WHOOP Podcast - Mike Posner: The Journey to Health and Healing

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

On this week’s episode WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by multi-platinum recording artist Mike Posner. Mike’s songs have been streamed more than 10 billion times, and his pop single "I Took A Pill In Ibiza” was nominated for “Song of The Year” at the 2017 Grammys. Mike has now found a new passion for health and wellness and spirituality. Will and Mike discuss how Mike got into music (2:36), developing a chip on your shoulder (8:10), getting his music career started (9:36), becoming a real celebrity (17:18), the switch to owning his own identity (20:10), walking away from material fame (27:00), grief as a remarkable reset (36:13), walking across America (40:46), climbing Mt. Everest (46:36), how Mike uses WHOOP (1:03:20), and advice to give yourself (1:08:49).Trigger warning: this episode contains content about suicide Resources:Mike’s FacebookMike’s InstagramMike’s TikTokMike’s XFollow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInSupport 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

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast, where we sit down with the best of the best, learn all things performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you're thinking about joining Whoop, you can visit our website, sign up for a free 30-day trial. That's just Whoop.com. Try Whoop for 30 days, no cost to you. All right, today I am joined by the multi-platinum recording artist, Mike Posner. Mike's journey is a unique one. His songs have been streamed more than 10 billion times. His pop single, I took a pill in Abiza, was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2017 Grammys. Mike has become a huge advocate for health and wellness and spirituality. 2019, Posner walked nearly 3,000 miles across North America. He then made it to the peak of

Mount Everest in 2021. He's really had what I would call a spiritual. spiritual awakening. And he was very open about his path, going from someone who was addicted to the chase of fame and fortune and getting to that next level. And now he's driven by very different things, health and fitness being core to that. Mike and I discuss how he got into music and his belief he would be successful, landing his first record deal as a student at Duke, his mindfulness toolbox and how he found his identity. He really went through a period of profound grief and loss that made him rethink his identity. We both talked about how grief can shape and change you, help you prioritize the now and what's important. We talked about Mike's walk across

the country. He got to a point where he was walking 30 miles a day. His climbing of Mount Everest, he talks about the unexpected feeling he had when he reached the summit and how he has truly started to love himself and what he does now and what's coming next. Powerful conversation with Mike Posner ahead. Have a question. Once he answered on the podcast, email us, podcast to whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. All right, here is the great Mike Posner. Mike, welcome to the Whoop podcast. Thank you, Will. Thanks for having me. Excited to do this. I've followed your journey from a distance with a lot of admiration. You have gone on an enormous fitness and health kick in the last six or seven years. So I want to talk definitely about that.

But let's start with your music career. I mean, what drew you into music? Yeah, music drew me in. Yeah. That is the way to say it, you know. I believe it's something I was born with. So my mother tells me a story, which predates my first memory. And she says, you know, Michael, I would take you in the backyard in Michigan.

and the birds would be chirping, and you would try to sing the melodies back to the birds. And so this musical part of my life has always been there. It's a gift, and it will always be there. So later that took many different forms. Probably forms she didn't expect when I started to write rap songs when I was eight years old. But it's just been there,

at what point in your life did you say hey this is something i'm good at like around 1213 okay i was uh i was very much into freestyle and hip-hop culture so i spent a lot of time freestyling and i would get to um rap battles like eight mile all the time at high school And where were you in school at the time? Michigan. Okay. Yeah, right outside Detroit. And I would always win.

So I think that was like kind of a good sign. And this is just freestyle rap. Freestyle rapping, but battling, you know? So two guys, there's a crowd around you and you're making fun of each other. Right. And sort of cut my teeth like that. And I don't know. It seemed like I came sort of pre-equipped with what at the time,

would seem like to other people delusions of grandeur on what I could accomplish and how good I was I guess maybe I was making a plan in my head that somehow became real.

It does seem like a bit of a theme like when I watch some of these documentary type videos of now famous artists but way before they were famous you know these like kind of behind the scenes videos of some of these artists I'm thinking about a like a Kanye West video I saw recently or a Travis Scott performance where he was like on the sidewalk performing to people or like a video of Taylor Swift when she was 14 or something and like the confidence that she had that she was going to be a star.

There is something about you artists that make it where it seems like you know you're going to make it. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, you start with the end in mind. Yeah. And I think that that theme doesn't, you know, isn't quarantined to the music industry. I'm sure there were elements of that in your journey with Woop as well. I was suspect where you're like, hey, I'm going to do this thing.

And people are like, yeah, really? I mean, have you found that? Yeah. Was there a time where your internal vision didn't match what other people saw? When I look back in time on the confidence or the quote unquote certainty with which I felt, I would be able to help build this company versus now knowing how hard it was to build it. Yeah, there's an aspect of like reality distortion in there. Yeah, yeah.

So that was definitely present for sure. I remember being 13 or around there, maybe even younger. And it was the era where Lil Bow Wow was famous. Sure, yeah. And he was like about my. age and I was convinced like that somehow I was going to become the white little bow wow and that I was going to be famous in like the next year or two and that that didn't happen but I don't know why I was like really it seemed like that was attainable to me and where was

Eminem at that point the stratosphere he was yeah the stratosphere although I will say when I was rapping it was it was a lot weirder to be white in a rapper at that time than it is now and eminem was helping

pioneer that wasn't he yeah yeah but he was just considered a one-off very much so very much so yeah which was part of his mystique and allure and obviously you know coupled with his amazing music yeah

but yeah My experience of being a white rapper at the time was difficult, you know, who was lonely at times. Did that give you kind of a chip on your shoulder? Like, I'm going to make it. Screw all these people? I definitely have a chip on my shoulder. I don't know. I think my chip probably predates that maybe.

Yeah, it's an aspect of that. Yeah, but I think it fueled that for sure. You know, in building a company, you're like, you're rejected by an enormous number. of investors and people along like in the early days especially and so there is a little bit of that that fuels you and I get asked about that a lot but I think my answer is similar to yours which is a lot of the chip is already there and that just sort of is a little bit of fuel to the fire right right where do you think your chip originated this is like the nature versus nurture question in a way I mean I think some of it I was born with I think some of it I got from my parents my dad was

an Egyptian immigrant came to this country with very little. So there was sort of an aspect of, well, if he could do that with very little, and I'm starting, you know, in a better position or born in America or going to good schools or, you know, studying at Harvard, like, where should I be able to go, right? There's like a sort of a, you know, second generation attitude to that. And then I think there's something of a competitive drive that I've just kind of always had inside myself. I think being an only child has made me compare myself to myself a lot more than other people. So those are a few things that come to mind. Yeah. What about for you? I think my mother. Yeah. Yeah. She just, uh, the way she worked to get where she got in her life. Um,

and she had a pretty tough childhood, and she had three jobs working her way through college some days, not having enough to eat, but kind of choosing sometimes to go to class instead of having a meal. I think put a lot of fire in me being raised by her. So age 16, 17, 18, do you start saying to yourself, this can be a career? No. I'm kind of doing the opposite. I'm 17, 18, and I was a very good student, and I got accepted to Duke University. And I was then relegating my musical dreams sort of to the back burner. I thought I would get a good job out of Duke and maybe have a job on the business side of music.

I would make music for fun. It started to slip away feeling like, man, maybe this like the little bowed thing didn't happen. And like maybe this isn't, isn't, it's just like a pipe dream. And that changed when I met a guy named Big Sean. Sean is now a very famous rapper. But at the time, we were the same age. We were both from Detroit. And I met Sean. And the rumor on the street was Sean new Kanye and maybe Kanye was gonna like sign Sean and you would hear always hear people say stuff like that and you use BS you know but like he had like this picture of him with Kanye like an old thing you know they when you get the pictures developed sure he had like and he like he was him and Kanye I was like well this guy knows Kanye West and um I was I was I went to, I went off to college, and Sean had a scholarship to Michigan State. Kanye told him, don't go. You can be a professional rapper.

And Sean and Kanye were engaged in kind of a musical courtship. Kanye was considering signing him. And then I was at Duke, and I remember Sean's record deal got signed. and something snapped to me when that happened because here was a buddy of mine and Sean and I used to wrap together we never battled but we freestyled a lot and I consider him a peer

as competitive you got the chips so deep down I'm better than everybody I'm better than this guy like and he just got signed I can do this exactly and that shifted my belief to not like maybe this will happen one day or gosh that would be cool to this is going to happen for me i too am going to get a record deal and will there was a degree of certainty that far you know surpassed the the

little bow wow like yeah fantasy this was like i knew this was going to happen now and when that shift happened it was only about eight months later and i was a junior year at Duke. I'll fly to New York. I met with Jimmy Ivan. I met with Barry Weiss. I met with Jay Z. Sitting across the desk from Jay Z in my junior year. That must have been a trip. It was a trip. And in the summer after my junior year, I signed my own record deal. And so And what did you have to show for yourself at, you know, age 21 to sign a record deal? Was a lot of that just based on your vibe, your energy, tracks you had put out it was based on some really good music okay i'm biased yeah um but you know

one of the songs became my first hit i already had a version of that out it's cooler than me okay i could write you a song yeah that song was out on my my space yeah and i was working really hard to build this core audience so me and my friends we figured out this little loophole in iTunes called iTunes You and I was able to put my music onto iTunes but at the time you know if you remember like we were all pirating music of course college you don't pay for me so I knew no one was going to pay for my music because no one knew who I was yet so I found this little loophole and this is like the moments where you know you think gosh was like guided or his faith involved because we're

Really, that part of iTunes was made for professors to put their lectures up. And so I knew I need to get on iTunes because my music was appealing to people in the hip-hop community. And so they would go on hip-hop blogs. I knew I needed to get on all these hip-hop blogs. But it was also, I was finding out my friends would go to the parties. And I would always stay in because that's when it was quiet. They'd leave the dorm rooms to go party So you weren't going out really that much

I wouldn't go out because it'd be quiet and then I could record You know like we're recording now It's got to be a quiet room Yeah So dorms are loud always Except for like 11 to 11 p.m. 1 a.m. Everyone's gone. Yeah

That was my sweet spot I could make music And occasionally my friends were coming back And they'd say dude They played that song cooler than me at the party And all of the girls knew the world words. And you're like, that's a good sign. I'm like, well, this is crazy.

So I knew my music couldn't only exist on these strange hip-hop blogs. Those girls weren't going to go to those hip-hop. I knew I needed iTunes, but I knew it couldn't cost money. It had to be free. So I found the iTunes You loophole, and I called the guy who ran iTunes You at Duke. His name was Todd Stably, and we started speaking. And he's like, where are you from, Mike? I'm from Southfield, Michigan.

And the phone's quiet. He goes, I'm from Southfield, Michigan. I'll definitely put your album up on iTunes. That's great. And we did. And my buddies were sharing the music with the kids that they went to high school with who are now at other colleges. And this sort of strange network, you know,

I would get little fan pockets that would pop up at every different college. And how did you know you had a fan pocket? So I guess there'd be some notion of Facebook pages then. It was Facebook pages. I made a Facebook event that we had basically got like 30,000 people invited to. And at the time, I was asking all my buddies to change their profile picture to the album cover. Yeah, I remember things like that. And then I started to get offers to do little concerts.

So I'd get offered to play like a fraternity party or some kind of other concert. And I started to go to other schools. And the shows would be small at first, 50 people, but they would know every word to this, you know, little album I put out. And I thought, okay, this is pretty cool. So that's how I knew things were popping up. and it would be the same every school. And I'd come back. I'd come back twice a year, like first semester,

second semester, I'd go back to the same school. And it wouldn't be 50 people, it would be a couple hundred. And I might go back to the next year and be a couple thousand. Now, at some point in that period, you're probably feeling like a bit of a switch from being somewhat unknown to being someone people are starting to look at, like this sort of feeling of celebrity starting to take form.

Yeah. Do you remember that moment? Yeah, I remember being very, very uncomfortable. Yeah, it's a weird guy kid. Yeah. You know, I was the kid that stayed in from the party to like make weird, get my feelings out into this microphone, you know.

And so to get all that attention was a lot for me to adjust to. It was part of me that loved it. And it's part of me that was wildly uncomfortable with it. And I didn't deal with it very well. I didn't have the tools that I have now. And it felt out of control. what's a tool that you have now to deal with it baseline meditation

but you know overall I would I would call my toolbox I no longer live life being blown about by whatever emotions shows up you know my emotions used to be dictated by what happened in my life

and that is no longer the case now my life you know I dictate my emotions. I can, for a large part, have sovereignty over how I feel. It doesn't mean I'm perfect or I never feel sad. I do. But I know how to change my emotions. And that dictates the external events in my life. And they play out, you know, as a result of me showing up the way I want to show up in the world. Not perfect. No one's perfect. But that's the toolbox. You know, the name on the toolbox. And inside of that box is meditation.

is cold water, is breathing, moving my body, is just being outside, you know, writing lists of gratitude, changing what I'm focusing on, changing my identity as a deep one. You know, identity is a deep, deep thing. Where I used to have identity, I would say I'm a depressed guy or I'm a deep guy or I'm a lonely guy. Or I would say I picked up another one of way like I'm an avoidant a person and like these things are these are habits these are patterns

that's not who I am unproductive labels unproductive labels but you got to be careful what word you put after the words I am and those are those are things unproductive labels I would

they were deeper than labels they were identities and I've changed all those you left those behind I might have an avoidant thought I might have a depressed moment, but I'm not depressed. That's not who I am. What was the switch for you? Like when did you go from Mike Posner, you know, party guy, you know, amazing musician, billions of streams on Spotify to it's not about that. It's about, you know, owning my own identity. It is a two-pronged journey. There was a part of my journey pulling me towards what I call the glow or grace or, gosh, there's something more going on here.

And the second part was there was something pushing me away from pain. And I think both of those forces come from life with the capital L. But I'll hit the first one first, which was it felt like life was leaving me these breadcrued. I would have run-ins with people that would create almost an altered state of consciousness in me. And one of them was Big Sean. I met him again. I'll say I met him again. I met him, as I told you earlier in Detroit.

We were 18. But I saw him again. We were about 23. So you had just been signed. You're now a year or two into it. I'm now, like, famous. Okay. And he is also, this is kind of strange, you know, took a while actually, I got, my career blew up first. And then his exploded afterwards. And I went to see him in the studio in L.A. And Will, he was like glowing. And the external part of his life was going really well. Like he, yeah, he was, his career was exploding.

But there was this feeling from being around him, and I'm sure you felt some version of this in your life everyone has, where you're around someone, and just being around it makes you feel good. Sure. And it was a very powerful, like, it was a version of that, but in just a way that was more powerful than anything I'd felt before, where I went home and I'm like, I'm still almost. buzzing just from being around this guy and i i went back to the studio the next day and i'm like dude what do you like what are you doing like what's going on here i was like you have the kind of secret i don't know about and he kind of did and he gave me a couple books to read i remember reading a line in one of the books and it said when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change

and I look back at that now it's kind of like a basic basic thing like of course like you know you can change your frame of something but but it was it was really new to me then this idea that that reality isn't just the way I see it you know it's being colored by

my frame of it and if I change that frame if I change my thoughts then I can then change my beliefs because a belief is just a thought repeated over time. And if I change my beliefs, then, of course, I would take different actions. If I take different actions over time, then I'm going to have different habits. If I have different habits, I'm going to have a different life.

And that was sort of the gateway drug on the pulling towards something beautiful. And conversely, I was coming towards something beautiful. I was coming towards the end of myself in a lot of ways where I was maxing out the things I thought were going to make me feel really secure and good in myself, which were fame, which were money,

which was popularity, which was hooking up with strangers. Yeah. And none of them really worked. Yeah. You know, and everyone tells you that. But, like, I thought people would tell me, like, my dad would tell me, money doesn't buy happiness. And I would look at them and nod my head.

But in my head, I was really thinking deep down, yeah, but you didn't make as much money as I'm going to make. Yeah, right. Watch what I'm about to do. Yeah, right. And I just really had to learn that myself and bang my head against that wall and experience a lot of pain. and a lot of loneliness because when you when you think

you know this fame or this record deal is going to bring me peace you can always look forward to that and there's a hope you know that it's not here now

but it will be but then when you get it and it doesn't work that hope is gone and and then often the coping mechanism is well that if it's bigger

next time or more more more you move the goal post i see this happen to entrepreneurs a lot of course it happens to you know i think it's a human thing not just artist thing and so i found myself with nothing to look forward to in my life the juice of wanting to do these things was gone and when the future is empty the present is unbearable and so the confluence of life leaving me these breadcrumbs and also running into sort of a brick wall created the birth of a spiritual journey where i was i was then going okay if it's not that then what and so i started to to look and i searched and ask questions and i feel blessed i found some some answers you know that I've made a difference for me and that's what my life is about now is just

sharing what I found because I've had a unique journey where I had it all at a young age but I also realized I had nothing and I walked away you know literally and walked away from everything and found everything you know pretty amazing isn't it well first of all super happy for you and you've got your own glow these days so that's that's something to cherish thank you so it's the highest compliment yeah thank you so the uh the year is what when you say to yourself i'm going to walk away from this right now 2019 and so to put that in perspective i took a pill in Biza, which has been, I think, downloaded or listened to on Spotify now close to two billion times, one of the most popular songs, I think, ever. And that came out in 2016, 2017, you're nominated

for Song of the Year at the Grammys, which is probably a bit of a trip. And then pass forward a year and a half later, and you're almost completely burned out. Look, I believe life is rigged in a way where it's always happening for you. For you. Not to you. Yeah, Byron Katie, right? So she said, life is happening for you, not to you. And I really believe that.

And life is sometimes trying to give you the lessons, but if you're like me, sometimes you're stubborn and you're not listening. So they'll kind of give you a stronger reminder to put you on track. So listen, man, when Abiza came out and I was flying high, It was the, you know, so far as the highest moment of my musical career. And I'm going around the world. I'm popping my shirt off at shows. I'm crowd surfing.

And I remember I'm in a house in the Hollywood Hills that I own is my house. And my phone rings. And I'm thinking it's going to be my manager telling me more good news or an agent telling me we got a gig. you know in some odd country and I'm going to make a whole bunch of money or a friend, you know, celebrity friend invite me at some party and it's none of those people, it's my mom.

And my mom says dad has a tumor in his head the size of a tangerine and they're going to take it out tomorrow morning. You need to come home. I get on the next plane of Detroit I sell that house in the Hollywood Hills I move I basically move home and

10 months later my father's dead I wash back up on the shores of West Hollywood after my dad's death and My friend Evichi, he killed himself. And a few months after that, a peer of mine, it was like in my generation,

a guy sort of came up with in the music industry, Mac Miller, he overdosed and died. And not too long after that, a friend of mine, I grew up with Ronnie. Um, he died. And I remember just looking in the mirror. And my dad's death was, you know, they were all sad, but that one was especially poignant because I was helping him sort of make that transition. And I'm doing things like changing his diaper, feeding him, you know, singing him song. him songs as he goes to sleep things that he did for me when I was a baby and I'm also looking at

his body decay and transition into death and there's a whole whole bunch of parts of his body like his nose his hands that looked just like mine and i'd go look in the mirror and go oh this this suit that i'm wearing is also going to expire you know and then there were all those reminders afterwards and it was just hey ma'am uh i'm going to die also hopefully night time soon But I'm going to die. And before I do so, I don't want my life to have just been this pursuit of hedonism, basically. And there was this part of me, Will. I think a lot of people identify with this.

there was this knowing that I kind of been saving some of myself, maybe the most beautiful part. Like, there's more in me that I can give or contribute or do, but I'll get around to it later. Now, I got to get all my ducks in a row, and then I'll, like, really shine in this life. I'll really, like, be the, most beautiful expression of myself. I'll really make the thing that I'm here to make. I'll

really do the act that really would light me up. I got to get everything done that I have to do before I do the things I'm meant to do. When I faced my own mortality, I realized like, you know, a lot of my life had been waiting. I was sort of like preparing, waiting for the right time to really show up to really give my all to really be the full me and i just i knew i couldn't wait anymore and now was the time and so i had this dream to walk across america and the dream i had way before my dad died but i was always putting it off it was always like next year to walk across America

you want to start in the spring there's a strategy to it and every time spring rolled around I'd say oh maybe next year you know I got an album I got to finish as a tour whatever I'm busy

so my friends are getting married you know so maybe next year it'll be a better time and after all those deaths it was like this is the time there is no right time There's never going to be a time where life or the people I work with in the music industry say, hey, Mike, you know what?

You should quit doing music for a year. And, you know, just go, go, go, like, try to find yourself on the walk. Don't do any concerts. Yeah. We, you know, we've decided we don't want to make any money this year. That's never going to fucking happen. And there's never going to be a right time. and so the sad thing is like most of us are waiting for this right time that's never going to come

you know it's just it's just never going to come and some people die waiting for for that and i think about how scary that is that could have died never having pursued my dream and so I made sort of just made this decision like enough is enough like this dream of mine which you know it may sound random when I say that but this dream represented freedom to me it represented freedom from the old me it represented sovereignty over my own life it represented West Hollywood. It represented everything. And it was me

putting something in my future that was compelling, that was inspiring, where it was empty and would make my present joyous as opposed to unbearable. And so I told my manager,

I'm going to walk across America this year, and he said to me, you know, this is I think this is a crazy idea, and I don't think anyone's going to care. And that's when I learned the first sort of, like, lesson of this journey, which was not all crazy ideas are great. He's right. It's a crazy idea.

Not all crazy ideas are great, but all great ideas are crazy. That's kind of the Entrepreneurs Manifesto right there. Yeah. And so I would argue that, you know, it was a great idea. What a powerful story that was, and thank you for, uh, for sharing it. I mean, grief is a remarkable, it's a remarkable reset. I mean, obviously you went through an enormous period of grief to come out to this other side. And until very recently, I hadn't experienced much grief in my life. And I think that's a, that's a

blessing in a way. But my best friend committed suicide in January. And I was so sad and just so broken by it and I didn't I didn't realize I could be that sad you know what I mean like my body hurt you know what I mean and even in situations when I was happy I still was sad you know and the amazing thing as you go through that process and grieve through it is you feel your You feel the breadth of your feelings widen. You feel your sensitivities heightened. You notice little emotions that other people are carrying with them or other little griefs that people are carrying with them.

It was a helpful reset again. I think similar to what you described, which is there's only right now. You know, the people you want to see. the people you want to be with, the things you want to do, there's only right now. It's so easy to say, well, we're going to do it tomorrow or next year or I'll catch you next time. But that feeling of just getting back to the present and feeling the present, I think that there's a really easy, it's very easy, especially if you're a driven person to be bouncing between the past and the future and the past the future right and the magic's here now yeah well first of all i'm sorry for your loss thank you you know and what you shared is so beautiful that even when you're happy or sad you know it's

very well said and it's just a beautiful reminder thank you for for saying that that the magic is right here now and and the the funny thing of all the spiritual secrets you know is that they're not secrets right and the teachers are just yelling them and like the only secrets because we're not listening most of the time and so you know I just thank you for that reminder that it is all right here right now and what is the the state we're in now and our minds where our bodies are we present and life really is a gift it really is a gift and whether you've someone close to you it dies or you yourself get close to death a few of those you know you're really reminded of that of the scope and scale of that gift you know

And there's no achievement that you can get to inside of that gift, inside of that life that will surpass that gift itself. They're all held inside of this macro gift of life. And that's what I'm hearing you say, is that the closeness to mortality and death is a reminder that beauty. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop.

That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. When you started walking across the country, were you in phenomenal shape going into that? Or were you finding that you were getting yourself in shape as you were doing it? Hey, we're at the WOOP headquarters. So we might have to

like, you know, bracket what we're calling phenomenal. Right. I was in good shape, you know, I was, like, healthy for sure. And I've always been, I've always enjoyed moving. But as you know, there's always different types of good shape, right? So I was in good shape, you know, my body looked good and it's a healthy weight and this kind of thing. But I wasn't in the type of shape that my body was ready to walk. 24 miles every day for six months and so I had to build that up and I built that slowly first at home where I was just starting to walk more and more and more and then I started my journey

and I sort of continued you know it's an interesting thing like if you want to practice basketball like you go play basketball but when you want to walk across America like You can't walk across America to get ready to walk across America, you know? And so you kind of have to start doing it. And so I was building up my miles at home and then eventually I was like, let's just start. And so my first day, I think I walked eight miles, which is like 0.2% of the distance I wanted to go. It's very humbling. But over time, I started to be able to walk further and further each day.

And this was a real exercise and discipline for me because as I walked across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, you know, I'd always played sports like basketball and you have phrases like leave it all on the court. But you can't leave it all in the court when you're walking across America because you because you have to do it again the next day and add infinitum not infinitum but kind of feels like add it yeah so i could never leave it all in the court i always had to think i always had to kind of be disciplined and ratchet back to miles and okay i can only do this if i can do it every day but slowly over a month two months i went from 10 miles to then i was doing 20 miles

every day and the majority of the walk I was doing 24 a day and you just keep getting better and similar to what you just described where sorrow opened your emotional aperture and you're actually able to feel more and even your joy is more nuanced and appreciated more well as I walked my pain increased linearly the entire time but the uh amount of bandwidth that took up and my awareness became smaller because my awareness was getting bigger who i was was getting bigger and so my body hurt more and more and more and more but i cared less and less and less as i went so by the the end of the walk i could do 30 miles a day and then i ran out of land man what uh what is this all look like on whoop i mean i imagine you were having pretty high strain scores every day

were you recovering and getting your sleep no it evolved over time to tell you my strain at the beginning actually when those miles were were short was like through the roof like my highest strains. Actually, I think my highest HRV score ever was on like the fourth day of the wall. I was asking the AI. Oh, yeah. When was my highest HRV? And it was like April 19th. You're tugging to the whoop coach. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the fourth day. Oh, interesting. And my strains started to get less. I guess has my body adapted. And yeah, your heart rate probably came down, got used to to it. Correct. My sleep, I did the best I could out there, but yeah, it was tough. And you were sleeping in a, you know, a van or something that was following you? Yeah, typically we had a support

vehicles or RV. And then when we got to the best parts of the walk, like the Rocky Mountains or the mojave desert then like the the roads are too treacherous so i'm sleeping a tent and it's summer it's really hot it's really hot and the days are really long but i needed to get up at four and start walking at five because of the heat so i try to go to bed at eight and it's just like light out still and it was really hot so I didn't sleep I definitely did not sleep it's like like I do now you know when I'm home I think about that sometimes now because when I'm home I'm trying to like dial in the sleep as much as I can but some of these journeys I've been on it's like yeah that's part of the journeys you're kind of have to survive you're not going to sleep

and can you still crush it you know what did you do to prepare for Everest so you climbed Everest in 2021 if I've got that right yeah so I finished walking across America and I was so terrified of just going back you know the walk changed my life and I uncovered a part of myself that I didn't know it was there and it was a tougher part of myself it was a more authentic part of myself. It was a realer part of my, it was a deeper part of myself. And I was just scared of losing it, Will, you know, because the walk every day provided sort of a scaffolding for this part of myself to come out. You know, I'm going to do something that's hard every day, but it's simple and it's beautiful, and I'm outside, and I'm connecting deeply with nature and myself and other

human beings and i was really scared to just go back into the sandbox of west hollywood and trying to write hit songs so i said you know this doesn't feel like an end this this walk it feels like a beginning and so i climbed my first mountain two weeks later i didn't unpack my bags i didn't go home i didn't really have a home to go back to i was just like it was kind of like one project and i met the man that became my coach his name is dr john and you asked how did i get ready he has a great line which is trained for climbing mountains by climbing mountains and so that's what we did it was a year and a half so three times as long as my walk across america and in that year and a half

I climbed 71 mountains with John Wow, that's a lot Yeah I think you'd be like, yeah, we did five You know, 71, that's epic Because my goal will was I wanted to climb Everest But I wanted to belong there

You wanted to feel comfortable doing it Or capable doing it You never, it's always going to be uncomfortable Because it sucks But I wanted to feel like oh yeah i would say i wanted to feel like i belonged there yeah i wanted to be a mountain by the time i showed up at everest i wanted to be a real mountaineer and when i started with john i was anything but that i was just a dude who had walked you know and i would do when we start climbing mountains is

like funny things i'd be trying to measure the climbs and miles you know but you don't measure climbs and miles you measured it in altitude right how many how many feet are we going to gain and so it's like little things like that you know and temperature regulation like on mountains you never want to sweat you know obviously never want to be cold because if you sweat and the temperature is negative 10 you know that water on your body's going to like you're going to get really cold you're going to be in trouble and so at the beginning of my journey i'd be following john and john would take a layer off And I'd take a layer off because John was. I'd do what my coach is doing.

And then, like, he'd put a layer on and I put a layer on it. I'm sweating and all this stuff. And I learned to listen to my body. I learned it doesn't matter when John takes a layer off. It matters when I'm going to. And then you just get dialed in. And you see a steeper part coming up on the climb. You go, well, that's going to take more exertion.

So I'm going to take a layer off before I even get to that part. And you just start to, these are like the small things, you know, or on Everest, there's a fixed line. And you slide what's called a Jumar, and your carabiner is, so you have a Jumar, and then you have another line from your harness on a carabiner that's attached to the line. So you're attached to the rope in two ways.

And you'll move up the route for 100 yards, and then you get to a stake, and you have to undo your carabiner, and put it on the other side of the steak and undo your Jumar put it to the other side of the steak because not just one rope the rope has it's you know it's a bunch of ropes right and there might be a hundred of those points where you need to undo your carabiner put it on the next line under your Jumar well if that takes you five minutes to do yeah right guess what you're out there for 500 extra minutes.

Yeah. Okay. That's bad news. That's a problem. So like, you know, we drill that kind of thing because you're wearing these giant mittens, you know, and like, how quickly can you undo your carabiner and your Jumar like dialing in these small systems that are going to save you minutes, you know, and then eventually hours, you know, and you want to be on that mountain the least amount of

time possible so it was and then the ladders of course you know like learning to walk on with crampons on over crevasses with giant ladders and and drilling out through blood sweat and tears fear of heights you know why started this journey off scared of heights are you still scared of heights or did you overcome that from doing it now i am because it's been four years so it goes away like you know when you don't climb so i don't climb as much as i was but by the time you know we would do these climbs in the training that were life-threatening you know like we'd climb stuff with no rope i'd look at john after my hands would be shaking like dude like and i'd be a little pissed off because i'm like i've researched everest john like i don't think we have to do that like

a move that hard there on that mountain and he's like yeah you're right i'm like so why am i training this crazy thing that's dangerous and scary when it's not necessary on the climb he goes because when you get to summit day and you're on a fixed line and you look to your right and there's a 10,000 foot drop you look to your left and there's another 10,000 foot drop you're not going to be scared and he was right good coach yeah i wasn't scared of the heights you don't scare other stuff up there where you got to contend with no matter what but he was yeah he was incredible coach did you find that the altitude really messed with your uh data on whoop i mean maybe you got

acclimated to it but for me it's actually one of the biggest killers of my recoveries when i go from non altitude to altitude yeah it was like on another level of of suck you know it just it feels like track i mean and they call it the death zone for a reason and mind you i had been living at altitude for that whole year and a half i went to i basically moved next to john and and i climbed tall mountains but they weren't tall in comparison to everest you know i climbed 20,000 foot mountains. This was just a whole other thing. You know, once you got base camp is 15 and you're there not for a day, but for months. And you get to camp to 23,000 feet. It was unlike anything I had experienced before. And that was the hardest part to me. And it's the hardest part

to articulate because the climb itself like if we put that same climb as like a 14 or in Colorado like there would be fucking nothing right like we we do two or three of those in a day you know but you put it up high it and it's exponential right so going from sea level to 1,000 feet you know it's not that big a deal but going from 28,000 feet to 29,000 feet is a really big deal so each increment becomes exponentially harder and it just really does a number on you man when i got to camp two i didn't sleep at all because as you know and all the users know like your respiratory rate naturally falls when you fall asleep right and so i would at camp two close my eyes and start to drift into sleep

my respiratory rate would slow down and then my body would go dude like we're we're underwater or something and it would go like that and wake me up and so i never i wouldn't sleep at all Oh my gosh. Yeah, it is horrible. I hate that place, you know. I hate that place. So at the end of it, did you find you were a little bit at peace now on the explorer side? And you almost wanted to get back to, you know, the artist's workshop or what?

It's beautiful. So I suspected when I climbed Everest, the same thing was going to happen when I finished the walk, which was, okay, like, I've completed this. It's going to motivate me to do something even greater. And I thought I would feel pride. I thought I'd feel motivated to maybe take on some other giant physical feat that would be fueled by that accomplishment. And that's not what happened at all.

As I stepped over dead bodies, as I came, you know, had the scariest moment of my life, the avalanche at Camp 2. And as I just existed and climbed in the death zone where death is just close. It reminded me of what we spoke about earlier that life is a gift. And I got to the summit.

thank God and it was one of the most beautiful moments if not the most beautiful moment in my life where

we had timed it just right the sun was rising as we hit the summit and you'll hear a lot of talk about lines

on Everest and you know there's too many people and there are too many people but John and I had just like

mastermind this summit day so perfectly such that we had beaten everyone so we were the we were first that was really special to you know it's just like yeah be in front of everyone to share that moment with John and Dawa Dorje and Dau cheering our local guides and to see the the shadow people don't realize that

mountains too have shadows and when you're there at the right time which is sunrise you see this gargantuan pyramidal shadow that's hundreds of miles long going out of Nepal into Tibet into China and you go this is just such a gift to be able to see this you know most people will never see it and such a special moment

and at that point you knew you had made it no you know interestingly you're halfway right the summit it's halfway we'd always say that you know our goal isn't to climb ever since to summit and get back down so you're so you can't let up you you know what i found in my training is i try to climb mountains sometimes where you make the summit and you just keep going no no break no celebration nothing but you need that you need that celebration so yeah it's 20 minutes up there for us you know it could be longer if the weather's better shorter if the weather's worse it was about 20 minutes for us But you've got to have that release, that moment of crying, celebration,

because that's going to fuel you coming down. And if you just stay in the ascent mode, there's probably more writing to be done here. As I'm articulating this, like, man, I've got to sit with my laptop kind of right about this. Yeah, there's a good song here. You need that little celebration to give you the juice to finish the climb but yeah you're only halfway you're halfway you're actually at the most dangerous point right

because you're the furthest from safety you're at the top so that's an interesting hit but I started this story because I thought I was going to feel pride when I got there and I just felt humbled I mean this thing was so hard and there was no way I could have done it without my team And on my team, you know, his four-person team, all of them, you know, had three summits. Like, I'm the worst guy on the team by far. I'm the weak link, you know. And so I didn't feel pride. I felt humility.

I felt gratitude, immense gratitude for those men that I was with. And immense gratitude that I was still alive. You know, I really sort of like rolled the dice there and came out with this beautiful experience and my life. And for me, these two projects were self-exploration. It was going, okay, how tough am I? You know, who am I? And Everest was the end of that. of that journey in that I realize if I kill myself exploring myself that's a little bit silly

yeah that's a little bit silly and it's and it's more than a little bit selfish and so I'm blessed here I got I got some lessons I want to share what I learned and and I got a lot of gifts inside me a lot, a lot more to give. And I don't want to die on a mountain. You know, I want to die in a few decades, having wrote some books, having made a lot more music, having put a lot more smiles on people's faces, having guided a lot more people in breathwork, having, you know, had a family in my own, having just helped other people on their journey of life. And my father you know we talked about him earlier before he died he used to always say mike there's two hs in life health and happiness and so my mission now is just to help people be healthier and happier

and if parts of my story can help people do that i want to share it and parts of the tools that i've either uncovered or learned that's like my breath work or you know training with wimhoff all this stuff that I've been able to do, then I want to share that. And that's just, that's why I'm here, man. That's, that's my, that's the thing in my future now that, that makes my present not unbearable, but, but exciting. Well, it's been awesome to see you on Woop for a number of years now. So I, I'm grateful that, uh, you've gotten some value out of the product. I love it, man. And, uh, you know, we, we connected again recently as I move. you know in my journey there's a there's a healthy tension right because i'm a student and i'm a

teacher and so those last 10 years i've been in student mode and now transitioning to sharing being a teacher i'm still a student at the same time but as i do so my team's getting a little bigger and i'm thinking myself okay well if our mission is to make people healthier and happier well we got to get healthier happier too like i can't have my my team burning out and you know this kind of thing so i'm like how do i how do i walk that talk so we've been a big part of that in that you know my small little team everyone has a strap we're on a team and we inspire each other in that way and so there's people on my team you know that like hadn't worked out for years and now they're like you know spinning and cold plunging and they got their bike out of the garage and so it's cool

and you've seen people dialing in their sleep and we're still in the process but we're trying to be really creative in in creating an incentive structure that you know is based on their performance on one hand but also I want to anchor a bonus in HRV you know if they can like move their HRV annually some kind of bonus structure that I love that yeah and so like you know we're moving the company forward but we're also getting healthier happier and HRV such a great it's the metric to do that with it's a powerful metric and it's hard to increase with time because as you age it's just naturally going to decline a little bit and so if you change your behaviors and your habits and that you're going to increase it which is quite powerful yeah we have a a program at whoop where if you

get over 85% of your sleep performance in a month you get a bonus with your payroll which is kind of a fun thing you know so the the headline of course is whoop is paying its employees to sleep yeah i love that i'd love to chat more with you on that because obviously you thought more about this structure but yeah i just love you know this tool is so powerful and i know you've really been the one and your team has been the team that have have popularized this metric because you know now it's everywhere but 10 years ago totally no one knew that that metric and also the education you do on this podcast is awesome thank you because it's one thing to go and like have the product and But to really understand what HRV is measuring, you know, and like this oscillation between

parasympathetic and sympathetics and how you can change it and sunlight and, you know, being consistent in the times you go to bed and, like, you know, all this stuff is like very empowering and stuff that just is becoming common knowledge. and it just wasn't 10 years ago. So, you know, these different verticals of the education mixed with the product is just awesome. Well, HRV was like the, it was probably the single metric

when I was doing physiology research that pulled me to starting whoop. It just jumped off the page as this fascinating statistic that I had never heard of and it felt like if you could measure in a non-inventure, way could unlock all this wisdom into your body and so that that kernel that thing that I didn't feel like anyone was talking about that I had never heard of that was that was the amplifier to get it

off the ground wow wow yeah imagine you like were you a college a student at the time yeah I was probably my sophomore junior year at Harvard so you know 20 21 years old reading you know in the library I met you, like, just, like, geeked up. Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit like you described with, with music at various points in your career, but there was just, like, a feeling of knowing. And I remember I even gave a TED talk in 2013, where I said there was some crazy statistic, like, I think it was 200 million watches are. sold globally every year, which I thought was a pretty high number. And I said in the future, every single one of those watches will measure heart rate variability because it'll be that important for understanding your health and your physiology. And, you know, 10, 11 years ago,

no one even knew what HRV was. So that there was an, there was an aspect to having this sort of contrarian bet on metrics like that. And it fortunately coming true. what do you find let me ask a different way if the highest part of yourself or yeah the highest part of yourself were to whisper one piece of advice for you to remember right now what would that be well for the longest time it's been keep going because in the grind of building this company and the highs and the lows, there's been all these, there's been all these moments where you usually could quit, you know, or you usually could fold it up. And so for me, that talk track of staying relentless, but also true to the mission, right? Woop has had this mission for 12 years to unlock human performance.

And a lot of that speaks to doing it our way and caring about metrics like heart rate variability versus, say, steps, which at the time was very popular. You know, it's to build a company in our way and be true to our identity versus trying to mimic what a lot of competitors or other people in the space are doing. is it different now you said for the longest time well there's something in my head that's around just being yourself and as i think about the pressure of building a company and having shareholders and investors and employees there's a magic to being able to handle all the stress while still feeling like you're you and you're not compromising anything about yourself in that process and so I try to show up every day with a certain sense of authenticity and try to bring in a way like bring that inner kid to work you know what I mean like don't feel like you have to be more of a

grown up than you are you know and that that actually I think makes me better at what I do But it certainly makes it more fun and lively and you connect with people. It's beautiful. I can see you light up as you talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. I can feel it. Yeah.

Awesome. How about for you? It would just be you're doing great. You're doing great. You know, sometimes you can be winning in life and feel like you're not. and sometimes you can be doing all the right things and pain will still come in life challenges will still come so a few minor challenges come in this week and in the past that might have been assigned to like burn the boats you need to change all the stuff and i think right now it's more just keep going like i'm doing all the right

things there you go and sometimes those challenges are just a test to see if they're going to get you off course or not you know and so for me i think right now it's just stay the course man and you're doing great doing great well you are doing great and i feel like i feel like this next chapter of music for you is going to be really powerful when can we expect some of that um definitely have a new album come out this year okay that's exciting that's the first album in a while right yeah a couple years it's a big deal um and it's the first real album i've made post these adventures you know yeah it's sort of like going to the mountain literally and figuratively when you listen to your music now versus your music i don't know from eight years ago or 10

years ago can you hear something different about yourself yeah dude it's not subtle I mean, those songs that we started this conversation about are largely about chasing girls, smoking weed, you know, and even if you flash cut forward in my career, until I took a pill in Abiza, which is 16, so that's eight years ago, right? Like, when I look at that song, and I still sing it, right, sometimes, none of the lyrics are true anymore. None of them. And I couldn't be more proud of that because they were all true at that time. Right. I'm just a singer who already blew a shot.

I get along with old timers because my name's a reminder of a pop song people forgot. Right. You know, I hope my name is a reminder now of inspirational. of transcendence of hey who you think you are now like you're actually way more i took a pill and a bea to show of vici i was cool when i finally got sober i felt 10 years older but screwed it was something to do you know it's like i would never take a drug from a stranger anymore because i want to look cool to somebody else because i love myself now and the chorus all i know is sad songs like that's not true like i know i know a happy song that my my heart

is singing a happy song most of the time now so there's a there's a lot of pride in that growth and the deeper the human you are the deeper the musician the deeper the creator you are and so Yeah, as I, it's been such a blessing to have, to make albums from a, from a authentic place the whole way, because those things were authentic then. And to see this arc over time is really special for me, you know, and I think for my audience as well. Well, I'm excited for you. I'm really excited to see what's next. I think, I do think the best is probably yet to come for you commercially, too. which is a funny thing. It's like in a sense for you letting that go is probably going to make it all come to you easier.

That's how it always works. It seems how it works, right? So anyway, but I'm stoked for you and for hopefully this new album and I'm grateful for this new album and grateful for this conversation. Thanks for coming on, man. It was really cool. Well, thank you so much. All right.

Thank you. Thanks to Mike for joining me on the show today to share his incredible story. excited to hear his new album when it releases later this year. Thank you, Mike. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Please subscribe to the WOOP podcast. Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. Have a question once he answered on the podcast.

Email us, podcast to Woop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. If you're thinking about joining Woop, you can visit our website to sign up for a 30-day free trial membership and take the first step to unlocking your own best performance today. new members can use the code will W ILL to get a $60 credit on WOOP accessories and that's a wrap thank you all for listening we'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast as always stay healthy and stay in the green