WHOOP Podcast - Golf legend Gary Player shares his thoughts on fitness, health, and happiness.

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Global fitness icon and golf legend Gary Player joins the WHOOP Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion about health, life, and happiness. At 85 years old, Gary still works out harder than most people half his age. He shares his philosophies on exercise, nutrition, sleep, and the four factors he believes are key to a long and healthy life. Gary discusses how he got into fitness (3:01), his diet (6:09), sleep and training (10:50), the importance of breathwork (12:58), Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer (17:21), his 4 keys to a long and healthy life (18:10), enjoying adversity (20:05), visualization (22:32), Phil Mickelson's win at the PGA Championship (27:19), mindset (32:05), traveling more than any other athlete in history (37:13), and breaking his age on the golf course (41:21). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks, welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We've got a great guest this week, a fitness icon and golf icon. Before we get to him, a reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a WOOP membership, which comes with hardware, software, analytics. WOOP is designed to help you improve your health. Check it out at Woop.com.

This week's guest is golf legend Gary Player. Gary is 85 years old and he still trains harder than most 40-year-olds. Gary's been working out since he was eight years old when his older brother went off to World War II and made him promise to stay active so he could pursue his dreams of becoming a professional athlete. It's a phenomenal story. So he's been a real pioneer for bringing fitness to professional sports and certainly for bringing fitness to professional golf. When he first started lifting weights, most people around the game of golf questioned whether lifting weights was even good for golf. We discussed Gary's career, his philosophies on life, fitness, and happiness.

That includes how he used visualization to reach new heights in golf, his four keys to living a long and healthy life. what he's learned about travel and how he's been able to thrive despite flying over 16 million miles in his life, his perspective on gratitude and mental health, his thoughts on nutrition, and why he's so concerned about childhood obesity, this is a big theme for Gary. We touched on it a number of times. And why adversity is the key to success. He said he used to pray for adversity on the first tea before tournaments, which I thought was a pretty amazing soundbite. There's a lot to enjoy here. Without further ado, here is Gary Player. Gary, welcome to the Woof podcast. Thank you, Will.

Nice to be talking to you guys. You guys are doing a lot of fantastic work and admire you very much indeed. Well, you and I met on the golf course of all places. Seems appropriate with the great Jimmy Don. That was a fun round we had with James. And I appreciate the fact that you gave me a lot of tips out there. I hope you've been putting them into practice because you really have a beautiful golf swing and I want to get you to where you're playing well.

So I'll bring you in as a ringer and you can be my partner. We can make a lot of extra cash on the side, man. I like that. I like that a lot. We're going to talk a lot about health and fitness because you brought health and fitness and a lot of ways to golf for your era for sure. I wanted to start by asking you when you knew you were going to be a professional golfer. In 1953, I turned pro.

I was school in stature. In fact, my brother went to war when he was 17 and I was, I think, nine in South Africa. And the day he left, I can still see him he was going to fight with America and the Allies at 17, much to my mother and fathers discussed at that age. But anyway, he said to me, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to be a professional athlete. athlete of some kind. He said, you're too small. And he got me a set of secondhand weights, and I started using them in 1953. And then when I started using weights, I was ridiculed. You cannot believe. I mean, even my friends, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicholas at that stage, said,

you can't use weights and play golf. And so there was another man called Frank Strannahan, who took his weights. He was a very wealthy amateur. He took his weights with him when he went to different golf tournaments. And we worked out together and it was the best thing I ever did. How do you ever explain to people the value of exercise? I must admit, though, I always thought that exercise was 60 and eating was 40. Now I think that eating is 60 and exercise is 40. However, that's a very debatable issue. Obesity is the biggest crime that exists with our health, and the worldwide today. I don't know about places like India and China

where they're not a nation of obese. As far as I know, I haven't done the stats on them, but I do know America, South Africa, and most of the Western countries, the biggest danger, more dangerous than any disease or war, is obesity. Once you start getting fat, you're going to end on the mat. People don't worry about health, Will?

I'm telling you, If you take this great country, if there are 20 million people that exercise all the time, it'll be a lot. I don't know what the numbers are, but they'll start exercise, but they'll quit after a year. Because to exercise takes a lot of discipline and a lot of people just say, well, it's just too much, particularly young people. I'm working all day. I've got a job.

I'm trying to support my family. I come home. I'm exhausted. I'm just not going to do exercise. And to a degree, you can understand that. But it's still, if you exercise, you'll have more energy. Anyways, you're putting exercise, you're putting money in the bank, really. And so to get young people, but will, in the United States,

what school in America teaches children about what to eat and how to exercise and how to use the mind? Oh, look, I think it's a great point. I mean, I think it's a travesty that 40% of the U.S. is obese. And for some reason, it doesn't seem to be ridiculed the way other problems in the country are. You're right. It's an education problem as well. A lot of it comes back to what you should eat and just doing a little bit more in terms of activity.

I mean, we talk about obesity. It's not even so much exercise as it is just eating properly and moving. I don't like to eat bread. I don't like to eat bacon. I don't like to eat drink milk. I don't like to eat a lot of high ftes. I don't like to eat a lot of meat. I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't, I try and watch what I eat.

I try to eat a lot of salads, a lot of vegetables, a lot of fruit, drink a lot of water. But there's water and there's water. Where do you find good water anymore? That's another question. The stuff that we put into our bodies, if you buy something at a drugstore, and you look on the back of the package, it's scary to see the stuff that's in it. You buy a packet of potato crisps and you see 150 sodium. I mean, I don't know.

It's just very concerning to me that there isn't. I don't know. But I think it comes back from the families, but the mother and fathers don't know, unfortunately, because they were never educated along these lines. So we've got to get it in the schools. We've got to. It's imperative. It's strengthening a nation.

And, you know, the other thing that concerns me will, will the health care systems benefits be in existence in time to come? With people dying and getting sick like it's a daily occurrence, are the country is going to be able to afford it? That's the other thing. I do think that it's going to get better. I'm pretty optimistic about that, and in part because of where I sit in building whoop and and thinking about what the future of the health care system could be. You know, health monitoring, Gary, the ability to continuously measure someone's body invasively and to be able to prevent things before they happen can so dramatically

revolutionize the healthcare industry. It's pretty staggering. I mean, as you know, all the costs in the healthcare industry are curative costs. Something's already happened. It's too late and now we're trying to fix it. If you can get to someone before that thing, happens, whether it's a disease state, whether it's a heart attack, whether it's obesity, you can dramatically change the cost equation of the whole health care system. And I believe you can

also put more power into the individual's hands. Part of what I think has made you so successful in life is you have an incredible self-discipline. A lot of people lack that discipline, but if you give them enough information, they can start to take actions, right? And I'm talking now on a global basis, not sort of on an individual basis. But if you just take up from a percentage basis, not everyone's nearly as disappointed as you are. So you have to find the little bits of motivation or the little bits of encouragement that can drive the whole system forwards. And I do believe that non-invasive wearable technology will play a massive role in improving some of the things that you touched on. Well said, and that's why your loop system is really so outstanding.

It's actually, in a comparison, it's like having, you know, telling people to exercise and they don't do it. But if they get a coach, if they get a trainer that comes in three times a week, they have to do it. Right, right. Your loop is telling people, hey, listen, you know, you better watch this. You're not getting enough sleep. You're too tense, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And it will be there to nag them every day. It will make a massive difference. And so what you're doing, you're making money, which I'm pleased to hear, and I hope you do well. but you also, if you make money, it's a great thing if you're contributing to society. And so that's what you are doing, which for me is very exciting. One way we describe whoop is to be this 24-7 life coach. So a lot of what you just described about having a trainer show up at your doorstep, you know, I think you can think about the same way with sleep and recovery and nutrition

and a lot of these other categories where people don't really have anyone to tell them what to do or give them some guidance. And it's been amazing to see if you can just provide a little bit of information to people about how they're sleeping or how they're recovering, how dramatically that will make them shift their behavior in a positive direction. Well, that's right. And, you know, I'm in the racehorse business, which is, as I say, without being repetitive, it's a very, very competitive sport and the greatest athlete of all athletes. So you've got to train that horse well. You've got to feed him well. If you don't feed him well, he's not going to be the horse that you want him to be.

And so what you put into your mouth, your food you put into your mouth determines how much energy you've got. I mean, I sleep nine hours a night. I can very comfortably sleep 10 hours. And I think one of the reasons I'm so fit at 85, and I am fit at 85. I mean, you know, when I exercised last night, I'm doing the equivalent of most 40-year-olds in the gym. I'm working out extremely hard. What does your workout look like? Well, I exercise my entire body, and obviously I try to exercise what's going to be beneficial for my golf swing.

You know, so I work out my neck because when you hit a ball, you're a tremendous stress, hitting it hard. Your neck takes a lot of strain. Your back, the lower back, when I go and have a lot of stress, you're a lot of stress. a check on my back, the doctor said, we don't know how you've hit 15 million balls and you still are able to walk. They said, you'll be worn out. But, you know, an interesting thing, well, I had a ranch in South Africa. I just sold it and it broke my heart. We had water on that ranch that was as good as any water in the world. It came out of the wells. And we had a population of 30,000 people in our village. We never had a dentist.

People in my age had never been to a dentist in their lives. Never had a fillet. And this water had the proper minerals that were really necessary to develop bone. Now, you take a horse's leg. When they cut the hoof of a leg, they trim the hoof of the leg to put a shoe on the horse. And they did it in certain areas. And this farrier, the man who does that, says to me, you know, would I go to other places, the hoof is very soft.

When I come here, the hoof is three times as hard. So we weren't imagining things. We did a stress test on crushing a bone. And the one went to, say, hypothetically, 17 pounds per square inch of pressure. On my farm, it was almost twice as much, the bone. And so you attributed that to the quality of the water? No question about it.

And also zero pollution. Zero pollution and oxygen intake. Well, people don't breathe properly. They're not breathing. Well, that's a great, that's a great point. I mean, I think proper breathing can change your life. I do. You know, just a small thing like this, watch.

You should be able to do that for a minute. Yeah. Exhale. You ask people to do that. If they do it for 15 seconds, they're doing well. And then you've got to inhale it and hold it in there. But that's if it's good fresh air. You don't want to be doing it.

that in China, we're all India with all their pollution. That's not going to do you any good. Yeah, I think the world's best golfers, which of course you are a part of, are terrific at breathing, because you have to be in order to hit some of those shots under intense pressure. Otherwise, your body tenses up, right? Yes, correct. And walking. And walking is such a wonderfully, you know, people don't give walking enough credit as an exercise. People, they're only people, you know, are sitting down. I love the song that, I think it's Keith did for Clint Eastwood. Don't let the old man in.

It's a great. And this is what people are doing. They're letting the old man in. And that's wrong. You've got to get up there and irrespective how you're in pain or how old you're, you've got to get out, take the pain as best you can. And my wife has got pancreatic cancer down, spends most of her time in bed when we get out, we make her move the legs and walk as best you can. That body, you've got to exercise that

body. It is absolutely imperative. I mean, I've done so many experiments with weights and with speed training and with dashing. And then underwater swimming. I've done chilling the bar, which I don't do anymore because I don't want to hurt my shoulders at my age, so I don't do that. But the experiments I've done have fascinated, the human beings' body, we built to live over a hundred. We are built. That's how we are built to be. And we will go back to that with technology.

There's no question about it. Now, for you in the game of golf, age 17, you start lifting weights and you tell everyone you're going to be a professional golfer. At that point, was it obvious that you were like a great golfer? Because some people were critical of you going pro even, right? Oh, no. I mean, when I told my dad, I wanted to be a pro golfer and I was going to turn pro at 17. He said, are you crazy? You've got to go on to university and get a degree. And I said, dad, there are many great people in the world that have never had degrees. I said, the degree I'm going to get is traveling the world, meeting people, learning by traveling, which is better than any degree, quite honestly, to experience it. I mean, people might, hypothetically talk about socialism. They don't know what socialism is until you've gone there and you've seen it.

You follow it. So in life, you've got to be able to see something, not just talk about it and learn about it. So my dad was shocked, but he didn't know, even though I was his son, what I was sacrificed and do. But it takes a tremendous amount of effort, obviously, and you've got to make many sacrifices, and you've got to do a lot of suffering. I mean, you know, people say, what are you talking about suffering?

You won all these world titles and made a lot of money. But we didn't have any money. My mother died when I was nine. My brother went to war when he was 17. I wasn't allowed to play golf because I was from South Africa in Japan, in China, in India, in Denmark, and Sweden, etc., I had people demonstrating in me a dated Ohio, throwing ice in my eyes, telephone books in my back,

charging me on the green, screaming when I was playing and throwing balls between my legs when I was putting. So all these things were a great, great asset, all the suffering, all this diversity was the greatest gift ever bestowed upon me. That's what made me become a champion. And the tougher it is, the better it is for you. There's no such thing as this perfect life. I love that. And so much of success, I think, comes from overcoming great obstacles. At what point did you meet Jack Nicholas and Arnold Palmer, who really became your rivals and close friends in your era? Well, Jack, basically, I met them in 1957 when I first came to America.

Jack turned pro later. Jack is, you know, almost five years younger than I am, and obviously a lot older, younger than Arthur Palmer, almost 10 years or so. So, but what a wonderful time we had, and we won. most of the majors. I mean, you think that we won between us 300 golf tournaments and it was so great competing against them because they were such fierce competitors. We went around the world and we promoted golf on humanitarian ideas, work together, live together, love each other. You know, there are four things that if a person can do, it will be conducive to long living

and well living. If you can eat half as much, if you can exercise, every day, even if you do it three times a week. And you can laugh. See, laughter, if you look at the discrepancy between laughter and happiness, it's enormous. When you said, it's terrible. When you're laughing, the endorphins, they are the young cells of your body. You are, I really believe one of the main reasons I'm so strong and so fit at 85 is because I laugh so much. I laugh all the time. Yeah, you do. It's an injection into your system, man.

And the other thing is have unmeasured love in your heart. Yeah. Look at the world we live in now. If you say you're a Trump fan, they want to fight you. If you say you're a Biden fan, they want to fight you. The hatred exists. We've got to get rid of this hatred. Martin Luther King.

What a wonderful man who said, and Mandela, I spent three years with Mandela. What an incredible human being. He had no revenge. hatred in his heart. And if anybody had a reason to have hatred and revenge, it was Nelson Mandela. Going to jail for over 20 years. And I said to him, you must hate the white man and have great revenge. He said, to the contrary, I have no hatred and no revenge. I've got to now bring us together. I'm talking about experiences that have existed, that go to the extreme. And that's where I get my ideas from Martin Luther King and Mandela. Mandela said, we've got to now forget

about the past, remember it, but work together and build on it and make a new future. And that's what we've got to do. Not live with hatred in your heart. Amazing. Now, you mentioned great competitors. What do you make so a great competitor? A great competitor is a man who really enjoys adversity. Now, how many people can you say enjoy adversity? Very, very few. And funny enough, when I used to play, I used to get on the tea and say, please, Lord, let me have that adversity today and I'll show you how to beat it. Oh, isn't that great? Yeah. And so I think that's a thing.

And obviously, through that, through that, it encompasses a lot of things. You never give up. You never feel sorry for yourself. It's there as a guidance to tell you, behave well, compliment the man when he hits a good shot. when he beats you, look him in the eye and say, well done, because when you win, you want them to do that to you. So it teaches you an awful lot. But there are a lot of people, and the big thing is to believe in yourself.

That's the big thing to believe. A lot of players get on the T, say, I'm the best in the world. But the minute they get on that first year at the British Open or the Masters, they say, this is another world, man. I'm not so sure I believe in myself, subconsciously. Now, you strike me as someone who's done a good job overcoming feelings of doubt. In fact, when we were together, you talked about visualizations and how they played a big role in your success. Describe that a little bit more.

And for people listen to this, what are some of the best ways to overcome doubt and create that belief system? Well, for a start, if I had to start my career again, I would hire a coach that does yoga to keep your body stretched. and your mind at peace. The mind is the secret to life, really. Everything originates out of the mind. And you have the choice to do it or not to do it. Now, when I won the U.S. Open, I needed to win the U.S. Open to be the first modern-day player, so to speak, to win the Grand Slam.

And that's a big task to do that. And I was going to go to Greensbury, and Jack Nicholas said, they don't go to Greensboro, come to St. Louis with me, to Belrieve Golf Club, and if you want to beat me and win the Grand Slam before I do, because I'm trying to do it before you do it, you've got to come and practice with me. I said, Jack, I don't have the money to do that. He says, come, so I'll wait, reluctantly. And I was there, and we practiced together.

Then Jack flew back home here to Florida, and I stayed on. And every morning, I used to get up and go to the scoreboard. Now, the scoreboard is a massive scoreboard with all the U.S. Open champions, throughout history. And I sat in a Tai Chi position, which you know is not easy to do with your legs at parallel with the ground. I'd sit there for five minutes every morning. And I saw Gary Player on the scoreboard, 1965. I saw Gary Player, Gary Player. I did that. I brainwashed myself and I really sincerely believed I was going to do it. I went to the gym every day. I never went out to dinner one night. I had room service. I wore, and I'm not superstitious. I

I wore the same shirt every day. It was a black shirt. It felt so good. It felt so good on me. And so clothing has a big, a clothing shirt's got to feel good to you. Otherwise, you're not going to swing. Totally. So, but then I dried it out, and the humidity was so unbearable there, and I wore black.

But I was so fit, and I was squatting with 325 pounds, and one golf architect walked by and said, Gary Player will never win another golf course tournament by past the age of 35. You can't do weights and lift these and these heavy weights and play golf. Well, I smithed him to heaven the other day and said, listen, I'll be up there one of these days. Make sure you've got a good gym and design a good golf course. So the thing is that the way I prepared for that tournament, and I sat in front of the mirror every day like this at night,

and I said, you'll never give up. You'll never feel sorry for yourself. You will behave properly. hit more ball. You will exercise. You will not be greedy with your diet. That's what I first thought. And you were literally slapping yourself because I'm watching you slap yourself. Hard, no, because no pain, no gain. No, I wasn't tapping myself. Amazing. I put the nivia cream on my face every night afterwards. So how long would you slap yourself for? Well, I went through a routine and did about, I would say, an average of 12 things, you know,

to brainwash myself. And you just kept repeating those things and slapping? And you're going to have a bad hole. It's impossible to play without a bad hole. You are going to miss some short putts and don't stand there and look at it like, you know, it's not supposed to happen to you. Miss it. Get the hell out of there and go and hit the next shot. And I said, remember, the one thing I kept saying myself, it's the next one. When you had a bad shot, forget it. There's nothing that can be done about it. Forget it. The next one. That was a saying I had. The next one. I love that. I love that. And you gain to win. There's nobody that's going. to beat you because nobody is preparing like you do nobody has hit as many golf balls as you

as it's ever lived nobody's traveled across the world with no jets 40 hours going from south africa to america traveling with six children with a wonderful wife that made the sacrifice to do nobody's done this in sports like you have nobody so you gain to win so you see the mind is so we haven't scratched the surface will we haven't scratched the surface of the bind a great Phil Mickelson. Amazing. He was overweight, okay? I've been saying for years, for 20, 30 years,

I've been saying somebody at 50 will win a major. Now I'm going to, and I've always been criticized for my so-called kook ideas. They're going to hit the ball 400 yards. You're a kook. Somebody at 50 will win the major champion. You're a kook. Now I'm going to say somebody of 60 will win a major one day. Yeah, for sure.

A long time. And now I'm really a coup. And somebody will hit the ball 500 yards. A LeBron James will come out and play golf instead. of basketball and he will hit at five and a job. You're a coup. So all these things I've been saying are actually taking place. So we, the mind, the mind is so, so unbelievable.

We use 10% of it. Imagine if we could use, as Einstein said, 15%. Imagine if you could use 20%, which in time we will. We will be doing extrasensory perception. I'll be talking to you. You'll be in South Africa and I'll be here and we'll communicate without a phone or any device whatsoever and I will communicate with you

across the globe. Now, people say, this guy is really a cuck. But think about it. If you said to your father that you and I would be sitting here and talking to each other like this, or I will send a message to South Africa

and across the world which I communicate with every day. And it will take, you send a message, two seconds later there's a message. Your dad would have said, Will, you're not feeling very well. We better get adopted. So we haven't scratched the surface yet. Well, it's only crazy

until it happens. And as we've seen, technology can go a long way quickly. You mentioned Phil Mickelson winning the PGA championship. When you watch a tournament like that, having been around golf for so long, is there a moment where it's obvious to you what's going to happen? Or do you kind of find yourself caught up in the suspense of it? Like, did you think he was going to win all along? or after the third round or so? Or did you sense that it wasn't a slam dunk until the 18th hole? No, it wasn't a slam dunk until the 18th hole. And a man like Kepka with his long distance, he had, I mean, he played the three-par-fives

in more than three-over-par, which would normally be three-under-par. I mean, it was just a sitting-up for him. But there's no ifs. Remember this. Let's talk about the word if in a minute. But what fool did, and it was so obvious. I hope people are not oblivious of the fact. There he was.

He's lost weight. You could see it in his face. You could see it in his body. He could turn better. He could unwind better. His balance was great. And also, he was focused. You could see it.

Oh, insanely focused. Insanely focused. Have you ever seen a golf... Now, Tiger Woods did that all the time. Jack Nicholas did it. I did it. Not a lot of players. There were a few players.

I'm going to take that back. there are a few players. Jordan Spieth does that well. Now, if you looked at the way that Phil's mind was, it was just extraordinary. It was oozing out in the camera saying to you, look at this, look at the weight he's lost. You know, weight as we come back to,

weight stops a train. Never mind a human being. The worst thing we come back to which we started when we started this podcast, weight is the great destroyer of the human being. and this should be taught to children. But anyway, so when Phil is playing, I am saying to myself, well, he's focused, we're all hoping he's going to win.

But what I liked, and there's a great lesson for people, when I mentioned these four things to live a long time, unmeasured love, when Phil holds a putt, he goes up with his thumb, he goes to a young boy, shakes his hand, he blows a kiss to a woman, things that we had, we did because we didn't have money. we were playing for tournaments and we learned to communicate

with people. Communication is so important. And Phil was so great. Now you watch the other guys hold a putt. I'm not kidding. You sell them hold a 20 foot putt. They walk off the green like they're going to a funeral. Hey, man, that was great because the whole of 20 foot

putt is great. And give people the love. And then I noticed on the TV one of the guys ended up his program saying, well the crowd were unruly. Sure they were unruly. because here's a man at 50 accomplished something that had never been accomplished and he gave love so he got all the love and affection and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is one of the great essences of life.

It was a great example. School teachers should be taking that video and showing children what can be accomplished through love and diet and mindset. You're quoted as saying, accept the advice of the man who loves you, though you like it not at present. Well, you know, I had a son that could really play golf. I mean, he should have been really, if he had my head on his shoulders,

he would have been one of the 10 best players in the world. But he didn't have the dedication. And that's fine. You know, that's the young man's choice. But when I tell him something about the swing, he was reluctant to listen but he'd go to somebody else who didn't know much about the swing

and he thought he was being taught everything and how often do you see with parents I mean parents who listen understand 100% what I'm saying you tell you oh dad you're old-fashioned what do you really know and the older they get more they realize how much their father and mother

really realized and on that topic we've got to get young people to honor their mother and their father because a lot of children forget what their mother and their fathers, the sacrifices they made for them from day one to honor your mother and your father is important. So, you know, it all stems back, well, everything stems back from the mind. Well, in some ways, it leads me to thinking talent is overrated and a real mental clarity

and focus and belief is dramatically underrated. you're so right for you it seems like a lot of this uh mindset came from within is that fair like did you just start you'd learn this over time i mean this idea of going out and sitting in front of the leaderboard and picturing your name atop it i mean that's like uh you know true sports psychology today but i imagine you didn't have a sports psychologist telling you to go do that did you no i didn't have money so so where did you get that idea What a great question that is. And you're going to get an answer that a lot of people will poo, poo.

I think I got mine through prayer by sincere prayer. And I mean, even today at the age of 85, I never miss one single day, or I don't say a prayer at least five times a day. I say thank you that I can sit here and talk to you like this and maybe help a few people. I say thank you when I have a breakfast. Hey, Will, a lot of people don't have breakfast. A lot of people don't have a telephone.

Majority of the people, they don't have a breakfast. The majority of people don't have three, two meals, one meal a day. They don't have one meal a day. Most people, a lot of people don't have blankets. They don't have television. They don't have air conditioning. They don't have a house. They don't have a car.

They don't have money. They don't have a school. But people forget about this. Gratitude. I'm entitled to this. As I repeat, you're not entitled. do a damn thing. So we are one of the select, all your people that are listening to this today are the selected few. Why are we selected? I can't answer that. We'll find out one day. But all I can

say is gratitude is a terribly important thing because it can be taken away from you like that. We want to tick and you did. And by the way, it's one of the great happiness hacks out there is just being grateful for things. I don't care how you want to practice it. A gratitude journal, sitting down and taking a deep breath and saying thank you, like you just described, you know, having people in your life that you regularly say you're grateful for, it actually produces serotonin and it makes you happier. And there's a lot of hard charging people, Gary, who win a lot of things in their life or get a lot of measurable success, whether it's wealth or fame or otherwise. But they're operating solely on a dopamine system, right? The

dopamine system is saying, when I get to the next thing, when I win the next award, when I get the next trophy, I'm going to be happy. But actually, you have to introduce gratitude along the way and appreciate it, otherwise you're miserable. And I've seen this with a lot of hard-charging entrepreneurs. We all get carried away of what is important in life that is not really important. And what you were saying is so, so true. But gratitude, you know, gratitude is a terribly important thing, just to be grateful. And a lot of people, you know, don't have all these luxuries, but they're extremely happy in life.

And look, I think that modern-day professional sports and professional athletes, I think, are struggling with this as well. Yes, they are. Where they seem the least happy, at least in my lifetime, as they've ever been. I mean, I've never heard so many professional athletes talk about how they're having mental health issues and... Yes, can you imagine. Yeah.

Can you imagine? Yeah, I mean, it's a travesty. When you read about a tennis player that withdrew from a torment because of depression, well, I mean, it's just, look, I suppose you can have depression in your mind with a certain thing, but a lot of it comes back to the mind, you know, a lot of it comes back to the mind and we're getting into a very complicated discussion here right now, but when I tell you one thing. I don't know about this depression thing. It can be a disease to a degree, but again, I see people with nothing in life that are so happy and have a great family. We get away from

the things that are important. Your family, your faith, a nice church, friends, to have good friends. There are reasons why people get depressed other than actually as a disease. They don't have the essentials, the ingredients that make them happy. It's not merely going to university and getting a degree. There's a lot more than that. There's a lot more to life. And I think the schools lack terribly in getting the message across. I wish I had the money of a Bill Gates to build a perfect school, dress code, manners, teaching love, teaching all the ingredients that are important. Well, I love that as a theme and you've lived every bit of it, you know, as a great example for what the mind is capable of. Our audience loves understanding habits and routines that can make you more successful,

more optimal. Let's start with sleep. You talked a lot about how you have always invested in sleep. You think sleep's very important. You also travel enormously. You have been considered at one point or another, the world's most traveled athlete estimated to have flown more than 16 million miles in your life. So talk a little bit about sleep and travel, and what are things that you do to be great at both? First of all, if you sleep well, the reason I sleep well, I think, is because I keep my body moving. And I exercise. So I get tired. I need to be tired. I need to to sleep. And I, as I say, I sleep an average of nine hours a night. Yesterday, I went to a person's apartment and they're only going to be there for 15 minutes. So I sat out of the couch and I went

fast to sleep. I mean, I get in the car, I go to sleep. I get on an airplane and I go to sleep and we'll come to that in a minute. Jack Nicholas says traveling with me is like traveling on your own. But the thing is, the reason why I sleep well is because I exercise. size. And by the time I go to bed, I'm tired and I really enjoy my sleep and I think that sleep builds your immune system to a great degree. It puts you at peace. Now, traveling, I've traveled more mile not than athletes than any human being that's ever lived has never traveled as far as I have. I've been doing it since 1952, 1953. Now, how many years is that? That's over, what's that? 70 years, I don't know, what's it, what's it, 53, let's say 50, that's 50, that's 70 something

years I've been traveling around the world. And nobody's done that. A businessman might represent a company and travel extensively for 10 years, 15 years, let's go to extreme, say 20 years, but I've been doing it for all these years. And I'm not traveling to Los Angeles and back or to Hawaii. I'm traveling across the world, Australia, China, India, America, everywhere, around the, and traveling with no jets. And what would you do to beat the time zones?

It sounds like you were someone who used to always fall asleep easily. Is there something you would do right when you landed or, you know, a certain diet? Yes, what I did was I slept on the plane. When I arrived, I went to the gym immediately and worked my body and got the oxygen. And I tried to do it where I could get a lot of oxygen in my system because you deprived of that. in an airplane that high up in the sky. So I try to fill my body as much with oxygen. I had an ice cold bath,

which we still, in our Western world, evaluating the importance of ice, which athletes now have suddenly recognized. When I was young here, they all put on heat. Now they get in cold baths. I mean, people like Ronaldo after a soccer match, they lie in this ice cold. We did it with horses ages ago,

so we're still going to find out even more that what ice cold water does for you. But way back, I was lucky enough to find a man who told me the importance of that. I'd have an ice cold shower and then a hot shower and ice cold and then a hot shower. And then I'd go after the gym and I'd go

out and practice. I wouldn't go to sleep. I'd get on the clock immediately. And I made sure of not eating a lot of bread and not eating a lot of heavy foods what I call heavy foods. A lot of salads and vegetables. And I had a lot of water, a lot of water. So there are methods that you can adopt or adapt by traveling.

And you know, that's important because time change knocks the hang out of you. Now they've got a time change pill on the market, which is quite good, quite good. What's that called? It's called jet lag. It's called jet lag. It's called jet lag. It's a very good pill. It fills your body with a lot of things that at that height you are deprived of.

Okay. Now, let's talk a little bit about exercise. What would have been some of the best exercise routines for you to be able to break your age in golf, right? Which is an amazing accomplishment along with all your millions of trophies. Well, that's one of the things that I'm very proud of that I've broken my age over 3,000 times in a row. Nobody's ever had it. That's amazing. I know Sam Sneed came close to that, but I spoke to him and he never did it.

And I want to now be the first man to break his age, 18 shots. And just yesterday I did it by 14. Wait, say that one more time? Break your age, what? To beat your age by 18 shots. In other words, one shot a hole. Now, I've done it 16 twice. I've done it 14 quite a few times.

I'll be a year older next year, so it'll be easier. But it's a thing to beat your age by 18 shots. But the thing is, you've got to set goals. You've always got to set a goal in life. Once you stop sitting, you are on a downward slope. You've got to keep setting goals, whether it's raising money for charity. One of the things I like to do, which is a daily occurrence, you know, everywhere I go, the love I'm given is unbelievable. And a man says, it happens every day.

Well, Gary, you know, my dad really loves you, my mother loves you. I said, are they alive? They said, yes. I said, get them on the phone. Now he says, I say, yes, I do that every day. That's awesome. My dad. How are you?

I'm with your son here. We're playing golf. We're having a great day. Listen, thanks for your support. Thanks for help building America into a great country. You know, it's just you've got to have a zest for life. You've got to have things that you keep doing, set goals, big or small. Well, what a beautiful message.

I have to say, Gary, you know, you're an inspiration just with the energy you live life. You know, it seems like every day is a new adventure. for you and you're grateful for it and you're as hard charging as ever with all the accomplishments behind you and all the new ones ahead of you. Thank you for the inspiring messages today and really for all that you've done for the game of golf. But I think more broadly as an inspiration for young people and old people to, you know, keep pushing every day. And I hope we get to play golf again soon. It was a pleasure. I think I'm swinging a little better now too, by the way. I hadn't played for a few months leading up to that game.

But I'm feeling good about my game. Oh, good. Keep playing and keep walking. And, you know, it's wonderful to see how much we are getting young people to play golf now all over the world in South Africa. We have these wonderful programs for underprivileged children to play golf now. And it's wonderful to see. Now, take care.

Will and I have enjoyed talking to you. And God bless you and God bless America. Take care. Thank to Gary for coming on the WOOP podcast. A reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off your W-O-P membership. You can follow us on social at W-W-P at Will Ahmed. And stay healthy, folks. Stay in the green.

Thank you.