The Tim Ferriss Show - #72: Triple H on Pre-Fight Rituals, Injury Avoidance, and Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

Episode Date: April 20, 2015

"Why would I be wound up? I'm either ready, or I'm not. Worrying about it right now ain't gonna change a damn thing." - Floyd Mayweather, Jr. just before a fight, as recalled by Paul Levesque [34:20] Paul Levesque, more popularly known as Triple H, is a 13-time World Heavyweight Champion in World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE). He is also the Executive Vice President of talent, live-events, and creative at the WWE. In this episode, we explore everything: the teachings of Killer Kowalski, how he avoids and repairs injuries (even if on the road 200+ days of the year), pre-game rituals, and habits developed with the support of trainer Joe DeFranco, The Undertaker, and boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr.. This podcast is not limited to athletic performance. We dig deep into Triple H's routines, and how he manages his responsibilities as a husband and father of three daughters. Enjoy, and thank you for checking out the products below! I use them, and they make the show possible. This podcast is sponsored by LSTN Headphones. LSTN Headphones are gorgeous headphones made of real exotic, reclaimed wood. Proceeds from each purchase help a deaf or auditory-impaired person hear for the first time through the Starkey Hearing Foundation. Check out the headphones that I love and travel with here: LSTNHeadphones.com/Tim. On that page, you can get a $50 discount. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Special offer: For the month of April only, you can get an additional $30 off. Give it a test run and share your results!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why, good morning, you sexy beast. Would you like me to make you some breakfast? Oh, I'm sorry. I was having a flashback there. Folks, this is Tim Ferriss. This is an addendum, an urgent update recorded after this episode was completed because I was going through a roster of all the most amazing things I've been able to experience in my life. And at the top of the list was floating at zero gravity, experiencing weightlessness in a shuttle and being able to say chase after globules of water floating in midair or chase skittles that you've tossed into the air. It's floating right in front of your face, say five feet away, or scurrying around all the way around the perimeter of the shuttle, like a hamster on a hamster wheel. If you were inverted

in a way, it's really amazing. And I loved it so much that I decided to give away a flight. So I am giving away a flight at zero gravity. And you can get it, there's no cost involved. But it's only possible this week. That is the week of Monday, April 20. So jump on this right now, I would suggest that you pause this and check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com forward slash zero. That's 4hourworkweek, all spelled out, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R, et cetera, forward slash zero, Z-E-R-O. So check it out. And now, back to your regular programming.

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forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. I am drinking tea with coconut oil in it because I am in ketosis. So my brain is running like Speedy Gonzalez on some type of biochemical advantage. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to do what I do every episode, and that is deconstruct world-class performers to find the tools, tricks, routines, habits, and so on that you can use, whether those people are billionaire investors, like, for instance, Peter Thiel, who's the first money into Facebook, also co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, or

celebrities and actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, tech icons like Matt Mullenweg behind WordPress, WordPress.com, and so on and so forth. Musicians, we've got everybody. And I have wanted to interview a professional wrestler for a very long time now after seeing the movie, The Wrestler, but also having wrestled myself and having watched WWE and WWF before that, and then the rise of MMA. And I managed to get a hold of a fantastic, fantastic performer and incredible athlete, Triple H. So Triple H, who is a 13-time world champion in the WWE. But that is not all. He's also the executive vice president of talent, live events, and creative at the WWE.

And we talk about just about everything in this episode. His real name is Paul Levesque. And we dig into the questions of misconceptions related to both Triple H, his stage name, his stage persona, and WWE, the important lessons he learned while training with a wrestler named Killer Kowalski, including getting hit in the back of the head with a phone book in a garbage bag. Ouch. And we get into his longevity, how he avoids and also repairs injuries, pregame rituals, including input from a trainer named Joe DeFranco, of course, his colleague in arms, The Undertaker, and even Floyd Mayweather. And who does he model? How does he view parenting? He has a bunch of daughters. And it goes on and on.

We really dig deep. It turned out better than I could have expected, and I expected it to be good. So I hope you really enjoy this. Of course, all show notes can be found at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out. And please enjoy my conversation with the one and only Triple H, Paul Levesque. Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, man. It's an honor to be here.

I'm so excited for this. You are a massive human being. It's a job requirement, kind of. It does seem to be a job requirement. And you have worn a lot of hats and have had a lot of different titles, a lot of different jobs. When someone asks you, what do you do if they don't recognize you how do you answer that question oh god it's funny now because i'm kind of in that this weird kind of combo twilight zone of the last bits of my my in-ring wrestling career you know um even then when i did it then i used to say I was an entertainer. Because if people – the WWE is a weird thing. It's one of those things like if you're not into it, no explanation can explain it to you to make you like it.

And if you are into it, there's no explanation necessary. It just is what it is. So to say sometimes, oh, WWE, they would go like oh look at the wrestler you know and it just had a weird connotation to it when you say entertainer oh what kind oh you know wwe it just took on a different meaning sure uh to people that don't understand what we do um so i always went with that right now it's um it um, it's kind of a combo, you know, we have a saying that we use at WWE, which is our job is put smiles on people's faces. And it's kind of the overall thing of what we do, but I spend 90% of my day as an executive. So there you go.

Okay. We're going to also, we're going to dig into that and rewind the clock and sort of look at the trajectory, but what are misconceptions that people have about you or triple h or wwe um i i think they don't you know they just see what they see on tv they see you know um the the misconception for me is that i'm very much what you see on on television or i'm that i'm this character or they see the simplistic things of what we do. You know, it's funny,

even if you're this huge fan of the WWE, they get so upset over things like, um, well, good. Why would this guy beat that guy? Just, you know,

it's one of the terms right now. It's buried him. You know, it's, um, it's a show. And what they don't get about our show is we are like this never ending. You can compare it to whatever you want, comic books, soap opera, TV drama, movie, but it never ends. So it's always another chapter. And they get so upset

at the moment of not liking maybe the end of the chapter that they're on. There's another chapter that starts tomorrow. It actually started right now when this one ended. And they don't get that and they can't wait for that. And they don't understand all the complexities that go on behind the scenes. So that's probably the biggest misconception is that the WWE is just a bunch of guys at its simplest form that just go to the ring in their underwear and pretend to fight with each other. But when you really break it down, it's a massive global business.

Oh, there's a lot behind it. Oh, my God, it's huge. And I've been so impressed by it for so, so long, not the least of which, and we'll certainly explore the physical and mental stamina. How many matches would you say you have had total wow to date televised or otherwise thousands you know if if you break it down simplistically and math is not my strong suit so but you know i started wrestling i think in like 93 ish just just training 92 93 training was this in new hampshire or was this yeah um

in new hampshire i went to um i trained with a guy named killer kowalski and old who my mom loves by the way oh really yeah i wanted to dig into that yeah he he was a you know one of the first guys to become kind of like globally known and i started training with him he had a can't uh a school if you want to call it that was like a little rundown mill building with a boxing ring in it in Malden, Massachusetts. And I started training with him there. So if you break it down from there to today of 20-plus years, and then once I made it to the WWE, which was 95,

even if you just want to look at it from there and just say 20 years, 20 years, I probably, for a lot of those years, wrestled 250, 280 days a year. Sometimes in the weekends, we did double shots. So we'd wrestle on matinee in the afternoon and then a night show. So it's a lot. A lot of mileage. Yeah, it's a lot of mileage. Yeah. What were the most- That's the thing we always say. It's not the years. It's the miles. But figuratively and literally, and it's a hell of a lot of travel. But before I get to asking about travel and all these different training aspects, what were the most important lessons you learned while training with Killer Kowalski?

It's funny. A lot of the things – I think as in life, he taught me a lot of the things i think as in life he taught me a lot of things um that i didn't know he was teaching me at the time he would tell me a lot of things and i would like oh he's just like the mr miyagi approach yeah yeah you know he had this it was a very it would have worked very well in today's millennial uh age but like he had that his theory of telling you did something wrong was hitting you in the back of the head with a phone book that was in like a shopping bag you know oh my god and um but yeah he would just teach all the he wouldn't say a whole lot and then all of a sudden he'd come in and he would say um you know god that needs it you need to be spectacular

make everybody look at you, no one else. And then he would just walk away. And then you'd be like, what does that mean? Like, I don't, you know what I mean? You kind of had to figure it out. Now there's a lot of things that he said to me then that I find myself telling the young guys now in a different way. But it's the same lessons kind of, you know.

Are there any examples that come to mind? Well, just in how to be spectacular, but also how to break things down and to just look at what you do. Like never be satisfied with what you do. If you don't do something well, don't do it, unless you want to spend the time to improve that. Like, and still to this day, I see a lot of guys do stuff in the ring that I'm like, he doesn't do that well. He does it all the time.

It's just, you know, you shouldn't do that. I have things that I don't do well in the ring. Just don't. It's just. What would be examples? For example, there's just one thing that guys take where they they um they go through the top and middle turnbuckle and hit the post right right from the inside and uh hit it with their shoulder i just it's one of those mental block things for me like i can't i just like can't seem to navigate

going between the two turnbuckles and getting the thing like i always get stuck somehow or i've tried to do it before and it's just one of those things like doesn't work out well for me so I never do it and if guys will grab me in the ring over the years and say like take the post and I'll just no you know what I mean because I don't mid-flight correction I just don't do that well I'm not gonna do it and I think there's little things like that that guys don't analyze what they do they they do what they do and then they they go, and they say, oh, that was really good in the overall picture of things, right? It was really good. People really liked it.

It was, but there were some things in there that weren't really good. So it averaged out well, but there were things they should have omitted. Yeah, and to me, I don't know. I've always been the kind of guy, if you're doing it, why wasn't everything what you wanted it to be in there?

There shouldn't be wasted movement. There shouldn't be things that aren't what you want them to be. I don't want to do something just to get to the next thing. No, I do. And what are you particularly good at in that environment? What are the strengths that you focused on? For me, it was never about individual moves. And I think as the business, maybe some guys now look at that

and they think differently because they might look at my style and say, like, I was never an over-the-top spectacular guy. But I wasn't supposed to be. I was usually the bad guy. So I wanted to have that. I wanted to be that constant and let the other guy be spectacular around me. And for me, it was never about the spectacular moves.

It was about the drama of the match. And I look at what we do as we're more like Rocky, the movie, than we are legitimate, you know, like boxing. Right. It's about the story that you tell. So if the story is really good going in and you care about the two characters and then you make that emotional story play out

through those two characters non-verbally in the ring, that's the magic of what we do. It doesn't matter if, you know, yeah, it makes the highlight real like oh my god he did this one spectacular move was crazy i don't know how he he made it through that or whatever it's it's not really about that because tomorrow there'll be another guy can do that move better than you just did it right and it'll be even more spectacular he'll come up with another way to do it that's even crazier well you mentioned rock right Rocky, right? It's about the story arc,

not just a handful of really good lines of dialogue. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing of it. And you'll watch, it's one of the things that works. We have the WWE Network. It's a lot of old content.

People will go back and they'll watch WrestleMania 1, you know, over and over again and how great it is or WrestleMania 3 and all these things, it's because it's an emotional story. If it was just about the moves, it wouldn't be so impactful to you still. The emotional story, that's why people will go back and watch the movie Rocky

over and over again because it's a great story. They very rarely go back and watch. There's exceptions, Muhammad Ali and Foreman or something, moments in time. But the average person, unless they're like a boxing connoisseur, doesn't go back and watch boxing over and over again. You know, and you know, it's fascinating about the examples you just gave, like whether it's Ali, Frazier or whatever. Those in real life ended up being like story arcs because you would have this back and forth and this drama and the thriller in Manila and there were all the elements of sort of the monomyth.

Yeah. And even when you go back and usually watch those fights, you go back and you watch them in a show that now chronicles the story of... That ties them together. Yeah, yeah. It chronicles the story of those those epic contests you know and that's the the reality of the story you know it's um

you know said all the time if you know who's in the ring fighting you'll tune in and you'll watch to just watch two guys fight for no apparent reason it's not that interesting unless you're a connoisseur of the of what they're doing you know if you're if you're watching connoisseur of what they're doing. Of the craft. If you're watching the UFC and you're a big mixed martial arts fan or all those things, and there's a lot of those, but they're very into what's going on scientifically and the chess game, the technical chess game that's going on. But that's not the general public. To hit the general public, they need to know something

about the two guys and why they're fighting. Right. The fighting. Right. You know? The fighting. Now, at your peak point in your onstage wrestling career, you mentioned 200 and something like 250 to 300 days of the year you were probably traveling, something like that? Traveling, yeah. something like that traveling yeah and uh what were some of the keys to your longevity being able to maintain that and i know we have a common connection in joe defranco and he's mentioned that you very very rarely if ever miss training days and then maybe you could speak to that but even if that means coming in at two three in the morning to train what are what have been some of the keys or practices that

have allowed you to sustain that type of torturous schedule um i think you know you you speak a lot in your in your podcasts and in your books and everything about routines and having things that you do and i'm very big in that way and i like i like to have my life kind of when it when it gets chaotic it bothers me and it's it which sounds silly because like what we do is chaotic at all times like my day varies and you know people talk about when you do live tv like monday night raw for us we work on that show and it isn't done and like sometimes guys are walking out the curtain and somebody's shouting a done and like sometimes guys are walking out the curtain and somebody's shouting a change to them as they're walking through the curtain you know

it's so the chaos is there but having that consistent thing so for me i had very distinct things like if i was in the beginning there wasn't as much supplements and and it was a little bit more difficult but as supplements became more available i would i'm like big on the preparation part so like if i was going to get on a plane to fly to japan i would take um either containers or or later when they were there the the i would make my own protein shakes right i'd put the two scoops of protein in the thing i'd put some oil in there whatever i needed I'd put the two scoops of protein in the thing. I'd put some oil in there. I'd put whatever I needed.

I'd put the top on it. No liquid in there. And I'd stick it inside my carry-on bag. And I would time it in my head. So I'm on the flight for, it's a 16-hour flight. I've got three hours. I need to eat every three hours. I'm not going to count on the food on the plane.

That would just be bonus food. So every three hours, I have a shake for every three hours. And I'd set my watch to go off every three hours time to eat and i'd get a shake out get water drink my shake put it in go back to sleep right whatever i needed to do when i landed i would check into the hotel second we checked in i'd ask them to is is the gym open can i go train even if it was to get on a bike and ride for 15 minutes, reset that. I learned early that it seemed to me anytime I did that, I didn't get jet lag. Anytime I did that, I seemed to like, we can use wrestling terms, like I'd get kick out faster, right? So while everybody else

would be at the building dragging that day, I'd be like, I feel great. Like, you know, I don't feel so bad. Getting your blood flowing, resetting your clock. If we were in Australia, I would always, like that last day there, I would force myself to stay up because then I could sleep the whole way home. And by the time I landed, I'm landing in the morning and it's perfect. I'm just waking up and I'm great. I'd do the same thing. I'd land, I'd try to find a gym, whether a hotel, something, ride a bike,

reset my clock, do the same thing. I'd land, I'd try to find a gym, whether a hotel, something, ride a bike, reset my clock, do the deal, you know. So those routines and regimented stuff, and same with my training. When new guys would start a lot on the road, like internationally, when we're all traveling together, it's hard when you go overseas, you're on a bus, there's a gym set up for you, but they don't know how, like, how do I get to the gym? I'm not sure. Am I supposed to go downstairs, get on a bus?

I don't know. The guys would always come to me and say, hey, look, we've always heard that you go to the gym every day. Can I go with you? So, yeah, I'd meet downstairs, a bunch of guys would come down. We'd all go to the gym together because I would go every day. I didn't like missing it. I didn't like, you know, to me it was that regimented thing. And I can look back on my career and say,

I think part of that regimented stuff is why I was able to maintain it or maintain that schedule because I was one of the guys also that really truly believed in that when you make it, the job gets harder. It's not the other way around. You don't make it and then go, okay, now I can cruise because now I'm the guy. And now that means I can say no and I can not do these things. I felt the opposite. When you get there, now it's your responsibility to not say no.

So, you know, I've had times where I've worked 64 straight days and just everybody else went home. I went on a media tour. Everybody else went back home. on a media tour everybody else went back home i went to something else i did that for years you know and and that uh that regimented having those distinct patterns so to speak um i think helped help keep that i think it helps preserve your bandwidth also for making decisions about other things so you don't have to decide each morning or each day what all the elements of your routine are going to look like.

Yeah. It's funny. I heard you talk just recently. I listened to your podcast and my research for this because I've read your books, but hearing somebody speak is different than what you put in your mind of how they speak. You're like, God, that guy sounds a lot dumber on audio. No, no, no. But you put something in your head and then you get there and go, that's not what I expected at all.

So I listened to – I sounded more like Barry Manilow. Yes, much. Yes. You spoke – no, I forget what I was talking about. That was bad interview etiquette on my part no no no we're talking about routines it's it's bad memory on my part is what it is routine oh i know what i was going to say yeah i i believe that um like training is almost like

a meditation right like totally agree anthony robbins say he doesn't didn't meditate because in like shutting off he's the. He wants to just keep going. But I also believe you need to reboot your brain because your brain will get stuck in like – it's like when you go to sleep and you can't stop thinking about something you've got going on at work and you can't get it out. And in the morning, you realize like it was actually gibberish that was in your brain going on. I think training, when you do it well, if you're into it, you can't focus.

You can't be in the middle of trying to do a heavy set of something and be thinking about another project. You have to be in that moment, and it allows you to reboot, which I kind of believe is what meditation and all that stuff is. Anyways, it's just a reset button for a second that just allows you to go like, start over clean the plate and now let's do this again you know and that's really to me what training is definitely digging a little bit more on the routines uh for instance uh in the last let's just say as you've gotten older in the last

uh handful of years how do you what is your pre-game ritual if you have one before you're going to go out and compete and perform? Yeah. So that just became a necessity of age. I never – And just for people listening, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you at the moment? 45. how old are you 45 but so you know for years when i was doing all that stuff with wrestling uh you know wrestling all those dates and and everything um it's funny because some of the younger guys would would joke with me about it like you're like the old school guy like i would literally

be sitting in a chair up at we call it gorilla position right before you walk out the curtain uh named after an old wrestler gorilla monsoon but um i would just be sitting in a chair my music would hit get up and go to the ring and like they would say you don't warm up at all so i'll walk to the ring it's good it's a good warm-up you know i'll start slow it'll be fine um now i have to like stretch and warm up and joe uh defranco you mentioned my strength and conditioning guys one of the things when I'm really bad with years and dates, but four years ago as my career was kind of winding down and I was still wrestling fairly regularly

and I had had this problem. I thought it was a neck injury and really having all this problem with my neck and my shoulder. And I got into a position with a company where I needed to go make a couple of movies for them long story but I went to go make two movies I ended up taking about a month off from the ring to go make these two movies and then I was supposed to come back while I was making the movies one day I went to the gym to train and it had gotten to a point where I couldn't raise my

left arm up like over my shoulder and my neck was really bad and i'd been going to see our team physician uh you know the guy that runs our medical and i'd been you know getting stuck with needles and dye and mris and things and they kept saying like it looks great we don't see there's clearly something nerve going on here but we don't know what it is um and they kept doing all this stuff and went to the gym one day and tore my bicep and it didn't hurt at all it like snapped i looked down i had the big gap in my arm i was just mad more than anything i was like oh i can't believe it just rolled up like a venetian blonde it tore at the top so it just popped down and made like this divot there right and i heard i had headphones on i heard it and i looked down there was this divot i was like son of a bitch i can't believe it just tore my biceps so I'm like mad I put my weights down and like literally I

was done training I was just gonna do like a couple extra sets of biceps or whatever and uh I called the guy to come back and get me and as I went to go outside like I was sweating and now I'm pissed so I'm just gonna leave and I go to put my sweatshirt on and as I did I put my sweatshirt like threw my arm up over my head to put my sweatshirt on. And as I did, I put my sweatshirt, like threw my arm up over my head to put my sweatshirt on and realized, like, wait a minute. Like, I can move my arm all the way around my head like that. I couldn't do that. Your shoulder mobility. Yeah.

I was like, everything came back. And hey, wait, my neck doesn't hurt. It was all from, like, this bicep. And I had to get surgery and the whole thing. But it got me to a point in my head, like I'm getting older, I'm falling apart a little bit. Like I have to start, maybe I should think about trying to train like an athlete instead of just like going to the, just being a bodybuilder and just looking good or whatever. So I'm not like a guy that just like called a local gym. Like I have to then like dig into it.

So I start like researching trainers and everything. And, um, ironically, I end up probably where you did in your quest to do when you did for our body, which is you start researching all these guys that become the best at what they do. And I,

I come across Joe DeFranco. It. And I come across Joe DeFranco. It keeps coming back up, Joe DeFranco. And I call Joe DeFranco out of the blue one day and just say, you know, hey, I was actually, because he was in Jersey and I was in Connecticut, I was thinking maybe he could recommend me to somebody. And he said, can I come and meet with you? I'd like to meet with you.

And just so I can analyze the thing, I still had my arm in a sling and everything and just finished making the movies. i didn't have the surgery until after i finished making the movies and um he came and said uh after we met he's like you seem like a really great guy i'd like to take a stab at doing this with you i'll drive up here i'm willing to do it and drive up and uh there's a thing he's awesome he's a great guy and for people who are familiar uh he's he's very well known for a lot of reasons but does a lot of work with uh football athletes training for the nfl combine yeah and that's how he ended up the chapters in the four-hour body where i i showed how unathletic i

am uh but how much joe could improve my performance attempting to simulate the combine for for a handful of chapters but uh please continue i just wanted to give some context for people. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Great guy. Yeah. And just wealth of knowledge, incredibly smart. And he said to me, so this will be a difficult transition for you because your mindset is

totally different. You know, I'd never been with a strength and conditioning guy. Everything I learned in the gym was from bodybuilders or powerlifters. I just went to the gym and trained with guys and learned everything I could, but I was a sponge for it. And, you know, Arnold was my hero and, you know, I like just was a sponge for all that stuff. And, and, uh, but that's how I learned it. So strength and conditioning and the whole stretching and mobility was totally foreign to me. And he said, uh, this is going to be a tough thing for you. We'll see if you can do it because tough with old dogs, new tricks.

And I just went to him and I said, dude, I will tell you this. I'm all in. Tell me what to do. I'll go do it. But it changed my life. Changed my life athletically. I went from a guy with, you know, gimping going upstairs because my knees were killing me. I've torn both my quads and my knees were really bad and all that.

I have zero knee pain now. I'm as strong as I've ever been. I don't have physical issues, but it's because of that type of training in Joe. And, you know, he was one of the guys that got me like, when you do wrestle, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get you in this kind of shape. And then here's going to be your pre-match ritual of you're stretching and your mobility. We're going to light your body up, get your nerves kicking and firing, and then you are, uh, and I can, what I'll provide for folks, uh, obviously lots of links to everything that you're up to, but also I'll ping Joe and get some links to exercises and some videos. What, what does that look like now? What are some of the exercises or the sequence? It's, um, it's a lot of mobility stuff, Cossack squats. Um, you know, um,

Is that a weighted Cossack squat? No, no. Well, it depends. Usually, I don't like if I'm getting ready to go for a match, but he'll have me do Cossack squats into maybe just like a squat, but when I come down, I'm pushing my knees out to the side to stretch my groin out

into some type of eccentric explosive push-up, but just getting things to fire my nervous system, wake my nervous system up, but then also just open my joints up a little bit and just warm my body up. But it's never anything like I see guys running up and down hallways and doing all these things to get a sweat going.

I'm never at that point, but when I'm done it, I always feel like alive you know as opposed to just kind of physically shut down but mentally aware because i'm about to go to the ring so you know no matter how many years you've been doing this you're still like nervous and like freaking out and um to to then have your body just kick in and wake up. Boom, and you're there. You know what I mean? And that's really what it is.

But it's just a – he varies it, but it's a little series of exercises that just makes me go – How long does it typically take? Five, ten minutes. Oh, it's nice. It's not short and sweet. Yeah, it's not – I just go right from one thing to the other. It's a good little deal.

I'll ping Joe. So people, you can find that at the show notes at 4hourblog.com. The fear factor, what you guys do is, it can be very dangerous. I mean, there are risks involved. Sure. When you're nervous or have been nervous, what does your inner dialogue sound like when you're preparing yourself to go out, when you've been most nervous? What are you saying to yourself? So it's changed over the years. I used to get really intense and really like,

almost like that same level of intensity if you were going to go for a personal record squat or something where you just get in that zone of intensity and just nothing else is around you, and you're in your own little world and just on fire, ready to tear through this thing. And that, when I was younger, that used to be the thing. For me now, it's much more of an inner dialogue of, you have been doing this for 20 years. You know how to do this. Like, relax, and this is fun.

And somewhere there's that inner dialogue in me saying, could be the last time you do this. Enjoy it. You know what I mean? Like, Undertaker and i had a conversation a couple of years ago about this like you you it's it's a little bit of like you can still do this like and calming yourself down but at the same point in time like don't forget to enjoy this moment like when you're out there because you might not get another one you don't know you know

and and injuries do happen especially as you get older so and you can't think about it once you're out there because you might not get another one. You don't know. And injuries do happen, especially as you get older. And you can't think about it once you're out there. And that's the thing for me. It's always been this emotion and nerve. And my music hits, and the second I walk out, it's gone. Like I don't have any of it. When I'm in the ring waiting for the other guy or whatever, I don't have any of it.

And it's an interesting thing to me that um i'm friends with floyd mayweather and incredible athlete yeah and i was walking him to the ring one time in uh i think when he fought marquez and um we got there early and his guys came and got me and i wanted to watch some of the undercard and then they came and got me and they said you know floyd just want to say hi before he starts getting ready and stuff, chat with you for a few minutes. So I came, we, Steph and I went backstage, my wife and, um, we get in his locker room and he's laying down on the couch watching

basketball game and we come in and say hello and all that. And he's like, I have a seat, you know, now he's, we're talking a little bit, but I'm trying to be ultra respectful of him. He's about to go in. It's just a massive fight. The second there's like a lull in the conversation, I'm like, all right, man, we're going to get out of your hair and head back, and we'll come back here when it's time for us to get ready for your deal.

And he's like, man, you don't got to take off. You can sit down. I'm enjoying the conversation. Have fun. And he's like completely relaxed. So another lull in the conversation, I go, i go we're gonna run floyd i don't want to be in your way and he goes hunter i'm telling you i'm not i'm just chilling watching the game and i said you're not wound up about this at all and he goes why would i be wound up i'm either ready or i'm not worrying about it right now i'm gonna change a damn thing.

Right? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. So I've either done everything I can to be ready for this or I'm not. It's a fair point. I sat back down. We watched a game for a little bit. You're like, all right, want a beer? Yeah. He just is very calm and relaxed.

That's amazing. And I think when you feel in your mind that you're ready, you're and you're gonna have those nerves but it's you know it's there when when you were coming up let's just say when you when you would hit your stride somewhat so you're starting to uh make the ascent through the ranks and really become popular when you thought of the word successful who was the person in your head at that time? It's hard to say because I looked at inside of our business, there were guys like for me, my favorite performer character was Ric Flair. Just kind of felt like overall he had the best package of everything to offer you know there were guys that were great showmen very popular or guys that were great at one thing very popular he had the kind of the combo of great in-ring performer it made everybody look good this

great character all all these things in inside the wrestling business that was a component of success for me. Just that level of performer, the way he handled himself in the ring. I always wanted to be the in-ring kind of general and understand. And it's one of the things I prided myself on at the peak of my career was I could tell you at any given time if there were six people involved in something, I could tell you at any given time if I closed my eyes in the ring where they all were like no matter how much they were moving around and what they were doing i knew where they were i knew what they had in their hands i knew like just on glimpses as i was moving around the ring i always felt like it was my job if something was going to screw up that was my. It wasn't because he didn't know what was coming. It was because I didn't control that.

So I always felt like the control was mine to take because it was what I could count on. I couldn't rely on, you know, this might get screwed up because maybe there's a confusion between those two guys over there that are supposed to do their thing. So I always took it on me to make sure I was there to tell them, this is coming up. Be ready.

Here we go. Get the chair. Whatever. Flair was very good at that. So that was like, for me, from that point of view, was a success component. But there was a lot of things that I looked for. Wrestling didn't define me as far as what I saw was successful. I looked at my father-in-law now, Vince,

I looked at that as a guy that saw business, that was one thing, but had a vision of it being something else. He saw this little territory business and thought, there should be one global brand that everybody watches because the world's getting smaller, cable is taking over. So he had this vision and then he just kind of set out doing it I looked at Arnold I remember you know as a kid reading education of a bodybuilder and very structured methodical set of here's what I want to do here's what I want to

be and here's how I'm going to get there. You know, those kind of things and those kind of people were success models for me. Arnold was that in the structure. You know, I just said it to him a few weeks ago. Like for me, I say this in interviews a lot. The gym taught me everything I need to know for life. I walked in a gym at 14. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the end result look, right?

Always in awe of these big, powerful, impressive guys. I think it's part of what I dug about wrestling. I enjoyed the physical and all that stuff of it and fell in love with that really wholly. That's probably what led me to the gym at first, but just the discipline of it and the going to the gym. When I say it's like life, the more you put in, the more you get out. The harder you work, the better the results. If you're willing to prepare, to sacrifice, it's not just about going to the gym, lifting weights,

and then going out and goofing off the rest of the time. It's your life. So if you discipline your diet, if you discipline your rest, if you don't go to the party with your friends, if you don't do all these things, your results follow suit. You know, I just got inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame, Arnold's International Sports Hall of Fame. Congratulations.

Thank you. But I bring it up because Evander Holifield was there, and he told this story. And I never heard it said this way before. Sorry, Evander, but I'm going to steal this. He told me that he was giving his speech, and he said that his coach at one point in time told him, like his very first day, he said,

you could be the next Muhammad Ali. And he said, you could be Muhammad, you could be the next Muhammad Ali. And he said, do you want to do that? And he said he had to ask his mom. And then he went back home and he came back and he said, I want to do that. And he said, okay, is that a dream or a goal? Because there's a difference. I'd never heard it said that way before, but it struck to me so much so that I've said it to my kid now. Like, is that a dream or a goal? Because a dream, just something you fantasize about that just will never happen, probably. A goal is something you set a plan and work towards and achieve. Is that a dream or a goal? I kind of always looked at my stuff that way.

So the people that were successful models to me were people that had structured goals and then put a plan in place to get to those things. And I think that's what impressed me about Arnold. It's what impressed me about my father-in-law to this day. He's still very much a, you know, here's the goal. There's I'm going to get there, you know, energizer bunny. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, you guys are seem like peas, you know, energizer bunny. That's amazing. Yeah. And you guys are seem like peas in a pod from us.

Stamina and endurance. You know, and to you, I've heard you say it before when, when you have that goal in mind, now it's not, I got to do this thing to get that done. It's you.

You can't wait to do that thing to get that done. Cause it's going to get you closer to your goal. Right? Well, it's the, it's the compass that allows you to find order in the chaos too. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, parenting. parenting i don't i don't yet have kids uh that i know of uh at some point i i would love to have a family how do you think about being a father what type of father

do you want to be what do you think is is important in that role that's's a tough one. I have three girls. I have an eight, a six, and a four. Very well spaced. Yeah, yeah. And that's it. We're done. Yeah. But, man, it's hard when the pressure as a parent,

hopefully if everybody takes the job seriously, you're giving them the examples of how they're going to live their life. Kids don't do what you say. They do what they see. So how you live your life is their example. I've heard it said, and I believe this, is like the way I treat their mother and the way i treat them is what they're going to look for in a in a significant other um that's like you gotta think oh yeah like so what do i

want them to have in their life holy cow now i gotta do all that stuff it's a lot you know and then you add in all the other things of life. It's a very difficult challenge. But you want to teach them right from wrong. You want to teach them. You want to give them a path and a direction. But at the same point in time, you learn as much from your failures as you do from your successes. So you can't give them everything you want to help them so bad like i'm watching you make a mistake and i want to help you but go ahead and make the mistake

because you got to learn from that mistake you know what i mean um and it's it's tough to do but you have to and there's no manual that's the hard thing about kids right there's no manual that comes with it and you're just doing the best you can i remember when we got our first one home we the hospital they put it in the car seat and you take the thing home and then we walked in the door and we put it on the step and we were like what do we do now we just stood there looking at her for a little bit like what do we like what do we do just like eventually she cried and we had a feeder and whatever but you don't know what to do you just it's like you don't we have a kid holy cap you know just comes with this figure it out as you go yeah luckily i was i gotta go on the road uh the um the aspect of routines that we touched on earlier, I'd love to bring back into focus for a second,

specifically morning routines. What does the first 60 minutes of your day look like? And I'll probably ask a bunch of really irritating nitpicky questions because that's how I am. But when do you wake up? What does the first 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like? Yeah, so I wish I had a really cool example of that. Like, you know, Anthony Robinson. I wake up, I go in a cryo chamber. In a cryo chamber, he's like at this elaborate ritual of mind-altering spiritual,

like jumping in a hot tank and a cold tank. Mine involves my kids waking me up in an ungodly hour after i you know like we we work under the premise of my wife and i and and to me she gets this even more than i do because she's got all the roles and all the stuff and then she's mom and when you're the dad it's it's um it's a big responsibility. But the mom, like, if anything happens, if they wake up, they go to her first. You know, when the kids wake up in the middle of the night, unless they're scared, they might call dad if they're scared. But usually it's mom because they just, mom's more the comforter, right? So it's all those things.

So that's an even harder job. But, you know, we train late at night. We get home. We try to get home every night, no matter what, to, to spend a little bit of time with them and put them down and, and,

uh, you know, read them a book, whatever, get them in bed. So Joe comes to my house around 10 o'clock. So by PM. Yeah.

So I, I get them done. You know, we get them in bed, um, change and then Joe's there. And we start training. And usually by the time you warm up, it takes me a while to warm up. I'm at 10 o'clock at night.

You train and do all the stuff. By the time we get done, usually it's 1 o'clock in that ballpark. And then you get into bed after 1 o'clock. They're up at like 6 at the latest. And they're in the room. So there's no really cool ritual. I wish I could say jump in a cryo chamber. It's usually me stumbling downstairs with them to try to make every morning. My ritual is I am also ironically out of your book, Dave Palumbo.

Jumbo Palumbo. Yeah. out of your book dave palumbo is jumbo palumbo yeah dave um has i've been friends with him for years and he um he's a big um uh ketogenic diet guy so he like works with my diet a lot when i'm getting ready for a wrestlemania stuff so dave's kind of my diet guy uses protein powder species protein so every morning roll downstairs two sc scoops of whey protein, a bunch of Starbucks coffee, powdered Starbucks coffee, some macadamia nut oil, and I make a shake, and that's the start. You just got to get the kick in going.

So it's powdered Starbucks macadamia nut oil. What else was in there? Two scoops of isolized protein. Nice. And some ice. Blend it all up. It's a Starbucks smoothie kind of concoction, but very healthy and has enough caffeine in there to at least make me realize what's going on.

Get them ready for school. My wife and I get them ready for school. Jump in the shower. Depending if I'm getting ready for school, jump in the shower, either depending if I'm getting ready for like WrestleMania, it's either throw sweats on because I'm going to bring them to school and then get a workout in because usually I train twice a day when I'm getting ready for WrestleMania or something. But train and then off to work. If I'm not getting ready for WrestleMania, it's shower, get ready, suit suit bring them to school you know we drive them to their school get them to school get them in their class do all the stuff and then drive to the office start the day uh get home at you know 7 38 o'clock at night and repeat and this is all in connecticut is that

all in connecticut yeah and the the hq is i want to say i'm gonna get this wrong it's not stanford is it stanford yeah yep see it right from 95, right off the highway. Close to the UBS building. Yeah, down the street, not far. I used to work there. I guess the slip of the tongue, live there is probably appropriate. You pretty much live in the office. What is your role currently at WWE in the executive capacity? So I am the executive vice president of talent, live events, and creative.

So if you look at the core of what we do as a company, like from the product itself, Ross Mac down, all that, and we're a lot more than that because we have movies and music and like um it's I say all the time it's like saying Marvel's a comic book company but that's the core of what we do um I control those aspects so talent and that goes from we have a department talent relations which is like their HR, and they handle everything that has to do with talent from their travel to anything that has to do with them. All the logistics of WrestleMania week, what talent they're doing. There's 1,000 appearances for talent literally in the week of WrestleMania.

They have to handle all the logistics of getting who, where, making sure nobody's late, all of it. It's a maze. From to talent development, which is the biggest probably thing that's closest to my heart that I do, which is where do we find talent? Where do we recruit them from? Where do we recruit them from? How do we recruit them from? How do we train them?

We opened a performance center in Orlando, Florida to a developmental territory or a developmental system that I have called NXT that has become kind of like an alternative brand through to how do they then evolve and get into the main roster of the WWE. So basically what we did is kind of created college football to get guys ready for the NFL. And then the last part of what I do is creative,

which Vince is kind of the ultimate filter of creative. I'm more – well, I weigh in a lot on that stuff and the content that's going to go on the network and all these things, and I weigh in on it from a creative concept, but I'm also approving T-shirt designs and banner designs and going through all that stuff through all the different departments and doing the approvals of all that day-to-day process. Sounds like quite a few hats. It's a lot of hats it's funny i used to marvel at um vince's ability when i first started coming in the office um i've had a working kind of behind the scenes relationship with vince since probably i started the wwe in 95 since like early 96 i just was always fascinated with the behind the scenes of the business and how it actually all came together as much as i was doing it in the ring.

And he and I just kind of clicked in that sense. And we started working together. And I didn't meet Steph, his daughter, until quite a few years later. And then we ended up having a relationship and the whole thing. But I had this working relationship with Vince. And as time went on and i got more and more involved in that and then um kind of later in my career he kept always asking me like when are you going to stop messing around in the ring and come do some real work in the office you know

you need to be in the office i need to get you in the office and um i used to marvel at how many hats he wore and how quickly he could change them you know he'd be talking about a foreign tour and box office receipts or or you know um a touring strategy or a marketing strategy for that and then two seconds later he's looking at a t-shirt design and approving colors and that and then that would go away and now he's he's you know looking at some new talent or he's like just with so many hats that he wore. And it used to amaze me at how quickly he could change gears. And I find myself now having to do that same thing. And it's really cool to see yourself growing that way because I used to think,

how does he keep that all straight? And at first I couldn't keep it straight. And now you learn it. You learn learn that you adapt to that process i know we only have a few minutes left i feel like i could ask you questions for hours so maybe we'll do a round two sometime but i love it this is great uh the i'd love to ask you some rapid fire questions and uh i think we can do an entire session just on productivity but just really quickly what is the the book that you have gifted most to other people or any book you've gifted a lot to other people? Um,

Hmm. I don't know that I could answer that question. I don't give books much, not a problem. Most of my friends aren't big readers. I need to work on that. We can come back to that. What band or song have you been playing most on your iPhone or in the car or otherwise?

So lately, it's been anything heavy. Metallica, Motorhead. I'm in like training mode for WrestleMania. So at 10 o'clock at night, I need to put something on the stereo that just gets me in ass-kicking mode. If you could only do one or two physical exercises for the rest of your life, movements, what would they be?

Wow. I think if at this age, if I could do fre a freestanding, just body weight squats and like pushups and kind of body weight exercises would be where I'd be at because I think you can stay in phenomenal shape doing them and you don't need a whole lot of space or equipment. I should at some point introduce you to a buddy of mine named Travis Brewer, who is a top competitor at American Ninja Warrior. And you guys could trade workouts. I think that'd be amazing. Yeah. I bet you that's awesome. He's a little monster. I bet. What advice, this will be the last question before I ask you where people can find

out more about you online, but what advice would you give your 20 year old self. Don't take it all so serious, you know, and, and, and be more open. Um, it's, it's man,

when you're so focused on making it and you're, um, I always had fun in the business and it was one of the things that I, like I could, I, I can look at it now and say like, I didn't take everything so seriously that it was detrimental to me but like there were times when it just something happened it just eat me up you know what I mean and I would be yes just couldn't

take it because I was so hungry to get to that next place and um you need to keep that perspective of where everything lays out. There's times when I – over the years when we've looked at each other and my friends within the business, little group of guys, and we'd always look at each other. At a certain point in time, you just laugh and go like, it's the phony fight business. We're wrestling our underwear. You know what I mean? What am I getting all worked up about you know what i mean and and i think that

that is the biggest thing um is just not taking it so seriously and then and then being open to stuff you know it's it's funny i mentioned that i listened to the Anthony Robbins interview with you and I was fascinated with it. I met Anthony one time and it was probably 2000. I was just kind of like getting to a high spot in my career and this happened to be in a hotel. I look over next to me, he's checking in next to me. I was like, it's just a big giant dude, you know? And I, but I recognize him from TV and he looked over at me, he said, how are you doing?

I was great, how are you? Good. And he, you know, I grabbed my doing? I said, great. How are you? Good. And he grabbed my keys, and I went and got in the elevator, and he gets in the elevator with me. And he looked at me and said, forgive me, I don't know what you do, but I clearly see people looking at you, and I clearly see you're somebody, and I don't – what do you do? And so I tell him who I am and what I do. And I said, I've seen you on TV. You know, and, um, you know, one of those two second chance meetings in an elevator.

Right. And, um, this really impressed me that I get back a couple of weeks later and I get a big box of like the cassette and his books and all his stuff that he had written me this handwritten letter and sent it. Didn't know how to get ahold of me, sent it to thewe office whatever two weeks a month later when i come back through the office at some point in time in my travels they give it to me and i'm like wow this is amazing i was too young and stupid and unopened at the time to foster a relationship or i listened to the tapes and i and i read the books and and all that stuff and if i'd have thought about it maybe i would have

reached back out to say thank you and like, hey, this is really cool. And he invited me to one of his seminars and I was just at that time like, I'm doing good. It was close to it. I wish I was more open to it. I wish I could have had the bandwidth to not be so absorbed in what I was doing

and my moments going for that I could have said, bandwidth to not be so absorbed in what I was doing and my moments going for that. I could have said by this guy, he could teach me so much and man, I should call it and just, you know, foster that relationship. Cause he, he put the,

he put the, put the handout and I was like, ah, I don't know. I don't need a hand, you know? And it's, um,

those are things that I look at. There's other opportunities in my life that I wish, ah, man, I wish I would, that was right in front of me and I could have grabbed that, but I was too narrow-minded to see it.

Well, this has been fascinating. You're a fascinating guy. I would love to do a round two sometime, but we're out of time. I know your schedule is incredibly impressive to me. Where can people find more about you online, say hi, and so on it's uh so uh twitter uh what's my twitter handle it's like a it's an at triple h i don't know i just know how

to push the buttons on it if you search at triple h easy peasy yeah wwe.com is is for our our um for our company and our site and all that. I do stuff on Twitter, and whether anybody believes it or not, I actually do it. It's not somebody else doing it. It's me. So if it's terrible, it was me. If it was really good, it was me. If you want to go back and look at my career, the WWE Network is a great place to do it.

All the historical content is on there. You know, that's really me. But, you know, for me, I'm – I know you say I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by this process and what you do and how you do it. And I'd love to do this again because I think these kind of things, it's funny. A lot of things I said in here when you asked me questions today, i'm i feel like i gave you long-winded answers i apologize if i did but like so i'm almost explaining it to myself as you asked me like i never thought about it that way so i'm kind of explaining it to you going like yeah that's really cool but you know not

long-winded at all they were uh you're a great storyteller you're a great story creator uh an incredible performer and i I hope I am. I'll never be as big as you, but hopefully I will be as bulletproof as you are when I'm 45. So until next time, thank you so much. Thank you very much, man.