The Rich Roll Podcast - America’s Angriest Trainer Vinnie Tortorich

Episode Date: January 21, 2013

Buckle up people! America's Angriest Trainer Vinnie Tortorich joins the podcast today to pontificate — in the way only Vinnie can in his unfiltered and uncensored way — on a wide variety of subjects, including: * His career as an ultra-cyclist and racing the Furnace Creek 508; * What fuels his 15 hour training rides; in other words the popular & oft asked question is posed, “what do you eat on the bike?” * His opinions on aerobic zone training versus the currently popular CrossFit / Mackenzie method; * Fitness and weight loss in general; * What it's like to be a celebrity trainer in Hollywood; * His evolving perspectives on nutrition; * His Angriest Trainer Podcast; and * His upcoming book “Fitness Confidential” NOTE: Vinnie veers into a bit of explicit language a few times. Nothing crazy, but just a heads up if you're blasting it at work or unusually squeamish. And if you have a moment, we'd love it if you could toss a quick review up on the iTunes page. Thanks for the support and enjoy the show! SHOW NOTES * Generation UCAN SuperStarch Nutrition Products * SaltStick Electrolyte Products * A Conversation with SaltStick Inventor Jonathan Toker – Slowtwitch * The Angriest Trainer Podcast * VinnieTortorich.com * Vinnie on Twitter @VinnieTortorich * Vinnie on Facebook HOW CAN I SUPPORT THE PODCAST? 1. TELL A FRIEND! (Self-explanatory) 2. SHARE ONLINE! (Also self-explanatory) 3. SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW the show on iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud and TuneIn. 4. DONATE: Check out the DONATE button on the right hand margin or click HERE to learn more. We even accept Bitcoin! 5. DOWNLOAD THE NEW MOBILE APP! Now you can access, stream, download and share the entire RRP catalog in the palm of your hand on any iOS mobile device (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) with our new mobile app. Never miss an episode, plus special announcements, discounts, giveaways. Already downloaded? Awesome. When you have a minute, and it feels right to you, do us a solid and give the app a review in the iTunes Store.

yeah people welcome back to the podcast episode 12 back in the saddle back from kawaii back from yurtville our little experience living on the organic farm on the north shore of kawaii a common ground and kind of re-acclimating to life here in Los Angeles. Sorry, it's been a little bit since the last podcast. We're just having, you know, we're just, we just got back in town and we're just plugging back into society. And so we just had to kind of acclimate to being back here. So it's been a little bit, but we're back. And today I have a great guest for you. My buddy Vinny Tortorich is coming on the show. And we talk quite long. Our interview is basically two hours. So I don't want to bog you guys down with a bunch of introductory, you know, advertisement nonsense and the like. So what I'd like to do is just introduce him and roll right into the interview. Vinny's a great guy. I met him back in 2008. He is sort of the local ultra cyclist in my area here in the Calabasas area. So it wasn't long before my kind of magnetic

antenna found him. We have some mutual friends and Vinny and I have spent many an hour out on the bike training together. He's an amazing guy, a really fun guy with a unique point of view. He knows a lot about training, a lot about nutrition. He's participated in some crazy, grueling, ultra-endurance cycling events like 24-hour mountain bike racing and the Furnace Creek 508, which is a 508-mile cycling race in Death Valley that he's done, I think, four times at this point. So he's full of great information, and also he doesn't pull punches. He pretty much tells you, calls it like he sees it and shoots straight, which I love about him. And if you enjoy him on the podcast, he has his own podcast, which you should check out. It's a lot of fun. It's called the Angriest Trainer Podcast. Find it on iTunes, or you can go to his

website, which is VinnieTortorich, T-O-R-T-O-R-I-C-H.com. rich, T-O-R-T-O-R-I-C-H dot com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you

to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec,

a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to So without further ado, let's just roll right into this so I don't take up too much of your time today. I hope you enjoy Vinny as much as I enjoy having him in my life. Take it easy. Vinny Tortorich. What's up, Vinny?

How you doing, man? Good, man. Thanks for coming down and being part of the podcast, man. I appreciate it. Actually, I want to thank you for waiting for me because you called. We talked about this when you were in Hawaii. I think you sent me a text, and we were going to do it last week, and then I got sick. Yeah.

I didn't get sick. I lost my voice. Well, that's cool, dude. You're here. You lost your voice because you're yelling at people too much. I'm always yelling at people. And I just got through doing four hours of my own podcast. Today?

Yeah, just now. Oh, wow. I was driving from there to here. And when you said, let's wait until 2 o'clock, it gave me an extra 40 minutes to kind of get my voice back. Right, right. So here we are doing it again. It's podcast rules. You have to have here we are doing it's podcast rules you have to have you know it's funny i listen to a lot of the comedian podcasts like carola and rogan and yeah they all

have the same guys on it's like you know ari shafir brian callant like they just wrote they make the circle greg fitzsimmons like all the top podcasters they all have each other on so we got to do the same with the fitness podcast exactly Exactly. And you know, it's crazy, but you know, a lot of those guys, other than Corolla, and I have this on good measure, most of them don't make a lot of money. You know, what's his name does? You were on the show, Rogan. Rogan. Yeah. But some of these guys have, you know, 10, 12,000 downloads a day, and they're not making any money. it's it's still people are still trying to figure it figure it out i mean rogan i'd actually be surprised if he i mean he usually has

one sponsor and then he has his on it company that's his supplement company that he's a partner in or whatever um his he's got to have crazy mad downloads though so whatever ad he's putting on there he's probably making a nice return on. But Corolla seems to be the only one who's turned it into like a business in the kind of radio way because he does it five days a week. I mean, it's a job. He does it every day

and he has other shows on his network and he's on almost every show. The guy, he's like a machine, which is good for him. I like Adam. I listen to his show from time to time. As a matter of fact, I heard his show just the other day when he had Leo Laporte on.

I heard that too, yeah. That's pretty scary stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. For those who don't know, for the listeners who don't know out there, there's this thing that's occurring right now. And I read about this in Wired Magazine a couple months ago. I don't think it's the current issue.

I think it's the one that was just before. There's a new kind of trend in technology where there are these bottom feeder groups of people that are picking up these obscure technology patents that have to do with strange little technology procedures that no one's even aware of. And they're starting to file lawsuits against companies and users of these patents and people that don't even know that you're using it. And the first one that I read about, they were suing, this group was suing a large corporation and it had to do with employees using their copying, copier machines, scanners. Yeah. And so every time you scan something,

you are, I guess, arguably violating the obscure patent. You are breaking the law. And they wanted a licensing fee for every time that you scan a document in your copy room or whatever. And they sound ridiculous, but they're winning some of these suits. And so now, long story short,

this movement has found its way into the podcast world, and there's some kind of strange little piece of technology that has to do either with uploading content or the distribution of content across the, I guess it's the iTunes platform? I mean, I'm not sure. I don't know the details of it. Well, they're going after iTunes

because it's the biggest platform, and of course they're naming Adam Carolla in that suit because he's the biggest platform. And of course, they're naming Adam Carolla in that suit because he's the biggest name in podcasting. So he, you know, but the bottom line is some judge somewhere is going to have to stop this and stop these people. And they're going to have to pay punitive damages just to let them not know that they can go to court

and waste everyone's time and money and everything else. It's completely predatory. And also, shouldn't they go after iTunes or Apple before someone like Corolla? If you're the end user and you're just plugging into this system unawares of whatever, I guess it's the same with the copy machine and the scanner. Yeah, well, I think they go after everyone. They go after the money. But if they beat the money, guess where they're coming next? You and me. Yeah, I know. So everybody who's podcasting right now is in jeopardy. And I liked what Leo had to say and Adam about, you know, the podcasters have to unite and let's, you know, get our own Kickstarter going or war chest to defend against this because

I don't want to get sued. And we're just, you know, you and I, we have these little podcasts or whatever, but you know, if you're Chris Hardwick at Nerdist or these people that are running these networks or one of the big guys out there, I mean, that's scary, especially when they just won like an $8 million verdict against Apple recently, I guess. Yeah. And Apple didn't back down. They actually went to court and they lost that case. So, you know, what's going to happen hopefully is going to be fixed before it ever gets to you and me right um but but we don't know that um i find this to be a great outlet for anyone to to spew what they have to spew um and i'm happy it's here um i i would hate to see it go away

but that could very well happen. Yeah, I know. I think some actions are going to have to be taken to protect this little universe that we have, which is so fantastic. And it's really just starting. I mean, it's really the Wild West still. And there are a couple of big players that were early adopters. But there are still – I mean, I don't know about you, but I still get emails from people or tweets like, what is a podcast? How do I find a podcast? And I'm like, really? It's just one click on iTunes, but still a lot of people are not aware of the medium and they're not a user.

Well, and you would think that it's some idiotic person living somewhere in the deep south. But I can be at a party and they'll say, hey, I hear you have a radio show. And I'll say, no, I have a podcast. And before the word cast comes out of podcast, they're already glazing over. Yeah, I know. Wait, what? I'm never going to. Is it like a radio show?

And you just know right there you're going to lose. Well, it's so ridiculous, too, because what I don't understand is terrestrial radio. Like, I never listened to the radio. I don't see any purpose in it when I can download all the podcasts that I want and curate my, you know, like a zillion hours worth of radio program, custom tailored to what I'm interested in. So when I'm driving around on the highways of LA or out on a long run or whatever, I'm, I'm listening to the subject matters that I'm, that are specific to my interests. But. What I did before podcast, because we'll get into it in a minute, but doing all the ultra stuff and spending all that time on a bicycle over the years, I learned that once MP3 players were a real deal, meaning the iPod, I started downloading books

because you can only listen to music for so long on a bike for 12 or 15 hours. So I would download books of information, you know, and that was, you know, the audio files were just great. But now we have podcasts. And all I do is, you know, just take my iPhone and listen now to you and to Carolla and Leo Laporte and anyone else I want to listen to. You can just sit there and listen.

Sit there meaning riding a bike for hours on end. And it's just great information. And the thing that always amazes me is when I go back to the radio, sometimes if my phone's not with me or my phone is going dead or something, I'll turn on AM radio. It's just not the same thing. No. It's the same three guys complaining about the fact that we're going to build some railroad here going into nowhere here in California.

And they talk about Villaraigosa, and they call him Tony Villar, and that's supposed to be a big joke. And I'm sitting there going, God, there's a reason why I haven't listened to you guys in two years. You haven't changed anything. Not only that, they still, it's all sound bites and it's all sort of, you know, for ratings and you feel like you're getting preached to. And there is no long form conversation.

I mean, you can listen to Terry Gross on NPR or something like that, but that kind of programming is few and far between. And I think that with podcasting, you know, originally, I think a lot of people kind of jumped into it and they're trying to adhere to the terrestrial radio model of, okay, it's top of the hour. And if you're just tuning in, you know, I have Vinnie Tortorich with me. Like, well, why would you be just tuning in? I mean, if you downloaded it, you know who you're listening to,

it's ridiculous. You know, those rules don't apply and you can make it whatever you want to make it. And so, you know, I like it when it's just open-ended and the conversation goes wherever it wants to go. And when it's played out, you're done. You know, it's not like, oh, we have 15 minutes and we have to be done by this time because we're going to, we need to tell a joke or go to the weather. Well, you know, as you know, I started off on real radio, on actual terrestrial radio. I know. Let me just interject. Vinny is like Forrest Gump.

The more time I spend with Vinny, you can always peel back these layers. And he has all these past lives. He's like, oh, well, I used to write children's books. Oh, did I tell you about the time that I was? I was on Mount Everest. You've done many things in your life, Vinny. I wasn't on Mount Everest, by the way. When I had the radio show back in the 80s, you had to hit time marks.

Because at 13 after the hour, you had to go to some national do-do-do-do-do, and then they would play some kind of national news. And you had to hit these marks, and you had to have a producer there and you're talking and somehow he would start holding up fingers and you got to drop it right on that mark not only that you know because i'm very i speak very openly about what i believe yeah i can't imagine a program director being very happy with having you in the studio on a daily basis i mean i only did the show once a week but i was in trouble all the time because um i would go ice cream is crap and they would come in and

go but we have haagen-dazs as a sponsor and i go oh god you know right you know not for my show but for the rest of the station they didn't want me calling haagen-dazs crap and i would sit there and call everything crap which means I was always in trouble. And the only reason they didn't fire me is because people were actually listening. I was bringing in ratings, which was good for the station. If I was not, I would have been gone. But it was this constant battle of, you know,

what do we do with this guy? We can't shut him up. We can't tone him down. But on these mics, we never have that problem. So podcasting is like Christmas morning for you. Oh, every time I go on. You could just mouth off all day long, whatever you want. Do you have sponsors? Are you trying to monetize it? Are you trying to turn it into a business? You know, I've actually said very often uh the answer to that is that we would like to know because we have an audience i didn't realize i had an audience for a long time a long time meaning we started back last may and um i was doing it because as you know i wrote

another book this time not a children's book i wrote a book on fitness and we're gonna get into that in a minute yeah we'll get into it. But for that reason, I started a podcast. And I didn't think anyone was paying attention. I would open a show by talking about my co-host, talking about her breast, because she has huge boobs. I didn't think anyone was paying attention. And then one podcast, I didn't say anything about her tits.

And people started writing you know on on uh twitter hey you didn't mention her breath really i gotta do that now that's my lead you're you're imparting all this fitness wisdom and really all they want to hear about is yeah and those boobs and i mean it's the most sophomoric thing you can possibly do but if you if i leave out the best lungs in podcast radio, they go nuts. We open a show with, she's got the best lungs in podcast radio. And I always say podcast radio, even though it's not radio, because we're trying to get people to understand that it's like radio, but it's not.

Right. So we use that term, too. Cool, man. Well, let's take it back you know we uh vinnie and i go way back i think we met in around 2007 or 2008 yeah i thought it was before that like 206 maybe it's somewhere around there no i did well i did ultraman for the first time in 2008 so i think i met you through mayron like uh maybe a year before that but it was it was right around the time that i had just gotten a bike and was starting to starting to ride so that would have been late 2007 early 2008 yeah and all i knew about you

was like you're the crazy ultra cyclist dude dude, right? And I was afraid of you, and I was afraid to ride with you. So I think I was on the bike for a good six or seven months until I felt like I could even be in your little Saturday morning peloton. And by the way, it's a very small peloton that moves very slowly, as you found out. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know that at the time. And so, yeah, Vinny and I got to know each other a little bit. At the time you were training for the Furnace Creek 508, which for people out there who don't know what that is, no, it ends up in 29 Palms. It starts off right in Santa Clarita, and it goes through the Mojave Desert, and then it crosses right through the heart of Death Valley and comes out in 29 Palms.

And how many times have you done that race? I have done it four times. I have DNF'd twice, and i completed it once as a solo and once as a team i i love the race i i adore that race you know before that race uh throughout the 90s there was a thing going around and it's kind of broken up now but there was 24 hour mountain bike racing yeah that. That's, that's what you were doing before you got into the road cycling, right? Yeah. Well, I started off road cycling after college in New Orleans back in the early eighties.

And I fell in love with, you know, I was trying to lose weight. So I parked my car, I bought a bike. I was watching what I was eating. Well, let's just, why don't we just, why don't we just back it up? Because let's go back because you were a football player in college, right? So let's just take it back to the beginning and your kind of introduction to sports and your athletic history. I was on a football scholarship at Tulane University. Back when Tulane was actually a real college football threat. I don't think they can beat St. Mary's School.

That was true. That's a true statement. They were a football threat. I don't think they can beat St. Mary's School. That was true. That's a true statement. They were a football threat. When was this? Back in the early 80s. We're talking 30 years ago. It's hard to believe now, but the last two years I played,

we beat LSU. And the last time we beat them, they were going to the Orange Bowl and we went down to LSU Stadium. We went down to their house. They had already to the Orange Bowl, and we went down to LSU Stadium. We went down to their house. They had already had the Orange Bowl bid, and we upset them, 31-28, in the rain, in front of 93,000 of their people. That's pretty exciting. So Tulane was, you know, we used to beat the likes of SMU when SMU was a threat. Back then, Miami wasn't a threat.

If you can imagine that, the world was way different back then. Alabama was always a real deal. LSU was always a real deal. Ole Miss used to be a big team. But, you know, I was a middle linebacker for Tulane University, and I played at around 235 pounds. And I noticed that every year, whenever the seniors would graduate out, they would come back a year later to maybe see a game or something.

They would always be fat. You know, these guys that were these hulking, you know, molting muscle piles were now, you know, these fat guys with guts. You're talking 22-year-old fat guys. And I said, that's never going to happen to me. I'm going to always pay attention. But when I- A lot of guys say that. And I was serious. I was not going to get fat. But one year not even one year six months after football i went from 235 to 270 when after after you'd retired from college football i was done with football i was still going to the gym and working out and somehow i made it to 270 pounds i can't even looking at you

now it's so hard to believe 270 well i have pictures of it i have you know the gut and the whole deal i mean yeah you gotta you to send me an email of that photo. I want to see that. As a matter of fact, I need to digitize that photo because we're going to use it for the book and everything else. Yeah, you got to have that in the book. Yeah. I look like a porn star because back then I had a mustache and a gut and the whole thing. I just didn't have the cock to be a porn star.

Otherwise, I would have had a different career. And the podcast just went explicit. Yeah. You don't do explicit. Do you do explicit? Well, we will for this one. And you're going to have to put a little marker. It's all right.

Yeah. Sorry. No, it's good, man. That's hate. It's podcasting. It's not radio. Anyway, I gained that weight. And my girlfriend at the time, Jamie Friedland, we were having lunch.

I was having a hamburger. And I said to her, I said, you know, I think that the dryer is shrinking up my genes. And she said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, these genes, I can't button them anymore. And she started to smirk. And I said, well, what's wrong? She said, sweetie, you're getting fat. And I literally did this. I flexed my arm and said, look at these guns. Look at this. You know, I still had big giant guns. And she said, yeah, your arms are big, your chest looks great, but you're putting on a gut. I went home and looked in the mirror and it was the first time I'd ever noticed a gut. Yeah. It's weird how, uh, it's weird how the human mind works. You know, denial is a funny thing. I say it all the time. Like, you know, I was putting on weight, you know, I never got up to 270, but I was putting on a good five or 10 pounds a year.

And I honestly, and even when I would look in the mirror, I still would see that like collegiate swimmer. Like in my mind, I still weighed 165 pounds and I, you know when I would look in the mirror, I still would see that like collegiate swimmer. Like in my mind, I still weighed 165 pounds and I, you know, I could still jump in the pool and kill it. And, you know, you don't, until somebody calls you out or you have like a reckoning moment, you're unwilling to like see what's right in front of your face. That's exactly what happened to me. And, you know, what I did was I took about one day to come up with a plan. And I've always been very careful with money. And I allot money for different things. So I literally had a pizza budget. And I also had a gas budget as to how much gas I can put in my car. You had a budget specifically for pizza?

Yeah. It was my dating budget to take girls off dating girls. I called it the pizza budget, but hamburgers, pizza, whatever. A couple of hundred bucks for that. I had money for gas. And I was always weird about allotting money for different things. And I said, you know what? If I take my pizza budget and my gas budget, I can probably go out and buy a bicycle. And I did. I bought a bike for $175. And I didn't even have to deplete both of my budgets to do that. And I told myself, no matter where I go in New Orleans, I'm going to go on that bicycle. And that was the beginning of the bicycle. Right. So you get on the bike and then something clicks. And obviously, you decide you like it because you become a bike fanatic.

Well, it wasn't. I loved riding the bike. I would ride it to class. I would ride it around New Orleans. I would take it where I found out that in a city like New Orleans, uptown, you could get places quicker on a bicycle than in a car because there's no traffic. There's all these jammed up streets.

It's a little kind of European town. So the bike got me around quicker for one. But then I realized that if I wanted to visit my parents who lived 80 miles away, I would have to ride a bike to their house. So you didn't even have a car? I still had my car, but it was parked. You know, I decided not to use my car. Not for any reason at all? No, emergency. If I had to get to a hospital or something like that, it was fueled up, ready to go. And I would start it once a week to make sure that it was still running.

But other than that, I just didn't touch it. I just left the car alone and took the bike everywhere. And then I realized in order to get to my parents' house, I would have to go 80 miles through the swamps of Louisiana. And that was the beginning of, this is kind of neat. Although I did get hit with a bunch of beer bottles on the way home. Yeah, I can imagine. Rednecks up and down. So would you ride there and then have dinner and ride back, or you do that the next day?

That was the idea. That was the plan. But when I got there, I was just— Toast. I was done. I couldn't do it. And my dad gave me a ride back because I had to get back that day. So then when does the idea to start racing come in?

You know, there was some— and you all know there were some groups some cycling groups and they did criteriums uh and i got into some of those where you don't have to have a lot of endurance strength you just have to have a lot of you know anaerobic strength um i guess today we call it like zone four right but you're still you're in the weight room you're still a big guy you're not you're only a couple years out of playing football right so i was down to i don't know at the time 220 i got down to 220 and like 50 pounds off the you know just from riding your bike and i looked like a bodybuilder now i didn't even look like a football player i was you know i was lean and muscular you know it just looked weird and i i ended up buying some cycling shorts at one point.

That came in handy. That changed everything. Then I got baskets because they didn't have toe clips. They really didn't have toe clips. So I got a pair of baskets for cheap off of some guy. And I took the kickstand off of my bike because that wasn't cool. Right. I can't imagine what this bike looked like.

It was a Fuji. It was a maroon Fuji that I just kept kickstand off of my bike because that wasn't cool. Right. I can't imagine what this bike looked like. It was a Fuji. It was a maroon Fuji that I just kept taking pieces off of. It used to have the idiot brakes, you know, up top. Right. So on the hood, you had brakes and you can grab them down below. The ones you could pull. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Took those off. I kept stripping the bike of weight. And some guy told me about these criteriums. And, you know, being a football player for 13 13 years i had a lot of fast twitch muscle and you know i was pretty good at it so i kept doing the criteriums every time they came around never won any but i would always be in it you know at the sprint at the end i was always up there you know i didn't get dropped which is kind of cool for that kind of racing. But that led into other things. By 1985 or 86, I had read about Pete Pincers in a race across America, and I was fascinated with the whole idea of humans being able to,

because at that time I started riding down to visit my parents all the time, eating lunch and riding back. They thought it was the most incredible feat they had ever heard of, going 160 miles in one day. So you're getting the endurance bug. What do you think that is? I mean, because obviously I caught it.

What do you think that is that goes on when somebody taps into that and decides that that's something they want to do. I mean, for a lot of people, it sounds nutty. For me, it just seems natural. And it sounds like you just gravitated towards it because you enjoyed it. You know, it's more natural. When you started doing it, it became more natural because more people were doing it.

But back then. Back in Louisiana, I mean, I'd go out for jogs. And people would stop and go, hey, let me give you a ride. It's like, no, no, I want to be out here doing this. Right. You know, think back then. There were really, you know, Nike was just in its infancy stages of, you know, jogging shoes and, you know, the shorts.

You couldn't just really find jogging shorts all the time. As a matter of fact, I used to use my old football pants. I would cut them off because my thighs were still so big that they would rub in the middle. And football cutoffs were the best thing to wear because it would rub against itself and it wouldn't rub me wrong. That was my actual jogging clothes. So it wasn't like today and we all wore high socks made of cotton.

It was way different back then um but at one point someone told me about a triathlon i think this was around 80 it was early on before 85 before i was out of college 82 83 and i said what's a triathlon he oh, it's this thing they did in Hawaii, and now they're doing it everywhere. And there was a triathlon in New Orleans, and I just signed up and did it. It was, if I remember right, it was, I don't know, a quarter of a mile in the water,

because that was the length of this bayou that they could do it in. Right. I mean, most of them back then were super short. Well, they were all wacky distances. There was no such thing as Olympic distance or short course or half Ironman or Ironman. It was just whatever the terrain. It was whatever the terrain allowed. So in some cases, the run would be as long as the bike.

So it was this whole craziness of whatever they could do and i remember saying at the time this will never take off there's no way that this sport's going to take off because people were literally changing their clothes underneath towels you know you just the way surfers do it where you wrap a towel and take your swimsuit off and pull on cycling clothes right it was a whole kind of chinese fire drill back then you know it was so but you did it and did that kind of lock into you as something fun or i mean what was that that what did that experience lead to because you know i sucked at swimming so i wasn't you in the pool that's for sure um i i can't catch a football so me either i could just catch the guy with the football in his hand um yeah it's a funny thing i the bug let's get back to the bug

right in this box that's what i'm interested in i'm interested you know and people always and it's sort of like well what do people want to know and you know people always say well like why do you you know why do you need to do these things? Why don't you just work on your 10K time? Or what is it inside of you that feels compelled to chase after these crazy long races? And I want to get into your training, too. Because as hard as I've trained, I've never seen anybody train on the bike like you have. So you have it inside you the same way that that i do

and i'm still trying to understand what that is um a real understanding is almost impossible um it's i it's like a massage i think of it as most people go for a massage to relax i'm not relaxed until i'm six seven eight nine hours into a ride and when i say relaxed i'm not talking about my body relaxing i'm talking about my mind um it never shuts off and i um i learned early on that when i'm on the bike or if I'm running, I can shut it all off and just do that and not worry about anything else. And I think it was the love of, you know, just being out there alone. As you know, I train with the, as I call them, the Jews, you know, Jonathan, Steve, the same guys for 20 some odd years. And they all ride with me for four or five hours and as you

know i don't stop talking during that ride right but then they'll peel off and go have the rest of their life and i'll go for another 10 hours by myself just to put it into perspective what what what actually goes on here is vinny gets up at like 3 30 in the morning it's about right right yeah about 3 30 in the morning you It's about right, right? Yeah. About 3.30 in the morning. You'll drive your truck over to the commons and park it. And you have all sorts of nutrition in the back. And then you'll start riding and you'll do these,

I don't know, three or four hour loops that bring you back to your truck so you can refuel with your maltodextrin or whatever and get something to eat. And then around seven, you pick up Jonathan and the boys and they'll ride with Vinny for a little while. whatever, and get something to eat. And then around seven, you pick up Jonathan and the boys and they'll, and they'll ride with Vinny for a little while. And what Vinny does is Vinny's like, I love riding with guys that are slower than me. It's the best because every time we hit a hill, you'll ride up, you, you, you will ride ahead and do your cadence and, you know, your speed

up the climb. And, you know, where we live in the Santa Monica mountains, these climbs can be four or five miles long or half a mile, depending on where you are. And then Vinny will crest and then he'll come back down and join the group and then do the climb again and then circle back down and join the group and do the, do the climb again. So quite often you might've done that climb three, maybe three and a half times. Right. More than the group. And then you'll ride with them for three or four hours until they're done. And then you will continue to ride until like it gets dark, like nine o'clock at night in the summertime or whatever. So you're literally going from 3.30 in the morning till nine o'clock at night

when you're getting ready for 5.08. Yeah, when you're doing that kind of thing. And, you know, people, you you know have said to me over the years why do you keep riding with uh jonathan and steven it's like they're the best training partners in the world because who in their right mind would crest a mountain and then come back down and crest it again and come back down when you have those guys that are keeping you accountable they become coaches you know you have to keep doing it. Right, because then they're like,

why aren't you riding ahead, Vinny? Come on, you're slacking. That's literally what goes on. And I enjoy it. I enjoy their company when they're there. And then kind of the rest of the day, I think about them. I think about the crap we talked about. And, you know, it's kind of neat.

I've always liked it like that. There's a bonding that goes on when you're on a long ride with someone and i think in you know maybe maybe golf is that way for some guys or whatever but you know in our culture it's not normal for you know two three dudes to hang out for the better part of the day and talk about their lives you know it just doesn't very rare it doesn't really happen. And when you're, there's something about the bike, maybe it's kind of that low grade elevated heart rate and just being comfortable with some guys. And I've had the most amazing conversations on the bike where I get to know somebody better than, you know, better than you would ever imagine.

And then people start telling you all sorts of stuff about their life and opening up. And I do the same. And there's an intimacy that occurs that creates a pretty deep friendship with people that you ride with. Yeah, absolutely. It's a special thing. But getting back to also getting back to that thing about you know what is it about endurance sports and ultra endurance sports i mean i can definitely vouch for that and you know i was saying to a friend the other day like you know if i just go out for an hour or two hours that doesn't do anything for me like i don't get that feeling like i want to quiet my mind i want that feeling of being like you've been burned in the fire, like purged and cleaned out completely.

And that quiet that you get, that you can only get, I guess, if you meditated in a cave for two weeks or something like that. But just something about being out on the bike all day for a really long, solid effort. And you come back and you're like a different person. It really does i like that you use the word purging there because uh it really is uh that sort of thing um there's a guy that started something he started a long time ago and it started to get traction a few years ago um um it's that interval training where he has you lifting heavy ass weights uh mckinney is it the CrossFit guy, McKenzie?

Yeah, McKenzie. McKenzie. I was just talking about him with Ben Greenfield on an episode the other day. I listened to the first half of that interview. I can't wait. Did you guys get to that? We talked about it a little bit. And I'm actually, that was one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about.

Yeah. Because I've always been kind of a Maffetone guy. Like, I need the volume. I believe in zone two training. I've experienced tremendous results and rapid improvement by adhering to aerobic zone training with hard intervals. Ben describes it as, I can't remember the exact term he used, but you're either training on one end of the spectrum

and then you train on the other end of the spectrum. And when you combine the super intense efforts and the sort of Z2, you know, miles, that's when you're going to get a good result. And it takes time. If you're going to put all that volume in, you're putting in a lot more time. But now, you know, this CrossFit craze is upon us. And I think in large part due to kind of the advent of the paleo diet and, you know, it's very, very popular right now. Um, but this guy McKenzie and others are saying, you know, if you want to train for a marathon, just forget about all that volume. You never have to run more than 13 miles and you do this super hard efforts and you're going to hit the, you're going to do

the CrossFit super hard and you're going to do interval work on the track and you know, you're going to actually get your PR in the marathon. You're going to improve. And like, I have a hard time. I mean, I can't speak to it personally because I haven't, I haven't done that. So I can't say I did it and it didn't work. Um, but I know myself well enough for being a, you know, an athlete that, I don't think that that would work very well for me. And so as a trainer, you must get this question, you know, people are always,

should I do it this way? And what are your thoughts on that? Of course you get that because it's a too-good-to-be-true type. And this is going to be interesting because as soon as I leave here, I'm going to go listen to what Ben has to say about it. And Ben's a trainer I actually respect. There's not many that I do respect as much as he. But it's going to be interesting because I'm going to give you my piece, and it'll be interesting to see how it relates to someone like ben and what he thinks about this type of training

um i'm gonna come right off and say it's no good it's no good and and i'm gonna give reasons as to why it's no good um first off people um you know when you have people who aren't really athletes and they haven't trained in this form and they don't really know how to do power moves, you could cause injuries right off the bat. Just that alone is going to cause enough injuries that will probably stop these people from doing anything else ever again. But McKenzie says, and if you're not familiar with what we're talking about, there's an article, I think it's in the latest Outside magazine, about him and his methods. Oh, great. So he's getting more press. Yeah, he's getting a lot of press. And Tim Ferriss is a big believer.

He talked about him in his book and all that kind of stuff. But he's saying this is a way to avoid overuse injuries for people that have problems because they run too much. that have problems because they run too much. Well, yeah, you see, he's taking an inkling of truth and turning it into something else. But my feeling is when you start mixing anaerobics with aerobics, you're not going to give your body the break it needs. And when you start adding any extra aerobics to the fact that you're burning yourself,

I'm trying to use as layman terms as I can. You're going to burn out, and you're going to cause stress fractures. You're going to cause muscle tissue damage. I mean, I could go on and on and on and on. It's pretty similar to what Ben had to say about it. I mean, he said, you know, basically McKenzie's kind of saying this is a way to avoid overtraining. Uh,

and, and it's for the time crunched person, obviously, but there is a different kind of sort of stress and over, cause these workouts are very difficult. They're short, but they're very difficult, but they,

they create, you know, a different kind of stress on the body. And in effect, it creates overtraining. So the thing you're trying to avoid, you're going to actually fall into. I'm a big believer, and I know you are, because I see you going up and down the road a lot.

When you see someone up and down the road a lot, the only way they could do that is to be in zone two. I believe in a big, giant base, just the hugest base you can get. I believe in starting early in the year, build up that base, find out where your zone two is, and stay there and just build a big giant aerobic base that's going to serve you well when your long-distance races come along. Yeah.

You can't, you really can't, I mean, I guess it depends on what your goals are, but I think if you really want to kind of break the glass ceiling on your performances, there really is no end run around putting that time in to that base and really dialing it back and getting those aerobic miles in. And look, if you just want to complete a race and you don't have much time and you're a super busy guy maybe you know that crossfit mckenzie method might get you to a certain level of proficiency or fitness but you're not going to reach your potential doing that i would rather see people under trained for

an event than to do a crossfit to try to you know because body, our bodies know how to go the distance. I know I like to put the time in just because I like to put the time in. My buddy David Holt, who's a big-time ultra-cyclist, he loves to put the big miles in. I think we all do it more for our head than anything else. But even if you don't have the, you know, you could probably do your long ride on an Ironman. Your long ride could probably be between 70 and 85 miles, and you can do that.

You know, your long run might be as much as 16 to 18 miles. You don't have to put in a full marathon to do it. You swim. God only knows how little you can swim and still make it through that swim in the cutoff time i think uh i think too many people worry about the amount of time they're going to be on that course more than they should um same with bikes you know serena used to say when she first met me she said well you never go any further than three 350 miles in practice yet you do a 500-mile race. You realize that sounds insane to me.

Yeah, yeah. And I would explain to her, it's like, as long as I get 60%, 70% in, I'm good. Well, you can't go out and, I mean, if you're training for a 500-mile cycling race, you can't, you know, you can't, you're not doing race simulations. You just can't, it's not physically possible. So how much are you going to be able to do in one day? It's physically possible, but it's not going to, you know, you can't, you're not doing race simulations. You just can't. It's not physically possible. So how much are you going to be able to do in one day? It's physically possible, but it's not going to, you know. It's not going to make you better.

Yeah, it's not. Some years I've never gone more than 250, and I've done just as well. Well, you also have years and years, decades of base behind you of doing this. Brain knows how to get there. You know, the cells in my Brain knows how to get there. The, you know, my, my, my, you know, the cells in my body know how to get there. There's only so much training you can do, you know? Right. So, uh, the other thing I love about when you do 508 is you just gun it right out of the gate. You know, like you go hard, you know, I've never seen anyone like you just go for it and you're out on the front and, uh, and, and hitting like a really aggressive pace early on

for the first hundred miles. I mean, I've done some crazy endurance stuff, but I also know what my body feels like after I've put, you know, 150 miles and on, on a bike. and the idea of going 350 more is is beyond me so i still i i don't know how you how you do it um for that race a lot of us that you know i my feeling is if i'm gonna go out there i'm going out to win or i'd rather burn that's why i've dnf so much of that race yeah he's dnfing not because you know he's out of shape or whatever. It's because he's going for it. And it's either going to work or it's going to go down burning. And I've gone down burning. And one time I gave it up at the 400-mile mark.

I hurt my knee, and there was nothing else that I could do. There was no continuing on. Another year I went 320 miles, and that was it. But why don't you just – I mean, I've said this to you too, like, why don't you just pace out that first 150 miles and take it easy? You obviously have this huge base. You've been doing this for a long time. I believe in your ability to kill it in that last 5,000 miles. Why don't you try it that way one time and see how that goes? You know, if I do it again, and I probably will next year, not this coming year, but the following year,

that's going to be what I'm going to do. Because, you know, we all race to Trona. That's about the 150 or 60-mile mark. We want our cars to be in Trona first because it assures our chase vehicles getting gas and not being held up. I like getting to Town Pass. That's a 12-mile, 11.5-mile climb with 12% and 13% grades. I like getting there in the daylight. I like getting to the top of that mountain in the daylight, and I like getting down

the backside of it into Death Valley in the daylight. Most competitors, other than the first two or three or four people, see the whole thing at night. I like to be over that hill. And, you know, you're talking about the speed. I'm a 50-year-old man now, and last time I did that race I was 48, and I'm still hitting the 200- mile mark at nine hours and 15 minutes right which means you know you're doing back-to-back 100 mile runs at four hours and you know whatever 40 something minutes right um and you know in your mind you keep hanging on to that you know you don't want to

give up that you can go the first 200 and way under 10 hours you know you're you're you're losing the forest for the trees especially as you get older and you're absolutely right you know your your strength will naturally diminish but you can continue to build that that that aerobic engine you know and rely on that but and rely on that in a bigger way yeah i you know i've learned a lot from my buddy David Holt, who... Tell everyone who David is, because I know who he is, but he's quite the cyclist. David is now 60 years old, and he can still go out and hang with the young bucks.

He'll go out. He's always a threat. He had the record at the Hoodoo 500. It's a 500-mile race, 40,000 feet of climbing in Utah. He held the record at the hoodoo 500 it's a 500 mile race 40 000 feet of climbing uh in utah he he held the record twice there the overall record not the 60 year old record the all out won the race had the record how long ago was that uh two years ago so he's literally 50 late 50s. He's never done, the first time he did 508 was when he was 51 or 52. He's never finished worse than eighth overall. And he's finished second once and third twice. I mean.

That's crazy. And didn't he go for or hold the 24-hour record? He held the 24 hours of Sebring record i think but he did it in the velodrome too like you you were no no no there was another friend of ours oh that was a different big al schmutz i was going for that record and he had stomach issues at around 15 or 18 hours and that ended that right there right done right right so but you're taking the you've taken a kind of the year you're not racing this year you're focusing on your training you're training other people we're going to talk about that and also um and also your book so uh i want to talk about your book man you got a book

coming out in a couple weeks so as a little bit of a background uh in addition to being, you know, a ridiculous, uh, cyclist. Um, and on that note, one thing I wanted to mention too, and this is important, I think for everybody out there, when Vinny goes out to ride and he can hang with anybody on the bike, believe me, uh, he, uh, everyone's out there, especially in Malibu and out here, they got their super fancy bikes with the fly rims and the latest Garmin and the SRM and the power meters and the whole thing. Vinny goes out, you've got a couple bikes, but I think your favorite bike

is your old Serrata steel frame bike. DeRosa, it's a DeRosa. Oh, a DeRosa, yeah, DeRosa. I mean, what year was that frame made? That frame is a 1980. Just got a 1980 steel frame, and he has the Brooks leather saddle on it. You know, you seem like that you see on like a commuter bike, whatever, the one that's the brown leather. Yeah.

And then you load it down with about as many water bottles as possible. You got like four on the back and two on the frame. Yeah, I usually have five 25-ounce bottles. That's 125 ounces of water on the bike and sometimes another one in my jersey. And, of course, I have that big pack I carry. And then you wear a fanny pack. I don't even know what you have in there, like a toolkit. It's loaded with everything.

Because over the years, you learn. You break down out there. I'm the most neurotic cyclist in the world. So in other words, he's riding on a bike that probably weighs 20, well, with the bottles on it, it probably weighs 35, 40, 50 pounds. I don't know. It's very heavy. Right. So he's going all day on this bike.

He's trying to make it as heavy as possible. And you see other people out riding, and they got their race configurations on. And it's the same thing in swimming. We used to wear, like you're not going to wear your skin suit to swim practice to see how fast you can go. You want to slow yourself down right right we used to wear i can't even believe i say this but when we were in high school we would wear pantyhose we would wear pantyhose to swim practice because it the drag that it creates when you're swimming makes you swim like 20 slower it makes it very difficult to swim so i don't know i wonder if swimmers still do that but i I can remember telling my mom, like, you got to buy pantyhose for me for some practice,

slow me down. It kind of, you know, when you think about swimmers wearing pantyhose and then you use the word drag, you know, I was sitting there going, well, we are, it is a team where you are. Yeah, it is. This is an explicit podcast today. Yeah. yeah right you got to put the sign on it anyway um but anyway you know the point being that like you know vinny's tough as nails and he's going out there trying to make his bike as heavy as possible when everyone else is out there trying to make it as light as possible yeah because you're training race in practice you're training yeah exactly um and of course then when you you grab the the little light piece of carbon fiber bike and go out and race um you just fly up the hills i mean yeah you know you go from 35 40

pound bike to a 15 pound bike it makes a big difference and you are a weight weaner i think i remember you telling me you did something with uh like the nuts on your on the screws that you are screwing in to hold your, your, your water bottle cage under your frame. You were shaving off the ends of them to save like, you know, one, one hundredth of an ounce.

It's even worse than that. I take one, you know, I don't even leave the two water bottle cages on. I just leave one on because I figured you have a car following you. They can always hand you anything you want why have two waters on your bike uh but the one that I take off I don't even put the screws back I just cover it with a little piece of tape just to keep those screws out and the other two screws

holding the other one I actually shave them down yeah so but you know it's that is that's insane but you know that's more insane than wearing pantyhose. It is. But, you know, it comes down to, does it really do anything? Only in your head. In your mind. It's a mental thing. And that's where it matters.

It's the same reason we shave our heads. Because you know, you're the only guy who is like, you know, in his study late at night, shaving down those little. Oh, yeah. Sitting there going, hee, hee, hee, hee. Look at this. I'm going to shave it down. No one else is thinking of this.

Like a crazy maniac. And you're shaving your legs and everything else. Does it all matter? Not a whole lot. Grant Peterson, the guy who has Rivendell Cycles, he and I, we've had conversations about this. He can actually make an argument to the fact that we're faster without toe clips. Meaning using the cages on your pedals instead? No, just using nothing, just pushing pedals.

Because when you think about it, we really don't lift up on those pedals. Well, you do a little bit when you're trying to have a really smooth circular pedal stroke. Yeah, so he makes that argument. I'm not making that argument, but Grant Peterson, who has been designing bikes, he designed for Giant back in the day, and of course he has Rivendell Cycles and the whole thing. He's got a book out right now called Just Ride. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've seen that book. Yeah, cool. He poo-poos all of it. Interesting. Yeah. I haven't read that book. Cool. Yeah.

All right, so training. We've got to talk about you as the Hollywood the uh hollywood celebrity trainer i just saw you i just saw you on what was it access hollywood yeah billy bush and and howie mandel i know you train howie um so you know vinny's a guy who's uh been around town here in hollywood for quite some time so in addition to being this lunatic uh ultra cyclist he trains a lot of people you know average people and celebrities alike. And he's got a book coming out. So how did you get into the whole training thing?

I started it in, well, I started working out when I was 10, which is, you know, when you think about it, 1972, there was no gyms around. There was a guy in my hometown that had a gym. So before even football took hold, I was always into fitness and working out. And by the time I was 16, I was actually, you know, we built the gym in my hometown. So a small town with an actual gym. And I was the only employee in that gym. So training people started way back. When I was at Tulane getting my degree in physical education and my background in exercise physiology,

they needed someone to teach weightlifting, and I was the guy. I also became the assistant at Tulane after my football career was over with for health and strength for the tennis team, the swim team, girls basketball, and men's basketball. After that, I got hired on by Newman School. That's where all the Manning kids went to school. I didn't have Eli, but I had Cooper and the other one, Peyton. Right.

You may have heard of him. Never heard of him. Anyway, I just kept on with fitness. And by that time, I had training clients. I was training people. Back then, training didn't exist as a career. Right. So they called me the exercise guy.

Because trainers, as you know from college, were guys who would tape you up and ice you down he's like the old guy like burgess meredith chewing on a cigar and that yeah it was those and they actually have degrees to become trainers so to call myself a trainer i didn't have a training degree so you know i called myself the exercise guy and i was going into people's homes there and that continued and you know for 10 years until I moved here back in 91 uh and started doing it here um uh the original question was well so so you well I guess I mean you answered it but you know so you move here you move here to develop the

training business is that was the idea moving to to los angeles yeah and at first i didn't know a soul here i just moved here i just i wanted to be where i can ride more and you know it'd be sunny year round so i moved here without knowing anyone i had no way of making a living here um someone introduced me to an agent who turned me into a model and that's literally how i made my money for the first two years of living out here. Do you have any of those pictures? Tons. I got to see those. Oh, you've never seen any of those?

No, uh-uh. And when you look at it now, it just looks so wrong. Is it online anywhere? Is there a link I can put in the podcast? Yeah, you can find stuff. I'll send you some stuff. All right. But I did that, and literally, I was making a lot of money.

But I was already in my 30s, so I was like, how long can this possibly hold out? So I got back, and the whole time I was trying to find clients to train, and I found my first client at Playboy. And there was this woman who lost, you know, she was 300 and something pounds. I took 120 pounds off of her. That caught the eye of some of the Playmates who, after they do their Playmate stint in the magazine, Playboy has a contract with her for two years. And these girls start to gain weight. They start partying a little too much. So I started working with those girls and that led me into the hollywood

community you got to keep them game fit yeah so you're so so basically what's happening is you fall into that and you're calling your friends back in new orleans going you're never going to guess what's going on here in a million years you're not going to guess this one right yeah it was kind of that cool that story story alone should merit buying this book. I hope there's stories about that in there. Well, we actually opened the book talking about, as a matter of fact, I went to your agent first before I went to any agent.

And she read the book, and she literally had a visceral reaction to my book. And she basically sent me the equivalent of hate mail. Really? Oh, it was horrible. And she called Dean because I wrote my book with a very well-known author, Dean Laurie, who has written, I don't know, eight or ten books. He's one of the writers for Arrested Development, My Wife and Kids. He's written movies, Adam Sandler movies.

The guy's been around Hollywood forever, and he's a well-known writer. Right. She called Dean and said, you should know better. She did not. Yeah. Really? Dean said, what are you talking about? She said, no one writes a whole book and puts it out there.

You should have written a synopsis, and we could have sent the synopsis out. You wrote a whole book. Well, I think, I don't know. I think a lot of people now are writing, are writing whole books. Uh, you know, the, the, the business is changing, you know what I mean? It's sort of like, you know, I did it the very traditional way, which was, I was introduced to Carol, who's my book agent. And I, I told her my story. Um, what happened was a guy that I swam with in college. Uh, I was talking to him on the phone and he's like, and this was way before the book. And he's like, you know, that's a great story. Have you ever thought about writing a book? You know, I should introduce you this woman, Carol. I used to, uh, rent, rent, uh, a house that she

owns in San Francisco and she's a book agent and she's Dean Karnaz's book agent. And she probably, you know, dig talking to you. And I was not attached to it or whatever. I said, cool. But that sounds, you know, yeah, I'd be happy to talk to her, but I didn't really think much of it. I ended up talking to her and she's like, this is an interesting story. You know, I don't know that there's a book in this or not, you know, maybe there is. It's, it sounds interesting. I'll tell you what, like you know, I don't know that there's a book in this or not. You know, maybe there is. It sounds interesting. I tell you what, like you're, you know, you need to write a proposal. I'll help guide you through it. You know, I can help find some people to help you write it to show you what

it, you know, what a real book proposal is. And then we'll, you know, figure out if there's something here or not. So I actually busted my ass on a proposal for like four months. So, and that was what kind of set everything in motion and made the book happen. But, you know, publishing's changing, man. Those, the big publishing houses are more and more conglomerated, just like the television networks. Yeah. And I want to get into that in a second, but go ahead. No, I was just going to say, so it's sort of like, you know, if you're a screenwriter, if you're not bringing the next Twilight or, you know, Iron Man, you know, or some kind of comic book franchise to their attention, they're not interested. You know what I mean? So you have to thread the needle in a certain way.

And that basically eliminates, you know, a lot of interesting, you know, intelligent projects. And the same thing is going on in the publishing world. Like they can only publish so many books. There are only so many publishing houses. The indie publishers are kind of falling by the wayside or getting scooped up by the big ones. And there's never been a better time, particularly for somebody who already has an audience like yourself to, to self publish and, you know, cut out the middleman and distribute directly. And if you do it right, and so many people on the internet are telling you, here's how you do it right,

here's how you can do it, here's how you can leverage the audience that you have, you don't really need that. You know, it's interesting because you and I were writing books at the same time. I know you were writing yours because I saw you every day at Starbucks writing yours. Right. Most of my book was written in Starbucks. I couldn't do that. That would distract me. The way I did mine, you got a deal and then started writing your book.

Right. I decided not to get a deal and write the book. And we did it at exactly the same time. And by the way, speaking of books, if you're listening to this podcast there's a good chance that you're you're a fan of rich rolls but you don't know anything about ritual until you read this book um i listened to the whole book on tape i bought it and listened to it bored by my voice on that actually i you know when i heard the first five minutes oh i gotta listen to this jackass for another six hours i I fell in love with your voice.

I know it sounds a little gay, but I fell in love with your voice. Hey, I'm the guy who wears pantyhose, so. Yeah, so maybe. That doesn't make you gay. It just makes you a drag queen. I think it's a more different. Very different things, very different.

But I remember every day, I went, okay, I'm going to listen to another hour of your book. I would go out to the Amundsen Ranch and start jogging. And then two hours later, I would find myself still listening to the book. I remember exactly where I was when I read that piece about the girlfriend and the marriage, the woman you married. And really feeling your pain four, five, six times in that book. From high school, the high school pain.

The pain with alcoholism. Because I have a family member that is an alcoholic. He's been clean for several years. And just going through that pain of what you had to go through. This book is a great read. If you don't like rich and you don't like endurance sports and you don't like anything, read it for that reason alone. It's a great journey.

And the whole time I was reading it, actually listening to it, I kept going back to, I wonder if he was writing this that day when I walked into Starbucks. Maybe. But thank you for that. I appreciate that. It really is a good book. And even if you bought the book,

go back and buy it again. Do you make a buck if they buy it? Here's another reason to self-publish. I'm still not in the black yet. I think I've sold. That's crazy. They're really happy with the sales. It's been selling like crazy. And, and, uh, I think I've sold over 30,000 copies. That's net like his

bookstores return. I think gross. It was, it's like 45, 50,000 or something like that. But a lot of bookstores end up returning a lot. Um, and they're all super psyched on that, but it's still, I still haven't sold enough to be in the black because I got paid in advance, so I'm still not, I've never gotten out. You haven't covered your advance. No, I haven't covered my advance yet. By definition.

Excuse me, I gotta sell some more books. Please buy his book again, folks. I'm gonna go home tonight and buy another one of your books. And if you're gonna buy his book, go to his banner at richroll.com, click the Amazon button. I wanna talk about your book yeah and if you're going to buy his book go to uh his banner at richroll.com click the amazon i want to talk about your book man this is i'm trying anybody who's anybody who's listening i appreciate that but we're here to talk about you man my book um here's what we did well it was called first of all it was called confessions of a hollywood trainer right but

you've changed the title well the original title we wanted to go with was um fitness confidential and we've gone back to that um we we put the book out the second agent i spoke to uh took the book uh loved the book and she went out to 22 of the top houses and you know that it's basically the only top houses left right um you, HarperCollins, Crowns, Simon & Schuster, the whole slew. And they all got back to us pretty quickly. Here was the interesting thing. Usually when you get a turndown from a book agent, because I've been through this before with my children's books, it's one sentence of thanks but no thanks. You know, we thank you for getting in touch we were getting two and three paragraphs of information back on this book only one agent hated it one agent you know who is this guy tony my agent no no no only one publisher or one

publishing house who is this guy t this guy Tony thinks he is? She didn't even get my name right. Right. Is Vinny that interchangeable with Tony? Is it really that bad? You Italians. Italians. It's like if a black guy's name is Tyrone

and you call him Leroy every time you meet him, it's almost like that. And Tony doesn't know what he's talking about and he's all wrong. it turns out that she's jillian michaels book agent oh interesting i have a lot to say about jillian michaels in the book so obviously she didn't like the book but the other 21 you talk about jillian on your podcast a lot too yeah yeah we don't we don't sugarcoat anything on my podcast. It's very raw, if you will.

I love it. It's great. It's totally unfiltered, uncensored, Vinnie Raw all the time, all day long. And you know what's crazy? And great information, too. It's not like you're just complaining. I mean, you're imparting a lot of great information. No, it's not.

People think that I'm going to be angry. It's almost like this. I just get on the air and say, what's the truth? I'm not going to lie about anything. Well, it's a catchy, you have the catchy America's Angriest Trainer. So you think it's going to be like AM Talk Radio or Fox News or something like that, where you're just going to be screaming all the time. But it's not that you're angry, and it's not that.

You just call it like you see it, whether people agree or don't. We say at the top of the show, and we say it in the book, I'm angry because your good intentions have been stolen. You've been lied to. You've been told that Gatorade is a good product. And that's just an example of what we go off on,

and we talk about it. And that's just an example of what we go off on and we talk about it. But getting back to the book, all of these publishing houses wrote to us and said, we love your voice, we love this book, but we're scared of this book. We can't sell a book like this anymore because the world has changed. Meaning, what does that mean exactly? They literally wanted me to take my book and cut it in half and just give the prescriptive form of it. So the book you did, where you talk about two things, your ultra life and your life growing up and the whole thing, they don't want that anymore.

They just want the how-to. Yeah. If I was a celebrity, they would take the other part. But since I'm a non-celebrity, they just want the, like a magazine article, 10 ways to make your butt tight, five ways to make your gut tight. And I said, I won't do that. As a matter of fact, three of the bigger companies have come back to me and said, fine, since you won't cut your book in half, will you write us a different book? So I'm in a process now of writing a second book

before the first book is sold. But in this case, I'm going to write exactly what they want, but I'm not going to pull any punches. Yeah, it might even be smart to wait on releasing your first fitness confidential until the other book comes out because your audience will be so much bigger that you could release that second book and do better on it. Or I guess you could always re-release it. The problem with that is you know how long it takes to release a book. That's one of the beauties about – I'm getting this first book professionally edited. We're not saving the horses on edited. We're not pulling any, we're not saving the horses on this. We're spending a lot of money on a professional edit job.

We're spending a lot of money on cover art, and we're going to spend a lot of money on actually promoting the book. So I think the book is, you know, hopefully the book is going to do well the way, and at the end of the day, we get to make most of the profit. Oh, of course. That's the whole thing, right? Yeah. But you're planning on getting it out there in the next month or two, you said? We're looking at, I did a piece for Oprah for the own network, and I'm going to try to go out on the heels of that.

When is that, Aaron? That's in October. Oh, wow. That's amazing. And tomorrow. So let's talk about that. Hold on a second. Wait, when is this podcast coming out?

This will come out. I'm going to try to get it up tonight. Because tomorrow I'm going to be on Access Hollywood again. They're rerunning my show. Oh, cool. So if you didn't see me in a tutu the first time, it's going to be preempted by the inauguration, but at 1 o'clock la time they're running that piece again of me in a tutu right i like it on access hollywood so so who's the cross dresser now uh me maybe me yeah there you go

all right so uh so but let's talk a little bit about about what it's like to be a celebrity trainer and i know it's that's a big part of the book, not all about the book. But, you know, why don't you like sort of pull the shades back for the listener and, you know, spin a yarn or two about, you know, what it's like to deal with these celebrities. And, you know, when the movie studios call you and say, you know, we got a guy who's going before the cameras in 15, you know, in three months or whatever, and he looks like hell and you got to clean him up. And I mean, is that kind of like a typical scenario that arises? Yeah. Um, it is, um, not so much today as it was back when, um, most of them try to stay in shape all the time now. They see the benefit in doing that. The worst case I ever had, and as you know, I don't mention any of my clients' names. Howie gets mentioned because we're actual friends in real life. I'm not friends with most of these

people. I go in, I do a job, and I leave. Right. So it's not a tell-all, tattletale. Right. I'm not sitting there telling all about this celebrity and Britney Spears does that and so-and-so does the other thing. I think I mentioned Howie in the book by name because we're actual friends outside of... You've been training him for a while, too. By the way, he looks fantastic. He looks better than ever.

I couldn't stop looking at you in the tutu, but when my eyes did gravitate over to him once in a while, I noticed that he does look like he's lost quite a bit of weight. He's lost some weight, and I've put a lot of muscle. He wanted to add some muscle, but now we're worried that he's not going to be as funny because, as you know, when comedians like Carrot Top put on too much muscle mass, they're not as funny.

There's a direct proportion between how fit you are and how funny you are. It killed Joe Piscopo, too. It killed his career. He just got too big and too muscular. So we talk about that all the time. But I had, I want to say it was about 15 years ago, where Weight Watchers, and I'm mentioning, it was actually Weight Watchers, I'm mentioning it by name as I would on my own show. They used to give celebrities just a shitload of money,

you know, like millions of dollars to say they lost all this weight on Weight Watchers. Well, what actually would happen is they would get the fat celebrity, they would take pictures, and then they would hire a team. And I would usually be part of that team. They would hire me, they would hire, you know, chefs, you know, they would hire dieticians and they would get all these people in to work with the big fat celebrity for the better part of two or three months, get them down, get them to look good. Uh, and then, you know, have them do a ton of ads. And it would pay them millions of dollars to do that.

Like the Christy Alley's and the people like that, right? I don't know if Oprah's ever done it for them. You know, you see it. Didn't they have the princess or the duchess of... She did it for a while for Nutrisystems. They all do a version of it. And they inevitably end up getting fat again. Yeah, every time because I leave, the chef leaves, the dietician leaves,

everyone leaves, and no one's paying for us anymore, so we walk out and they get fat the next day. We actually had one, I went in, huge celebrity at the time, big in stature and big in the world. And they had given her a million dollar check to get in shape and to do the whole thing. That's insane. And I went in on day one and I said to her, I said, which drugs are you using? And she said, well, I use Ativan and I use this, that, and the other thing. I said, which illegal drugs do you use? And she goes, well, I use Ativan and I use this, that, and the other thing. I said, which illegal drugs do you use?

And she goes, well, I do some coke and the whole thing. I said, okay, all that has to stop or I can't help you. You can't be coked up and you can't take Ativan. You have to stop or I can't help you. And, well, she did what she would do. She fired me. So they called the next trainer in, and, you know, I knew the guy.

I said, ask her about the Coke. Of course, I used Coke. He got fired. She ended up giving the million dollars back. She wouldn't do it. That is a, ah, I love it. It's that type of story where. That's an addict after my own heart.

Yeah. It's like, I'm not stopping this. Here's your money. Yeah. That's an addict after my own heart. Yeah. It's like, I'm not stopping this. Here's your money. Yeah. That's the insanity of addiction, man. Yeah. You know, I can relate, you know, unfortunately to that. Yeah.

So, you know, I'm sure that's not the only case of something like that going down. It's all the time. I mean, some of the big ones that use the drugs and do the whole thing, I can't be part of it. And it's tough because especially in this economy, you're giving up money, but I'm not going to be part of someone killing themselves while I'm on watch.

Right. And part of it is you can kind of come in and when you're on the payroll and there's that accountability and you show up and you're there in person and they're going to work out. But like what happens when that kind of ends? I would imagine that a big part of your practice is trying to teach the tools to create a sustainable lifestyle change that will sort of perpetuate beyond, you know, you being involved with them. You know, I, God, you led me right into this. In the book, in the very first chapter, we tell a story of a client. And basically, I'm telling the story in the book because I'm trying to get, you know, most books start with the reason you should listen to me is because I have a BA

from this school and, you know and a doctorate from that school, and I went to Stanford, and I went to Harvard, and I'm the greatest guy on the planet. I hate reading those first chapters. So I decided to get the audience to understand who I am, I actually did a story. It's a true story that happened where I'm sitting in a meeting with Disney execs, with the manager. It was Galen Mori at the time. Maybe I shouldn't mention that. But all these people are sitting around the table, attorneys, suits, Disney, everybody's there.

And they are getting ready to create a sitcom for this character. And she fails her screen test. So this is how the book opens up. Because she's overweight or? Way overweight and her face is heavy and the whole thing. So all of these people are looking at me. I'm standing there, I'm sitting there in T-shirt and shorts and all these suits are looking at me going,

can you take 30 pounds off of her? They didn't tell me who it was. It started with, can you take 30 pounds off of someone? And I said, well, it depends. And they said, well, it depends on what? I said, well, does this person have 30 pounds to lose? And they huddled up and they're talking and whispering and they come back and they say, yeah, we think so. Well, I do take on this case and we talk about it in the first chapter. And we go back to this at the end of the and we talk about it in the first chapter and we go back to this at the end of the book and talk about it again because I actually failed even though I ended up getting

50 pounds off of this woman and she looked fabulous she ended up getting fat again and I looked at myself as a failure because I didn't teach her anything. I just did what I had to do because they were handing me big giant checks to do it. She learned nothing. Did she want to learn anything? I'll never know. I will never know. But we talk about it in the final chapter.

I was a failure because this woman learned nothing. I told her what to do. I didn't teach her what to do. So it's, you know, it's giving somebody a fish or teaching them how to fish. So, you know, so what do you think when you, and I want to get into this more, but what do you think when you watch like the biggest loser or you see this sort of, you know, reality TV culture around weight loss and fitness? It bothers me a lot. And I make Jillian Michaels the bad guy. She's just a bad trainer. Any good trainer wouldn't sign up for a TV show.

They have enough clients to sustain themselves. Of course, she turned herself into a big deal and good for her. But she's not the problem. She's like a whole industry unto herself. She's become an industry, good for her. But she's not the problem. She's like a whole industry unto herself. She's become an industry, good for her. But the problem is more systemic than that. You know, all they care about in those shows is for the camera to see someone who's very heavy

and then see a substantial weight loss. It's all about the camera showing this and just how drastic these changes can be. And because it's done on camera and it's done over 13 weeks, we're teaching people or they're made to think that you can lose just a ton of weight. An unbelievable amount of weight, a very unhealthy amount of weight in an incredibly short period of time. It's very unhealthy. And, you know, fundamentally, I have a problem with that. Not only that, I know a little bit about what goes on with The Biggest Loser, and I know some of the doctors involved. They're basically starving

these people to get them down. And it's not right. They're not teaching them anything. Yeah, that was my question. Are they, you know, I don't even watch the show, so I can't even. Oh, God, no. They're not teaching them anything, and they're not teaching the audience anything. I can't watch. I watched a couple of shows, and I said, you know, I can't watch some dumb broad just yelling at people. These people, they have hearts, and they have families, and they have, you know, you don't do this to people. It's not how

you handle people with a real problem. Their problem is not that they're fat. Their problem is that they're misinformed. That's how they got fat. They're not teaching them anything. And, you know, we live in a society where, you know, no one will ever say, hey, look at Rich Rose. He's in great shape and he's a vegan and he lives his life on a straight and narrow. What they want to hear is that you were really fucked up at one time, that you took drugs and that you got fat. That's why we love Jared so much because Jared will always trot out those big pants and go, look, I used to be 600 pounds and I ate this Subway sandwich and now I'm thin. It's not reality.

And that's what we're teaching. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and with my book, like my before picture, you know, the whole thing with my before picture that's in my book is I don't look that bad. You know, like I'm not even that fat. That's the crazy, Serena goes, I think he's a hunk. I mean, yeah, he's a good looking guy. I look different.

Who was good lookinger. Yeah, I was like, I look, you know, I was clearly I'm chunky and i look different and my face is rounder and all that kind of stuff and but it's not like oh he's a guy and we're so programmed by the biggest loser to have this expectation that somebody's gonna look like a circus act like they weigh 300 pounds and for me yeah it's sort of like oh yeah i was 50 pounds overweight it's a hook you know it's sort of a marketing hook but for me it was it wasn't really about the weight and weight loss was never really the focus it's more about how did i feel what were my energy levels like you know was i was i

depressed was i lethargic you know was i setting goals and looking forward no i was none of those things it was so so the weight like me transitioning my life, the weight came off as a byproduct of a systemic lifestyle change. And I think if people were to kind of refocus on that, I mean, we're so focused on weight loss. Weight loss is everything. At the expense of health, in the case of maybe the biggest loser, I't speak to that directly but in many cases like people are losing weight in an unhealthy way and in a non-sustainable way and that's why people have these rubber bound you know rubber banding situations so you know what is it and i know the answer to this but like what you know what are some of the things i want you to speak to this because i know you're passionate about it you have really strong opinions about it like what are some of the things that that you know we can do to address this so

that when we go to the airport in detroit or dallas or wherever it doesn't matter where it is every time i go to an airport it's just abounding with like extremely overweight people riding you know who are who are in their 20s and 30s riding around in wheelchairs and in motorized vehicles. It's ridiculous. Well, we talk about this in a podcast, and I always go back to it all started right before the Great Depression. This country, we were an agricultural society before people moved into cities and we became industrialized. And during the Great Depression, the government had to keep the country running. So we started subsidizing wheat and grains.

And we found out that if we just kept growing wheats and grains, the government stayed in the wheat and grain business. And because of that, we started, our wheat and grain are sold the world over. So it's in our best interest to keep, you know, selling wheat and grain. Our country basically, you know, we're in bed, our country's in bed with the wheat and grain farmers. we're in bed, our country's in bed with the wheat and grain farmers. They subsidize it to such a level that we're able to basically charge people little to nothing for food that should cost five times as much. When you go to a McDonald's or you go to a Taco Bell,

I remember in college you go to Taco Bell and they had dollar tacos in college back in 1981. It's still a dollar. No, now it's 49 cents. So how can everything else... It's half what it was 35 years ago. Right. When everything else has gone in one direction,

you can now get a taco for less than half the price of what you paid for it when I was in college. And the same with McDonald's. Everything else, you go anywhere and get a good hamburger, like a real beef hamburger, and you're going to pay 8, 10 bucks for it. Notcdonald's 69 cents well how can they do it well the bread is less than free it's reversed you know the thing that they're putting it in so they can you know and look at soft drinks you know we you know people barely drink water anymore they they're everyone's

drinking not only a soft drink, but if you don't have a soft drink in your hand, you have what we're calling a sport drink, or you have a juice. It's all the same thing. It's all just a big, giant bottle of sugar. Right, but in fairness, I mean, there is a difference

between high fructose corn syrup and an organic orange juice. Not a whole lot. Not a whole lot. I tell people, if you're going to drink orange juice, put it in a blender and blend it. Add a little water to it. You got to keep that fiber in it. Once you squeeze the juice away from the fiber, it's going to cause the average person just to get a glycogen spike. And if you get that glycogen spike over and over and over and over during the day, you become insulin resistant.

This isn't me talking. Look at the statistics. We have more type 2 diabetes in this country right now than we ever have in history. Oh, it's insane. I mean, when we were kids, diabetes was something that no one even ever talked about, at least that form of diabetes. Something else people never talked about was heart disease because we didn't have it in this country.

No one knew what their cholesterol number was when I was a kid. Now everyone can recite their cholesterol number, and everyone's on statins. Why is that? Well, because they told us we needed statins. Did we really need statins? Which are only treating the symptom and not getting at the cause. So if you're worried about heart disease and you're taking statins, you're just masking

a symptom and you're not getting at what's causing it. That problem will continue to persist or grow unless you address the underlying cause. You know, I had a whole town get, I wish I could remember which episode, if people wanted to listen to this one episode of my podcast, this is the one to listen to. I went back to my hometown in Louisiana, Donaldsonville, 7,000 people. And I came back and did a podcast on it and got a whole town pissed at me when I said everyone in town was fat and everyone I spoke to told me they had type 2 diabetes well when i left town 30 some odd years ago nobody was fat no one had type 2 diabetes what happened in the meantime it's soft drinks and fast food yeah just soft drinks and fast food processed snacks you know

chips and stuff like that and by the way all the juice you get in the store is exactly like a Coca-Cola. It's all processed. Some of it has more sugar and corn syrup added to it. You know, it's not the natural stuff you and I drink. I tend to drink everything with the fiber in it. Like I won't go to Juicy Ladies because they juice it out. You know, they squeeze it out, and you're getting just a big hit of sugar. And once you get that big hit of sugar, you want more sugar. I'd rather blend it up in the Vitamix or the Bullet and then drink it like that. You get more of the fiber in it.

You get all the fiber. You never get that spike. And you get all the nutrients, all the phytonutrients that you need without, you know. But how many people are going to go out and buy a Vitamix? Yeah, there aren't. How many people are going to even buy a Bullet? It's too expensive. Or one of those cheaper. Exactly. You, they're just going to, exactly.

You know, they, everyone wants everything quick and easy and they, you know, if I can buy it and drink it and it's full of sugar and it's a real problem. What do you say to the fruit, you know, are you familiar with the fruitarian movement? These are like, this is like a subset of the plant-based nutrition people who are really focused on, I don't know, you know, I don't think they eat a hundred percent of their diet isn't fruit, but like a huge percentage of their diet is fruit. And there are certain people like Durian Ryder, who's very outspoken on the internet, has a YouTube channel, who's essentially fruitarian. And there are some athletes too, like Michael Arnstein,

who's a pretty successful ultra runner is doing really well on this fruitarian diet. And I have some other friends too, who seem to like it and are experiencing great results with it. And what they've said to me, I've never gone full fruitarian, but what they say to me is, first of all, I don't know that they're juicing, they're eating the whole fruit, but they're eating like, you know, like 50 bananas, you know, like crazy amounts of fruit. Yeah, they're eating the whole fruit but they're eating like you know like 50 banana you know like crazy amounts of food yeah they're eating like fruit all day long um but but but what i understand is that they will take their blood sugar and you know an hour later whenever it's supposed to peak after eating a lot of fruit um that it it's not really as high as you would think i don't know whether that's the fiber in the fruit or whatever it is, but that they're able to like, they're able to like, you know, do well on this program.

Yeah. And then there's the other side of it. There's the idiots like myself and the guy who just won Western States 100, I can't think of his name, who's doing it in the opposite direction, eating meat all day and eating high fats right the pale yeah like and i want to talk to you about that like a sort of low carb high fat paleo bacon and eggs for breakfast and and and all of that i'm interested you have people going to both sides of the extreme um you know i think you know it's i can't imagine it's good for you just your body trying to digest all that fiber all day you all those bananas and all that. It just seems like just a ton of fiber for your system.

I can't imagine that that's good for you. And what about the sort of saturated fat, bacon, paleo kind of thing? That's something that I actually do. Right, I know. And you're kind of a low-carb i'm just no grains no sugar no grain no sugar no grains is your big thing you wouldn't would you characterize yourself as paleo or no um because i don't really know what paleo you know i don't like to to jam myself into any group uh but i i guess if you look at the pure form of paleo i guess i'm there but i just don't eat sugars and grains.

I eat everything else. And it's funny because people, they'll see me eating a ton of vegetables and they'll go, wait, I thought you were the meat guy. Because everyone wants to fall into a camp somewhere, and I'm not that guy. We joke about me being the carnivorous vegan on the podcast because I eat more fruit and vegetables than I do meat, but I believe meat is a staple.

That's just the way I roll. I just stay away from sugars and grains. If that makes me a paleo guy, I guess it does. I don't know. I just think people that are just doing one thing all the time and just eating a ton of fruit every day, I can't imagine that that's all the way healthy. Are you thinking about going in that direction?

No, I'm just interested in different people's perspectives on it. And, of course, I'm plant-based, and I believe in that, and that's worked very well for me, and I have no to to change that you know all i want to do is to learn how to do it better and to kind of continually you know evolve and refine my program but i'm you know i'm if all i did was have vegan guests on this podcast i'd run out of guests pretty soon you know what i mean so i'm you know i i'm trying to create a safe open environment where people who have different points of view, particularly with respect to fitness and nutrition or whatever, can come in and we can talk about that and have a good conversation about it.

Whether we end up disagreeing or have different perspectives on it, that's completely fine. So I like hearing from the paleo guys. And this is something that came up that I did the Joe Rog rogan podcast and i think i talked about this on the podcast before so i'll keep it short but but that was a result of of joe having rob wolf on the show who's a big paleo paleo guy he wrote he wrote a big paleo book and some people including myself were like hey joe why don't you have a vegan uh athlete on or two and i ended up on the show and then there were all these people trying to after i was on the show and I felt like I acquitted myself fine. People were saying, oh, you should have, you know, Joe, you got to have a show where you have Rich and he's going

to debate Rob and, and you know, you should get it, you know, turn it into this big, you know, sort of thing where we're going to, what we're going to like have a boxing match and beat it out of each other. And at the end of the day, somebody's going to win. I mean, you know, and I like Rob. And Rob and I had some emails back and forth. And I was like, I don't know if that's really in either of our interests. I mean, we both have the same goals. We want people to be healthier. We have different ideas about what that means

and, you know, what works for me and what works for him. And I think that there's room for, you know, there's room for us to both have our opinion you know it's funny because i'm right in between both of you guys because um i i truly believe that humans need to have a ton of phytonutrients meaning a lot of green we need a lot of color in our diet um and for that reason i i make what i call the fat shake every day um it's it's a ton of kale it makes me sound like a vegan there's a ton of kale in there there's a broccoli is i'll eat broccoli before chocolate um um you know i throw everything i throw nuts in it

i i throw coconut oil in it you know i just make what i call the coconut oil is what gives it its fat yeah i mean it sounds like something i would have in the morning yeah and it that meal stokes me more than any other meal i have all day right because it's got the fat in it it's got all the phytonutrients it's got all the vitamins i need um but then again i'll have a big hamburger patty for lunch. No bread, just a big real patty, not some crappy from McDonald's patty because it's my belief that humans need animal fat. We need the creatine from the meat. We need the nutrients from the meat

just like we need the nutrients from the vegetables. just like we need the nutrients from the vegetables. But I've been, you know, I'm going on six years now without that. And you're doing just fine. Yeah, yeah. So there goes my belief. You throw it right out the door just by your being and what you're able to do. And your family looks healthy and Julie looks healthy. And so who am i to say that eating

meat is the way to go um you know i've thought about going vegan not just vegetarian but total vegan a lot in my life um but i i love meat and i think meat is uh is a staple the one thing what about what about dairy uh i eat dairy but I don't eat a lot of dairy. Have you ever tried to go without dairy? I'm only saying that because for me, that was when I experienced the biggest change in my energy levels. I've done short periods. And when I say short periods, never more than two or three weeks without dairy. But let me qualify dairy. Dairy is cheese on an occasional basis, but more so heavy cream, like heavy whipping cream.

So it's basically an oil. It's not, I don't drink a lot of milk. I don't drink any milk. Because you like it or because you think there's a nutritional benefit to that? Well, I call heavy cream my go-to fast food because it's a heavy oil. I can stick it in coffee and I can go on. I can almost miss a meal by drinking a coffee with heavy cream. And as you know, I go through a busy schedule of you know that's like the dave

you know dave asprey is the bulletproof executive he has this whole thing where he makes a coffee called bulletproof coffee but it has like uh but it has like uh grass-fed butter in it or something like that and his whole thing is that the fat content has something to do with improving the i don't know whatever see i believe fat content is very important. I think people, and I think you and I are on the same side of the street with this, I think people get too much protein or they care about protein too much. There's so much emphasis on protein, and it's so misplaced. And I think if people just forgot about that altogether,

and there's a lot of emphasis on low fat, and I think overall low fat is good, but it doesn't mean no fat. It means choosing your fats properly and making sure that you're getting healthy fats. And I certainly don't eat a no-fat diet. I feel like I need some healthy fats, like coconut oil and my smooth or whatever to power me.

Yeah, and when you're on a bike and running as much as you do, I couldn't imagine you not having enough fats to carry you through. What do you, when you're out on your long rides, what do you usually take with you for nutrition? Well, for years, and this is where I've changed over the years, it's like a mutation. I used to use a lot of, you know, like the Hammer products. Right.

Not so much the gels. I've never been a gel guy. You were the guy who got me off gels. If you read my book, you remember I talk about Vinny. Yeah. Yeah, because I was like, well, I was just starting and everyone was doing gels. I'm actually not a sweet tooth.

I don't really have a problem with sugar. I don't crave it. I never was a big soda guy. I'm like a French fry, greasy, you know, nachos and pizza kind of guy. That's what I crave. So sugar was not a big deal for me, but it seemed like everyone was using gel. So I would just use gels. And when my volume started to ramp up and I was starting, you know, I never, my rides were never as long as your long rides, but you know, I go out for eight hours and you were like, dude, you cannot do that all day. There's no way you're going to

make it. Can you imagine sitting on a couch and just every hour squeezing it? You would be sick in the third hour. I know. And I think a lot of, you know, in a race context, there's some argument for it, but I think it's a big reason why a lot of these Ironman athletes have GI problems and stomach problems, because they're out there for eight hours

and they're just killing the sugar, you know, like nobody's business. I talk about that a lot in the book, and I talk about it a lot in the podcast. What I would do, you know, you talked about me circling back to the commons, to my truck to get more product and I would have an ice chest of stuff ready to go so I wouldn't have to stop. I can just stop, drop one off, grab another one. So the question is what's in that bottle and how it's changed over the years um it used to be yeah i would i would start with a base of hammer nutrition now that stuff is mostly maltodextrin i'm talking about the sustained energy but perpetuum and and i never liked the perpetuum the original sustained energy was the one i would use the perpetuum somehow gave

me so much gas that i would get sick way quick is that dog gonna go out no he's fine yeah our dog is wandering now he never goes out he's too lazy don't worry about him all right he does um anyway the he's going out the gate hold on a second no he's just gonna he's going for a look he's fine he's just going to, he's going for a look. He's fine. He's going to come back. Are you sure? I'll keep an eye on him. You talk. I'll keep an eye on him. Thank you.

I started, it would be just perpetuum. And then I would add, um, he's fine. I'm really worried. Don't worry about it. You talk.

I'm going to go get him. Cause this is, this is honestly, this is what people want to know. So I want to really, can you cut it for a second? Can we bring it back on again? All right, there he goes. Yeah, we're going to pause for one second.

Sorry about that. The dog's fine. Yeah. As you know, I almost lost one of my dogs last week. I heard about that. Very interesting, man. You know, there was a supplement in the house Serena was taking that raises serotonin levels, something you can buy in any health food store, 5-HTP.

Right. And a bottle fell onto the floor, and she ate the bottle. Apparently it tastes good to dogs. And she ate it and started, you know, she literally died. I was taking her to the emergency room. She evacuated. I brought a limp, dead dog in. Wow.

And they somehow got her back. And a bazillion dollars later, I have my dog back. Anyway, I want to go back. We were talking about what I eat on the bike. And it used to be a lot of sustained energy from Hammer because, again, just like everything else, it's convenient. And there's a lot of sugar in the product well it's maltodextrin which is a more complex lower glycemic value sugar than say eating fruit or a gel right it's more like a slower burn it's slightly better the problem is when you're taking in 300 calories of it every hour you end up with you know

the same problem you know 10 hours 11 hours in you're throwing it up or you're trying to fight from throwing it upside you can have some nutrition in your body it's not that sweet it's more like for those who've never tried it it's kind of like pancake batter it's not the best tasting stuff but it's not super it's not like a syrupy sweet thing like a gel either. It's chalky, if you will. And it's a grain. It's corn, right? Yeah, and again, I have some problem with that.

They make a non-GMO version of it. Yeah, good luck keeping that going the way we're putting, we're turning everything into Monsanto GMO type. Again, my podcast has a lot to say about gmos um we could do yeah i could do a couple hours yeah you know if you ever want to have me back in for the gmo no what i'm thinking is like i want this podcast to kind of be about who you are and your background and all of that but you have so much to say i'm sitting here thinking like i'm gonna have video like every you know like once yeah like like every couple episodes just come in with like vinny you know like let you blast blast off for like 10 minutes on your latest you know yeah what's pissing me

yeah whatever's whatever's pissing you off bring you in and make you a recurring guest it's funny because i just did four hours in another studio and here i am. And I literally got up from one mic and I'm sitting in front of another mic. And we're all doing this for free. Yeah, it's all for free. This is my Sunday, just doing this, you know, all day. Well, you can ride your bike for 15 hours in a row. Yeah, I do everything. Like, you know, everything is overboard or nothing. Feel your brother. But, you know, the bottom line is, you line is I started changing my mixture. I started adding a little whey protein powder to my sustained energy, and I found that not only did I not need it as much, I didn't get as sick.

Interesting. I was always working with— Because protein's not really an efficient energy source. No, but it would cut the sugar. I'm guessing. I don't know what No, but it would cut the sugar. I'm guessing. I don't know what happened, but it would cut the sugar. It would somehow give me some nutrition without causing me to lose energy or power. I wouldn't bonk.

So after adding some of that, I went, hmm, I wonder if I just throw a little fat in here, what might happen. So I worked with several different oils. I worked with coconut oil. I worked with macadamia oil, which is a good one, but expensive. Grape seed oil, which is pretty good. I would start adding oil to the mix and then pulling out more and more of the, you know, sustained energy. That led into me going to a totally different product called UCAN, Generation UCAN. Have you seen this stuff yet?

No, I've never heard of that. It's basically, the guy took corn storage and somehow micronized it. They want to advertise on my show i haven't allowed them yet um but peter attia talks a lot peter attia uses it too but you can literally take in 50 or 75 calories of it it doesn't cause any glycogen spike it almost acts like a fat but it's a carbohydrate i would actually add more oil to that. So I would have that carbohydrate mixed with an oil. This is getting complex, but I'm getting through rides now where I used to take

in 300 calories an hour. I might take in 50, 75 calories an hour. Now there's one caveat to this. If you're going to stay in zone two, you can do this all day, never bunk. Literally all day. I mean, after years of kind of doing this aerobic Zone 2 training, like, you know, if I don't feel like it, like, I don't really have to. I can go for hours and hours and hours just on, you know, some electrolytes, you know, electrolyte tabs and water because you're in that fat-burning zone and my body's become efficient enough in that zone where, you know, I don't need to be taking in 200 calories an hour although you know i'll be more tired the

next day if i don't you know it's better if i take in at least you know 100 150 calories an hour yeah but you could get away with a lot less than people thought before right the one thing i find though is when i try to climb with that mixture if I'm three hours into a ride and I try to do stunt road the way you've seen me do stunt road, you'll be at the top way before me. You'll dry off before I get there. What I have to do at those times is what I call trickle sugar. And I'll take the gel, the stuff that I told you never to have, and I won't squirt 100 calories of it in my mouth. I might squirt 10 calories, 15 calories, and just trickle a little sugar a couple of times up a climb,

and you get the same result. Well, a lot of that is because I would imagine, I'm guessing, is that the taste of sugar triggers your brain to tell your brain you're okay you're you're you have nutrition on the way so even if your body doesn't actually need the sugar a lot of times you're and ben ben greenfield talks about this too and he talked about the other day but you know if you can let your mind know that yeah you're going to be okay then it will tell the body like okay go for it because you're you have more nutrition on the way and you're not going to be okay then it will tell the body like okay go for it because you're you have more nutrition on the way and you're not going to get into trouble um so it's just

the taste of it alone that's all you need just a little something in your mouth i've told people you don't even need to buy that if you buy the old jolly ranch or hard candies stick it in your mouth let it sit in your cheek for about 20 30 seconds and then spit it out it works i've done all kinds of candy with this right uh little tiny red hots remember those yeah put two little bb's in your mouth and just let them soak in you're done interesting it really works that well i have uh you know i i you know i use the hammer, the perpetuum and the sustained energy and all of that. And, and I've never really had like gas problems or anything like that.

The only thing that happens with me is if it gets hot, it gets gross. Yeah. And I'm just sick of eating it, you know, like, but I have experimented with putting a little coconut oil in there and that seems to work well for me.

Obviously I'm not using whey protein, but if I mix a little bit of, uh, of fats in there, that seems to be helpful. Hemp protein will work just as well. Yeah, hemp. I don't know that I want to be doing hemp protein while I'm riding because it's kind of a chalky. It's not the most absorbable.

Like whey is very absorbable when you're in an active state. I think it's probably easier for your body to metabolize that. Hemp is a little trickier i think but i don't know i mean i'm more prone now to experimenting with whole foods like rather than have a bottle with a you know perpetuum in it like why not eat a eat a sweet potato i've done sweet potatoes in races all the time uh serena makes these incredible sweet potatoes and they hand them to me in ziploc bags that's it's hard to do in your training to constantly have i do use a lot of nuts nuts while you're training yeah nuts while i'm training that would seem that i would think that

would cause never intestinal problems not only i i can do walnuts. Because they're hard to digest. I know. And I'm okay with that. Like almond butter, I get that. But like chewing on almonds or walnuts while I'm riding, I don't know. Just stick a few in your mouth and start chewing. It changes everything. Maybe I'll try that. Try macadamia too. Seems to work fine with me. The problem with the heat, you know, we had a hot summer last last summer i'm with you on the perpetuum and all that stuff when it gets hot oh it's gross it's just bad nothing is good the problem is if you have oil with you also that can go bad pretty quickly it's rancid and that's when the nuts kind of come into play you know you have those nuts in your back pocket you can and the easier

oxidized oils like flaxseed oil or whatever that that's not good you don't want to be you don't want to use that that's rough you know what else i've tried what about electrolytes a ton a ton what do you what do you what's your go-to i like salt stick i've used hammer um i find salt sticks seem to have more product in it than hammer right um uh s caps i love do you have one that you like i mean i'm always s cap salt sticks salt stick salt sticks a little more expensive but jonathan he's a local here local triathlete the guy who owns a company he's a good guy so i like to support him yeah i i knew who owned Salt Sticks. So he's around here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He lives around here.

He was a professional triathlete in Canada and he lives actually on Latigo. Oh, really? He still rides. Yeah, I ride with him and swim with him once in a while. I'd love to have him on the show. He was a scientist at Amgen and left and started this company.

Huh. Yeah. I had no idea where it was from. We talk about his product. I don't even sell his product. Jonathan Toker. Yeah, he's a good guy. I sell it on the podcast.

I tell people, you know, go to Amazon and buy salt sticks because I get We've got to get you an affiliate relationship. Throw a few nickels in your pot, man. Keep your bandwidth going. Yeah. I'll put you in touch. No, I appreciate it are you do you have him here are you just pushing jai seed or uh no i mean i'm not i have no business relationship

with him i just like supporting him yeah no but tell him i love his product and i go out of my way to to push his product and i have no idea i figured there's some company somewhere i just knew that they made a superior product. It is good. I think he's trying to figure out how to grow it. You can find it in your local tri shop. I think it's in most places, but you're not going to find it at the supermarket. You can find it at Amazon.

It's on Amazon. I think his website is saltstick.com. Well, you know, if you go to Amazon through Rich's site to do it, it's probably the cheapest price because, you know, if you go to the local shops here, like I go to the one on Agora, that running store. Right. Because they always have a supply. Amazon is maybe 17 or 18 bucks per bottle and it's 25 there. So it's, you know.

As long as you click through the banner ad on richroll.com right buddy you look you have that on your site yeah yeah you got that right yeah everyone's doing that yeah you know and amazon pays nothing it's like i know it's not like i mean i for those of you out there like what does this mean i think i made like 60 bucks last month off that. It's crazy. I'll look at it. It'll be like, I've sold $10,000 worth of Amazon stuff and I'll see the check I get.

And it's like, are you kidding me? I know. Are you kidding me? It's like two, 3% of some crap. And then everyone's accusing you of selling out, right?

Yeah. It's like, Oh yeah, it's supposed to be free. No, it's free. We're not asking for any money here. We're not asking for anything, but if you're going to click through and people do click through, no, they do. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, it's supposed to be free. No, it's free. We're not asking for any money here. We're not asking for anything, but if you're going to click through and people

do click through. No, they do. Yeah. Actually people are great. And I love it when they like say, Hey, I bought this. And you know, uh, I know Jay Moore on his website, he's, he opens up his, his, uh, his podcast every week by like reading, like some of the funny stuff that people have bought, you know, when they click through his, you know, I was like, so-and-so bought a, uh, you know, some crazy product or whatever. He's like, the most books that they were buying your book and, uh, Gary Topless book. That was my two biggest sellers for a while. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Yeah. I made a few bucks in you, man. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Now, uh, I want to, I want to help you get your book out too, man. So let's get back and talk about your book a little bit. Sure. So are you going to launch it

just, uh, on your website? Is that the plan? It's going to be on a website. We're going to do Kindle. We're going to do, you know, and you have to format for every one of those things. Yeah, I know. Amazon is its own format. Uh, Kindle is its own format everyone but then you're gonna you're gonna have a printed version too you're gonna have a printed version um both hardcover and uh you know softcover at the same time right and what so tell me a little bit more about what's in the book like what what's you know what is somebody gonna find if they buy your book um it's it's gonna basically you know it tells a story it's kind of like your book it tells my story but um it also here you know we spoke of dean carnese a bit ago and one of the biggest criticisms of his best-selling book by the way the guy wrote a great book i love this book

and he told how he became this ultra runner. But the one glaring omission from the book was he didn't really explain how he got there. Yeah, we heard these heroic stories about he was eating pizza and ordering pizza and they were dropping him off on the street corner so he could keep running, but you didn't really learn how the guy got there. so he could keep running, but you didn't really learn how the guy got there. And in this book, we talk about, you know, ultra sports, but we also talk about my job as a trainer, and it's all pulled together.

And there's actual exercise routines. That's what the… So there's a lot of how-to and takeaways. It's a ton of how-to. It's a ton of eat this way, exercise that way. If you want to be an ultra person, you do it that way. It brings it all together in one book. And I couldn't have done it by myself. I had written, I want to say 45,000 words, so just in notes. And my buddy Dean and I got together and we started formulating those notes and we ended up trimming it down because we didn't

want any extra fat in this book. We ended up with just under 73,000 words. What was your book? Do you remember? I don't know. It ended up getting cut down quite a bit. I don't know what the word count is. What ended up coming out is pretty much what the publisher wanted to be, the word count. But when I delivered my manuscript, I purposely overwrote everything because my editor doesn't know my whole story. The only way he's going to know is if I over-explain things and include stories that I know are probably going to get edited out, but at least I have something to work with. You know what I mean? Like it's sort of, okay, here. edit it out, but at least I have something to work with. You know what I mean? Like it's sort of, okay here. Uh, so I think when I handed him my manuscript, it was maybe, maybe almost a hundred

pages longer than the book and ultimately ended up being. And I did that purposefully knowing like that we were probably going to end up cutting, you know, maybe 60 or 80 pages. He, he, it ended up getting leaner and leaner and leaner. And my, I had a great editor and he, you know, there was some stuff that I really didn't want to cut, but I think ultimately it did make the book better just by making it read easier. Well, that's what they're good at. And my book is going through an editing process right now. I hired a jackass to go through and edit my book to make it even more readable.

Right. And so I'm paying a guy a lot of money to kind of screw up my words, so to speak. But I couldn't be that narcissistic. I had to bring someone else in. But the book is an amalgam of two books, and that's the problem that the book companies had. They wanted it just to be the prescriptive, and they wanted me to somehow keep my voice in there

because they liked the voice that the book was written in. But we put it all in there. We explain, you know, why people were not fat 50 years ago and why they're fat now. You know, we talk about how the world's changed from, you know, the industrial revolution taking hold and how we kept subsidizing wheat. taking hold and how we kept subsidizing wheat. But in between all of that, we give people something real that they can hold on to

that is a real takeaway. And when they get the book, they'll say, I'd like to come back on at some point, if possible, when the book comes out. Yeah, when you're ready to have the book come out, you should come back on and talk about it. But I think it is that thing like, oh, well, does it, you know, fear the publishing house?

Is it in this box or is it in this box? And when you come to them with something that is a little bit of each and maybe not one or the other, then that creates confusion and it's just easier to say no. Yeah. And I struggle with that in my book, too, because it's predominantly memoir, but I do have, you know, when I was writing it, I was like, well, you know, I've got to address this plant-based diet in some regard, because if I don't, and they're going to be like, well, you talked about how this diet changed your life, and then you don't tell us what it is. What's the diet, right. is wants to die right then if i make it to how to then it detracts from the story and and so you know ultimately the diet stuff all kind of had to get pushed into the appendices which is fine but just trying to find that balance so that you know when you're telling you still have to tell your story and you know pretend you're going to a movie it's got to have a three-act structure and

there's a hero's journey and and there are certain things that have to happen at certain periods to keep the reader engaged and sort of emotionally connected to what you're doing. And if it's too much on one side or the other, then you start to lose people. And so figuring that out took a lot of time for me. Yeah. And the frustration was getting those letters back where they were going, would you please do this for us? To the point where three of the houses, as I said before, said, okay, since you won't change this book, would you write us a different book? So I'm actually working on a different book right now with my same agent. That's great. So can you talk about that or is that all top secret? It's not really top secret. I'm going to basically do the

prescriptive version. It's going to be, bottom line, it's going to be what I've given the Hollywood community, so to speak. You know, the same people that are walking the red carpet, you're going to get their program. Whether it fits you or not, that's what they want. You can try to make it fit you. I'm going to try to make it universal enough so that someone who's sitting on a couch might go, hey, I can do that. Or someone who's in good shape and want to take it to the next level, they can go, wait a minute, I can use some of that too. That's very difficult to do. And that's going to be my job to figure out how that's going to work. And hopefully they won't screw it up in any way. But it's that Hollywood thing where it seems like I'm failing upward on this one. We know a lot of people who fail at something

and then they get a bigger gig. Right. Hollywood is built on that. Yeah, I'm failing upward now. The only way you move up is to get fired from your job, right? Yeah. And we both can probably sit here

and name five, six, seven, eight, maybe even 10 names each of situations where people have lost a job only to get a better job. It happens all the time. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way this business works. So, um, and who is, do you know which publishing house you're going to do that book with or? No, no, no. She's, she's got three of them on the hook and that's fine because they can, they can fight it out. Cool. Um, and, um, you know, it's funny because now I'm on the hook and that's fine because they can fight it out. Cool. And it's funny because now I'm doing the podcast.

That's work every week. And then on top of that, I'm doing a newsletter that goes with the website. That's work every week. I have to sit down and write that. I'm trying to finish the edit on the book that we are going to put out in about two months. And now. And you have your training clients. There's no time for you to ride the edit on the book that we are going to put out in about two months. And now. And you have your training clients. There's no time for you to ride the bike, man. Come on. That's why you haven't seen me on the bike. I know.

You know, people, oh, you don't ride anymore. It's like, no, I'm writing. I'm not riding. You know, it's like, I'm just sitting around writing all day long. But if I'm not writing, then my writing is not as good as it could be. Like, it's always about finding that balance. I think I don't have time to train. I got to focus on writing and that will work for a little bit and then I'll hit the wall and go, I got to get back on the bus. It's like I'm just always doing the extreme.

It's finding that balance where it's like you're getting enough of each of these things. That mixture, it's tough. If you ever find that balance, give me a call because Serena's actually looking at me now going, you know, she came in my office the other night and she said, how long do you think you could keep this up? Because literally I'll write until midnight, get in bed, wake up at 4.15, start training clients by six. You know, I've become one of these people with the iPhone, you know, the thumbs, you know, constantly writing and tweeting.

You've got to take care of yourself first, buddy. And I'm not. Because you're just burning it. You're just going to crash into the wall eventually. I know. It's getting there. You know, it's getting there. And we have to figure it out. Like I said, if you come up with any solution. Well, I's getting there. You know, it's getting there. And we have to figure it out.

Like I said, if you come up with any solution. Well, I got one solution. You and I are going to get out on the bike at some point this week. Just don't kick my ass. No. Please don't kick my butt. I'm just getting back myself. But I've had you.

We're coming up on like two hours here. I know. So I don't want to- That's six hours of broadcasting for one day, by the way. I could go two more hours, buddy. Believe me. I'm just getting- Let's do it.

Let's see how long we could go. No, we got to let you get home to your beautiful Serena. But I want to give you an opportunity to kind of leave the audience member with just a couple, you know, one or two nutrition or fitness tips that they can take away. I mean, what do you think, you know, are some of, I mean, we've talked about sugar, we talked about grains, but what are some of the things that would be easy fixes for people that they might not understand that they could incorporate into their life in an easy way that could have a dramatic impact. Interesting.

Just going on a knee-jerk right here, if you're into fitness, and if you're listening to this podcast, obviously you are, and if you're interested in getting into ultras, rest is more important than actually spending time running or riding a bike or swimming or what have you. Make sure you get the proper amount of rest. We talked earlier about the guy that does the CrossFit.

I think the biggest problem with CrossFit is it doesn't give your body the proper amount of rest. It's more important than actually spending time doing the sport. Yeah, I agree with that completely. So get rest. Number two, if you want to go long, you can't go hard. You know, we even talked about that. I do all this training in zone two, just preparing a huge basin, and I'll get in a race and hurt myself by going too hard, you know.

Especially this time of year. It's wintertime. Most people, if they're getting ready for a race, they're keying up for a race that's going to be at the earliest in the spring or more likely in the summertime. At this time of year, you should be working on your core, getting a little gym work in, and then building that base, that aerobic base. Yeah.

People get confused about nutrition um and i get that people fall into camps and nutrition the way we fall into camps and religion um just be open-minded about it uh it's not it's not as cut and dry if you will as people would think it is. I wish I can say the vegan lifestyle is the only lifestyle or being a paleo guy is the only lifestyle. There is no cut and dry on that. Just, you know, listen to your heart. And if you follow something, just, you know, keep your mind open. Yeah. You know, there are other ways to do it. That said, you know, try not to eat so many processed foods and get rid of the soda. That's the one thing you should cut off.

How about that? I think there's consensus on that. I don't think any guy would go against that. If it's processed, don't eat it. Right. Yeah. We can agree on that. Oh, yeah.

Everybody can agree on that. All right, buddy. Let's wrap it up. Anything else you want to say? No, I'm good. All right, man. The Angriest Trainer Podcast. Is it America's Angriest Trainer Podcast?

No, the Angriest Trainer Podcast, right? You could put in Angriest Trainer. You could put in Vinny Tortorich. You could put in America's Angriest Trainer. Anywhere you do it, it will come up to me. Yeah, or if you go to my podcast, it'll probably be at the bottom saying, people who listen to this also listen to this.

So I'm sure we have overlap in our audiences. It's a great show. How often are you doing it? Once a week now? We do three a week. Oh, you're doing three a week? Yeah, we pop out Monday, Wednesday, Friday every week. Oh, man.

That's my goal is to try to get this up to at least twice a week. I've got to pick a day where I know I'm doing it at that time every time. Yeah, that's kind of what we do. As a matter of fact, when I wanted to go to three a week, Anna wanted to drop it. Anna's my co-host.

She wanted to drop it to once a week. Yeah. We were doing one and a half to two a week. Right. I wanted to go to five a week, so we decided on three. Right. But that's my personality. If one is good five has

to be good well she yeah me too i'm like i gotta do it every day you know it's a good thing i never did it was funny because brett blankner from the zen and the art of triathlon podcast he's he emailed me there the other day because i i sort of publicly proclaimed i'm doing this three times a week but then it the evidence showed that i was actually doing it like once a week. And he's like, yeah, I knew that would happen. He's like, you know, you get excited and you want to do it because I love it, man. I'm having so much fun doing it. But I really have to like, I'm looking for like a cheap office space where I can, or like a garage or something like that, where I can set this up and just make it the dedicated podcast place. This is not a bad area, right? It's good. But you know, there's a lot of activity. We're in the, we're in the garage right now,. It's good, but there's a lot of activity.

We're in the garage right now back at our house, but there's a lot of in and out and other stuff going on. So sometimes it gets tricky. Just keep doing it, man. I love the show and it's great. So just keep doing it. Write something right. Thanks, man.

It's been fun. And if Anna doesn't want to go three times a week, then just come over with me, man. I'll sit across from you anytime and we'll just, we'll bang it out. How about that? Sounds good to me. All right, cool. So also, in addition to the podcast, your website is VinnieTortorich.com, right?

VinnieTortorich.com. And you host the podcast. You can listen to the podcast there too. You can listen to it there. You can't download it there. Can you download from your site? You can only download from iTunes. Yeah, on the player, i think i added like a little

plug-in feature that allows you to also download it but i mean most people go to itunes right we know most people go to itunes but we get well over 2 000 a day that come to the site oh you do yeah so people do listen to it at the site um it depends on what uh we're gonna get all geeky are you on wordpress Yeah, WordPress. So there's a plugin. I don't know what plugin you're using for your audio player. I don't either. I got a guy.

All right. Well, I can talk to him or Anna or whoever. We'll sort you out. You should be able to have a little function on the player that allows somebody to also download it. Well, that would be cool because I know the ones that listen to it. I get a feeling they're the ones sitting in an office in a cubicle and, you know, like it's not most of them.

Most of them go to iTunes, but there is, you know, some people are anti iTunes. So people email me and they're like, tell me another way to get it. Cause I don't like iTunes or. Yeah,

I get that too. I get that email. Why are people anti? I don't understand. I don't know. It's free. It's not like iTunes is making any money off it. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't get any of it. I just know. I see the numbers. Are you on Stitcher Radio too? No, you're on Stitcher though, right? I am, but I know a lot of people are kind of not into that because I think there's something about if it's streaming on Stitcher,

then it doesn't count as a download. So it undercuts your total downloads. something about if it's streaming on stitcher then it doesn't count as a download from so it it undercuts your total downloads well that's what happens to i think my wordpress it undercuts uh itunes interesting oh what well yeah but yeah it undercuts itunes but ultimately you still have are you on libsyn is that where you're hosting your yeah so i mean it'll still count as a download on libsyn so you can show that as your full downloads to advertisers or whatever. Yeah.

I can hear people unsubscribing, right? Yeah, they're going, Libsyn, Stitcher, what? What are you talking about? Click. Yeah, I've had just about enough of this. Yeah. So, and also on Twitter, Vinnie Tortorich on Twitter,

Facebook page, all that stuff, whatever. Wherever you could be, I guess I'm there and I'm doing something. All right, man. Anything else? I'm done. Cool. Let's get out on the bike. Let me know.

All right. I'm there. Tomorrow? No. No, tomorrow's my rest day. No, not tomorrow. Tuesday? Let's go rest together.

We could do that. Let's go have a coffee. We could just do another podcast tomorrow. That's rest, together. We could do that. Let's go have a coffee. We could just do another podcast tomorrow. That's rest, right? I'll show up. I mean, you know, if I don't have a client, I'll come in and give you an hour. All right. Cool.

All right. And also, you're on Access Hollywood tomorrow. What time? I think it's one o'clock. They sent me a message literally today. But the show's on at like dinnertime, right? Isn't it? They do Access Live in the morning.

I learned all this two weeks ago when I was on the show. Access live in the morning. And then in the afternoon or the evening, they do another deal. I haven't had television in years. Okay. I'm doing Oprah, and I know she has an own network. I have no idea how you get to own network. Well, we all figured that out with Lance, right?

Serena got it on the computer. I watched it on the, yeah, I just streamed it. We can come back tomorrow and do another hour. We can talk about that. Yeah, we all figured that out with Lance, right? Serena got it. I watched it on the, yeah, I just streamed it. We can come back tomorrow and do another hour. We can talk about that. Yeah, we can. If you really want to lose subscribers. Right, exactly. All right, guys, that's it. Thanks for being here, Vinny. It was great to have you. Thanks for having me. So you got all the good stuff and where to find Vinny online. I'll keep you posted on his book. You want to find out more about what we'll keep you posted on his book. You want to find out more about what we're doing, you can go to my website, richroll.com, or check out

jylifestyle.com. I've got an e-cookbook up there. I've got a protein powder supplement, B12 supplement, more stuff coming. Also, if you subscribe there, you get a free seven-recipe download. So what the hell, right? Check it out. Uh, I'm at rich roll Twitter and whatever. I don't want to do an ad. I'm done. Let's get out of here.

All right, we're out of here. Peace plants. Thank you.