I would have to open many clubs to do what I do now. But there was so much risk in the brick and mortar space. Because when we're allowed to reopen, it's like you can reopen at 33%. I'm like, my business doesn't work at 33%. It would cost me my one gym, so I had two gyms, drive 495 and drive 443. Drive 485 cost me $2 million a year just to break even, just to cover my overhead. Wow. My monthly nut, it was probably even a little more than my monthly nut was like $200K.

A month. I had to do that before. Anything above that was profit. So the amount of, you know, the amount of business that I did in that place, the place was incredible. And, you know, to this day, I was able to pivot to something that I believe is so meaningful told of me, do I, do I ever miss it? There's aspects of it that maybe I miss, but honestly, I was able to exit the way I wanted exit. But to get the answer to your question, that gym that I opened, that first one,

was a golf fitness facility. Like, we worked with golfers. We did kinematic sequencing. We had a phlebotomist coming in doing blood work. We had nutritionists. We were doing this stuff in 2005. We had indoor golf simulators. I had a bar upstairs. I was hosting Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, all these companies. So, you know, we started this business off.

So imagine being the first place to open like that, New York City that had indoor golf simulators. That's amazing. Every corporate entity was booking their events with us. So we had the gym

during the day downstairs and upstairs we had a bar and we had three simulators upstairs, two simulators downstairs. It was 15,000 feet. So it was like, I had companies coming in. Oh, boom.

Like we were killing it. And then I think 2007-08 when we had that financial crisis, I remember looking at my brother, my business partner, being like, holy shit, we're going to have a problem here. And we just had to do a complete restructuring of our business. I had to raise a million dollars to keep the place open. But I didn't do it in a loan. I did it in prepaid.

So I went to some pretty successful members. And I said, I need 100 here, 50 here. They're like, how you get to pay it back? I'm like, I'm going to train it. off. So like if you're coming in with a hundred grand, I'll train it off. So I worked off a million dollars in roughly 18 months of training. That's how much I had to train. So I was opening, I was getting up at 3 a.m. opening at the club at 3.45, taking my client Rick at 345. And that's what I would start. So like, and I did this. Once the 18 months were up, I mean, I probably

end up, I've trained over 40,000 hours sessions in my life. I mean, I'm a, But in that time where we had to restructure at an actor walk into my club named Hugh Jackman, and he came in with his trainer at the time, Rico Wesley. Rico, who I saw recently, is doing great. But Rico is the reason why I got Hugh. So Rico ended up having triplets and had a move. And Hugh saw me working out one day and kind of came to me. It was like, you know, I want to work out with you.

I was looking at him like, treatment with Rico, get away from me. Like, it's almost like he was cheating on Rico. But no, I didn't realize that Rico and him were already knew that they were leaving. It wasn't how he was leaving Rico. RICO was leaving him. And he was like coming to me to be like, I'd like to work out with you. Finally, RICO came to me.

He's like, you idiot. Like, he's one. So I'm leaving. I was like, RICO, I thought he was like, no, he goes, I love you. I appreciate you for that. And I worked with Hugh for almost a year to get him ready for a movie called Wolverine and Australia when he left. And at that time, that was, I can tell you right now, my daughter was going to be 18 in April. He asked me to go to Australia with him that summer, and I couldn't because my daughter,

Amelia, was being born. Born, wow. August 11th. So that's, looking at now, that was like 18 years ago from right now. I was working with him, right? At this exact time. And that's how I got my feet into that space. I have a performance background through all the strength conditioning.

I'm a strength coach. but I also My best friend who passed away in 2010 was a bodybuilding coach He passed away I was I claimed his body Because he didn't have family So when I sent him in for an autopsy

I had him His body was in the morgue for two weeks I had to go down to city hall To clean his body Otherwise they were going to bury him in Plotter's field So Tommy's testosterone was north of 3,000 So I saw him struggling to get off certain drugs that he was on.

I'm not talking about testosterone. I'm talking about other things. And this guy was like an Adonis. He was 10 years older than me. So I lived in the bodybuilding world, but I lived in the performance world. And I kind of created this term in my head called performance physique. So when I worked with Hugh, yeah, we did all the mobility. We did all the performance stuff.

But at the end of the day, he had to be resilient. He had to turn and take his shirt off and look a certain way. So I really, that kind of became my niche. and then out of nowhere there was I mean there was no social media back then but I remember Hugh turned to me and he wanted to do

some press for me and I turned him and I said no and he looked at me he's like why I'm like this is your this is we got a job and I was so against exposing any of those clients I would go too far from it

like I probably should have done some press to be honest like I should have been like Hugh it's going to benefit us both but I was like no no no not doing it and we didn't do it and I think word got around that I had that approach.

The next thing you know, like you'd walk in there at any given deck. I've never seen a place in my life. This is like, walking like, Sandra Bullock's on the treadmill. Owen Wilson's over here.

The Rock, the Rock, Duane Johnson walking through the club. You know, and then he introduced me to, you know, I started working with Scarlett Johanson. I met Ryan Reynolds.

And it kind of all, you know, it all just steamrolled from there. And, yeah, I, that's really so that what ended up happening was I'd have these actors literally on a weekly come in and just say I got to get ready for this and we would go into my office and I'd say well

what does that mean what do you have to look like and we would Google like Lee F. Schreiber came in once and he was like I got to look like I'm training for this role Chuck Chuck Wetner and I got a train to to look like this it was like Rocky but before it was Rocky that was what Chuck yeah boxer But like, we have was two reps, so we had to soften them up. But how do you do that without? So out of nowhere, this became this like factory, this like experiment lab for me to be able to go in and get people ready to wear like prosthetic suits. Like hellboy, like Dave Harbor, we got him into prosthetic suit.

We do all this measurements beforehand. He weighed 250 pounds. Production company calls me in five weeks. We're going to pull the budget. Why? He's losing too much weight. I'm like, he was 249 pounds this morning. He lost one pound.

They're like, he's not fitting. properly in his prosthetic suit. He's just getting in too good a shape. I'm like, all right, just bear with me. And I'm calling Dave up like, hey, man, I'll go for ice cream tonight. He's like, what, what are you talking about? I'm serious. Like, you're craving ice cream.

I want you to tonight. I want you to tomorrow. But stick with everything else. And literally, like, those are the conversations that I'm having with with people. So that's how my career really kicked off. Now, you know, I'm fortunate to where I'll, I'll get calls from people. And like, I've been working with Matt Bowler for a while. I haven't met Matt in person.

I've probably been working with Matt at this boy now for two, two and a half, me in years. We haven't like met in person yet. We still laugh about it. He was on the phone with my daughter recently, helping her out with a college decision because she's going to go get a degree bachelor of fine arts. One of the greatest,

one of the nicest human beings, Matt, I've ever met. I love that. Yeah, but I think I haven't met Matt yet. Like, Matt's going to walk in here and I'm going to literally attack him and, you know, throw him down the staircase because I feel like this connection with it, with this guy. We talk. But, you know, it's just, that's where our world's gone.

So, you know, so many blessings. But again, when you talk about being able to predict where your career goes and what you're doing, this stuff didn't exist back then. But I'll love it at then. It's just a testament to the trust that you have because those, not that everyday people don't talk because they do for sure. But when somebody, that's their livelihood is putting that into your hands. Yeah. I mean, that has to be gratifying to you.

Not so much that it's a celebrity, but just the trust that's being put into you, I think. I'll tell you what helps a lot. The fact that it's almost, it's always a referral. Yeah. Right? Like it really is. Like when I had a brick and mortar facility, it was always a referral. So when they would come in, you know, they would get stories about me.

I'd get stories about him. And I remember meeting Jake Gyllenhaal. I trained him for a while. And we just looked at each other. We just started laughing. We just came over. We just gave each other a hug. And then the next thing you know, we're training.

So I think sometimes it starts as easy as that. But yeah, again, you got to remember that what they do for a living is not fitness. It's not training. It's not, it's being great at their craft. And I give them more credit than most people give them because imagine every time you go into a job, you have to completely recreate yourself. Like you're working in computers and then suddenly they're turning around to you and saying, nope, you've got to be a trainer this month, next month.

Nope, you got to be a garbage man this month. Nope. Next month, you've got to be a chef. That's literally what these people are doing. They have the ability to act, but they're turning around and you're training them to look a certain way. And they're doing, like, Blake lively was, you know, coming by, Michael, she had to do all this gunfighting in her, in one of her movies. And I'm like, what? And she brought her coach by her stunt coordinator and they're working on stuff.

And I'm sitting there watching. And you're just like, this is not what she signed up for, but this is part of, you know, her being believable. and moving into the role. Dude, I, I'm not going to ask anything about any of these people, but one thing is Ryan because I love his humor, like the way, is he really that funny in person the way that he comes across like that dry, sarcastic humor? Yeah, he's, I mean, Ryan's one of the funniest, like, sometimes he never comes after me verbally because one time I joked around and he started to and I ran into the corner and I just

ducked like he was hitting me with something. He just started hysterically laughing, but, um, let's see. and these people in their normal lives his life's not a comedy right like he's not turning around telling jokes every second he's got a family of wife he's got successful businesses and he'll be there he's serious and he's going to do stuff and out of nowhere

he says something and I'm just I mean I'm like he just started laughing that was too natural in his movies that's why I thought man he's got to be like that a little bit in person because he's been probably my longest standing person that I've worked with and I

I'm so grateful for what him and his wife done in my career. And they're the most wonderful, beautiful, thoughtful people that I've ever met. And they, I can't even begin to tell you the things they do behind closed doors for people that they're not expecting social posts for. They have a beautiful family. They take care of their team, their staff. They have a tight nucleus.

I cannot begin to tell you how incredible they are and how grateful I am. and how grateful I am to be working with them and just incredible human beings. Well, I mean, that is so cool. It's really, it's comforting to hear that too because, you know, people think and assume things. And so it's really nice to hear that. And then coming from you, I take that wholeheartedly. So I mean, I can't, I know we don't have a lot of time. They are incredible human beings.

Blake has been one of the biggest support systems in my life besides my mom. my sisters and my wife. Really? When she knew my, she knew there was uncertainty in my gym. She was on FaceTime calls with me going through marketing ideas for posts just to keep it interesting. They build half my following for me. They have done intros. They have supported me and my family.

She's baked for me. She's cooked for my kids. Beautiful people. Incredible human beings. I just, I can't even begin to tell you how much I, I absolutely. love them and you know unfortunately out there when there's negative press and there's other actors involved you have to understand and realize that those people they're actors and when you and when you know someone's character and you trust in someone's character you know the real

story but when someone else is turning around and they're saying things they are actors right they're acting all right it's it's um it's um it's very difficult to turn around and see people that you love be put in a false, false and negative light. And it's especially when none of it's true. But I could tell you right now, I've been training people for 26 years. I'm still with these people for 16 years. I would get on a plane right now and fly to China for both of them if they said they needed something.

That is how incredible they are. That is how amazing they are. I hope everyone listening to this right now understands that. that I'm saying this about as genuine as I can say. That's awesome. Dude, I got to tell you, man. I know that we got to go. I could talk to you for several more hours on this.

Let's do it again sometime. This is fun, man. I was just going to bring that up if you can. Let's do a part. If you're down for it, when you're ready down the road, man, you and I got to train and we got to hang.

So why don't we, we'll set up a part to you sometime at your convenience when you're, I'm grateful that you're featuring me on your platform and you're amazing, by the way. Congratulations on everything. And just let me know. We'll jump on a part two. It's easy. I think we should do a part two at your gym when I can come out there and train with you.

And that would be shit. Tell me what? Yeah. Easy. Are you in New York? Is that where you're out? I'm in Long Island. So I'm an hour outside the city.

If you come into the city, it's a train ride out here. I'll pick you up. I'll feed you. We'll train. We can sauna, do all that stuff. It'll be a blast. Let me know. That's what we're going to do then was we'll film that full thing like that.

And, man, that would be so awesome. I would be so grateful for that. So, all right. So real quick. quick, and I'll link all this in the description for each of you. What's the best ways to follow you or sign up with you or learn about you? I'm greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Don Saladino is my Instagram. You can check out my website, don't saladino.com. Yeah. And that's it. I offer free programs on there. So if anyone wants to come in and try stuff out, please. I'd never like to push anyone, anything on anyone. But again, grateful for you.

Thank you. Best of luck. And let me know when you want to come on out and let me host you. It's a guarantee. And dude, I knew we had a lot in common, but I can't believe just how much. So I'm, I'm fucking stoked, man. I didn't even want to get into, like, some of the prayer stuff. Like, when you said that, I'm like, here we, here we go.

There's more and more stuff that I typically keep very to myself because I don't like to, you know, that's more. Privately. Yeah, we can get into it privately. That's, that's very important. I'm the head usher at my church. So, you know, it's just there's certain things that I think, I think got faith. And I hold it really close to me and being around good people. So you and I'll be friends for a while.

I'm not worried about this. Guarantee it, man. Guarantee it. Well, once again, dude, thank you so much. This has been so awesome. It made my month, really. Thank you, Dawn. Write back at you.

Awesome. So, all right, everybody. Well, that wraps up another one. I hope you enjoy this, which I'm sure you will. And stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Jameli and Don Saladino, signing off.