The Joe Rogan Experience - #1514 - Joe De Sena

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Joe De Sena is the CEO and founder of "Spartan" and the "Death Race". He is also a NY Times best selling author of "Spartan Up", "Spartan Fit" and "The Spartan Way".

Thanks for doing this. My pleasure. Hello, Joe. How are you? We're rolling. What's going on, man? Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

So the kettlebell, you bring this fucking thing everywhere you go. Literally everywhere? I do. I lived overseas and I started it. You know why I started it? I had a 696-pound guy come to the farm six years ago, and he wanted help losing weight. And I helped him over 18 months get down to 265 pounds. Wow.

And one of the methods I used to motivate him was I said, as you lose weight, I'll carry weight. And eventually I was carrying a 100-pound sandbag. Fast forward, and we can get into it. I moved overseas with my family, and I tried to carry that 100-pound sandbag. Fast forward, and we can get into it. I moved overseas with my family, and I tried to carry that 100-pound sandbag because I had made that commitment to them, and they wouldn't let it through TSA. So when I landed in Asia, I asked my wife, I said, hey, can you order a 20-pound? It's stupid that I'm carrying a sandbag. Can you order a 20-pound

kettlebell? I'll just carry a 20-pounder. So I'm not a complete fraud. And she confused pounds with kilograms. And I ended up with a 44 pounder and it just became my shtick, my thing. So when you say you carry it everywhere, I mean, you go everywhere with it. I go everywhere with it. So during the pandemic, I wouldn't carry it if we were going to a grocery store. But if I'm traveling to see you or I'm going anywhere in the world, kettlebells come with me, Vegas, anywhere. Do you take it as a carry-on? Depends on the country. We operate in a lot of countries, and every country treats it differently.

So some U.S. flights, they'll let me carry it on, which is strange. Others, they ask me to check it. You know, they won't let you bring a pool cue on a plane? Yeah. Because they say it's like a weapon. How is that not like a weapon? Well, my answer to them is you'd have to be pretty fucking strong. You're pretty fucking strong.

I'm not that strong. You could smash somebody with one of those things. No, but they've let me bring it on planes. China doesn't mind at all. India, in India, you're going to love this. They ask me to put it in someone else's luggage. So, in other words, somebody had just dropped off their luggage. I'm checking the kettlebell.

Stick it in that blue suitcase. Get it when you get to the other end. You don't even know who the person is? I don't even know who the person is. Oh, that's insane. So I get there and I have to explain to this person in India why I'm opening their suitcase to get my kettlebell out. Do they speak English, the person you're speaking to? This particular case, no.

This was like... So what did they say when you pulled a fucking camera ball out? They were confused. They don't know. But if you act with authority, they just assume maybe I work for the airline or who knows. Oh my God, that's hilarious. That's so ridiculous.

That's that standard behavior in India? Well, How many times have you been over there? I've been to India twice. It's happened twice in India. Same thing? Same thing. Put it in. It's happened twice in India. Same thing? Same thing. Put it in somebody else's bag.

Somebody else's bag. In the Middle East, they give me a sentence, which I can't recall, but it basically says it's going to be up to God if this comes out the other end. Really? For real. They've lost a dozen of them in the United States. In the United States states once you're gonna love this i get to um jfk and there are two stories um in in the baggage claim so i go to

the large luggage area because i'm hoping that's where the kettlebell is where it should be but i hear some noise on the conveyor belt above me sure enough the fucking kettlebell comes flying down the steep ramp oh my almost takes out a tsa you know a customs officer dents all i'm embarrassed to say dents all the stainless steel right but um i walk over embarrassed pick up the kettlebell and walk out i bought a uh bowling ball bag like when that's what i need with a roller on it. I bought one of those for a kettlebell, but I was like, what am I doing? I stopped. I stopped.

It's just too much of a pain in the ass because I don't like to check luggage. I like to carry my shit. I like to carry it. Japan, the woman will wrap it perfectly as if it's like Godiva chocolate. Wrap it in cardboard, tape it, put a little handle. And then in high heel shoes, she'll carry it 100 yards like she's sweating and carefully place it in location. So they're very detail oriented. That's a different culture over there, man. Different culture.

Yeah. They have one of the lowest death rates and lowest problems with COVID. They're one of the countries that handled it the best. And we're trying to figure out why. And I think it's probably, they're really good at following rules, very disciplined. And they wear masks all the time when they're sick.

So I lived there for a year. And during COVID, I put together this phone call that happened every morning. I called it the warrior call, 527 a.m. And I had all our teams from 40 plus countries get on the call. 30 minutes. Give me an update from Japan. Give me an update from China.

Give me an update from France. Just very quick. And they shut down Japan right away. I mean, they did not fuck about. And, you know, they're not shaking hands in Japan, right? They've got the bow. Taxi drivers are wearing gloves. They don't fuck about. They're not shaking hands in Japan. They've got the bow. Taxi drivers are wearing gloves. They don't mess around.

No surprise that they killed it right away. It's so interesting how human beings, that basically not much different other than they're from a different climate, different genes, but it's just amazing how differently they live it's it's amazing how they all have like when i was in japan i've only been once but when i was in tokyo i was like everyone is so polite like you're walking down the street and it's like there's no garbage anywhere it's very clean but yes yet it's very packed there's a lot of people and everyone is very

friendly like it's like the way they handle everything everything is very polite very orderly one thing i found interesting i couldn't go to the gym unless i went back to my hotel room and put a long sleeve shirt on no tattoos yeah they wouldn't let me out i'm like i'm not yakuza you're you're a mafia you're a mafia yeah they wouldn't let me show you cannot have any visible at least in the gym that I was working out at. No, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And, you know, they're simple little things they did to affect human behavior. Like, we couldn't find garbage cans on the street like you would in New York or somewhere else. So you find yourself in a situation where you can't dispose of the garbage, right? So now you're sticking it in your pocket so within a month you're not creating garbage anymore because it's a pain in the ass right you're figuring out how to um use less and get rid of less like so they've changed behavior subways spotless yeah i didn't watch

uh i didn't actually get on any of the subways but i everything was spotless it was weird and people are thin. Yeah. Right? Fit. Yeah. They smoke a little too much. They smoke a lot. They drink a lot too, which is weird.

That's weird. But they don't really get fat. No. Yeah. Very unusual culture. And if you follow back to the warrior culture, the samurai, I mean, their long history of martial arts, it's really kind of amazing that this island had so much

innovation and so much mastery of hand-to-hand combat, of swordsmanship, of sword making. I mean, it's a pretty incredible culture. They're the Germans, we like to say, of Asia. Ah, that's a good way of putting it. They are tight. Yeah. So what were you doing over there? Why were you there for a year? So after I helped that guy lose that weight-

How did you do that, by the way? He lost 400 pounds? Yeah. Close to it? Close to it. In a year? 18 months. That's amazing. It was amazing. You're not going to be, we may be at odds on this, but I went, and I'll tell you why. We went raw fruits and vegetables only. And here's a guy that was eating eight egg McMuffins a day for breakfast and two two-liter sprites. Jesus.

Right? So he gets, he balloons to 696 pounds. How long did it take him to get that big? To get back to 696? No, as big as he was. Oh. Was he always big? Yeah. When he left, as big as he was. Oh. Was he always big? Yeah.

When he left, he was crying. He said to me, this is the first time, as far as I can remember, where I fit in one airplane seat. Oh, wow. So this was over a long period of time. But we did raw fruits and vegetables. And then we started with a 10-mile hike every day. 10 miles every day? Every day.

And then it went to 20. Jesus. It went to 10 in the morning, 10 at night, raw fruits and vegetables. We got to a point where he was losing two to three pounds a day. That 10 in 10, that's a long hike and a lot of time. How much time was that taking him every day? He gave up work. He worked for Comcast. They were kind enough to say, you're on leave. I covered the expenses, which was like two stalks of celery and a glass of water every day. It wasn't much of an expense. And he spent the whole day basically

hiking. So he hiked all day. And what kept him motivated? Just this idea that he was going to lose weight at the other end? I took his keys. I took his wallet. And he had no plan. Like, what was he going to do? How was he going to get out? Where was this? We have a farm in Vermont. So we basically had him on lock and key. How did you know this guy before this? I got a phone call that somebody had just finished one of our Spartan events that was extremely overweight and showed me the photo.

And I said, get in touch with this guy right away. This is our Jared. This is our Subway star. You don't want to say Jared now. That's right. Let's let that go. You remember. Yes.

So got in touch with him, and he said, game on. Wow. That's amazing. It was amazing. So he completed the race at 600 pounds? He was tricked. He was told that it was a 5K walk. So normally that 5K Spartan would take take let's say 90 minutes for the average

person he took seven hours so uh tricked into it fought through it probably would have never come back but then i found out about him called him and said hey you're invited to the farm i want to help you do that we documented it we actually found so you didn't know this guy at all before this didn't know that's incredible so you just looked at it as, okay, this is a project. Yeah, I tend to, I like broken wingers. I like helping folks that, you know, I had, I grew up in Queens and Howard Beach. And it was, for whatever reason, organized crime capital of the world. And this is going to sound crazy, but my neighbor was one of the big bosses. And one day when I was pre-teens, he said to me, you know the best thing we could do on this earth?

I said, what? He said, help people. He was a guy that killed people for a living. Because his perspective was he was a protector, right? He would help people even though from the outside we know what they really do. But it stuck with me. You've got to help people. So this was one of those people I helped.

Isn't it crazy that sometimes even people that are just, you would look at them. But it stuck with me. You got to help people. So this was one of those people I helped. Isn't it crazy that sometimes even people that are just, you would look at them, they're like, they're bad people. They have some good advice. Like even morons can occasionally say something like, huh, all right. I got that. You know, like every now and then, like even a real fool will say something that makes a whole lot of sense. He changed my life this guy he he um he said to me my parents were going through a divorce i'm 12 years old and he he wants to help me so he says come over you're going to clean our swimming pool for us i'm gonna pay you 35 a week so um i come over on saturday morning he says all right the first lesson

sit me down for lessons. First lesson is if you're going to come at 8 a.m., you show up 7.45, right? On time is late. Great lesson for life. Second lesson is if I'm paying you to clean the pool, I want you to straighten up the shed, straighten up all the lawn furniture, clean the windows, do whatever the fuck you have to do, but make it so that when I get home, I can't live without you. You are irreplaceable as far as a service provider. And number three, never ask for money. You'll get paid if you do a good job. And it just stuck with me for life. And really, really good lessons from, like you say, a most unlikely source of advice.

Well, not all mob people are bad people. That sounds like a crazy thing to say, but you know, I've known quite a few of them in my life and some of them were genuinely good guys. They were just in a fucked up line of work. A fucked up line of work. Well, you know, a lot of them thought of themselves as soldiers. You know, they really did. They thought of themselves as soldiers in an ancient war that we're not going to understand. We're not talking about people that are shaking people down for money. I'm talking about people who were doing work for organized crime, and they looked at the government as criminals as well. They were like, they're all criminals.

Wall Street, you don't think they're fucking criminals? That was the exact, as a young person growing up in that that was the exact narrative i heard as i was being indoctrinated yeah um that the government was just as bad they kill people from from these guys is what they were saying to me um wall street does it with a pen what the fuck are you looking at cops plan evidence yeah yeah so so um yeah i'm not defending them no but that was their mob's not around but they did a great job with Vegas. They did a good job with Vegas. They ran Vegas very nice.

This guy ended up giving me 700 customers by the time I graduated college that were – Oh, so you had a whole pool cleaning business by then? I had a giant business. Wow. Knock on wood. That were mostly connected to. And I became friends with all these guys. Wow.

And could just go in anybody's, it was pretty unbelievable. It's pretty surreal thinking back. And I wanted, like, who wouldn't want to be that? You're a young kid, you're in this neighborhood. They got money, respect, beautiful cars. Like, I want to be that. That's young kid you're in this neighborhood they got money respect beautiful cars like i want to be that that's the problem with that and you know with young kids growing up around gang members or drug dealers like you look at that and you're like they they have things

that i don't have and they live this life they get respect from people they're feared yeah you know it looks attractive and and um one of the boss's wives said to me one day, because I was alluding to, like, how do I make my bones? And she said, I had red hair, light skin. Everybody else had dark hair, dark skin. And this isn't for you. You stick with cleaning pools. This was from the wife of one of the bosses. So, yeah, that kind of set me straight.

So this guy, you find this guy. He's 600-plus pounds. You whittle him down to, what did you say, 260? 265. He's a big fella already. Must be, right? Yeah, you've got to see that. I probably could find the photo of the pants that he wore coming in

versus the pants he left with. I mean, you could fit three people in a pair of pants. How did you organize his diet? So I didn't tell you. When I was a kid, on one hand was raviolis, ghanoulis, and guns. On the other hand, my mom got into yoga, meditation, health food. She was like bohemian, crunchy. So while you were working for the mob, your mom was a yoga?

Yogi. Had monks in the living room. Very embarrassing. And the reason that happened was because her mom died of cancer and she walked into a health food store to kind of figure things out. This is like in the seventies. It's probably one health food store in New York at the time. There's no yoga journals, no whole foods.

People don't even know what a health food store is now. That's right. You say health food store. They'll look at you like, what are you talking about? Health food. There was, there was incense burning. That's's right. Health food store. They'll be like, what are you talking about? Health food. There was, there was incense burning. That's exactly right. So she walks in, there happens to be an elderly Yogi that just landed in JFK from India in the health food store. She strikes

up a conversation with this Yogi, changes her whole life, right? Comes home, throws away sausage, peppers, eggplant, parts all out of the house. Wow. Parents get divorced for obvious reasons. She's going to go in a different direction. And I am trying my best for the next 10 years to have my friends not come over because I'm embarrassed, right? There's like Indian pictures on the wall. There's beads. There's chanting. There's monks.

And I want to be a gangster. and so um yeah so so anyway so she maybe through just repetition would would just instill this idea that um you got to eat healthy you know you got to get on raw fruits we're gonna go vegan all the all the things that are somewhat popular now and you got to do yoga and you got to sweat every day cold showers way before wim ho Hof like she was into the cold showers really oh my god this was like proper food combining um this idea of intermittent fasting we were fat my mom my mom fasted for 30 days okay this is back in the 70s while meditating so so um so what was that like you were at home while she was doing that yeah my grandfather her her father had to come to the house and rip her out of the room because he thought she was going to die. Like she's getting thin. She's sitting meditating. She was pretty extreme.

And and so I had to balance these two things like like. And so, yeah, I guess what I do now is is a little tough guy, a little yoga. I guess that's what it is. But this guy's diet. Yeah, so it came from my mom. Right, but you're dealing with a man who obviously has an extreme health condition. He's morbidly obese. Like how do you know how many calories to give him, what's healthy, what's safe?

Like how do you know how to proceed there? So if there's doctors listening, they're probably going to say that I'm crazy. But – and then I'll answer the question more succinctly. Mom introduced me to a guy named Dr. Fred Bishi. You could look him up. He's 92 now. He decides 55 years ago that he's only going to eat raw fruits and vegetables. That's it.

This is an Italian guy that was a weightlifter. He's only going to eat raw fruits and vegetables. That's it. There's an Italian guy that was a weightlifter. He's only going to eat raw fruits and veggies. And he's going to test on himself like a guinea pig, does it work or doesn't it work? Is this the best diet or not? I'm just going to test it on myself, he says. And what he finds is that he feels better, all the things that people agree or don't agree with. So I wasn't necessarily knowing that and meeting Dr. Bishi and seeing my mom. I wasn't necessarily into like, how many calories it was just like, if you eat good, healthy food, less ultra processed food, you're not going to starve yourself, eat what you need, you could eat 40 salads, I don't really care was my message to the guy. But you're not going to. You get tired of salad,

right? Once you're tired of salad, then you want the other thing. Then you want to go have a cookie. But if you can only eat salad, you're never going to overeat salad. So all he's eating is fruits and salads. Fruits and veggies. That's it. Everything raw? Everything raw, not cooked. Because the theory was if you cook it, you kill it.

And I don't know how many months into it we are, but he's probably down to 350 pounds, 400 pounds. And he says to me, I got to go to the doctor. And I said, what are you talking about? I got to get my liver levels checked. You're not a doctor. And I'm really worried. You got me on this ridiculous diet. And I looked at him and I said, you stupid motherfucker. I said, you were eating eight egg mcmuffins every day and drinking two two liter sprites how many times did you get your liver levels checked when you were doing that you're worried about eating fruits and vegetables that

that's fucking up your liver anyway I talked him out of it and and he stuck it out but we would have we would have battles like that I'm sure he was in agony. Oh, pain. Yeah. Serious pain. I mean, losing that much body, your body's probably freaking the fuck out. Like, we can't do this. This is not sustainable. This is like a 300, this is a 720 degree turn for him from what he was. Did you ever hear about that guy? We brought it up a few times.

Was it in the 60s, Jamie, the guy who he fasted for a whole year? He did just vitamin drips and he was enormously obese. And he just did vitamin drips and fasted for a whole year. He did just vitamin drips and he was enormously obese. And he just did vitamin drips and fasted for a whole year. But the crazy thing about it was he didn't get stretched out. His body absorbed the skin. I mean, maybe it's just his personal genetics. You know, like some women, they get pregnant, they have massive stretch marks. Other women, they snap right back like a rubber band.

There's no rhyme or reason. It seems to be genetic. But this man who was really fat, he lost all this weight, but he lost it everywhere. Like his skin came back normal sized. He didn't have to have any of his skin removed. I would bet if it wasn't genetic and unique to him. I've done very long distance races where we had limited food. And I've read about people that have been stuck at sea, let's say, for 72 days.

And their teeth get extremely white and their skin gets, you know, if they're not getting sunburned, gets beautiful. I think, I'm speculating, I'm not a doctor. Your body eats any excess. So I'm making that up. I don't know if that's – I think that might be it because, I mean, if you – obviously, we're both morons. But if you think about this guy's skin, that's the thing that always happened. I mean I've had friends that lost a ton of weight, and they would have these big flaps of skin.

He had it. And they wanted to get it removed. But this guy didn't. This guy, his whole body shrunk. Was this Dom D'Agostino told us about this or was this someone? I recall. I'm looking them up, but I'm looking for pictures to see. I heard about it.

Yeah. I heard about it. But that was the fascinating part of the story to me. It was like, whoa, like this guy, not only did he live off of his fat and IV vitamin drips, that's what he took for a whole year. So he lived off of his fat. His body had hundreds and hundreds of pounds of fat to lose. He lost it all.

But that his skin shrank was fascinating to me. I'm like, man, if we could convince people to try that. But again, I don't know if that's the healthiest way to do it. I mean, what kind of long-term damage you're doing, if any? So I'm a believer, again, no scientific. I go back to like ancient times and I say to myself, we never had an abundance of food. You and I couldn't walk into a grocery store and have access. If we had food, we had food. And so I would think our stomachs and our digestive system needs time. It's not used to just constantly taking food on demand.

Wake up, coffee, donut. I don't think our stomachs are made for that. So I don't know about fasting for a whole year. That's a different, right? But also, you have to get to that crazy state to be able to do that you've already abused your body to the point where you're hundreds and hundreds of pounds overweight i mean that that's not normal anyway that's a tough one that doesn't even like you want to go back to hunters and gatherers that wasn't even possible no no they wouldn't

have been able to do that i mean uh and he was probably laying in a bed and probably not very active. Right. Probably. Yeah. So this guy, you just say, you're just going to eat as much salad as you want and as much fruit as you want, but that's it. That's it. And just by doing that and these long walks and how long are these walks taken? You're doing 10 mile hike. Well, in the beginning, as you could imagine, those were really long hikes. Yeah. Right. And probably, you know, two miles an hour, so five hours to get that done. But as he lost weight and he got more fit, he hustled. And on the farm, on our farm in Vermont, it's hilly. So I could either send them through the fields, which we did in the beginning,

but eventually now he's climbing mountains too. And then I started adding weight. Now he's got to carry a little 10- sandbag and a 20 pound sandbag. So we just kept upping the ante as his body adapted to what we were doing to him. And he just kept, boom, kept taking off weight. Wow. And so after 18 months, did you let him have a cake? No, did not let him have a cake. But I'll tell you what, somebody heard about what I did. And this guy shows up, number two, we'll call him. And he's 300 pounds and he wants to get to 200.

And I said, all right, head up the mountain. You're going to sleep in the cabin because I just went through all that time with the other guy. And we're going to be much more efficient here. First week, you're only eating apples. I'm going to clean out your system. I gave him a giant bushel of apples, put them on top of the mountain. 30 days, we had him down to 200 pounds. What?

30 days. 100 pounds in 30 days. That seems scary. Scary. Hiking, raw fruits and vegetables. Here's a guy that was sedentary, a truck driver, not really moving around much, eating shit foods. I mean, it's not rocket science, right? You eat shit food, you're not active, you're gaining weight.

You eat good food, you're very active, you lose weight. Right. And his girlfriend picks him up after 30 days, and they fucking leave the farm, unbeknownst to me, and they go straight to Ben and Jerry's. And he put on like 18 fucking pounds in a day. Oh, yeah. berries and he put on like 18 fucking pounds in a day right yeah so i mean there's psychological issues that i that's not what i'm fixing i'm i'm doing the physical part well i gotta think that a person willing to do 18 months is that what you said with that gentleman he hung in for a while the 18 months is just psychologically you're building up some pretty spectacular endurance. Just raw fruits and vegetables for 18 months and hiking 20 hours a day.

I mean, you're putting some miles on your mind there. I mean, that's strengthening that muscle of discipline in a way that he probably had never done in his whole life. He got tough. He finished a big event with us. That was like the big moment for him at the end. And got in a single seat in an airplane when he left. Got a girlfriend. Like stuff started to come together for him.

So does he maintain? He was at 265 at our best. And my latest understanding is at 350. He bounced back about 100. Oh, that's not good. Better than 696. Yeah, but 100 leads to 200. What did he do differently?

I mean, you come off the raw fruits and veggies and you stop walking 20 miles a day. Yeah, but he— Slip a cake in here and there. Yeah. Right? That's got to suck, though. Like, you get them down to, like, this really amazing weight. You got to—I mean, what am I going to do?

I can't keep all these people on the farm. There's nothing you can do. Right. No, but still. You get them there, and then they got to fly am I going to do? I can't keep all these people on the farm. There's nothing you can do. No, but still. You get them there and then they gotta fly. They gotta do it. Yeah, it sucks that you got that far and then you see them put 100 pounds. How long did it take them to put

100 pounds on? I'm sure it was 90, 100 days. But they snap back. I mean, it's that pendulum swing, right? Like, oh my god, I get regular food now. I don't have to hike as much anymore. Yeah. I mean, I'm a believer. I don't know if you are. I mean, it's that pendulum swing, right? Like, oh, my God, I get regular food now. I don't have to hike as much anymore. Yeah. I mean, I'm a believer.

I don't know if you are. I'm a believer the number one motivator for human beings is the avoidance of discomfort, right? Because if we didn't avoid discomfort, we'd freeze in the snow. We'd fall off a cliff. We'd get in cold, right? So we're always constantly, even subconsciously, avoiding discomfort. And to be healthy, you've got to be uncomfortable. You've got to train.

You've got to eat healthy. Those are hard things to do. Go to bed early, not drink as much. And so unless somebody is holding you accountable or unless you're, like, obviously you're a high performer. I'm a bit of a maniac in that. Like, I'm more uncomfortable if I'm not optimal, if I'm not being my best. Right.

But most people that's not the case. You have to kind of make your mind into – your mind has to seek discomfort. It has to seek these difficult tasks. You have to enjoy it. And you have to figure out a way to make your mind enjoy those things. And some people it comes easy and some people it doesn't. Some people it takes a long time. I always tell people the best thing you could ever do is force yourself to a schedule.

Just write it down. Like today I have to do an hour on the treadmill. I have to do an hour. No matter what. Even if you're fucking walking. You're doing an hour on a treadmill. The next time you're going to do it, okay, you did an hour and this is the amount of miles you got in. Next time you're going to, you know, add three miles, put, put an extra three miles in that one hour and just keep doing things like that. Write down today, I'm going to do a

hundred pushups and I'm gonna do a hundred sit-ups and I'm gonna do a hundred chin-ups. That's today. And then force yourself, force yourself to adhere to a schedule, make a Monday, Wednesday, Friday workout schedule. Give yourself some time off, you't even crush yourself to the point where you can't do it. Make it so that you really appreciate those Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you're going to fucking get after it. And this is what you're going to do. Most people just try to go work out and you're kind of aimless and you show up and you pick up the jump rope and you jump a little rope. Maybe you hit the heavy bag a little bit. Maybe you do some curls.

But you don't really have an aim. That's why people like to hire trainers because a trainer will tell you what to do. Well, you can tell yourself what to do. If you don't have money for a trainer, you don't even have to have fucking equipment. With bodyweight squats, sit-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, you can kick your fucking ass. You could give yourself a brutal full body weight workout. And you can find these for free on YouTube. There's a ton of them. There's a ton of these body weight workouts you could do. Just force yourself. Write it down. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'm going to do 100 push-ups. I'm going to do 100 chin-ups. I'm

going to do 100 sit-ups, even if it takes me all fucking day, even if I have to do 10 and 10 and 10 and keep going all day, just that's what you do. Do 10 pushups, take a break for 20 minutes, do another 10, but get those hundred in. Here's the question I have for you. I agree with you a hundred percent body weight and discipline, but you, you were a fighter. Tell me if you agree with this. In the seventies, I remember as a young kid seeing rocky yeah and that was my introduction to for many kids actually in america that was our introduction to fighting and what for whatever reason at a very young age it was intriguing to me that a person a fighter would get out of shape and then get in shape yeah why wouldn't they just stay in shape

the whole time right yeah it's a discipline issue. It's also like a lot of fighters are wild people. One of the things that fuels them is not just this desire to compete. They're wild. They like to get fucked up. They like to drink. They like to party. They like to womanize.

They like to go out on the town and be the fucking man. And they get fat. Like Roberto Duran was famous for that. He'd get real fat in between fights. then you'd have to lose weight and just you know that there's guys that don't like bernard hopkins never never gained weight and he was super disciplined and always ate really clean and was a elite athlete deep into his 40s i mean he was a world champion deep into his 40s yeah which is very unusual for a boxer and and so my question is is um makes sense why they go in and out and they don't they don't maintain it but then the very disciplined fighters would perform better i would imagine right because then yeah in the for the most part yeah do you think because this is the

way i i call it the spartan paradox right? You probably have a better name for it from all the years of fighting, but like, if you have a date on the calendar, the Spartans knew they were going to battle. If you know you got a fight coming up, you'll do those pushups, those squats,

right? And those crunches. Some guys will. But if you know you got a battle coming. Okay, I'll give you an example. Andy Ruiz. Okay.

Andy Ruiz, he comes in last minute, knocks out Anthony Joshua, becomes the heavyweight champion of the world. First Mexican heavyweight champion of the world. He's a fucking hero. Gets fat as fuck, balloons up to 280. This is while training for the next fight. Weighs in at 280. Loses the rematch.

Knew it was coming. Got rid of his trainer, had all sorts of fucking problems in camp partied too much knew it was coming knew the date was coming wouldn't do the work wouldn't do the work just just was living the lifestyle just got too wrapped up in the fact that he was the champ and too wrapped up in partying and next thing you know he lost the title and now you know he he's faced with this very difficult task of trying to get a fight for the title now because he's a dangerous fighter still but people he's a dangerous fighter still. But he's not really the draw that he could have been.

If he had beat Joshua the second time, he's a superstar. He's up there with Tyson Fury. He got cocky. Well, whatever it was, man, he got lost in the lifestyle. The lifestyle gets a lot of these guys. You're hanging out with a lot of your buddies that you came up with. Maybe you've got a buddy who drives you around. Maybe you got another buddy who does security,

and they like to party, and there's girls, and there's maybe a little bit of cocaine, a little bit of alcohol. Next thing you know, you're fat again. And this is real common. It's real common. Would you say, at least I see it in our community, is for the most part, most people,

if they know they got something hard coming, they'll wake up a little earlier. It's a good motivator, but some people cram for tests, right? Some people push it. Like if you tell someone they have a fight in three months, some people start drinking water right now and they start eating healthy right now. And they write down a schedule. They start monitoring their heart rate. Maybe they get a whoop strap and start you know checking what their heart rate variability is make sure they're recovering from their workouts correctly and do it scientifically other people go three

months all right we're gonna party for a month and then two months i'm gonna get after it and then two months into it look i only need six weeks let's go to fucking cancun let's go do this let's go and then they say i'll be fine i'll fuck this motherfucker up no matter what and then come fight time they know they didn't put in enough work and they're nervous and so they talk shit at the weigh-ins they try to push the guy they try to fuck with his head you know that you see all this insecurity come out the psychological aspect of fighting is uh it's a crazy battle and oftentimes that psychological aspect of it is either reinforced by discipline or the opposite like if you know you don't have any discipline like there's it plays on your psyche and it fucks with you and it really gives guys tremendous anxiety there's a lot

of very very talented fighters that for whatever reason, are just not very disciplined. It's really common. Sometimes the most physically talented guys, it came a little too easy for them. Maybe they have some unique gifts. Maybe they're very fast, or maybe they hit very hard. And those things are really kind of genetic, especially hitting hard. especially hitting hard. You could take a kid who is just starting out,

and he can hit harder than a guy who has been fighting for 10 years. It's weird. It's just the way you're built. It's just the way you're built. Some guys just have it, and some guys will never have it. They could be world champions. They could be fighting 10, 15 years and then retire and never have a real one-punch knockout power. Other guys are born with it.

You get a guy first day of the gym, he hits the pads, and you're like, holy shit. And other guys don't. And some of those guys with the power, sometimes they just fuck off. Sometimes they're not disciplined. Sometimes the guys who don't have the power, they work harder. And they develop a better, more well-rounded skill set to compensate for the fact they don't have that one-punch knockout power. Would you say – I have an opinion, but would you say the athlete, doesn't matter if it's boxing, whatever, right, that has both, that has the genetics and that just – That's a Michael Jordan.

That's a Michael Jordan. That's a Roy Jones Jr. Right. You know, that's a spectacular athlete, but he's also super intelligent. Disciplined. Disciplined. You need intelligence, too. Like, people look at intelligence, unfortunately, like book smart.

And by book smart, I don't mean someone who's intelligent, who's uneducated, is not capable of being book smart. Because most of them are. But, like, Mike Tyson is a great example. Like, Mike Tyson is a very intelligent guy. And when you talk to him about boxing history, when you talk to him about the history of philosophy, when he starts talking about great warriors and Marcus Aurelius and some of the books that he's read,

he's very intelligent. But he's intelligent in figuring out how to fuck people up. You can't get that good at heavyweight boxing Just on physical talent which clearly he had and just on genetics which also clear He was 190 pounds and he was 13 Wow when he was 13 Teddy Atlas told me he took him to these smokers And they wouldn't believe it. They're like how is that holds that kid? He's like he's 13 He's like get the fuck out of here He's like okay

16 and so he put him in there with 16 yearyear-olds, and he would knock them out cold. Wow. Because he was just incredible. He had both. Yes, and he had focus and drive. But that perfect unicorn is a person who's obsessed, but also extremely intelligent and gifted. That's the unicorn.

That's John Jones. That's Roy Jones Jr. That's Michael Jordan. That's these freaks. Yeah jr that's michael jordan that's the these these freaks yeah you know that when you see them you like yes right where they're everything they have the whole thing they have the passion for the sport they have this insane dedication and they also have incredible talent yeah so so um those are the goats yeah those are the goats so i i um i graduate high school and i want to go back to the neighborhood. I don't want to go to college, right, because for obvious reasons,

I want to be around these guys, and I got this business that's doing great. And a friend of mine says, because my mom moved to Ithaca, New York, to get me away from the neighborhood when they got divorced. So a friend of mine in Ithaca says, why don't we go to Cornell? Cornell's in Ithaca. And I said, how the don't we go to Cornell? Cornell's in Ithaca. And I said, how the fuck would we go to Cornell? My grades suck. I'm not planning on going to college.

I got this business. He said, my dad's a professor. He'll get us in. So coming from the neighborhood I came from, that made sense. We got a guy that's going to get us into college. So we both apply. We do great in the application.

We do great in the interview. Neither of us get in. But now I'm interested, right? When somebody pushes back and says, no, you're not allowed to come here, now you want in. It wasn't even my intention to go to college, but now I want to go. So, because they said no, right? So I say to him, and this ties to what you were just saying, I say to him, well, fuck, if we're going to do it,

why don't I spend the summer going to St. John's in Queens while I'm doing my pool business and learn how to study? Because I've never studied. Buckle down, get serious, get disciplined. He says, screw that, we're going to go to Vegas. Why don't we go to Vegas, give up your business, go to Vegas, we'll party all summer, and then we'll buckle down in September when we get here.

Why would we waste the summer? This is our last summer. So we diverge. And I study, and I run my business, and he goes to Vegas. And we both come back, and we reapply. We do well that semester. We're allowed to go, it's called extramural, allowed to take three classes non-matriculated in the school and then apply. We both do it and they don't accept us.

So he diverts, he goes to Vegas, he goes to UNLV. And I stay and I say, fuck this, I'm doing it again. And I do it a second time, I do it a third time. Finally, fourth time, they accept me and I pound my chest and I tell people this story, right? Look how great I am. I was disciplined unlike him who went to he became a giant medical marijuana and i'm fucking laying barbed wire for a living so maybe maybe discipline and that guy i don't know

but um well you know sometimes people find a path that suits their personality. Oftentimes people confuse discipline with focus. And this is why that's important. There are things that some people can excel at because they're focused on them and because they're drawn to it. And they have an incredible passion for it. Versus, like, you tell a guy, like, hey, you know, you're going to study to be an electrical engineer. And it's like, I don't want to be a fucking electrical engineer. Well, you got to have discipline. And so they don't have the drive.

And they don't get excited about it. And they don't do. But if you tell that guy, whatever, you're going to be a golfer. And he fucking loves golf. And he's practicing every day. And he becomes a professional golfer. And you say, well, I thought that guy didn't have any discipline. Well, it's not that he didn't have any discipline. He's just not interested in that other thing. I was never a disciplined kid, but I was,

but I would find things that I loved and I was obsessed. And I always felt embarrassed by it because people would say, oh, your son, like to my mom, your son is so disciplined. And she'd be like, my son's fucking crazy. Like, he's not disciplined. He finds these things and that's all he does all day long. Like, it's not really discipline. Because he doesn't clean his room. He's fucking lazy.

There's all sorts of shit he's supposed to do. I never did my homework. There's all the... But if I had a thing that I was into, I was obsessed. You were crazy about it. But it would bother me that I didn't really have discipline. Like if I had jobs that I had to do, I didn't do a good job at them, like construction jobs that I had.

But when it came to martial arts- How did you find those things though? How did you find those things? Did you stumble upon them? I just got lucky. I just got lucky. Martial arts, I just got lucky. And it clicked with me like almost immediately.

I became obsessed, you know know and I wanted to be I wanted to excel at it and so I was just doing it all day long and it was kind of stunning from for my family cuz they didn't even know I had that in me like they thought that I was just gonna be this ne'er-do-well you know because I just really couldn't concentrate on these jobs that I would have I just I was bored but when I wasn't bored I was very excited by things I think for whatever reason whether it's my genetics or my upbringing, I just had a very weird personality that didn't fit in with normal. I was allergic to the idea of having a nine to five.

I've never been in an office. I've never worked in a place where I was around a bunch of people. Never. Never had one. I just delivered newspapers. I worked on construction sites. I drove limos. And then I became a comic. And I taught Taekwondo along the way. But that's it.

I luckily dodged that bullet, but that was the fear. There was something in me that was like, I can't fucking do that. I would go to visit my mom at work. I would see people that were working in an office. I'm like, I can't fucking do this. It just repulsed you. It was like I was in a sewer. I'd be in there. I'd be like, I gotta get out of here. It just repulsed you. It was like I was in a sewer I would be in there and be like I gotta get out of here these people. There's no fucking light in here

They're all wearing ties They're all wearing slippery-soled shoes and you got to listen to this Jackoff was in the corner office like what the fuck kind of life is this it just felt Constricting like there was no oxygen like I had to get out of the room You have ADD? I'm sure I have it. 100%. I don't have it.

I don't know if it's real. I don't know what that means. Well, I read a great book. It's called The Edison Gene. And I've never been clinically diagnosed, but I definitely have it. And you'd know. I think I probably have it. We probably both have it.

And so he argues, the author argues in the Edison gene that really it's not a thing. What it is is a hunter-gatherer gene that's a remnant gene. He says we were all hunter-gatherers. And as a hunter-gatherer, we have to scan the environment. We're looking for threats. We're looking for things to eat. Right. And so you're all over the place.

But then when that deer comes out, you're on, just like you found martial arts and you were on, right? But otherwise, you're kind of scanning the environment and you're not really interested and then you're interested. And then we became an agrarian society. And now we're planting seeds and we're sitting there drinking coffee and we got the suits on, right? And we're a little more proper. But some people still have that hunter-gatherer gene and you're like i don't want to fucking sit around and wait for shit to grow i want to make shit happen i want to i want to go after stuff so that's his that's his argument and i suspect

um that's what you're talking about well see here's where i diverge there because i think gathering and farming and stuff is kind of exciting. Like growing things and watching food come out of the ground and processing that food or harvesting that food and then eating it. Like eating a salad that you grew yourself. There's something very rewarding. Thousand percent agree with that. Very rewarding about that. But sitting still. Right.

That's not rewarding. What's not rewarding to me is being compliant to a bunch of other people. What's not rewarding to me is being compliant to a bunch of other people where you've got some weird rigid rules and you're under fluorescent lighting and you're in some strange environment that's not natural. What I think is the people that adapt to that world, that nine to five world, are more compliant. They're more willing. German, Japanese. I don't even – yeah, maybe in some way, but I don't know. Those tendencies. I don't know whether it's cultural, but there's something about the human beings that are willing to do that office work.

They're willing to go and abide by the rules of human resources. That just, there's no, I have none of that in me. To me, that's like death. Here's the question, though. People that are listening to this, I found, I don't know if you agree with this. There's a, there were a ton of kids along the way of growing up as I was building my business that would say, Oh, I'm not into this. I'm not into that. Kind of like you described yourself and they don't do anything because they're looking for that thing. And I would argue, uh, do something, do fucking something until you find

that thing. Yeah. I've never been that kid though. And I've always been into things. I always argue, do something. Do fucking something until you find that thing. I've never been that kid, though. I've always been into things. I was into art or I was into something. I always found things that I was interested in, just none of them seemed like they were normal things that other people wanted to do for a living, like the path, like a career path.

But I think that there's a lot of people that don't have any, there's no one, they're not modeling their life after someone that they see that they admire. Someone that's successful, someone that is doing something that they enjoy and love. Sometimes kids have to see that. And if their parents are living a bullshit life and their neighbors are living a bullshit life and most of their family lives a bullshit life. They just fucking lay around. And then they seek refuge in drugs or video games or something that stimulates them. And video games are a real problem. They're a real problem.

Why? Because they're fucking fun. Addictive. Yeah. Well, I have a real problem with them. And you do them and they're real exciting, but you don't get anywhere. It's like you could do martial arts, arts right you could learn jujitsu you get obsessed by jujitsu and then three years later you're you're like an elite jujitsu athlete like you're entering in

competitions you're a purple belt you're moving up yeah you're doing well you're thinking like i might be able to open my own school one day confidence yeah if i have a hundred students and those hundred students are paying me X amount of dollars per month I can make a living Holy shit I can have a This would be amazing And then you see your jiu-jitsu school And your jiu-jitsu instructor has all these students

And drives a Mercedes And he's got a nice family And like that's the future This way you're doing something exciting and fun And you don't Or you could just be playing fucking video games Three years later you could be that same kid just playing video games waiting for the next whatever the fuck game is you know next xbox game to come out and you're gonna waste your time

you have children i have children and um it's a big battle in the house and and my kids i don't know if you're you're going through, but my kids are now saying, well, dad, this guy made all this money with this video game. He's a man. That's real too. That's real too now. So that's one in a billion, kid.

I don't know if it's one in a billion, but look, I heard the same argument about comedy. My own parents were like, do you know how few people make it as a comedian? I was like, okay. Does anybody make it? Somebody makes it, right? They figure out how to do it? They make a living?

I'm going to do that. Just stop. I know what I'm doing. I was real lucky that my parents were not around very much. So I didn't get much advice. So I figured it out myself. So there was no one telling me I couldn't do it. Greenfields.

Yeah. I was like, I'm going to find my way through this. And since no one's telling me it's impossible, no one's telling me I can't do it. Got it. Greenfields. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to find my way through this. And since no one's telling me it's impossible, no one's telling me I can't, occasionally I would hear someone say, what are the odds? I'm like, listen to this fucking loser. My thought was always like, that guy's a loser. If you think like that, you're a loser. But there are kids that make a lot of fucking money playing video games.

But the thing is, you have to be adaptable. You have to be able to play multiple video games because the one video game that you get really good at what are the odds that's gonna be around five years from now you know like what's the big one now like fortnight is that do they make money off of that yeah and then there's a Call of Duty they make money off that what's the big money Starcraft used to be the big one right that League of Legends, Counter-Strike.

Counter-Strike is still the Half-Life mod? Yeah, variations of it have come out, but it's still basically the same exact game. They don't make money off Quake though, right? Not really. Nah, really. No. One or two guys do, I think. Yeah, see, it's you gotta pick the right game.

You can be obsessed with the wrong game. What are you going to do? Are you going to spend 5, 10 hours a day in that house? You have to. You would have to. I'd vomit. Let's go down this road. Can I read you a text? You're going to die with this one.

A month ago, about a month ago, I said, listen, school's out. All the kids are playing video games. I'm going to hold a camp on the farm, kind of like what I did with the guy that was heavy. I'm going to invite friends and family's kids because nobody's going to send me kids that don't know me. It's going to be a fucking badass camp, 14 days of hell, no video games, no phones. And we are just going to crush these kids and turn them into little soldiers. So I get... How old are these kids you're talking about? I had my daughter, my seven-year-old daughter, all the way up to an 18-year-old. So I have four children. So seven to 18, most of them 11 and 13. Now, is this their idea or their parents' idea?

So I get the idea, and I reach out to a bunch of friends and family, and I said, I want to hold this camp, call it from the end of June through mid-July. Who's in? Who wants to send me their kids? You're going to keep the kids there? And I'm going to keep the kids on the farm.

I'm going to feed them. It's on me, but I'm going to turn them into, you know, it'll be fun. I'm embellishing a little bit when I use some of these words like fun. And really what I want to do is turn them into warriors and get them off the frigging phones. And selfishly for me, selfishly, I want my kids to be like, it's hard for me to do this to my kids alone. But if there's another 16 kids around around 18 kids around everybody gets sucked up in the vortex right right so anyway uh first day so unbeknownst to me we left their phones uh in their

rooms and unbeknownst to me every night when they got done with their work they would then get on the phones of course they would i just wasn't thinking about it and start texting the parents get me the fuck out of here. This guy is fucking nuts, right? But I don't know that's happening. My wife's not there. I got our four children. I got 18 other kids.

And the texts that are going back to the parents those first three days, I'm going to read you one. But they're going nonstop. And they eventually get to my wife. She then immediately races to Vermont like what are you doing this is not even your business why are you doing this people are going to hate us what if we can't have we can't do this we're so um I'm fighting with her I'm fighting with the kids parents because now I'm now I'm five days in and I'm saying listen our four kids are going to finish the dissent of kids are going to finish this. But what is it? You set up a schedule?

So I got an Olympic wrestler living with us, a guy named Andy Rovat, who just happens to live with us, which is a story. I've got a mountain warfare school veteran who's there in Vermont. And I've got this woman we call the seed huntress. So she's more like my mom, bohemian, this and that. And those three people are going to provide expertise along with my insanity of, all right, we're going up and down the mountain, we're carrying rocks, we're going in ice cold water, and we're going to run it like buds, basically, the kids, the girls and the boys, right? So at the end of it, I get texts from the parents that say, do you know, let me send you some of the texts I was receiving while you were there, Joe.

So this is the parent. How's it going? To his 15-year-old son. Kid responds, awful. Parent says, Joe said you're doing great. Kid says, this might be the worst experience of my entire life. It's literally like we're in the military. Parent's not taking the bait.

Parent says, there's got to be something good about it. Kid says, literally nothing. Parent says, is it harder than a seven-minute Peloton ride? Because he just won't take the fucking bait. Kid says, dad, you try carrying 35-pound rocks up and down the mountain all day. Dad says, come on, no funny stories? Kid says, when they get mad at us, they stick us in a freezing cold river until somebody cries.

No, and the counselors are terrible. Dad says, what else did you do today? That sounds like a dad who knows his son needs this. Yeah, you know, and this is the right kind of dad. I didn't have experience ever before dealing with parents that wouldn't let their kids struggle a little bit. Right. And so I happened to have a dad. This dad didn't come after me.

The other parents were all coming after me like, oh, we don't want psychological damage. You should release the kids. Your wife's got to come there and stop this. Dad, I spent 45 minutes keeping my legs off the ground six inches today. Dad says, it'll be great for your six pack. Kid says, dad, this place sucks. You never have enough water. You never have enough food.

I almost passed out today. Are you and mom hearing me? Dad says, don't be a pussy. Really? Yeah. Wow. Kid says. I like the dad.

Yeah. Kid says, if you or mom spent one day in these conditions, you would both be dead. Dad says, you need to embrace it. Oh, boy. Hang on. I'm going to read you the book. Maybe the dad should have said, fuck you. I'll do it with you. Well, it gets better because at the end, I need to embrace it. Oh, boy. Hang on. I'm going to read you the book. Maybe the dad should have said, fuck you. I'll do it with you.

Well, it gets better because at the end, I did have the dad. I had the parents come. Dad finally says, do you want us to call Joe? Well, call Joe. He'll lighten up on you. Kid says, you clearly never met this guy. He is a psychopath. Okay?

This is an illegal camp run by a crazy person. This is a 15-year-old kid who has tricked kids to come here to do farm work for him, manual labor. And he punishes us whenever he feels like it. And if you or mom were here, you would understand that. You put your son in a dangerous situation, but instead you're sitting on a fancy couch in our home laughing at our son's serious health concerns. Wow. Needless to say, the kid thanked me at the end. How long was he there for?

14 days. 14 days in hell. So he's five days in when he's— He's five days in. And I could read, I got dozens— How did he turn around in the next nine— You know what? Our message to them—well, we took the phones.

Once I got the tip off, right? We took the phones, and there was no way out. And the message to them was, when you can't change your situation, you change yourself. You're fucking stuck here. Figure it out. And what I just read to you makes it sound a lot worse than it actually was. Well, he was probably being dramatic. He was being dramatic, and it's hard work.

But kids need it. You're not getting that in a basement. probably being dramatic he was being dramatic and it's hard work but um kids need it you're not getting that in a basement to understand that you can struggle and you can you can realize that sometimes when things are really hard to do you think oh my god i gotta stop doing this but once you do it and you complete it you have a satisfaction this sense of satisfaction that you did something really difficult that is irreplaceable. Some kids never get that and they just stay fat and stupid their whole life. And some kids, they get these little lessons and then they realize like you can push yourself and you can get somewhere.

You know, some kids get real lucky and they get involved in sports or martial arts early. And one of the best benefits of sports is you realize that through hard work, you get improvement. Through improvement, you get success. Through success, you get that big dopamine rush. You get that good feeling. You get confidence. Yeah.

You get this knowledge. You get the girl. Yeah, you get, sometimes. I didn't. But you get this knowledge that you can do something that's difficult and you can overcome, even though it feels like you can't. That's one of the beautiful things about the belt system of martial arts. You start off as a beginner. You start off as a beginner.

You start off as a white belt. And then as things go on, you get a new belt. And when your instructor takes your old belt off and ties your new one off, your new one on, you have this amazing feeling of accomplishment. Like, wow. And then you know that there's a goal. At the end of the rainbow is a black belt. Like, I might get to be a black belt someday. It's gamified. Yeah. It's real possible. And then you know other people that rainbow is a black belt. I might get to be a black belt someday. It's gamified.

Yeah, it's real possible. And then you know other people that do get their black belt, and you're like, wow, what's it like? You see people that are a little bit ahead of you in the race. You're like, this is incredible. So you have people to model. You have other successful people to model. You see those black belts. Yeah, right.

You see disciplined people. When you talk about cold showers, when I was a kid, there was a black belt. When I was just starting out, his name was Bob Caffarella. When I was a white belt, he was a black belt, and he was living at the school. And he would take it. We lived in Boston. It was cold as fuck in the winter. And this guy would take cold showers.

And we were all terrified of him anyway. But he would get in that shower, and I just couldn't believe he could do it because it was so cold. And this was after training, right? You know, he would just get in there and just he wouldn't even budge just just sit there and breathe Why that fucking and I tried it one time I got in there. I turned that water on cold I stepped in there was like fuck this and I got out and I ran into the locker room and everyone was laughing I was like, how is he doing that? But another level some people you you learn from them, you know

You see these people that can over – now I take regular cold showers. Now I do cryotherapy. I get in 250 degrees below zero and I stand there for three minutes. I wait 10 minutes. I go back in there again. You learn how to overcome. You learn how to deal with that. You learn you wouldn't die, right?

You also learn that it's not that bad. It's an opportunity to go inward. It's an opportunity to just, to focus your energy and your thoughts on the deepest aspects, the deepest center of your mind and think about your breathing and think about that. And don't think about the fact, oh my God, it's so cold. Oh my God, it's so hot. I'm in this sauna. I got to get out of there. Instead of thinking about that, just think about your breathing. oh, my God, it's so cold. Oh, my God, it's so hot. I'm dishonest. I got to get out of there.

Instead of thinking about that, just think about your breathing. Just go deep. Close your eyes. Go deep to the center of your mind and stay there. Just stay there. Quiet down. Yeah, you learn. You learn how to do that.

Or you don't. Or you stay fat. You stay stupid. You stay lazy. You don't do anything. Maybe you never had that chance. Maybe. Right?

And that's why I wanted the kids there because they'll never get that. Like you said, if they're not in a sport or whatever. But when I found, when all these texts were coming in, my wife wanted a divorce. I mean, all this shit was happening just three, four weeks ago. I got in touch with a neurosurgeon. And I said, would you talk to the kids? And the neurosurgeon said, which I didn't know. You probably know this.

He said, kids, when you take on something hard, could be a cold shower, could be this 14 day crazy camp with Joe, the belt system, if you don't finish it, it leaves a physical gap in the brain. Literally, we could see as a neurosurgeon that the wires are unconnected, you never finished it.

But when you finish it, it leaves like train tracks. And so the more tracks you could lay like you were laying them as you were getting the belt system right uh the advantage you're gonna have an advantage over your competitors so i i thought that was interesting like kids need to do hard shit yeah and they need to finish what they start too i think adults do too i think everybody does but kids need to learn it you know and many kids today don't learn it. You know, it's sad. It is sad. And I think sports are really the best way for kids to learn it.

Sports are the best way because there's something about physical pursuits where you have to motive. The mind has to force the body to plow through discomfort. It's a different kind of mental strength. And there's mental strength in terms of like your ability to sit down and be disciplined and study and, you know, do homework assignments and complete projects and do complex, you know, problems and problem solving. There's mental strength in that too.

But there's also the strength of the mind telling the body who the fucking boss is. Like, no, no, no. I love that sentence. That's what it is. You're no, no, no. I love that sentence. That's what it is. You're like, no, bitch. Your body's like, we gotta stop. Fuck you. We're doing this.

Fuck you. You almost have to have two people in your brain. You have to have this general, and you have to have a soldier. And the general's like, listen, motherfucker. We know what we're doing here. We're gonna get this done. This is what we're doing today.

You got a list of shit on that paper. It's gotta get done. done it's 98 degrees outside and you're gonna do it out here in the sun you got plenty of water let's go i agree with that um ct obviously people like that have have that well he's the one we should tell everybody he's the one who brought us together ct fletcher he also broke your kettlebell he also broke my kettlebell today he threw your kettlebell and you had to get it welded today. Literally, I show up at his place this morning to get some advice. I'm going to be talking to Joe Rogan. You've met him.

Can you give me some advice? He grabs the kettlebell, throws it like a tennis ball. It's pretty hard to throw this thing like a fucking tennis ball. He's a tank. Breaks it. Thank God there's a welding shop. Because you had said to me in a text, hey, make sure you bring the kettlebell. So I'm like, I'm going to show up with a broken fucking kettlebell. Well, it would be a funny

story if you showed up with a broken one, but it's cool that you got it welded. No, but he's a general and a soldier. He's an animal. Well, CT's one of the most inspirational people online and one of the most inspirational people I've ever met. And if you watch any of his videos, you know, he's just

a special person. And really you want to talk about a guy who's gone through a journey after open heart surgery and having his heart replaced now he has a new person's heart i still think he doesn't know whose heart it is right he said he's an elderly woman he told me elderly woman i got from him which is crazy it's crazy knowing the size of his biceps and the workout he puts me this morning he um he says we're gonna do this uh what the hell did he call it random selection get on the um tricep push down which i don't do i do body weight stuff and uh i'm just gonna just

decide joe every 10 reps what weight i'm changing it to and he just kept changing change we get to 100 reps my triceps are on fire he said just so you know when i was training to be world champion i would start with 300 reps as a warm-up so he's just an animal yeah his his arms are ridiculous still to this day he like he thinks he's lost muscle size like how do you how do you know like fucking big your arms are he's a big boy he's enormous and when he was younger he was really enormous but he had a terrible diet unfortunately and you know burger king or mcdonald's and a lot of shakes fries and shakes and just a lot of sugar and nonsense and bullshit and you know when he was

uh power lifting when he was enormous you know he was just just eating whatever the fuck you felt like eating getting after it yeah You're a hunter. Yeah. So I got a hunting story. Okay. So I'm not a farm boy at all, but I meet my wife, like I said, 2000. We buy the farm in Vermont. Why did you decide to buy a farm in Vermont? You know, so- Where were you living at the time?

So I, we'll go back. So I built the swimming pool business, turned into a little bit of a construction company. We'll go back. So I built the swimming pool business, turned into a little bit of a construction company, somehow fight my way, graduate college, and meet a guy at Cornell who says, what are you doing when you graduate? I said, I'm going back to the neighborhood. And he says, well, you're a fucking idiot.

He goes, you got to go to Wall Street. I don't know anything about Wall Street. I remember the 87 crash. I figure people don't make money there anymore. He says, it's just like the neighborhood, only they do it with a pen instead of a gun. You got to go to Wall Street. So he pushes me there. And I land on Wall Street. I get a job.

I eventually build a business. I had a nice run. But just like you, I didn't want to be at a desk. I didn't like it. I didn't feel good. I started to gain weight. The folks around me, we were making a lot of money. But folks had

psychological problems I couldn't fix. Like, I can't believe John next to me got $50,000 more bonus than I did. We're making more money than we deserve. Are you fucking crazy? Like, are you kidding me? Right? Like they had problems I couldn't fix. So I was dying to get out of there. I had a picture of a red barn on my desk. I just wanted to go to a farm. I don't know why. I just wanted to leave. Sold the business. Found a farm in Vermont.

Covered bridge, idyllic, the whole thing. And meet my wife. And we buy this farm. And got a tractor. How long have you been doing this? So 20 years ago. Bought the farm. And you been doing this? So 2000 So 20 years ago Bought the farm And then

And you just decide Vermont? On what? You know what? Vermont's gorgeous I was on a I didn't know anything I knew Queens My wife

The girl I met was from Boston I didn't really You know If you're in Queens You know Connecticut I didn't really know Vermont I'd skied in Vermont You probably skied in Vermont

And I never have. You never have? I did some gigs up there, though. Okay. When I was doing stand-up. It's beautiful. It's cold as fuck in the winter.

It's cold as fuck. And so we had gone on a date, my wife and I, to a friend in Idaho. We went out to Idaho for like a snowshoeing thing. And on the way back, I saw this real estate magazine in the plane, and it had homes and ranches in Jackson Hole, which you got to be pretty wealthy to buy anything in Jackson Hole. 20 million, 25, crazy numbers. There was one ad in that magazine that said a farmhouse in Vermont, covered bridge, mountain, horses, 420 grand. I was like, wow, I got to gotta go to Vermont she's in Boston

I'm in New York it's a lot cheaper than fucking Jackson Hole so no one's up there too no one's up there so we bought the place and we settled in

sold the business in New York and started making kids I bought some Scottish Highlander cows and started to learn so those are those weird hairy cows?

The big hairy cows, the big horns, epic looking. Why'd you get those? They're beautiful. They're just gorgeous. Just for that reason? Yeah, no reason. They're like woolly mammoths. Just want to have cool looking cows?

Yeah, like everybody's got a regular cow. Let's get these cows. How did you get those? I just talked to a guy or another guy and he sent five fucking Scottish Highlanders. Then we had goats and chickens and trying to figure it all out. One day the chickens came, the chickens come in a post office. They deliver them. And so I got, I used to have chickens.

What do you do with them? Right. I got 155 chickens. You got 150? So I had all these little chicks. That's a lot of eggs. That's a lot of eggs. So, so.

Did you get roosters too? I got roosters. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Right. Just order more animals. I don't know. Right fuck I was doing, right? Just order more animals. I don't know, right? We're a farm. You're supposed to have animals.

So anyway, I'm doing all this work to the farm. I'm fixing up the old structures and stuff. And I need somebody to do excavation because the winter's coming. And we're going to flood the basement if I don't change the elevation of land a little bit, get the water to run away when it snows. But I can't find anybody to do excavation because they're telling me it's hunting season. And I don't hunt.

I don't know anything about hunting. And I said, somebody's got to want a fucking job. In Queens, you get any, like, somebody's looking for work. Got to find somebody. So a guy says to me, look, I'll rent you an excavator, a machine, and I think I got a guy that'll not go hunting, and he'll run the machine.

One guy? One guy. So I said, all right, send him to me. So I rent the machine. Fuck, I can't remember his name, but I'll remember his name. But anyway, he's operating the machine. This is a true story. This story's going to be fucking crazy.

This is a Quentin Tarantino movie. So the carpentry work on all the things I'm fixing up are done by some Slovakians that a guy sent me. I've got four Slovakians doing carpentry work in the background. I've now got Jeff is his name. I've got this guy Jeff that's running the excavator. My wife just gave birth to our first child on the farm. And we're like three weeks in with our first new baby. My mother-in-law is coming over to watch the baby. And my wife and I are going to go to dinner for the first time in a while. We're going

to be able to get out of the house. Slovakian's doing carpentry. Jeff doing excavation. Mom's going to watch the baby. We're going to dinner. Pull up in front of the house. 5 p.m. I'm going to grab my wife. Jeff, the excavator, runs out to the front of the house, sees me sweating profusely. I said, what's up? He said, motherfucker. He's pacing back and forth.

He says, you didn't let me go hunting. He goes, I've hunted my whole life. Okay, get out with it. I got to get my wife. I'm going to dinner. He said, I couldn't help myself. I was operating the machine in the backyard and the deer ran by i fucking jumped off the machine i tackled it and killed it with a handsaw but okay so again how did he tackle it i'm just telling you what he told me there's a there's a so what's the problem i'm saying like assuming the story is true what's

why are you sweating? I didn't tell you. I'm on probation. Hunting season ended yesterday. If somebody sees the deer is not tagged, I don't know what any of this means. I'm going to get arrested. I'm going to bury the deer in the backyard. I said, dude, I said.

You killed a deer with a handsaw? With a handsaw. So later on, the story from the locals said if that happened, the deer was probably wounded because it was just – and hunting season just ended. It was probably moving slow if he did that. But you're going to love the story. It gets more interesting. I'm going to bury it in the backyard. Don't bury the fucking deer in the – I got to take my wife to dinner. Put it in the bucket of the backhoe, right?

Lift it up off the ground. I'll call a neighbor i'm sure nobody caught a deer that's to show you how much i know about right caught a deer right people say that all the time right nobody caught a deer uh they'll want one i'll just give it away wife gets in the car i'm driving uh to dinner and i call dave fisher i'm remembering the name my neighbor and i said hey dave um i got a deer remembering the name, my neighbor. And I said, Hey Dave, I got a deer in the bucket on my backhoe. You know, I'm not going to get into how it got there. Yeah, I'll get it. I said, well, it's a pretty warm night. Should you get it now? No, I'll get it in the morning. Perfect. Problem solved. Go to dinner with my wife, come back, go to bed,

wake up in the morning, no deer in the backhoe everything's great i go to the general store there's only one general store in our town it's the only place to eat go into the general store and the manager of the general store says hey joe you want some venison for lunch i said how do we have how is there venison never have venison he says you never believe it he says late last night the slovakians were done doing the carpentry. They walked past the backhoe. They found a dead deer in the fucking backhoe. They dragged it here a mile. They dragged it to the general store, gutted it, and it's now in the freezer. I said, this is not even believable.

This fucking story is crazy. I said, I don't want any venison. And if Dave Fisher, the neighbor, happens to come in, do not tell him about this. Because now I don't know if I'm, like, I don't know the law with this, right? You're supposed to have a tag deer, not tag deer. Fast forward. It's now Christmas time, right? Hunting season was November.

It's now Christmas time. And I am stuck in New York during a snowstorm. I call a car service that I used to use when I was on Wall Street. There are a bunch of Turkish guys they speak with very little English do you want to drive me up to Vermont

it's like a five hour drive with the snowstorm might be eight hours yeah yeah Tony will take you drives me up we're 15 minutes from the farm

he says Joe anywhere to get any deer up here I said I can't even believe this fucking guy's asking me this I said go to the general store, go see the manager. There's deer in the

bay. He'll cut you a piece. Again, I don't know. A week later, it's Christmas. It's the only time the Slovakians take off. They're taking two weeks off. They surround me in my garage. They don't speak English. I call my friend in New York. I said,

you got to translate. I don't know if they want to raise. I don't know if they don't want to work for new york i said you got to translate i don't know if they want to raise i don't know if they don't want to work for us anymore i don't know what it is he says um they want to know where the fuck their deer is i said what are you talking about i call michael at the general store i said mike what happened to deer he said what do you mean the turkish guy came he said he could have the deer we loaded the whole deer in his trunk frozen he drove it back to new York. Oh, boy. Fucking crazy story. I gave the address of the Turkish guy to the Slovakian. I never heard from the Turkish guy again. I have no idea.

I probably shouldn't be saying it on the largest podcast in the world. The Slovakian guys went after the Turkish guy for one deer. For one deer. That's my only hunting story ever. He could have a piece of deer, and he told— Took the hoofs, the fucking head, everything. For one deer. That's my only hunting story ever. So you told the guy he could have a piece of deer and he told- Took the whole, the hoofs, the fucking head, everything. Oh boy. And they had dragged it a mile to the store from the backhoe. And what about the neighbor who you told it was in the backhoe?

Did he ever ask? Dave Fisher never asked again. Dave Fisher never asked again. Jeff, the operator, never to be seen again. The guy who killed it with a hands up. Never to be seen again the guy who killed it never to be seen again I don't buy that story unless it was really fucked up there's no way you're catching a deer with your bare hands which is what the locals said

it was probably shot it was probably wounded the only time that could happen is if the animal's in the rut sometimes when they're in the rut the males go so crazy that there's a video it's a crazy video of a guy is in a blind he's in a hunting blind and this buck is so out of it that he actually taps his antlers with the arrow he's got an arrow in his hand he taps him like tap tap

and the buck's like he's just so out of it because they're so horny they lose their fucking mind it's very rare that they behave like this but they could work themselves up into such a frenzy that they're like they're like hallucinating they don't know what the fuck's going on they're not scared of danger maybe it was a very horny deer they get really crazy but i doubt it that this guy's gonna kill it with a handsaw he sounds crazy but he and the whole thing was crazy the whole thing doesn't make any sense like a hunter wouldn't you're not

bloodthirsty like you're gonna jump on a deer with a saw you use a goddamn rifle and the fact that this guy waited

till the day after hunting season was over and knew it and still killed it with a saw that doesn't make any sense none of it makes any sense

yeah that's why it would be a good movie it would be a good Coen Brothers movie it would be a good Coen Brothers movie yeah it would be a good movie. It would be a good Coen Brothers movie. It would be a good Coen Brothers movie. Yeah. That would be a good movie.

Well, I bet a place like Vermont, you get a lot of those sort of Coen Brothers movies. It's very Funny Farm. Remember Funny Farm? No. There was a movie with Chevy Chase where he lived in Vermont. Oh, that was Vermont too? Cue the Deer. Remember that?

How do people feel about Bernie Sanders up there? I mean, it's very divided. There's the third generation Vermonter, hardworking farmer. And then there's all the New York, New Jersey, Boston transplants, very hippie, crunchy. And those are the ones like Bernie Sanders. They love Bernie. And I got to be careful what I say. But I would say this. They love Bernie, and I've got to be careful what I say.

But I would say this. I don't know what your feeling is on this, but I would say it's much better when people work for a living. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is too. Yeah. No, I definitely think it's much better when people work for a living. I think what Bernie wants is people to earn a living wage for their work. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what he wants. Well, I don't think he wants to give people free money. I think he wants people to be able to earn a living. And he thinks that there's a lot of greedy Wall Street

people that are essentially stealing money. We were definitely overpaid for our job, no doubt about it. I mean, the whole place is crazy. So I agree with that. But the other side of it, I think there's always the pendulum swings too far. The other side of it is in Vermont, and again, I'm going to piss a ton of people off here. There's a lot of free stuff, free cheese, free phones, free this. I've had a lot of stories where people say to me, I haven't had this experience myself, where there's negative selection, where folks will come to Vermont because of all those free things. What do you mean by free? Why are these things? They're support. It's basically if you're below a certain level of income, you get all the support. And I'm not against supporting people. I mean, look, I opened my farm up to the whole world, to kids, to people that are having trouble with weight. But I think you feel better when you earn it. Kind of like you said with the belt system. Like if you just walked into a jit and they just gave you a belt, you wouldn't- That's certainly true. You certainly feel better when you earn things. Yeah. So that's my only issue. So how did you get started? How did you start the whole Spartan

race thing? So I'm on the farm. I got one leg still in Wall Street, one leg on the farm. I'm selling the business. I'm feeling overweight and out of shape. Let's go way back. Mom introduces me to a 3,100-mile run in Queens, New York, that still exists today. 3,100 miles around a one-mile loop.

Oh, my God. Yeah, it's called the Transcendence Run. Even before that, it had a different name, but because she met the yogi, and the yogi believed that human beings could do things much greater than they think they can. They're only held back by the limit of their mind. And we're going to set up this running race,

one-mile loop, 50 to 60 days, and you're just going to transcend the possible. You're're going to set up this running race, one mile loop, 50 to 60 days. And you're just going to transcend the possible. You're just going to go around and around and around. About seven to eight people do it a year. I did not do it as a kid. I'm a very young kid, but I see it. And it probably makes an imprint somewhere in my brain, right? I'm on Wall Street.

I'm getting out of that business. I'm going to the farm, met my wife. And I start racing myself i start doing all these crazy races around the world not 3100 miles but crazy stuff and i feel good like you felt in in the dojo right i is that the right term sure you can use that dojo and and um i feel alive like i'm sweating and working and eating healthy and kind of like I have, I find that I have a boxing match coming up and it's forcing me to train for it. So right, I'm waking up earlier. I'm not drinking. I'm going to bed. I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to do because I got a battle coming. And I had so much fun with it that I said,

I want to do this for other people. I want to put on events and have them experience. that I said, I want to do this for other people. I want to put on events and have them experience. I get to meet myself during those events. I find out who I am. I get to places where I just want water, food, and shelter, and I'm not worried about payroll and all the bullshit of life or deers being buried in my back. I just want to survive the next step.

And could I do this as a business? This would feel really purposeful, kind of like you found your things and you felt good about. And so I put on the first race, and it was like hell to get people there. It's kind of like the kids' camp. I got to lie to people and say,

this is going to be fun. It'll be like a barbecue, which it wasn't. And I'm going to just, I'm going to torture folks. I'm going to put obstacles out there. It'll be fun. It'll be like a barbecue, which it wasn't. And I'm going to just torture folks. I'm going to put obstacles out there. It'll be very military inspired. Got a cool name, Spartan. And 500 people showed up. Then 1,000.

Then 1,500. Then 2,000. Then 10,000. Then we're in one country, two countries, 10 countries. Eventually 45 countries. I was in a battle with a company called Tough Mudder. Non-stop battle um about what well they we were we were both in the same industry right and they were they were having races on the same weekends i was having races so if i'm out marketing and they're out more how do i convince people to come to my race and not their

race in the same towns we're doing same town sometimes same location so if we announce the location then they would announce a similar location the weekend before, the weekend after. So they were doing it on purpose? Yeah. We were in a knock-down, drag-out fight. That's so weird. Yeah. For 10 plus

years. It was in the media. It was a big battle. That battle forced me to be better as a business owner. Like, right, I had to be on my toes. I had to fight for us to survive. And we ended up buying them. We ended up buying them pre-COVID, which was the absolute worst time ever. Can't seem to get anything right. But yeah. So you bought them. Do you incorporate any of what they do into what you do? Or did you just buy them and just assume them?

We bought them. And the way I look at it, and you tell me what you think, the way I look at it is we want to be the LVMH. The Louis Vuitton owns all these brands. Vail Resorts owns all these ski locations. We want to own all these different types of events that are basically the boxing matches for people. And so you could sign up and buy a season pass, and you just choose your poison. I'm going to do this this month. I'm going to do that that month. And so I don't want to – they're not going to converge. Tough Mudder is going to be its own thing just like it was when we were fighting.

Spartan will be its own thing. We've got a couple other brands in there, just trail runs, this thing called DECA. And I'm really just trying to put dates on people's calendars like a boxing match. Just give them something to challenge themselves to train for. And hopefully they're like the boxers you described that actually do the work. Yeah. And I'll get people healthier because— Well, there's something good about the fact that some boxers don't do the work.

You get to learn. When a guy shows up at a world heavyweight title fight at 280 plus pounds and everybody goes, oh, boy. You young boxers go, don't be that guy. You know, there's lessons in people's failures. They're all there for you. It's all like there's knowledge out there, positive and negative. You can learn a lot from people's fuck-ups, so you don't have to fuck up yourself.

I like that. I like that. I mean, you're right. I like lazy people. Yeah. They make people that aren't lazy feel better. They make them look better. They make it more impressive.

You know, when you see a lazy person and then you see a guy like my friend Jocko, Jocko Willink, you go, oh, okay. That guy's even more impressive. He's getting after it. Because I know people are just fuck-ups and they find a reason to not do what they should do. Isn't it so easy to stand head and shoulders above, like show up a little earlier, right? Go to bed a little earlier, drink a little less.

It's not that hard. It's not that hard to stand out, to work hard. It's not that hard. It's not that hard to stand out, to work hard. No. But in creative endeavors, that's what's weird. It's like creativity is a weird thing. And there's some benefit in indulgence. Creativity is weird. Some of the great artists, here's a perfect example.

Stephen King, when he was at his best, was doing blow and drinking like a fucking case of beer a night. That's when he was at his best, when he wrote Carrie and Cujo. And he was out of his fucking mind. Apparently, he doesn't even remember writing Cujo. Really? Doesn't even remember writing it. Yeah, he's just blasted out of his fucking mind but what what happens in that funk of that fog of cocaine and alcohol and nicotine and and just mashing those keys and just digging into the deep recesses of his mind i'm not convinced you could reach that on the natch i don't know if you can i think i mean

there is discipline the fact that he sat down and did that work. There's discipline in the fact that he was there, but he wasn't taking care of himself. He wasn't drinking water and doing sit-ups. That motherfucker would sit in front of that keyboard and torture himself with blow and write these masterpieces that to this day freak people the fuck out. You read Carrie, to this day, you're like, who wrote this? What is going on in this mind this man's mind but but you're not you're not suggesting we all do that you're just saying we got a tremendous benefit as a society because that guy did that i'm just saying that

there's some it's hard there's no real when you're talking about creative things like charles bukowski is another example. He's a fucking drunk, man. He wrote amazing shit. But that guy would just lay around and drink and he would hit his girlfriend on camera. They were crazy. He was a crazy man. But you read some of his work and you're like, wow, this is genius shit.

There's something about that one undisciplined, fucked up, but purposeful life that reached millions. So I don't think there's a hard, fast rule. I think activity and action are crucial, right? Inactivity is always bad. Someone who's lazy, sits around and does nothing is always bad. But when it comes to creative endeavors, sometimes indulgence, sometimes it's not a lack of discipline because the work still gets done, but they're not taking care of themselves. It's not self-care, but the results are spectacular. You think it's the exception or the norm for those amazing... Is it all of them? I think it's energy.

I think we look at it in terms of good and bad, and sometimes you can't look at things and you can't, everything's not binary. You know, like, if you want to talk about a healthy person, right, a person who's running, a person who's competing in athletic endeavors, well, that person has very specific requirements of their body. Like, you know, if you're going to run 3,100 miles, man, I mean, Jesus Christ, you're going to have to do that running. You're going to have to be in shape if you do the Moab 240.

You want to do that. You want to run 240 miles through the fucking mountains. But if you want to write a book, you don't necessarily have to do sit-ups. You don't necessarily have to even be healthy. And there's some people who just want to write a book. And there's some weird energy to being drunk. There's weird energy to smoking cigarettes. There's weird energy to taking amphetamines.

There's weird energy to sitting in front of a computer and coming up with these ideas. It's not good for the body, but sometimes the results, like sometimes people sacrifice health and they sacrifice wellness in order to achieve creative goals. I don't know if it's required, but I just know it's been done and the results for some people are amazing. This is nothing I would ever encourage.

Certainly never encouraged my kids to do it. Certainly would never encourage good friends to do it. But there's something about these people that have made some of the great works of art, some of the great, great works of literature. You know, they weren't healthy. No. But one of the things that's driven me crazy forever is high-level CEOs and business owners, same thing. Yeah. They might not have those big creative bursts, but they're under stress. They're eating shit food. My dad was one of those, eating shit food, right?

Yeah. Focused nonstop on the business. Yeah. They achieve, in some cases, tremendous success, but they're fucking dead. I wonder if they would have achieved that success if they had been eating healthy

and taking care of themselves, and I wonder if they would have looked at things the same way. Like, what is your ultimate goal? Is your ultimate goal numbers in a bank account, or is your ultimate goal to feel good?

Outlive your competition. Yeah, I guess. I mean, don't you want, I love this term health span, right? From the moment you wake, you're alive to the moment you die, just be healthy. Right. You don't want to like the last 20 years in the hospital is not a, that's not a good one. Right. Like relative health is interesting too, right? You see a guy who's 90 and, you know, he's running marathons. Like, wow, that's something to aspire to. But if you were 30 and all of a sudden your body was that 90-year-old marathon runner, you'd be like, what the fuck happened to me?

Right. You'd hate it. Right. Like it's not really healthy. No. It's just healthy for 90. It's healthy for 90. Yeah.

Yeah, I just want to feel good. Yes. I just want to feel good. Yes. I just want to feel good. So, I mean, I look at this 92-year-old guy, Bishi, I told you about, that's on the fruits and veggies. He's, like, sharp. His argument is, look, he goes, on this diet, you're not getting biceps. You're not going to look like CT, right? Yeah.

But I'm going to outlive people. But CT's vegan. CT's all vegan now. He doesn't like that word he told me this morning. He said he likes that plant-based. Yeah, because the kids are all using that word now. That's the new word, all vegan now. He doesn't like that word he told me this morning. He said he likes plant-based. Yeah, because the kids are all using that word now. That's the new word, plant-based. Is he eating only plants?

That's what he said. Then he's vegan. No, he's vegan, but he doesn't like the word. Yes. Oh. Well, the word is attached to a lot of annoying people. Right. You know?

Yeah, which is what he said. The problem. He said if you use that word, you tend to lean on other people to become vegans. I don't give a fuck what other people do.'m i'm trying to make sure this heart lasts yeah yeah yeah i don't know if that's the way to go to make your heart last you know there's a lot of variables and there's a lot of people that have differing opinions a lot of experts that have differing opinions in terms of nutrients that you're not going to get and you know and how to get those nutrients and how to make sure that the protein that you're getting is bioavailable

and that you're getting a full suite of vitamins with everything, with all your meals and making sure all your bases are covered. It's tricky. Do you think— It certainly can be done, though. Well, do you think—here's my thought on it. And, again, I had my mom pushing for 30 years, right, the diet, which I was pushing back from

because i wanted the raviolis and and the meat um if if you're a 10th generation or 20th generation from a particular place on the planet that ate a certain way for 20 generations and their survival of the fittest right like those that couldn't last on that diet died off and like you're probably have a predisposition to eat that way in that part of the world, I would think. There's certainly a good argument for that. Right? And there's a genetic argument for your diet in terms of, you know, they can do – they can sequence your genome and go over your history and subscribe or prescribe to you a diet that's based on your ancestry. It's controversial.

It makes sense, though. It does in some ways, yeah, but it's all anecdotal. And then also different people. That's the problem with biodiversity. People of different needs. Some people do great on just fish and rice and veggies. Other people, really, they need more protein. They need more meat. They survive

better on a red meat-based diet. Some people, they survive better on just eggs and vegetables. But I think the most important thing is you have to have your nutritional basis covered. This is so important, man. There's so many people- You mean checking all the boxes. Yeah. There's so many people go through vitamin D deficient. I mean, that is one of the most common ones. That's one of the big ones with COVID. More than 80% of the people in multiple studies, 80% of the people that were in the ICU with

COVID had vitamin D deficient levels. Which I think most of us have. Yes. Right. Only 4% had sufficient levels. Wow. Which is crazy. Right.

So, I mean, that doesn't, you know, correlation and causation, it doesn't exactly mean that vitamin D is going to protect you, but it is, it's crucial for health. And it's, it's a vitamin that's actually also, according to Dr. Rhonda Patrick taught me this, that it's also a hormone, you know, and it's, you know, it's something that it's crucial. And most people don't get it. And if you stay inside all day, you definitely don't get it. And African-Americans have an even harder time getting it because their ancestors, yeah, their ancestors developed all this melanin in their skin because they were constantly exposed to sunlight.

And the melanin was there to protect you from the sunlight. And they didn't have to worry about absorbing the vitamin D because they were out there all the time well as the you know as people move into colder climates and climates that are cloudier that's why people got paler they got paler because your body became essentially like a fucking giant solar panel for vitamin D because you you couldn't get it you needed it yeah you had it like look at the people that live in the places where it rains all the time they're white as fuck that's why i mean it's real simple it's a survival mechanism for vitamin d for the one thing like my doctor told me that when he was measuring people he would measure black folks in new york and some of them

had undetectable levels of vitamin d which is insane wow because you're in the winter right you're covering your body completely you're not Yeah. And you're also not supplementing. No. So let's go into diet. So for me, I got into these crazy races, and my diet that I believe, hopefully it wasn't just a mental thing, was more fruits and veggies. And so if I made a food pyramid, the very top of the pyramid would be you know fish eggs and meat but just 15 of my diet the rest was like avocado salad like and i performed fantastic on that diet that sounds great for you i mean but for me for me and you tried different ways

you tried like more meat more fish less meat less vegetables you've you've very well and this is meat, more fish, less meat, less vegetables. You've varied it. And this is primarily fruits and vegetables for you. Primarily fruits. I would say more veggies. Well, if you think about what you're doing, I mean, it makes sense, right? You're doing a lot of endurance stuff. And a lot of endurance stuff requires a lot of carbohydrates.

Also, you're getting a lot of vitamins from all those vegetables, a lot of minerals from all those vegetables. Makes sense. And a little bit of meat and and when i i did a an event in fiji once uh the fijians are phenomenal rugby players and we were out in the like literally in the jungle of fiji and uh animals these guys are like ripped and they got the machetes and barefoot and they're going from like for them to go to see a friend at another village it's like a 15 mile hike and they would kill a cow they'd eat mostly vegetables but they would kill a cow once every six months they eat it all they eat the the eyeballs yeah everything yeah um and they

would they would poke a hole in the cow's neck and like mix a little milk uh with the blood drink it up until a point where they killed it but i would say they were not they were more veggies than you know they'd eat that cow once every six months but up till then it's like all veggies and they were these guys like was that because of necessity though yes yeah because that's because that was what was available that's available yeah they didn't have a whole foods or car anything. Yeah. I mean, it's real clear that people evolved to adapt to their environments, like whatever their environments were. And if you were living in a plant-rich environment and you ate most...

Look, there's a lot of people that live in the jungles of South America that prefer monkeys. That's like their favorite thing to eat. Right. Yeah. My friend Steve Rinella actually went to Guyana and was hanging out with these tribes and they would kill a monkey and they were so excited and they would smoke the monkey and cook it in a soup. And that was their favorite thing to eat. They preferred it over everything. You eat a monkey? I've never eaten a monkey. Yeah. I don't want a monkey.

I don't want to eat a primate. My friend David Cho, who's an artist, was just in Africa, and he was staying with a tribe, and their primary diet is baboons because they – he sent me some pictures. I don't know if I can use them, so I won't post them to you. But he sent me some pictures of these people cooking up baboons. He said that people like miners and people that are out there that have killed essentially so many animals in that area. They've depopulated that area so badly that baboons are like the last thing left. So that's what this tribe hunts. Fuck. Yeah.

Right? I don't want to eat a baboon. I'd take a salad. You'd take a salad over a baboon. Oh, yeah. But if I needed to survive. Oh, you do what you got to do. Yeah.

You got to do what you got to do. Yeah. Let's go back to survive... Oh, you do what you gotta do. Yeah. You gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah. Let's go back to if you're okay with it. Yeah, let's get out of this darkness. Yeah, let's get out of that. There's something dark about primates, right? Yeah, why is that? Because it's our ancestors.

We're related to them in some sort of a strange way. It's like cannibalism. I've read a lot about Native American history, and one of the more disturbing things is how prevalent cannibalism. I've read a lot about Native American history. And one of the more disturbing things is how prevalent cannibalism was and how prevalent cannibalism was where they would kill their enemies and eat them and roast them over the fire and sometimes eat them while they're still alive. You think that was part of the reward? don't know man some of it was just survival i mean when you're you're you're talking about people that evolved first primarily without horses right it's like without horses for who knows how many thousands of years until the europeans came when the europeans came and they taught them horseback riding and then they started stealing horses and they started raising horses and they started

getting better at riding horses and doing battle on horses than any of the europeans were like the comanches were far better on horseback than any it's one of the main reasons why the west was so difficult to settle because the europeans the settlers only had muskets single shot take you like you know 30 seconds to fucking reload whereas the comanches can unload 30 arrows in that time you know in probably 30 seconds probably more they probably unload 40 or 50 arrows in 30 seconds to load one yeah and you're dead you're fucked and they could fight on horseback the Europeans hadn't figured out how to fight on horseback they would climb off the horse to aim their rifle and then shoot it and then they'd have to reload and the Comanches would just run up on them and shoot from horseback. So the idea that these people who grew up in this place or evolved in this place where they didn't have horses, they ate whatever the fuck they could.

They came here on foot from Asia, right? And a lot of them came through the Bering Strait. They ate whatever they could. Yeah, right. It was survival. And if you had a war with a neighboring tribe and you killed them, that's a lot of good meat. We got a lot of meat there.

Yeah, what are you going to do? Are you going to just let it rot? Yeah. Or you could just eat them and come up with some reason why you're stealing their soul or whatever it is and cook them over a fire. I got a saying that's fire ready aim rather than aim ready fire. And it sounds like you've got a lot of knowledge in this area, but my thinking is aim ready fire

came from like, took 30 seconds to load. Like, you don't want to miss that shot. Right. Right? But today, we've got the ability to shoot a lot if you use it as an example in business or whatever. Like, fuck it, take shots. Right?

Whereas the mindset, I think, is slow down, like, fuck it, take shots. Right? Whereas the mindset, I think, is slow down, aim, but you never take the shot because you talk yourself out of it. I'm not going to start this business. I'm not going to do this new job. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. I just take lots of fucking shots. Well, that seems like it's going to suit

your personality, though, right? Yeah. I think some people are more calculated, more German perhaps. More German. Slowly engineer this situation and figure out how to do it right and what's feasible and what's not feasible. I think the idea that's important is action.

Do things. Yes. Actually do things. To procrastinate and sit around and debate things forever before anything gets done. Yeah. There's a proper balance though of enough action and enough thinking.

But if you get ready and you're aiming, you don't tend to get into action. When I fire, right, when I tell somebody to fire first and commit to that event, that boxing, right, it sends things into motion. Like all of a sudden now you're doing a bunch of shit because, fuck, you said you were starting a business next month. Right. Right? Oh, I can see that, yeah. Especially if you're not doing anything currently.

Yeah. The problem is like how much, like the people that do too many things, that's almost as bad as not doing enough things. That's fair. You get spread too thin. If you were my coach, you'd say I do a little too many things. Do you think you do too many things? I do too many things. Yeah.

So what makes you know that but yet continue to do it? Why would I possibly throw a kids camp in the mix during COVID? I got 300 events. I got to reschedule across 45 countries. Do you test the kids? Like, how'd you do that? Nope. Just reached out to a bunch of them.

That sounds terrible. You got to test them, man. How come you didn't test them? Yeah, I fire ready aim. But do you worry about health consequences of a bunch of kids getting sick? We're making it sound much worse than it is. They woke up early, big deal, every fucking year. But I'm not worried about that.

I'm worried about they'll all be together and they're all – I mean, we're in a pandemic health crisis. Oh, test them that way. I'm sorry. I thought you meant test them physically. Oh, no, no, no. No, I meant test them. Yes, of course, yes. Okay.

I thought you meant like how many push-ups did they do? No, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. I used it. I wasn't very specific. We test the shit out of people here. We get tested every week. But when you did my test, when I came in, it was with a rusty knife.

I thought that was a little weird. That's how we do it now. We're tired. We're tired of doing it with clean utensils. What's your feeling on COVID? Well, it's clearly a real problem. I mean, it's clearly very contagious. And for some people, it's no big deal.

They shake it off. Pro athletes seem to have very little problem with it, like a lot of NBA players. Although I do know of one NBA player that got it. He's 28 years old, and he got it three months ago, and he still is not back up to the endurance level that he was before he got it. He's still having lung issues. Wow. Yeah.

It's a fucking weird disease, man. That's rare, though, right? It's rare. But, I mean, you could be one of those rare ones, right? It's a fucking weird disease, man. And I think one of the reasons why it's a weird disease is probably because it was manipulated in a lab. You think Wuhan? Yeah.

I mean, I don't know, right? But when I talked to my friend Brett Weinstein, who is a biologist, he explained scientifically that there's all these points, all these things you could point to about this virus that indicate that it's been manipulated, that it evolved too quickly, the jump from animals to humans is too quick, and that this specific type of virus, they were working on it in that lab, they had a level four lab in Wuhan. It's more likely, he said, given what we know about the virus, that it was released or escaped or accidentally released from that lab. A couple of military guys I spoke to think it escaped. They don't think it was. That's what I think.

But, I mean, China's pretty pissed off at us, right? I mean, whether it's justified or not. We're in a battle. But, I mean, they didn't release it in America. They released it on their own people. I don't think they released it on purpose. I think that would be really creepy. Fucked up.

And I think if they were going to do that, they would be really calculated and they would release it. They'd have the vaccine ready to go. Yeah, and they would do it in Manhattan and then vaccinate their own people and then fuck up our economy. That could have happened. Not this time, but I mean that is a possibility. It shows you what is possible. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I meant. Like a civilization could engineer a pandemic and infect another civilization. So powerful as a weapon. Oh, my God. Look what it crippled the whole world. Crippled the whole world. Crippled our economy. Like that. And we are the worst at it.

If you look at all the other countries, no one's done a worse job at dealing with this pandemic than us. I think it exposed our weaknesses. Sure. Right. Our health weaknesses. Yeah. Our financial weaknesses. Yeah.

Exposed a lot of our weaknesses. Yeah. A little riff now. Right. Like, you know, there's shit going on. Well, you know, that was, there's, that's like a bunch of compounding factors, right? Right. You know, you have the George Floyd murder and then you have the protests afterwards, which ignite most likely is one of the factors in the kickup of the virus again, the second wave of it.

There's a lot going on. And then also people don't like to be told what to do here. So will I fuck you? I'm going to go out. Fuck you. I'm going to spring break. Fuck you. I'm going to Florida.

Fuck you. I'm not wearing a mask. We got a call. I took the approach of we could put on a safe event. The second that I get a state or a country that allows us to put on an event, we're back on. And we're going to put protocols in place because I believe, fight me on it. I don't know what your thoughts are. But I believe that you're more likely to get it like we're sitting right now as opposed to being outside.

And I want people healthy and sweaty. That's pretty much established. You're more likely to get it inside. Sunlight kills it. And then people have said, well, if sunlight kills it, then the protest, it wouldn't have spread in the protest. Like, not so fast. You're talking about 50,000 people packed on top of each other screaming. The idea that the sunlight is going to kill all of it, it seems ridiculous. And it's also going to get into people, and they're going to bring it to their home,

and it's going to get to them. They're going to go to work. They're going to give it to other people at work or other people wherever, gatherings that they get to. Whenever you get to, you're having like, the way someone described it recently, it's like a music festival in every city all across the country for weeks at a time. And that's what the protests were like. I'm sure it had an impact.

And if you looked at the numbers, like so many of the people that have it now are young people. I think bars had a big impact on it too. I think a lot of, you know, drunk talk in bars. You're right on top of each other. You're indoors. You're drinking. Your inhibitions are down. You're not thinking.

You're not washing your hands. You're yelling. You're talking loud. Sloppy. Sloppy, yeah. So we get a call from Florida. Florida doesn't give a fuck. Florida didn't give a fuck.

Jacksonville. I was definitely on the side of you said, Joe, what's your stance on the whole thing? My stance was I think we should shut down for a period of time to get the hospitals and our medical system in shape. But I'm just not a believer that you could shut down an economy for as long as we have. It has some negative consequences. It's got a big negative consequence. It's got, right? People lose their shit sitting indoors. Forget about money and everything else, you start to lose your mind. So I'm putting a race on, I decide we're shooting down

there. We put all the protocols in place. I'm a little annoyed because it's not going to be the race I'm used to where everybody's like, like you're getting together in the festival area. And I can't have like mud pits where we're mingling people. So I don't know how it's going to go. I drive with my family cause I got to be there. If I'm the leader of this organization, I got to be there. Drive with my family down the East Coast. When I get to South Carolina, there's no virus. There's like corn dogs and partying and like beaches full of people all the way to Florida. It was completely different than New York and everywhere else.

Like it was game on. So it's not shocking that, um, the virus is huge down there. Yes. The virus in Florida. You know,

they said Florida, if it was a country, would be the fourth highest rate of infection in the entire world. I gotta tell you, and I'm not self-serving, we put on a good,

a safe event, really good event. And so far, knock on wood, no issues. But like, there was no protection no protocol nothing down in the states down there do you uh impose uh tests on the we did tests all all of our employees we we tested with the uh swap that you know touches your brain with the swab

unlike your your rusty knife on my hand did you do temperature checks we did temperature checks with everybody we kept kept everybody distanced. I'm not just saying it because my team went overboard. It was annoying to me at how good they did it. And you can't make money like that because I can't get enough people in the event. I got to space them out. How many people did you normally have at an event?

Normally we'd have 8,000 at that event, call it a couple so i can't i can't make those numbers work but i thought it was important because there's 50 000 events around the world that are shut down new york marathon boston go down the list and if we could provide like a path to hey this could be done it was important to do but it's not 50 000 events have been shut down 50 000 around the world is that crazy? Wow. We are the hardest hit industry because we're not like a restaurant where I could deliver food. I'm dead. Right.

I'm dead. I'm out of business. Right? I got to keep paying people. How many events do you normally run a year? 325. 45 countries. Wow.

325 events. And I'll be lucky. I'll be lucky if we have 20 this year. 20 from 325, 45 countries, 325 events. And I'll be lucky. I'll be lucky if we have 20 this year. 20 from 325. So 305 down. Down. Tough year. I wonder when this is going to turn around.

Do you think it's going to take a vaccine? I mean, I'm looking at Sweden. I don't know what your feeling is on Sweden. But thanks to that warrior call we spoke about at the very beginning of this conversation where I had all the people from around the world chiming in, it looks to me, I know people are going to listen to this and say, Joe, you're crazy. Sweden's got the more deaths than Norway and other Nordic countries. But when you look at the charts, you look at the number of people infected in Sweden versus the number of people dying, like, and no one should die. I'm not suggesting anybody should die but like it looks

like it worked its way through the system and they didn't shut down now granted they're in good shape unlike us right sweet Swedes are in good shape they socially distance anyway they keep their distance not like us they're not hugging as much as we do and shaking hands but um looks like it worked they also have a different society over there. They mostly have small villages. You have Sweden. You have Stockholm.

It's a little spread out. Yeah. You have some urban areas, but you have a lot of areas that are spread out, and they're small villages. Yeah. A little more like Vermont. Yeah, exactly.

And Vermont has almost no cases small villages. Yeah. No, it's a little more like Vermont. Yeah, exactly. And Vermont has almost no cases. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's just not a high population of people. No, but maybe, I'm a very optimistic guy, maybe this thing's just got to work its way through, because even if you get a vaccine, I happen to be close with a gentleman that's invested in one of these companies coming out with the vaccine, Moderna. And even if you get the vaccine this year, let's just say, right, you know how Americans are with vaccines. They don't even want to take the flu shot. Right.

So is everybody going to all of a sudden take the vaccine or do we just have to stay shut for another year? Like, you can't. The only way out of this, again, people are going to be pissed off. The only way out is this again people are gonna be pissed off the only way out is um just get on with our lives well the thing that i've been harping on maybe too much is that there's no emphasis whatsoever from our government about taking care of your health i'm i'm the number one proponent i mean come on that's what i live for i know it but it's weird that there's no discussion of this at all because they're afraid of shaming people for being obese.

They're afraid of shaming people because of their diet. So they've avoided the discussion completely. If it were me, if you were president and I was your advisor— We'd be fucked. I think this world's fucked now. President Joe and Vice President Joe. You're president. We have real problems. I'm your advisor. Tell me. President Joe and Vice President Joe. You're president. We have real problems.

I'm your advisor. Tell me what you agree with or disagree with. One, let's get everybody to bed early. Everybody's going to bed early. No, freedom. I'm all for freedom. Again, I go back to Stephen King. That motherfucker wrote some great shit doing coke and drinking like a fish.

But freedom leads to Doritos. Freedom also leads to Carrie. Great works of art. How do we get both? You don't. You get freedom. You get both because of freedom. You know, you give people freedom and you get a lot of things.

You know, this is, the problem with this disease is this is not like anything else. You know, I mean, you can't compare it to the flu. You can't, because it's clearly more infectious. And there's, you know, there's flu shots. flu you can't because it's clearly more infectious and there's you know there's flu shots people can even if you have a flu shot and it's for the wrong strain of the flu there's enough in that that will protect you at least a certain amount from whatever flu there's nothing like that for this so all you got is vitamins and nutrients and and health and sleeping so when you say all right let's get them healthy you you're president and you want freedom, which I agree with freedom.

But freedom has led to, like when I lived in Japan and I land anywhere in the United States, doesn't matter what airport I land in, people are three times the size. I don't want to say that about my American brothers and sisters, but like they're three times the fucking size. True. I lived in Vancouver, come back to America, three times the size. I lived in Singapore, come back to america three times the size yeah i lived in singapore come back to america three times the size like we got a problem we do but that's also look the american diet's terrible the average american diet's terrible i mean eating milkshakes and fries and soda and the massive amounts of sugar is what's led to people being enormous

massive amounts of calories and sedentary lifestyle. It's all terrible. But it's not all of us. I mean, look how many people are into CrossFit. Look how many people are into Jiu-Jitsu. Look how many people are into – It's a small percentage, though. It's a small percentage, but that's what freedom gets you.

There's a small percentage of people that are going to excel. I mean, that's just part of the recipe of exceptionalism. If you're going to have – you're going gonna give people the ability to do whatever the fuck they want all right you're gonna have some people that are gonna ruin their lives because of that have an open mind to this one I'm not saying this is right I beat this up what if your president and I whispered in here and I said all right Joe if you won't accept getting rid of the Doritos, can we at least have an FDA that's not, in other words, a department

that just doesn't allow factory farming, doesn't allow bullshit foods, maybe puts a sugar tax on things? Okay, factory farming I think should be a crime because I think it's a crime against nature. I think what they do to those pigs, when you see pigs stuffed into those cages, standing on their own shit,

and then the shit and piss gets filtered out into a giant pond that's outside of it, filled with methane. Can't even drive by it. The smell is horrific. That's a crime. And that's a crime that they're letting them get away with because it's profitable. That's what I think.

They even have laws to protect them. They have ag-gag laws. So if you're working there, you can't film this. If you're working there and you're horrified by it and you film it, you are in trouble. Because they don't want anybody seeing that. Exactly. And if you see that, you're not going to eat it. Like you and I don't want to eat the baboon.

Exactly. So what do we do? How do we stop it? Well, there should be laws against that. And that is part of what fuels fast food. Because in order to get cheap meat, you're going to have to do something. You're going to have to figure out a way to stuff these animals into these pens. And you're going to have to maximize your profit.

And that's how it got to the position that it's in right now. It should have never gotten there. But now that it's there and now we know about it, we've got to the position that it's in right now. It should have never gotten there. But now that it's there and now we know about it, we've got to pull it back. And if that means that these fast food places are going to have to jack up prices and they're going to have to use organic, free-range beef instead of the shit that they're serving people now, well, then that's what's going to have to happen. And if things are more expensive, then people realize, well, this stuff is better for you, but now it costs more. You know what? I can go to the supermarket and I can get it cheaper and I could cook it myself and I can,

and maybe we could wean people off of this fast food. The idea that we have to eat fast food is fucking crazy. But then you've got people that live in these poor neighborhoods and, you know, you can get a Big Mac for what? A couple bucks? And it'll fill you up. That was going to be my next question. So I like it. I like what you're saying. So now all of a sudden it's more expensive at Burger King, McDonald's or Pizza Hut, whatever, right?

It drives people to make their own food. But a lot of the neighborhoods, which a large part of America can't afford it, how do you solve that? That's a good question. That's a real good question. I mean, the real problem is poverty, right? afford it how do you solve that that's a good question that's a real good question i mean that's the the real problem is poverty right the real problem is and the real problem is these impoverished neighborhoods that have been like that forever and it does they don't seem to be changing how do you fix that especially now when people can't work you know that's this is a real problem right

now things are not just stagnant they're deteriorating so people can't work so so um i'm in our little game we're playing i'm your advisor you know tell me go fuck myself but um there's a lot of generals and colonels and folks from the military that retire each year and what if we took all those inner cities those tough those tough neighborhoods and we said hey you got you had a great career you're retired you're getting paid to the end of your life. Go take over that neighborhood. Clean it up.

Would that be viewed by the public as like a military state? It certainly would. I mean, look what's going on in Portland. In Portland, they sent the Department of Homeland Security to try to break up the riots. And they're calling them riots now, finally. You know why? Because the Portland mayor got tear gassed. And they told him to fuck himself like kids were yelling at him you retire step down yeah well yeah he's like oh this is crazy because he thought i'm gonna be i'm gonna be one of the people and i'm gonna go there

they're throwing water bottles at him i don't know what they want i don't know what they want but they were telling them you've got to resign. Fuck you, mayor. It's crazy. And then the Department of Homeland Security people were macing him. They tear gassed him in the face. How do you go into it? I mean, you've got to- You don't use the military. I just don't think you could do that. I mean, look, what they're trying to do in Portland is a different story because you're

trying to break up looting, smashing windows, attacks on federal property. That's sort of a different thing. And I don't think – I don't really – I'm not educated enough to decide, nor have I really sat down and thought about it, whether or not they need the Department of Homeland Security to break that stuff up. I don't know what's going on up there. But I do know that the mayor, who is in support of what he was calling peaceful protests protests is now like, okay, this is a riot. Yeah. I mean, they were screaming at him.

He's the guy that's on their side. He let Antifa take over the streets and they're throwing water bottles at him. Yeah. They're like, fuck you. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you would. I'm not a believer. You're not.

I don't think you're a believer in like you can't let people do illegal things. I don't care what it's for. You can't let people destroy property. You can't let people do illegal things. I don't care what it's for. You can't let people destroy property. You also can't let people, like these mass gatherings have become violent and they think they're doing it for a good cause, but it's totally directionless. What are they trying to do?

They're trying to take over the federal court buildings? What are they trying to do? Look what happened in Seattle where they took over those six blocks, the Chaz area. Look what happened in there. They started beating people up. People got shot and killed. They wouldn't let anybody in. They put put borders up they developed their own security system and then when people were violating that they were kicking their ass they were literally physically assaulting people in the name of this new utopia like they did a way shittier job of

governing that spot that america does the it feels like h Hong Kong. Everything we saw in Hong Kong. It's fucking chaos out there in some of these, especially the Pacific Northwest. And I wonder how much that has to do with they don't get any sun. Could be. Vitamin D. Could go back to vitamin D. That's part of why they're so depressed up there. That's been documented. That's why depression,

I mean, seasonal depression disorder. No doubt about it. That's up there, man. So what do we do with the Doritos? Let them have it. You can have Doritos. You can have ice cream. You can't put a sugar tax or a –

Nope, nope, nope, nope. You should educate people. Look, I don't eat Doritos. How come other people do? I mean, I'll have them occasionally. I'll have them occasionally. But I don't eat them every day. If I did, I'd be fat.

It's real simple. But we don't say this. So you think it's a discussion problem? Sure. Look, how much time do we spend talking about certain issues that we have, whatever those issues are, and how little time do we spend? How little time does our own government spend talking to us about our diet? Talking to us about literally one of the most important things. Even doctors don't talk about our diet.

They don't know anything about it. The amount of time that the average physician spends in medical school studying nutrition is minuscule. It's tiny. Unless that person's actually studied, unless their actual education is in nutrition, there's very little studying of it. If you're a doctor that's a general practitioner, if you're a doctor that's an orthopedic surgeon, how much time, unless you're independently studying it, how much time in medical school do they spend studying nutrition?

Very little. Which is crazy because that's the root cause of most of these diseases. Yep. Right? Yep. But we fix problems. We don't find the source cause of most of these diseases. Yep. Right? Yep. But we fix problems. We don't find the source of the problems and solve them. Yeah.

But some people do. So for those some people, you can learn from those some people, and there's a ton of them out there. But those inner cities might not be getting that information. They're not. They're not. So how do we solve it? Not only that, they do have cheap food in the form of fast food, and it's everywhere. And it also provides jobs for people that live there.

So do you subsidize that? Man, I don't know, man. That's a good idea. That's a real good question. The problem is people are addicted to those foods too. So you'd have to get them off of that. When you see someone who's obese, almost always they're addicted to some sort of terrible food. Almost always.

I know you love freedom, and I love freedom. That's why we both live in this country. But it's not a fair fight. I'm not a conspiracy guy. But, like, I was on Wall Street. And if you're a Burger King, you're at one of these big public companies that's making food that's not so healthy. Like, you've got scientists.

You've got Madison Avenue advertisers. You've figured out a way to get into our psyche yeah where you can't live without that thing yeah right so that's not a fair fight yeah and they're they're in there and they're not getting out right but they used to be able to advertise for cigarettes they can't do that anymore they stopped that it's interesting because you can still advertise for like jack-in-the-box but you can't advertise for cigarettes but obesity kills as many people as almost anything so that's what i'm saying would you cross the line on like were

you annoyed that you can't advertise for cigarettes is that taking away a freedom it's a good question it's a discussion the problem with those those ads is a lot of them were at least initially very deceptive you know they made it made it look like... Marlboro Man. Yeah, Marlboro Man. I wanted to be Marlboro Man, right? Yeah, the guy died of cancer, by the way. So, I mean, there's no ads where you see these shitty foods with obese people getting sick.

No, no. Right? They're making you feel good. Yeah, I wonder if, like, for every good ad, you would have to have a bad ad. Like you'd have to have an ad. I like that. Like, so like for every good ad for Burger King had,

you could hire like a company that would make a creative, very compelling ad showing fat people having heart attacks and literally like. Eating shit food or even, or even a motivating one to do something healthy yeah that'd be better right the the best motivation is always positive right but sometimes not for some people particularly for people that are addicted sometimes the wake up calls death's door you get to death's door you have that heart attack you're like oh my god i gotta fucking clean up my life ct yeah right and Right. And you know, I mean, I think CT had underlying,

um, genetic conditions, which many, many people do have. It's not even their fault. They just have a, for whatever reason, they just have a history,

a genetic history of heart disease. Heart disease is very weird, but it certainly was exacerbated. And he'll tell you that by his diet. Yes. That, that was the, uh,

doesn't mean you're definitely going to die because your parents did of that right you could you could make some lifestyle choices yes yes you could strengthen your health for sure in in multiple ways yeah what's a typical day look like for you from a health and wellness standpoint like like um well i'm lucky that i enjoyed doing things, physical things. Yeah. Because of your background. Yeah. So because I have this long history of exercise, it's like it's just a normal part of my day. And if I don't do it, I don't think right. Like if I don't do it, I'm not calm.

So it fucks up everything else. So it'll fuck up podcasts for me. When I was doing stand-up before COVID, it would fuck up stand-up. Like you can't be in a bad mood. Like, you can't. And for me, the best solution to a bad mood is hard workouts. Yeah. Hard workouts cure it all, man.

A heavy bag, smoke a joint, hit that heavy bag, play some Hendrix, just whack the shit out of that heavy bag. And then after it's over, man, I feel great. I love everybody. Doesn't it, smoking the joint doesn't slow you down? No. It gives you energy no it just makes me reflective makes me think more makes me paranoid it makes me uh more compassionate there's like there's a lot of weird stuff about pot and one of the things that people don't like

is like oh my god i just feel paranoid like i think that's hyper aware that's what it is like because really you should kind of be more paranoid than you really are i mean we're these water balloons of flesh with these fucking breakable sticks that keep the structure together i like wandering around driving 60 miles an hour in these metal boxes with rubber tires over this artificial road that we've created and cover the earth with. We're fucking weird, man. Pretty complacent when you describe it that way. And we're in space.

And we're on this ball that's spinning a thousand miles an hour, hurling towards infinity. A fire burning every day in the sun. And we're not going to be here for very long. You know, that's the other thing. You have a short amount of time here. And you're trying to navigate this time the best you can. Trying to be nice and have be a good friend and be a good neighbor and be a good husband and a father and all those good

things and a big good wife and just a a nice co-worker and you're trying to just do your best and it's complicated and you're you're interacting with all these different people with all sorts of different issues and problems and needs and wants and desires and egos. And there's a lot going on, man. And the more that you can mitigate your own stress levels, the more that you can calm the demons inside you, the better you're going to interact with people, the better they're going to feel about their interactions with you, the better they're going to interact with other people.

There's a ripple effect. And it just, it makes the whole world better. Like if you're a better person, if you do your best and you get better at it and you keep doing your best, you keep getting better at it, like all things in life, you do better at creating a healthy environment for all the people around you too. When you say it that way, it's like if everybody in America exercised even 20 minutes a day, 30, right? It'd be a better world. It would be a better world.

It would be a better world. 100%. Right? 100%. Everybody get along a little better. Yeah, I don't think there's any denying that. I mean for some people it wouldn't work. Yeah, well, my dad worked out 20 minutes a day.

He was still a dick. That's the outlier. But if you looked at the mean, if you looked at overall, like if you got 330 million people or whatever we've got in this country and all of them worked out 20 minutes a day. And then you looked at what the results were two, three years down the road. I would imagine you would have less aggressive behavior. You would have probably less violent crime. You'd probably have less arguments. People could be more peaceful about things. You'd probably have people that were healthier.

They'd have less visits to the doctor. They'd have less medical problems. I bet there would be overall a host of benefits that we would achieve nationwide if we could convince people. And I'm not talking about taking a fucking brutal CrossFit class or going to jiu-jitsu and getting strangled every day. I'm talking about going on a hike and doing some push-ups and sit-ups, some bodyweight squats. Very basic. Basic stuff. Basic stuff. Yeah.

Basic stuff. I've met enough, as you have, I've met enough, we'll call them killers from martial arts, where they're very humble. Yeah. They're very nice. And me not coming from that background, I'm shocked, right? Because I'm expecting a pit bull, but I'm getting a golden retriever. Yeah.

And I think it's because they work out every day and they've been humbled and they do hard work. Yeah. And so it takes the edge off. Yeah. it's also they don't have a need to prove themselves yeah they know what they can do and they don't they're not trying to puff their chest out and like intimidate everyone around them they're friendly they're like most like jujitsu is a perfect example of that because jujitsu there's only one way to excel at jiu-jitsu you have to spar so you can't pretend you have to be in there getting strangled or strangling people every day you become humble that's you get humble it happens i mean i don't know how many times i've tapped out

but it's a lot it's thousands and you got to make that decision at that moment it's gonna happen especially look if you want to get a black belt you started a white belt that means you're gonna get fucked up i mean there's just no way around it but there's there's great lessons in learning there's like you start like you you get in your blue belt you're like i'm getting really good at this and you roll with some purple bell smashes you know like fuck i'm terrible and then you get your purple but you're like i'm doing pretty good some brown belt fucking squashes you you're like fuck like there's there's you know it's just like you try to always being level level right yeah i like that and then there's there's always room to grow and learn you don't want to be the master you want to be the guy who's

seeking to improve because there is no real i mean there are masters there's guys that are at such a high level that unless they run into another master they're gonna they're gonna do the squashing but then they've trained with those other masters. They train with each other all the time, and it's beautiful to watch, like really high-level guys tap each other out. And you realize this never ends. This never ends. Yeah, Helsing Gracie has a very famous description of jiu-jitsu.

Jiu-jitsu is like I do this to you, you respond, I respond to your response, that goes on forever. Forever. That's jiu-jitsu. I like that. I attack, you defend. I attack, you defend. Forever. Forever.

That's jiu-jitsu. I like that. Given that, you're president again. Couldn't we do what Israel does? Couldn't we have one year? It doesn't have to be military. It's not a bad idea. Right?

Yeah. One year. Just kick everybody's ass for one year. It's not a bad idea. The problem with that is, again, the freedom thing. You want people to be able to do whatever they want. But you also get a lot of service out of your country, right? You get a lot.

There's a lot that we all benefit from, from having a fire department and a military and clean streets and sanitation and all the different fire department takes care of everybody's fire, right? The police, you call 911, theoretically, they show up to help you. That's something we all pay for. We all, this is something that brings us together as a society. And what separates Israel, I think, first of all, Israel is surrounded by people that they're in conflict with. So they feel like they have to have that. But the fact that they have this mandatory military service, they're very proud people. And there's a lot of patriotism when it comes to Israel.

Some would say that's bad. Some people would say that's bad. Some people would say that's good. I think there's real benefit to some form of service. I don't know if it has to be military service. I don't know what it has to be. I like the bonding that probably occurs. Same thing with our events.

But every culture has had a rite of passage. I'm doing it with these children. We need it. Yes. I think human beings do need a rite of passage. I think that is important. And, you know, these traditional cultures that have had these rites of passage, that's to signify that someone is coming of age. This is an adult now.

You've gone through this process, and this is like a belt ceremony. You know, like you get your black belt, man. They tie that around your waist. Like that is a moment that you'll never forget. You graduated. Yeah, you graduated. You get your black belt, man, they tie that around your waist. That is a moment that you'll never forget. You graduated. Yeah, you graduated. You made it. And I think as an adult, sometimes people have to know, I am an adult now. I'm held to a different standard. I need to hold myself to a different standard. I can't just fucking be a ne'er-do-well and fucking skip my way through this life and live off of unemployment and fuck people over and scam my way through this life and live off of uh unemployment and fuck people over and

scam my way through life no i want to be noble i want to be respectable i want to be someone who i respect i'm a good citizen yeah you want to respect yourself you want to appreciate yourself you know and i think that it's hard to do that it's easy to do nothing but it's hard to do nothing because if you do nothing you're gonna live a hard life it's hard to do nothing because if you do nothing you live a hard life it's going to be a sucky life you don't realize it like but everybody pays you pay no matter what either you pay now or you pay with regret you pay with a lack of success you pay with a sloppy body and a fucking weak mind that falls apart at any challenge you don't have any structure you don't have no rigidity to challenge. You don't have any structure.

You've got no rigidity to your thoughts. You don't have any resolve in your mindset because you've never been tested. And a person who goes through life without ever being tested is a sad person. The saddest thing is seeing a person who's never been tested when the shit hits the fan. And that's one of the things we're seeing from COVID. We're seeing a lot of people that just have weak minds, and they're just panicking and screaming at people, wear a mask, people on the other side of the street. And then, you know, because they never faced tough times. They don't know. They don't know how to buckle up. They don't know how to strap in. They don't know how to overcome,

you know? And so this heightened stress level that comes with the pandemic is freaking them the fuck out. And that's one of the reasons why social media is such a fucking shithole right now. It's so bad. It's because so many of those people are shut-ins. So many of those people are shut-ins, have never been challenged. They don't really know who they are. You know what I'm saying?

Like when you do a race, you do something, you meet yourself. These people never met themselves. No, I know. So all they're doing is judging other people, constantly bitching and bickering about other people. You can learn a lot from someone about how much attention they spend on other people's failures, how much time they spend pointing out other people's failures, and how little time they spend reflecting on their own.

Yeah. No, that's what we think about our business. We say we shine a mirror in your face. Right? Yeah. You get to find out. By the way, anybody could what we think about our business. We say we shine a mirror in your face, right? Yeah. You get to find out. By the way, anybody could be good when times are good. Yes. Yes.

Right? I mean, that's what I like about physical pursuits, man. You find out who the fuck you are. You find out whether or not you're that person who can keep going, whether you're that person who is consistent. So many people, they start off like, I'm going to run a a mile a day and they run a mile a day for a couple weeks and they off you know it's consistency this showing up when you don't want to show up forcing yourself to do things you don't want to but then reaping the rewards and learning like if you just

worked out every time you felt motivated you're not going to ever really get in shape no you're not going no it's got to be discipline you gotta have discipline motivation is great I love it I love music I love watching a David Goggins clip online or cam Haines or or Jocko Willink or any of these savages there's so many people out there you can you could watch one of their videos where they tell you what to do and you just get fired up and you want to go do it but that's not always gonna be there there for you. No. Sometimes you got to just, you got to decide. Check the box. This is what I'm doing every day. Yeah. You get used to doing it. This is what I do.

This is what I do. No, I agree. I agree with that. I love the fact that you're spreading it. That's what I love. I love the fact that you're forcing these kids to do these things. And then you're putting together these races where it gives people a destination it gives people an opportunity to train for an event and that's big man events are big for us and you'll appreciate this one this is for most people i mean we get pre-covid 1.6 million people a year doing these events okay it's a big number and this is the biggest thing they've ever done this is their belt ceremony right right this is the olympics they just became a navy seal right right right and and um all the benefits you talk like you can't even believe the transformations that happen to all these people and the letters

i get and like i get paid in that currency right like you changed my life i'm back with my husband i'm back my wife i lost weight i gave up drugs. I got a thought. What if you put together like an online thing where the people are accountable, but because of COVID, you tell them that event is going to happen. The event is going to take place in six weeks. And this is what you need to do. And then you need to mark your time. Every day. Yeah.

Maybe you have an app or maybe even simpler, they just use a fucking timer on their phone and say, okay, ready, set, start. Start your timer, and then you have to complete all these things. And maybe you have a checklist on your website where they can check off all the different things that they have to do during that day and get it done. And maybe someone like that 600-pound dude, it takes him seven hours, and the average person takes him 90 minutes. But everybody get it done. And maybe someone like that 600 pound dude, it takes him 7 hours and the average person takes him 90 minutes, but everybody does it together and then as a community they all report it, put it up on Instagram maybe with hashtags. A little ranking. Yeah.

I like it. Yeah, give someone, give these people an event without having a physical look. I mean, look, there's probably nothing better than that physical location. When you all get together and the camaraderie and the energy of all the people together running together and it's not the same we did it we did a very big virtual event what you're saying we registered 3.9 million people in his virtual but I don't know how many

did I you know I mean it right and then and then what I like what you just said was I didn't have the lead up every day did you run your hundred push-ups I like I like that part. That's the part that excites me. But a virtual event, you could kind of get away with cheating. In the sense that- Yeah, but you'd cheat yourself. You and I know that.

You gotta tell them that too. Just let them know. No, but if you and I, if we were signed up for September 1st, we're gonna do a Spartan. We gotta show up and you don't wanna to be embarrassed. I don't want to be embarrassed. But with the virtual, you could kind of hide behind your couch. Yeah, I did. Right. So that means you might not do the pushups, but I like, I still like the idea because maybe 50,000 people every day will do it.

It's something. And it'll do, it'll have an effect. I agree that it won't have as big an effect as if you're doing it live. I think the way you do it live is awesome, and that's the best effect. But, you know, you've got to do what you've got to do, and times change. Yeah. It'll come back. Yeah. Right? Hopefully.

I never thought this was going to happen. And what's the story? Are you moving? I'm out of here. When do you leave? Soon. Texas? Yeah, I'm going to go to Texas.

I've got a farm in Vermont. Yeah. It's a little cold it's cold i i i just want to go somewhere in the center of the country somewhere it's easier to travel to both places and somewhere where you have a little bit more freedom also i think that um where we live right here in los angeles is overcrowded and i think most of the time that's not a problem but i think it's exposing the fact that it's a real issue when you look at the number of people that are catching COVID because of this overpopulation issue. When you look at the traffic, when you look at the economic despair, when you look at the homelessness problem that's accelerated radically over the last six, seven, ten years. I think there's too many people here. I think it's not tenable.

I don't think it's manageable. And I think every mayor does a shit job of doing it because I don't think anybody could do a great job of it. I think there's certain things you're going to have to deal with when you have a population of whatever the fuck L.A. is. It's like 20 million plus people. It's just too many people. It's too many people.

Yeah, that's what I think. I think where you're living is probably the perfect way to do it. It's 500 people. It's just too many people. It's too many people. Yeah, that's what I think. I think where you're living is probably the perfect way to do it. It's 500 people. That's nuts. But then you got those dudes yelling at you. Where's the deer? You don't understand the language.

I could go on. We could do hours of the negatives of a small town. Oh, yeah, there's negatives. Everybody knows your business. Everybody knows what you're doing, where you're going. There's pros and cons to everything. But I think you have a better opportunity at more pros when there's less folks.

I agree. So small town Texas? Let's just leave it at that. Yeah. I got ideas. Jamie's coming. Nice. Look at him.

He's all excited. It doesn't affect the business. No. We're just going to do it from there. But that's the other thing is Texas has comedy. They have stand-up comedy. I've been doing – I did – well, I haven't been doing, but I did one weekend in Texas while all this was going on. It was the first weekend I was able to do stand-up.

But then my friends were in San Antonio, and they got COVID down there. But those knuckleheads were out there talking to people and shaking hands and taking pictures and stuff. Texas would be the last stand place to ever wear a mask or not shake a hand. They wear masks, though. People are wearing masks. Last time I was there. I think now they're woken up, right? Well, this is a weird disease, man.

It's weird. You know, it's super. But now, again, I was talking to a neuroscientist yesterday who was saying the latest is they don't think asymptomatic people are contagious. And I'm like, well, what the fuck, man? I thought they were. I thought that's part of the problem. Now they've got something else.

They don't know. They don't know. They don't know if you can catch it twice. They don't know. Yeah, I heard that's coming out now. They think you can, and then they say it's very unlikely. Antibodies are going away. Yeah, they don't know.

They don't know. You prefer stand up over this? I like all the things I do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Scary getting up on stage. It's exciting.

It's not scary. Not anymore. The first time I did it was scary. You know, after you develop a certain amount of proficiency. You know what's scary or what's nerve wracking is when you develop a certain amount of proficiency you know what's scary or what's nerve-wracking is when you release a special like i'll do a netflix special and then i have a whole new hour i have to write it's all new material that's oh because everybody's seen it yeah that's scary because then you go on stage all these people pay to see you they're all excited

they think you're hilarious and you got nothing right So you have to write a lot and you have to work it out. But it's just exciting. It's more exciting. I prefer the word exciting. It's just exciting. It's challenging. A show like Netflix, when you did that for an hour, how many pages of material is that? Well, it takes about two years.

It takes a year. To write that? Yeah. It takes really a year to write it and then a year to polish it and then add new stuff to it and really figure out where it is. But, you know, each bit is many, many pages.

It depends. You know, it really depends on the bit. It depends on, you know, how, I mean, a lot of it gets chopped. I mean, maybe I'll start out with like ten pages and then I chop it down to one. And then the actual bit becomes one page. But how many pages did it take to correct the bit or to re-edit and try it again?

And a second draft, a third draft? Are you testing it in front of people as you're? You have to. You have to. Yeah, stand-up you have to test in front of a live audience. You write. Sometimes I write bits and they are finished before they ever get to the stage and they're done like the moment i bring them to the stage they're already done but that's rare most of the time i have an idea and i think i know how it's going to work and then i say it

but it doesn't work that good or i have a new way to do it that's better or i come up with a new tagline that changes the bit it's like it's a weird art form because you have new way to do it that's better or I come up with a new tagline that changes the bit. It's a weird art form because you have to kind of do it in front of people. So there's a lot of people that are trying to do it like on Zoom. They're trying to do Zoom stand-up, but it's terrible. Stand-up you have to do live. It's like our Zoom workout, not the same as...

No, but it's something. It's something. It's something. Getting people moving. Get people moving. Yeah. Make America fit again. Yeah. Yeah. Make America fit again.

Yeah. So since you have all these other different things you like to do, you think you do too many different things. What are you thinking about pulling the trigger on? What am I adding or taking away? What are you adding? I love this kid's thing. I mean, if you, you know, that's why I asked you about stand-up comedy versus the podcast

or anything you do. If you put a gun to my head or a knife like you did earlier when you tested me, I like the kids. The kids are like wet clay in the sense that – You really feel like you're making an impact in the future. I feel like I'm making an impact. I've been getting – we didn't talk about this. I've been getting some 21 or 22-year-olds from very, very wealthy families that are saying, Hey Joe, they know me through somebody, whatever. Um, my kids are a little, they need some help. I want to put them

on the farm with you. They're hard to fix by the time they're 21, 22, they're hard to fix these, these little kids. Um, I make a big impact. I mean, the letters I got are tear jerkers after, after the, after the text, I saw them writing the parents about how terrible I was and then seeing 14 days later, like the impact. Yeah. I want, I want more. Yeah. You know? No, I think you're dead right about that. If you can give a kid a, like a transformational experience when they're, when they're young, something that really sticks with them. That's the rest of their life, right? Yep, yep.

And the other thing I like about it is they can't really quit. Right. You know, if the parent gets involved, then it's all fucked up. But if the parent stays out of it, we're doing amazing. I'm doing another one right now while I'm sitting here. I got another 20 kids there right now. They're there in Vermont right now? In Vermont right now, yeah. Who's cracking the whip?

Andy the Olympian, the Mountain Warfare guy, Eric Ashley. kids there right now and they're there in vermont right now who's running the cracking the whip andy the olympian the mountain warfare guy eric ashley and um they're kicking these kids asses and and you're running this every two weeks with new group new group i mean it's selfish for me because i want my i want my kids to keep just reenlisting right right and so i need more kids for them and so i just hit up another group and some of the old kids came. So this is their second tour, we'll call it. Yeah, which is great. One of them is an 11-year-old girl that's just badass, stoic. And one of the older boys I found out last night when I got to California is hitting his dad up and saying, you got to get me out of here.

You got to lie to Joe and tell him we have a family vacation and get me the fuck out of here. How old is the oldest? 15. And the dad hit me up. And I said, listen, next time he talks to you, tell him we have an 11-year-old girl by his side that is finishing this thing. Are you kidding me? So you can't blame them because they've never tested themselves. They've never done hard things.

Right. But I love it. How are you structuring this? Do you sit out in advance and decide what they're going to do like every day? So Andy, Andy, the Olympic wrestler,

when he, 2008 Olympian, didn't medal, went to Russia and he spent a couple of years in Russia to learn their system. Why do the Russians get all these gold medals in wrestling?

And they climb mountains and they climb ropes and they just fucking work hard. And not that American wrestlers don't. And so we took a bunch of that Russian system. We took a bunch of the mountain warfare stuff and then we just added the Spartan sprinkles in there and the stuff my mom taught.

The Spartan sprinkles. The Spartan sprinkles. And so, you know, they're waking up early. They're hiking the mountain. They're doing miserable shit, carrying rocks, always purposeful. So we're building stuff out of the rocks. They'll be there for the test of time.

And so they could come back and see the efforts of their work. Cold water is always involved because, as you said, with the shower, cold water sucks. Do they drink only water as well? They drink only water. All the Doritos, all that stuff is gone. It's only three meals a day. It's healthy food. Doritos, all that stuff is gone. It's only three meals a day. It's healthy food. Um,

probably keeping them a little bit hungry. Um, because you know, a lion is most handsome when it's hungry. Um, we're not getting true. Yeah. I mean, it wants food. I've never heard that most handsome when they're hungry. I mean, right. It's ready to attack. Yeah. And so, um, so yeah, and bed early. Um, we are issuing phones for 30 minutes. They get to text or call their parents or whatever. And, uh, we're doing two days on, uh, this particular camp is much more wrestling focused. So two days on, uh, and then one day to do a big hike. So they did a giant hike today. So they do wrestling?

Yeah, this, this, even the first camp, I didn't't say to you we had a fight club every day So they were some of them were wrestlers some weren't there were girls in there never done it before and we created like a Brad Pitt Fight Club down the basement with Andy and it was awesome. The kids fucking loved that part of the camp every day They loved it. So they beat each other up and beat each other was wrestling. So it was smooth wrestling He set the rules. It was like hey, I just want you to get a high single leg. This is what it is. There were games like that. Oh, okay.

They loved it. They'd pound the mat. They'd be screaming for an opponent. It was almost instinctual or something. It was unbelievable. It's great that you keep them from their phones for that long, too. Yeah, it was great. That's great.

It was, yeah, it was great. That's great. If anybody wanted to get a hold of you and wanted to do that, how would they enlist their kid? There's probably a bunch of people listening, looking at their fat kid laying on the couch right now going, Bobby, I got something for you. Yeah, so I give the whole world my email address. The only thing I ask is don't write me more than two sentences. Hold on a second. Do not give your email address on this podcast.

Just don't. I'll do it. You mean you're not going to be able to deal with it? I answer 2,600 emails one day. Okay. Well, you're going to get 2,600 emails the very second you give out that email address. Just make them work for it. What's your website? Website's spartan.com.

Spartan.com. Okay. Why don't you message me on Instagram, right? And my guy that manages that will- He's going to have a fucking heart attack. Fuck it. I mean, he gets paid. Okay.

And what is that on Instagram? What's the handle? At Real Joe DeSena. Okay. At Real Joe DeSena. At Real Joe DeSena. And John, behind the scenes, will figure out how to get me the message. And I hope you send me Bobby.

I'd love to toughen the kids up. All right. Beautiful. Joe, thank you, man. It was a pleasure. You're awesome. I enjoyed it. I really did.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everybody. I didn't know when you end, so I was like, I don't know. Like so.