The Nick Bare Podcast - 005: Jeff Cunningham - How Running Can Transform Your Life

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Lawyer by day, running coach by night - this is Jeff Cunningham. An Austin, TX-based coach with athletes worldwide training for various distances - including Olympic marathoners. He's the best running coach I know and a sage mentor and friend to many. Today we unpack the essential traits of successful runners, the impact of "hustle culture" in life and running, what it means to be all in vs. all consumed, and why competitive integrity is the advantage you need. Topics: (00:00) - Intro (00:46) - Who does Jeff want to be when he’s older? (02:57) - Running background (05:16) - Coaching background (11:00) - Passion for law vs. running (16:57) - How running can change lives (21:15) - “Hustle culture” in life and running (38:50) - Athlete burnout (42:35) - All in vs. All consumed (48:22) - Isolated vs. community training (56:10) - Traits of the best runners (58:04) - Competitive integrity (01:06:23) - Extreme Ownership (01:10:00) - Final words Follow for more: IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Jeff here:IG: https://www.instagram.com/jdcunningham97/

Welcome to the Nick Bear podcast. I've spent the past decade as a CEO building an industry leading supplement brand. There's a story. There's a mission. Serving in the U.S. Army. First video in Korea. And creating a community of inspiring leaders. The mission isn't changing, but it's evolving. So I'm excited for this next chapter.

It's out of you, man. Through powerful, unfiltered conversations. You have to be careful with entrepreneurship. You can get hurt. My mission is to help you unlock your full potential and create the life you desire. I cannot tell you how fine up I just got. Camera's rolling and we're on. I'm your host, Nick Bear, enjoy the episode.

Who is Jeff Cunningham and who does he want to be when he's older? Wow. Jeff Cunningham is a guy who is passionate. He's a guy who cares. He's a guy who wakes up every day. excited about the possibilities, the possibility of what's to come in mentorship, the possibility in what's to come professionally, the possibility in what's to come when you apply your interest, your attention to detail, and your drive into something that produces.

results for others. I'm a person who lives every day, not in the construct of selfishness, but I live every day so that I can look around me and spread excitement, joy, and uplift other people. That's who I am. How old are you now, Jeff? 48, but given my sleep deprivation, sometimes I feel 58. You don't look 48. And when we were training for our last marathon prep, you remember that one day we went and did that anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold testing? Oh, absolutely.

And run lab? Yeah, the genes on the treadmill day. As soon as you said you were 48 years old, I'm thinking you're approaching 50, I remember that day where I was doing lactate threshold testing, you hopped on the treadmill. after we got done testing in tight jeans and I think you were running a sub five minute mile and you were seeing how long you could hold it.

Yeah, I was running a sub five minute pace for I want to say it was three minutes so I made it over half a mile. I made it about a thousand meters at sub five minute pace. What's your running background? How did you get started and where did you take it? I love this question because we spent so much talking about the here, the now, and the future,

a lot of people don't actually know. I ran my first foot race in the Azalea Trail's two-mile road race when I was eight years old. And then I became an age group runner at a fairly, at a national level, finished third at the National Junior Olympics in 1988, and then ended up going on in running my high school, track and field at Lee High School in Tyler, Texas, and then went on after that, after signing with Baylor University, and then went and ran track across country at Baylor University.

How did running fit in your life after college, or did it? It did. I actually ran semi-professionally for the Brooks Athlete Development team while I was in law school, and so I graduated from undergrad in 1997. and was in law school and would wear the Brooks uniform and races. And I actually ran personal bests at most distances post-collegiately. My 5K personal best was run post-collegently. And then I ran marathons. And that's how I got into the marathon space.

At the very beginning was running marathons with a friend of mine who was actually employed for the Baylor alumni association and we would meet in the afternoons and go and run. I'm curious about this evolution because I grew up in a time and space with social media obviously in business. And the way brands like BPN finds athletes is through social media presence and sharing. How were brands finding athletes before social media was a thing? It was funny because I actually found Brooks. I knew somebody who was running for the athlete development team.

And so I actually got in touch with Brooks, and they said, sure, absolutely. And so then I started getting shoes and a uniform. So I actually reached out to them, frankly. What I'm very interested in is how your mission has evolved. You know, as a runner, as someone who grew up running, took that to college, took that to my professionally, had sponsorships, worked with brands and then went into full-time practicing law, when did you start coaching? At what point after practicing law and ending your professional running career, when and why do you start coaching athletes?

I was coaching before I knew I was coaching. And that realization hit me the other day when I was thinking about this. when I was a kid, believe it or not, people who know me now would not actually believe this. But I was really shy. I was scared to go to the counter at McDonald's and asked for an extra packet of ketchup. And as I got into running and I started becoming good at running, I actually started gaining confidence. and when I was in high school, I was a good runner, and I started garnering accolades. And what that did was it provided me confidence that they bled into other areas of my life.

At the same time, I had young guys who were joining the cross-country team and the track team in high school, and it would be during the summer months or the off months. And so I would put together little training plans for us to sort of weave them in, and bring them into the group. And so I was coaching even back then when I didn't really internalize that, but I was just so excited to see other people develop. It wasn't just the Jeff Cunningham show.

I wanted really good people on the team, on the track team. I remember going to the head coach being excited about a guy who moved to town who was a really, really good 110-meter hurdler from Dallas, and another guy who was a great 400-meter runner who moved in from Lubbock. and the possibilities of what kind of team we would have. And so I would sit with coach and we would strategize about who was going to do what,

who was going to be good. I would help the guys who were in my event specialties, which was the mid-distance distance training during the off-season. So it started then and it was sort of an emotional evolution where I gained confidence through my own personal success, but then I was excited about other guys coming in and the chances that we had to be good collectively. And so in 2001, right when I graduated from law school, my mother had a colleague whose son was a rising distance runner at the high school level.

And it was a small town in northeast Texas. And so I coached this young guy. And he ended up finishing second at the Texas state championships and then ended up going on and signing with the University of Houston to run. run track and cross country. And that was 2001. And that really was the first time I got into what somebody might refer to as semi-formal coaching versus me just sort of doing it for guys who were on my team in high school.

And I thought, what I got out of the hugs from mom and dad, the jubilation on national signing day, when this young guy signed his track scholarship, waiting. with bated breath after the first meet. How did you do at the University of Houston? I realized this is what I really, really love. And so then when my wife started coaching at St. Michael's Catholic Academy here in Austin, I then started coaching with her. And then we ended up opening sort of this Pandora's box of mentorship,

of surrogate parenthood sometimes for these young men. women and then watching the success even rising all the way up to the national level with some of the athletes that we coached was just so incredibly fulfilling in ways that far eclips anything I accomplished on a personal level athletically whether it was in high school or collegiately. Did you ever expect or want to be coaching as many people as you're coaching right now? No. Did you see your life 10 years ago where it is today? No.

No. But isn't that the beauty of life? Did you 10 years ago think you would be where you are right now? I didn't think this was possible. There you go. I'm thankful. I'm grateful. I'm incredibly humbled by people who trust me to help guide them,

whether it's finish your first marathon, whether it's qualify for the United States Olympic trials. No matter what the goal is, it's humbling. and I would imagine, and not imagine, I actually know for facts, I've known you for a good piece now. I think it's humbling for you too. Extremely. Looking at not just what you've built,

but that the trust and the passion and the dedication of the people who have followed you somewhat into the unknown and trusted in its working out, and it's pretty credible. So the answer is no. I didn't think I would be where I am now. Do I love where I am now? Absolutely. Am I excited about where things can go in the future?

Even more excited about that. But humbled and thankful every single step of the way. You can't fake passion, right? And the one thing that I truly connect with other people on and with is the trait and characteristic of passion. when someone is pursuing something they're truly passionate about and they are all in on that, I can recognize that.

I can recognize the real versus the fake. And there's a lot of people that fake passion, there's something that they think they want to pursue. But in reality, they're pursuing what they hope is the end goal of what comes through that process. But when you see someone who is truly passionate about what they're doing, they don't care about the personal win or it's not even for,

for selfish reasons. It's truly selfless passion. Like the two marathons that I've run with you, the marathon, my first sub three here in Texas and then Buffalo, the sub 250, I look back and I watch those videos, even the training videos when we're doing like these 18, 20, 22 mile workouts.

And I know that no matter what's going on in your life at that moment, there could be chaos and loss and destruction. You are so focused on your athlete in that workout or that race. I laugh. I look back at the footage from the Buffalo New York Marathon. And you're with Jordan and Yoli and you're lost on the course. And you're freaking out because you're trying to find out where I'm at

and making sure I'm hitting my paces and my times. And I'm on track to finish sub 250. But I recognize that in you of true, pure, real peasant. I could come across someone in life that is passionate about something else that I'm not passionate about, but I have all the respect in the world for that person because of what they're pursuing and how strong they're following that passion theirs. There's a lot of people who are afraid to pursue a passion because of the unknown and uncertainty of what it will provide for their life.

You know, you are a lawyer by trade, a lawyer by day, a coach by night, I guess you could say. When you first got into law, that interest and passion you had then, do you still have that now, or has that passion evolved as you've grown older and wiser? The passion's different and the passion has evolved. Listen, I touched on it a few minutes ago. I had confidence issues and on some level, some self-esteem issues, when I was a young kid sort of meandering my way into early adolescence. I don't believe that it is hyperbole to say that competitive athletics

saved me on a certain level. the practice of law has not saved me. I was passionate and I was confident and I was motivated to coach. And I started practicing law when I got out of law school. And what am I passionate about about the practice of law? Passionate about the dedication to excellence. Passionate about having the ability to take care of my family. I'm passionate about my daughter.

passionate about my marriage to my beautiful wife. And so I'm passionate about the practice of law because it requires dedication to excellence to be exacting, to be an advocate, and to be a provider. My passion for running has deeply entrenched emotional roots for me. And I have cried after people's, successes as well as failures because you have a few of those. But, you know, back in 2010,

had a young guy whose sister, who I coached, had passed away from bone cancer three weeks before her high school graduation. So we were actually able to have a graduation ceremony for the young lady in the hospital before she passed away. And he was running at university level at that time. And he had his conference championships, and I said, do you want to run? And he says my sister would want me to run. So I said, okay. So we ended up going down to New Orleans, Tulane University, was hosting it.

And he goes and runs one of the best races of his life. Now keep in mind, I coached this young guy in high school. that's the reason for the relationship. Obviously, we had the best high school runner I ever coached. And I just stood there and I just cried. I mean, how can you not? Here's a guy who ran one of the greatest races of his life the same week that his kid's sister passed away.

I coached her. I coached him from a no-nothing kid to one of the best high school runners in the nation when he was in high school. And then he's in college and he's going through all of this. And yeah, you just, I just stood under. a tree at the Tulane track stadium in the dark and just cried. Because look what's happening in front of us.

And running is sort of the side show that allows us to have some insight and some impact on people's lives at a visceral emotional level. Yeah, I'm really passionate about it because those are the stories that come with coaching experience. I truly think that running can change people's lives. Oh, absolutely. In preparation for this podcast, I was trying to find research, like peer-reviewed literature that supported it in terms of its mental benefits.

And there's not a lot of just like in stone concrete clinical research, peer-reviewed literature that you can point to say, yes, it does X, Y, and Z. So we have to assume that a lot of it is just, it's relative to the individual and it's subjective. It's like this objective data. It's an emotional passion for me as well. For me, I am not a very emotional person. I hope that in the future I am a more emotional person. And I think part of the reason I'm not a very emotional person is just because of what building

in business has kind of just done and calloused me over the last decade of my life. And I've become distracted, which I'll dive in. into it here in a little bit. But there's a few times in the last couple of years that I have, I have cried. One of those was when Steph was walking down the aisle when I got married, didn't think I would, started crying. The moment Charlie was born, I started crying.

And on a few runs in the last three years, I have cried. Running can be like this emotional passion experience. and I can't really explain why or what happens. But we know that as you're running, endorphins get released. And that can be what is considered the runner's high, right? Like you're running, things start to feel effortless, distractions in life just disappear.

And then you start thinking about something. Sometimes when I'm running, I think about my mom in her life and her passing, or I think about my future with my daughter or my family. And I've, I've like, sad cried. on runs in the past three years. And sometimes you snap out of it right away, you're like, what is going on? But there's this emotional connection with running

that I've personally experienced that I haven't been able to find anywhere else in my life. And that's why I think that if you truly dedicate time to running, it can have this significant impact on everything you do. Do you agree with that? Have you seen that? I agree with it wholeheartedly. You know, running is something that,

we can do almost every day, and we can do it almost every day of our life, no matter how old we are. So running can be a consistent platform and can open a consistent window to the sort of inner recesses of our thoughts, the inner recesses of our consciousness that maybe we don't realize is there. It's interesting because sometimes people say, I got to go out for a run to clear my head. I don't know if it's so much as clearing your head, but allowing you to have clarity into what's rattling around in your head. I agree. It's clarity. Yeah, I see it all the time. And, you know, looking at the emotions of the moment that people have after running an incredible race, or just sort of that spiritual experience when you're out in the morning when the sun starts coming up. You get that

golden coral-ish sunrise coming up over the horizon as you're out in the middle of a run. It could be a pretty spiritual experience and you get some of your best thinking done while you're running and then also get a lot of clarity into things that have gone on either in the past or are going on right now. Running with a sunrise is one of the most magical experiences. If I could do that every single day of my life, a perfect sunrise, you start when it's dark, you're three, four miles in, the sun starts rising, and you end when it's fully risen.

I mean, that is like, it's a spiritual experience. You know, I'm reading this book right now. I just started it, and it's called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. by John Mark Kmer. And absolutely amazing book. And as I'm diving into it, one of his quotes is, an over-busy, digitally distracted life of speed

is the greatest threat to spiritual life that we face in the modern world. It is the act of hurry. And it reminds me of another book I read a few months ago called Deep Work by Cal Newport. Another amazing book. what's really interesting about this distracted world that we live in

of wanting and needing to hurry, there's such a parallel between running. So in order to be faster, we can replace faster with efficient. To be more efficient at running, we have to run slower. If we really want to become a more efficient runner, we have to slow down.

We have to run into slower pace to build our aerobic base and then we can refine and build on that. If we think about life, if we want to become more efficient at life, we want to have more joy and happiness and fulfillment, we have to slow down to become more efficient. What we're finding in this digital world,

this modern world is everyone wants to embrace hustle culture and work, work, work, and sleep less and take less vacations. and the people who are overworked and overtired are put on this pedestal, but in reality, you're running yourself into the ground. I mean, we both have run ourselves into the ground. We're probably both running ourselves into the ground right now.

Yeah, I feel like that I need to be therapists right now because I'm sitting here thinking I'm in the hustle culture. But this is like, I think it's more so, it's being aware of, like right now I have an awareness of what I need to fix and solve and it is this act of hurrying. I'm always rushing. I'm always hurrying. I'm always five minutes late for something.

Or I'm trying to wrap up one meeting to get to the next. When in reality, my goal in the future, and I'm aware of this now to implement solutions to build the life and joy that I want is to be more proactive and deliberate and slow things down and be more intentional so that can be more efficient moving forward. It's taking one step back,

take two steps forward. I'm curious your thoughts on that, just the parallels of life and running. And there's so many parallels between running and family and work and happiness and fulfillment and everything in between. I'm curious your thoughts on the parallels between the two. Well, there's tons of parallels.

And it's this, a paradox, right? Because through science and study and a vastly a more voluminous set of data that we've got on what hurrying can do, what cortisol can do, what stress can do, we have a really, really good understanding of what we're doing to our bodies, but we don't listen. And maybe that's part of the problem is we don't listen. We know that running a four-minute mile right now is still a remarkable athletic feat, but it's not the same as it was 50, 60 years ago when Roger Bannister broke four minutes for the first time. The reason why we have so many people who could break four minutes in the mile now is that

science and the understanding of physiology has advanced so much. We really understand how and the why, but the how to physically train somebody to be able to run a four minute mile. That's why so many people can do it now. But what's interesting is, is we have a vast understanding of what you're. causes heart disease, what causes strokes, what causes people to be at a higher risk for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, various other neurologic disorders. And what we know is hustle culture is bad for our physical health. It's bad when it comes to heart attacks. We always joke, man,

that guy's so stressed, he's going to stroke out, right? That guy's going to almost man, I was so stressed out, man, I almost had a heart attack. We say these things, right? And so the question is, how do we avoid these things? Because we have this vast repository of scientific knowledge about all things, whether it's how to train your body to run a four-minute mile, about whether or not chronic sleep deprivation leaves you at risk for neurologic disorders and dementia later on in life.

So how do we do this? How do we navigate the fact that we have instub, Graham, Insta being the prefix, right? That we have rapid returns when we want to get our tax return done really fast. It's rapid. It's insta. But we live in a world where we know that slowing down our easy runs is going to actually net us more positive gains in the future. where slowing down our lives is going to get us to sleep

and get us to be able to connect with our loved ones in a way that's not going to be the death of our interpersonal relationships because of neglect or the failure to listen and also slow down so that we don't die way younger than we should. Slowing down is a good thing. How could we use the acceleration in the, scientific realm where we've gained so much knowledge and how can we use the accumulation of all

of the science that we now understand that goes into training for endurance events that goes into taking care of our cardiac health that goes into taking care of our cognitive health that goes into the maintenance of relationships the science of interpersonal relationships is such that we don't bastardize therapy as much now as what we used to, right? But how do we take all the accelerations in that to then internalize that a deceleration in so much of our lives is what is actually going to help us be healthier, better people? It's the ultimate paradox.

I mean, that's one thing I'm actively working on right now is to slow down. It's hard. It's very hard. And it's easier said than done. I think what happens is when you've done it so long and you've seen the positive return on moving faster and faster and faster,

it feels like slowing down and taking a step back. It almost feels like you're giving up when in reality you're not, you're just taking care of your responsibilities and yourself. But in order for me to get to where I am today in terms of building the business and building my fitness

and creating content, creating these platforms, I had to move very, very fast. And I had to act in this hurry mindset. Maybe I didn't have to, but I did. It's what got me here. So I'm almost trained to act in a hurry mindset. But now seeing the effects that's had on my life, in my health, in my relationships,

in my marriage. I think what's changed is now being a dad. and I don't want that to impact my relationship with my children, my daughter now, but more children in the future. So it's having that awareness of I know I need to slow down, but it's like it's building the game plan to slow down. It doesn't mean you stop and you give up, but the mission evolves a little bit to take care of priorities and responsibilities

rather than just running yourself into the ground because when you run yourself into the ground, you're not just affecting your own personal. health, but you're affecting all the people around you too. So it's hard. Slowing down does not imply regression. Slowing down can then aid in a bet progression. But it's hard because back in the running space, people say, well, if I slow down or I don't

do this workout as hard, or if I don't run this fast, how am I going to get better? And the answer is, well, because by going easier on yourself now, you're going to be able to be better in the future. You're going to get better faster by slowing down. And so in all areas of our lives, sometimes slowing down allows us to progress. It does not cause us to regress, but the human mind has been rewired in the last several decades to believe that linear progress is achieved through constantly being go, go, go, go, go, go, rather than take it a deep breath. I once had a boss who told me that vacations are for sissies. That's a disturbing viewpoint on life.

Would you start breaking down everything that was behind that seemingly sort of semi-inocuous statement to me? what is it that we're saying we're saying that your rest your relaxation your neurologic decompression one is not needed and two

I as somebody who's in charge the boss the managing partner of a law firm whatever it is that your health and your psychiatric health your happiness actually do not matter to me

That's what was behind that statement now 20 years later looking back on that. Your health, your happiness really don't matter to me. That's what you're saying when you say something like that to a young guy who's just buried who has a very young daughter at the time. My mindset used to be the same way. Yeah. You know, when I first started the business and we were bootstrapping and like times are tough. I would see people taking vacations,

and I would think, you're soft. Like, you need time off. Yeah. And my mindset used to be the same way, and it is shifted tremendously over the years. What I realized now was I was ignorant then. And it's funny,

now, in this book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, they describe how, how advertising and marketing has changed over the last couple decades, where, you know, say the 70s and 80s, if they were promoting a very expensive vehicle, car, or watch,

a Rolex or a Ferrari, they were showing the consumer with these products on vacation or sipping a latte, you know, in Italy, on this cliff. Yeah. Just relaxing.

But now as hustle culture has become more popular and we're in this digital world of hurry, now they're promoting these products, these cars, these watches, these luxury items, more so in scenarios and situations with people that are presenting meetings at 11 p.m. in a skyrise in New York or are leaving the office last after everyone else left five hours prior to. you know, now we're associating these luxury products with overworking instead of the luxury of taking time to rest. But you need time to rest. You know, and through the rebrand of this, new podcast, it's, like I said before, it's me being very, like, raw, honest and vulnerable with my life and where I'm at right now. The last couple years of all the vacations that Steph and I have

gone on. There has not been one where I wasn't working or training for something. So we're going to Florida here in a few weeks. It's our first vacation, probably since we were, before we were married, that we're going on a trip that I'm not actively training for something, and I'm not going to work on that trip. Now, even on our honeymoon, I was training for Iron Man, Texas. I'd wake up, I'd go down to the hotel gym, I'd run 14 miles on the treadmill that morning, and then go meet her by the pool. And I've done that selfishly because I put my goals and my priorities ahead of her,

which is not the right answer by any means. Now I'm aware of what I've been doing in the past. I'm trying to fix that. But, you know, this being our first vacation in years that I'm not training for something or going to be working is going to be refreshing and relaxing. For me, yes, but for her, like, this is what I want to do.

This is what she deserves, is what she needs. But we live in this life of just being rewarded for working and not resting. Right. And the rewards for working are significant, both personally and in those in our sphere around us. and we have a world where there's people who don't want to work globally, and that's a big problem. And then we have people who do invest their lives in their work and overinvest to the degree that they don't take care of their family

and their own physical health. And so having a balance there where you do work immensely, hard, but then when you do go on vacation and when you do get those moments and those time periods possibly each day, hopefully each day, to rest that you do, because it allows actually somebody to become less soft rather than more soft if you do take a vacation. A few minutes ago, you said, oh, you know, earlier on in your career, would you see somebody take a vacation? Oh, they're soft. Well, actually, taking it easy on themselves just for that brief period of time allows them to be harder when it really, really comes time to be really, really good. And soft people sometimes get created by burning the candle at both ends for too long.

And then you just become burnt out and bad at what you do. and being bad at what you do and not motivated because you are simply so fried you have no more neurologic bandwidth, that's probably way softer than the person who goes and takes a full on vacation, being out of pocket, not available, but then show up rested,

and then they can go hard because they're rested. And if you think about it, that's the way it works. When you train hard for a race, then you taper, right? and then you go and you run this great race and you run hard and you have a great result because you actually allow for some deep compression. And so that's the trick is not falling prey to the work culture such that we actually become worse at everything.

You know, we talk about embracing the grind. We said, it's about grinding at the right stuff. Let's grind at being the best that we could be. and sometimes that means actually not grinding our connective tissue and our fascia if we're training for a body or bodybuilding or weightlifting or running or whatever, right? But let's grind at the stuff that maybe doesn't come so intuitively, which is let's grind at reconnecting with relationships that I've neglected. Let's grind at having a diverse set of interest and some understanding on the stuff of life that's beyond simply, I'm going to go and run one more mile really, really hard and embrace that kind of grind when it could be detrimental.

So let's just focus on what is the actual grind that we need to be attentive to at various parts of our days, various parts of our lives. It's really important. How often do you see athletes burning the candle at both ends and burning out? Oh, I saw it this week. You know, I saw it last week. I saw it the week before that. And so I have to individually counsel athletes about pulling back, dialing back.

Let's take it easy. Don't worry about that run. This morning, I sent somebody a text message and says, yeah, you have 16 miles tomorrow with a bunch of pacework built in. I'll tell you what. just run easy the whole way. Because that's not regression. That's actually taking it easy

so that we could get progression in the future. Do you see a difference between males and females and unhealthy relationships with training? Just any observation of, does one gender tend to have an unhealthy relationship with training over another? The answer is yes. and we're in a world where we have to be careful,

and I understand that about drawing fast overgeneralizations or making vast overgeneralizations about one gender or the other. But just observations from a coaching perspective. Yeah, the observations are that a lot of the young women through the proliferation of the diet culture of messages, the messaging about what women are, supposed to quote-unquote look like and be like that has been a decades-long sort of evolution in our culture has gotten us to a point where, you know, exercise is used for weight control

as much as it is used for actually a goal-oriented training. Ambivalent relationships with food are prevalent for both men and women, but tend to be more prevalent with the young women. So I see this unhealthy synergy between diet culture and exercise culture and obsession with body image, aka skinny is beautiful. I mean, let's go ahead and call it like it is. God love them. All these publications, these magazines that came out with this unhealthy sort of image of what a woman should look. look like back in the 80s and into the 90s and early 2000s has led to be issues that we've got to really confront and wouldn't it be nice if it was so easy, which is, we'll just change,

just be different. Well, it's not always that easy. So you've got to really be mindful of that. And when you're with the coaching space like I am, being mindful of that and understanding how to engage in healthy dialogue with people about this is one of the key things that I have to confront almost on a daily basis. There's a difference between the coaching general population, someone who's just going to run their first marathon,

and then elite runners. And elite runners, the truth is a pound, an extra pound, does carry weight over the course of a mile. However, there's pros and cons of being nourished and having performance and then being lighter and fatigued and underfueled.

So I could imagine that as you're coaching more elite, athletes, there's this greater need and want to be lighter, which come with unhealthy relationship with food and eating disorders and honestly, like an addiction to fitness. There's a lot of people who are addicted to training. They can't take a day off. They have to, like, if they have any free time, they're going and hopping on the bike or the treadmill or logging a few extra miles. Yeah.

Do you ever come across to athletes who are running more than you prescribe? All the time. and, you know, we get into this situation where I have to explain to people that there's a difference between being all in and all consumed. All consumed is a situation where the running and the activity actually becomes your identity. It becomes who you are, and without it, you are soulless and rudderless. Being all in means that you can compartmentalize your energies in a way that allow you to be hyper-focused on a goal without it consuming your life to the destruction

of your professional life, of your relationships, and the destruction of your personal health. Thank goodness for BPN and the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle that includes weight training. One of the things that we now know is that the light of the chassis doesn't necessarily mean the faster the truck, okay?

What we now know is that women can have muscles, men can have muscles too. Being one pound lighter isn't going to make you one minute faster. Why are you lighter? Are you lighter for the wrong reasons? Because you calorie restricted, do you called iceberg lettuce a meal? That's not a good reason to be lighter, and it's not going to net positive performances athletically. Right. And so understanding that you can be all in on your goal, don't be all consumed,

and don't let the consumption then cause exercise addiction, calorie restriction, which then segues into full-on eating disorders, which then comes with a host of negative implications for somebody long-term, whether it is amenorrhea in the women, osteopenia, which is bone density issues that can then transition into osteoporosis, heart problems, metabolic problems that could be lasting maybe for a lifetime. These are the things that come with calorie restriction and exercise addiction.

And we've really got to be mindful of that and stay away from it. I love the whole all-in versus over-consumed or all-consumed. And it's interesting, you know, my last fitness endeavor and prep prior to this bodybuilding prep and competition was a marathon prep. with you. For the marathon prep, I was, I was all in, all in, hit my workouts, hit my paces, stayed on top of nutrition and recovery, implemented strength training. We went out for a sub 250 and we ran 248 and I felt really strong throughout the entire prep. I could, I could maintain a social life and work and balance this bodybuilding prep that I'm in right now.

I'm nine days out from the show as of today as we're recording this. For me, bodybuilding is all consuming. This is coming from someone who had a previous eating disorder, you know, when I was 14, 15 years old. So I'm sure that has something to do with it. But when you restrict calories to a certain point and your energy is depleted, your hormones are depleted, your metabolic health is becoming depleted, you're thinking about the next meal and when I can eat the next meal

and getting leaner and tighter to step on stage in a few days it is all consuming from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep and I respect the sport and I respect people who do the sport because you have to have so much discipline

is to be so committed and so discipline through the process but for me and I said this already before this will be my last bodybuilding prep I'm going to officially retire after the show because it is all-consuming.

Right. And it's, yes, I'm all in, but I'm all consumed all day. Where I'm home, I'm not present. When I'm at work, I'm not present. And it doesn't fit the life that I want. And it doesn't align with my priorities in the life that I'm setting out to live and achieve.

And there's such a firm line that line is not like it's not blurry it's not muddy at all all in versus all consumed there's a massive difference so i love the fact that you brought that up oh it's so vitally important because we can fuse the two and i had one young lady who was very very talented several years ago who indicated well i don't really want to um train for another marathon because it's just so consuming. And that's when I actually started thinking about this difference between being all in and all consumed.

And I texted her back. And I told her, be mindful of the difference between being all in and all consumed and all in on a goal or a task or something that's sort of on the horizon that you want to work toward doesn't necessitate the abdication of your responsibility. and the other areas of your life that are so vitally important, not just for you, because you have to understand,

it's the people around us who we can impact positively or negatively that we have to be mindful of. Yeah, I pulled this stat from, there was an interview and a study that was researched with 560 participants on why they participate in mass running events. I'm not sure if this was before or after the pandemic, so I'd take that with a grain of salt. 50% of the people

said they want a desire or they have a desire to feel unity and integration with other people. 28% of the people wanted a belonging to a subculture of runners and 21% of the people desire to gain recognition

in the eyes of others. So it seems that people want community, improve self-esteem, affiliation, personal goal achievement. Have you seen a difference in the amount of people wanting to to run and sign up for races after the pandemic, or would you say it was a pretty positive correlation even prior to? Pretty positive correlation.

But what I've noticed post-pandemic is there's a lot more thanks for being able to do things that we took for granted pre-pandemic. There's a lot more gratitude and joy and gatherings now in doing things collectively when we were deprived of that for a significant period of time. Human beings are social animals. We're social creatures. That's the reason why we organize ourselves in tribes, villages, cities. We don't do well with isolation.

That's the reason why we have solitary confinement in prisons. Think about it. What's the penalty? is to solitary confinement. We don't do well, generally, being isolated from others. And so I think the joy coming out of the pandemic to be able to go and do something collectively was significant and it's palpable,

and I think that it continues into the future. Why do people run? One, it's a healthy endeavor. Two, it allows us to be competitive on our own terms and allows us to progress competitively all the way to the top. Think about it. You could enter a race one year,

finish 300th. If you're a genetic freak and you train unbelievably and, you know, ignoring a lot of the other stuff that would go into this, there's the possibility you can enter that same race

a year later and win it. Well, where else are you going to be able to do that where the training could take place day to day and week to week and month to month at relative inconvenience. You could do it out

your front door. You don't have to drive to a country club. You don't have to drive to an athletic club. You don't have to have either rented or own some incredibly expensive equipment that can be cumbersome and difficult to deal with, such as if you're doing a rowing where you have to get a boat and get it to where you're going to launch the boat and then you have to be in a body of water or do that, right? Or just playing tennis. You have to go to a tennis court or a country club to do it. Where else could you get 10, 15, 20,000 people to pay $150 a piece and then all show up together and race one another and compete against each other? It's really unique. And that's the reason why people are drawn to it because they could do it for a long time. They could do it with a

relative amount of inconvenience. There's the prospects of this great sort of American mindset of pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and create your own success where we could go and do that in these races that we pay to enter. Think about it. I mean, you could pay to earn a race and go and with that thing. That's pretty cool. And I think that there's just so much of an allure to it because it's relatively easy to do.

It's a healthy pursuit, and we could do it socially in collectivist fashion, which I think inures to sort of the way the human mindset works. It's why CrossFit got so popular years ago is because it was a very socially integrated work-on experience. Absolutely. I think about this last marathon prep that did for Buffalo, my life looked a little bit different where work got busier. It took longer to get into Austin because of more traffic and I had a pregnant wife.

Like, you know, I was on a more restricted timeline. So I didn't really do a lot of my Wednesday morning workouts with you and the team in downtown Austin. So I did a lot of them by myself. And it was definitely more isolating. I put in the work, I hit my paces, but it was more isolating. It wasn't as fun when I looked back at when I did my first marathon prep with you, when I was training with Natasha for the Iron Man. I was doing a lot of those workouts with groups of people.

Every Wednesday morning, I was coming down with you. And we were either at the track in Austin or we were on the east side loop. And I was doing the workouts with 10 to 20 other people. that was so much more fun. That was a much more enjoyable prep. And there's this social aspect of training and fitness that you can either welcome in your life or you can avoid it. Like you can train for things.

And I've done this where you train for things by yourself. You don't integrate into the community. And it's isolated and lonely. And I can tell you from personal experience, It's all relative, it's all personal, but it's not as fun. It doesn't bring as much fulfillment and joy when you're doing it by yourself as opposed to doing it with a group of people. So I think that's one of the best parts about getting in shape and living a healthy lifestyle is finding a social community to do it with. That's why the BPN athletic clubs have been so popular.

That's why everyone trains at BPN at 430 at the end of the day because there's this camaraderie. but that's the beauty with endurance sports is that it is, community is easily accessible no matter where you're at. I agree. And for a lot of people, the bulk of the runs are done so low

because a lot of times that's what life necessitates. But we do really, really well with anticipation as motivation. And the anticipation of the Saturday morning group run that a lot of people do is enough motivation to be able to go out and do four or five other runs that week solo. It's the anticipation of getting to work out in a group setting before the BP and Athletic Club, for instance, they could drive people to be able to work out in solo fashion three, four,

five days prior to that. But always having some sort of a social component. to whatever we're doing and be able to anticipate being in that social context or being in that social situation can then get us to persevere through the days when maybe it's not quite as enjoyable because we also do have to recognize that we're not always going to have rainbows just shooting out of our ass every day. Some days are a grind. Some days are work. but having the anticipation of something that's fairly close on the horizon to keep us going socially, I think is really key.

What separates the best runners you've worked with and everyone else? Three things that come to mind. We cannot ignore DNA. We can't ignore talent. And when I say talent, I'm talking about the physical measurables, right? two dedication to process and understanding like i just said we're not always going to have rainbows and moon being shooting out of our ears and our nose and our butt every day dedication to process and hard work and then the third thing is a incredibly high level

of competitive integrity that means recognizing the importance of the day when it is time to go, internalizing the urgency of the moment on the day that it matters in delivering the goods. Okay? So you better have some talent physically. You better than stack on top of that talent day-to-day, just rugged work ethic and dedication to process. Then three, when it's time to deliver the goods, when that gun goes off, you better be an ass kicker. Have a high level of competitive integrity. And that means that you are dedicated to the process and you want to do justice to the coaching that you've gotten,

the mentorship that you've gotten to the work that you did and deliver it when it matters. And in the vernacular, in the running world, we call those people racers. That guy's a racer. He can race. That gal, she's a racer. She delivers.

She runs really fast, really well when it matters. It can self-inflict the most immense amount of discomfort in pursuit of that goal. How do you know if someone has competitive integrity? Can you see that in someone prior to race day? No. I would love to tell somebody that I magically know how well somebody's going to race. Now, we can do the measurables on a treadmill, and we can prick your finger,

and we can test your blood lactate levels, and we can look at sort of a lot of the stuff that goes into. Well, physically, is this guy capable of running fast? Okay, check that box. Is he on time, or is she on time for practice every day? Is she phone rolling after practice? Is she not drinking five beers than out before every workout? Well, no, we're checking all those boxes.

They're showing every day. They're working hard. They have a dedication to the process. so we can have the physical measurables, we can have the day-to-day measurables, which are, are you on time, are you hitting the parameters of the workouts, are you taking care of your body?

Yes, but then when the gun goes off on race day, we're about to find out if they have a high level of competitive integrity. And then through field researches through repetition over time, you could say, that guy's a racer or, man, that, you know, that young lady may have trouble delivering on race day when all the stars seem to be aligned up to that time, right? And a lot of that is the neck up. It's the psychological components of competition.

You could build it. You can build it. In fact, you can build to some level all three of those things a little bit. The raw genetic DNA obviously is the thing that can be most relied upon to just be present from birth. But having a high level of competitive integrity could come through confidence built through superior training. confidence built through the repetitiveness of self-care and preparation, and then suddenly, because you're so self-confident, then toughness comes from self-confidence,

and suddenly great races can occur when if you were ill-prepared, when you hadn't dodged your eyes across your teeth, you didn't show up to a starting line confident, and so then you run meekly without confidence and without toughness because there was no self-belief. So you could breathe toughness through self-belief. What I'm thinking about right now is one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone doesn't hit the time they want, they don't race the race that they've signed up for and trained for for weeks.

And you know there's that post-race recap social media posts that they're putting out there of all of the reason they list why they didn't achieve. and none of those reasons point back to them. They're pointing fingers at everyone and anything else. Whether race course, coach, delays, this, that and everything in between, but they never point the finger back on themselves. I think a lot of people, you know, that competitive integrity, that is accountability. You know, I will never, you will never,

see me post something after a race or a competition or something that I trained for and make excuses of why I didn't. You missed your marathon time by five minutes. No, it wasn't because you messed up your nutrition strategy or the course was hilly. You weren't prepared for it. It's one of my biggest pet peeves is when people don't take accountability for their execution and they try to blame everything in anyone else. That is something that drives me fucking insane.

For me, peak week, you know, like peak week for a marathon, peak week for a bodybuilding competition, peak week for a triathlon, whatever it is, that is one of my favorite weeks of life. Because I know I put in all the work to get seven days out. And now sticking to the plan. and sticking to the plan physically and with nutrition and training, but also getting in the right mindset.

One of my greatest strengths is getting into the right mindset for that day. Like when I ran Buffalo in New York, I woke up. I mean, the 36, 48 hours down from that race, my mind was in a different headspace. And I can't just get there right now. I have to be like 48 hours.

hours out from a race or competition to be there. And it's so hard to describe what it feels like, but it is so focused. It is the most pure and dialed in focus that I ever experience. There's 36, 48 hours out from Buffalo, New York Marathon. I was so focused that I was thinking about every mile, every step, my nutrition, what I was going to be thinking about during the course.

It wasn't chaos in my mind. It was very clear and concise and deliberate. and when I towed the line for that race that day, I felt so prepared and so dialed in. And while everyone else still looking around is joking around and laughing and they're already talking about, I don't know if it's going to be my day. I'm like, no, this is my day.

So headspace mindset, those hours leading up to that race or competition and from the time you step off across that starting line until you finish, that is all on you. that is on no one or nothing else. Yeah. And differentiating between excuses and explanations

and really knowing the difference between the two and then understanding how you come across and how you control the narrative about you to the outside world is a big problem that we've got right now in the social media space. People's failure to control the narrative about them where they become excuse makers and really,

repeat failures, but then making a mockery of themselves because they keep repeating the same tired refrain after every failed attempt, after every flunking grade they get. It's blame everybody else, blame everything else, and then demonstrating this strange need to use Instagram or Facebook or whatever social media platform it is, to sort of air out all of the skeletons that are in their closet in a way that just exposes them to needless scorn, needless criticism.

I would encourage everybody, think about the difference between an excuse and an explanation, understand and really contemplate how this is going to come across to the average scroller on Instagram, and are you protecting yourself? protect yourself from a highly critical world and don't subject yourself to needless scrutiny by airing out all sorts of things,

all sorts of personal things that there's nobody's business. There's things that's nobody's business, guys. But at the same time, if you keep saying, well, it was the weather, or I'm on my third crappy coach, or I got tripped at the beginning of a race. Well, yeah, but it was a 26-mile race. So what happened the other 25 miles, right? Control the narrative about yourself.

Really think about what you're doing. And are you going at things with a high level of competitive integrity? Or are you going at things with already sort of building in reasons for your failure because you're scared of what might happen. If you just go all in on that day and on that moment and just let it rip, don't be scared. It's going to be okay.

Just a foot race, right? If no one's ever read Extreme Ownership by Jocko and Leif Babin, I highly recommend, I mean, individual accountability, and extreme ownership of yourself and your actions and the outcomes can change the trajectory of your life. But there are so many people

who will go through their entire life of not taking any ownership of accountability of successes and failures, wins and losses. But I always say, where you end up at the end of your life is based off of the sum of decisions you've made up until that point.

and you have to live with that. You can't blame anyone else. You're not a victim, but you have to own where you end up. And that you're not a victim thing is something that's very, very important to me. Because Nick, you and I do know victims in all areas of our lives.

There are victims, okay? Victimization is real. Do not minimize the, impact of victimization by then watering down what it is to be a victim. Because when you start trying to create victimhood out of nothing that's more than your own series of bad decisions or maybe something that will really be characterized as a mundane, if not minor inconvenience, that's not victimhood. So let's make sure that we're understanding what the definition of a victim is.

And let's not try to seek attention and let's not try to create a light that doesn't even need to be shown where it's being shown by trying to minimize the negative impact on our lives that we create and then try to call it victimhood. Because victimization is very real. It is very sad and people who are truly victims of a transgression visited upon them by another individual, right? Or victimized by the horrible, horrible circumstances at life that are out of our control, whether it's cancer, whether it's mental illness. Let's keep the focus on the people who really, really need the focus, and let's not try to create focus on ourselves. by creating victimhood when we could create, focus on ourselves through a celebration of resilience and success and a celebration of us embracing positivism. Let's get attention through positivism and embracing the successes of others and embracing the

path towards success rather than trying to create victimhood and trying to create a woe is me scenario, which to me is the path of less resistance. And that might be why people do it. It's easy. Did you just trigger me? I think you might have. It's the easy path. It is easy.

Yeah. Woe is me. Woe is me. It's the world that I'm personally trying to correct with content as a role model in this space. And it's something I'm very passionate about. So Jeff, I appreciate you, man. Thanks for all your mentorship, all your guidance over the years,

and looking forward to what's next. I love life and I love coaching and I love celebrating the successes of others. Everybody's biggest cheerleader around me because it doesn't matter what we're doing. A rising tide races all boats. So let's embrace the rising tide and let's get on this wave and let's write it and let's see where it takes us. Life's beautiful.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Cunningham.