WHOOP Podcast - Strauss Zelnick, media mogul and author of "Becoming Ageless" shares the secrets to how he continues to get fitter as he gets older.

Episode Date: January 2, 2019

Strauss Zelnick, founder of Zelnick Media Capital, President & CEO of Take-Two Interactive and Chairman of CBS discusses his book Becoming Ageless: The Four Secrets to Looking and Feeling Younger Than Ever (8:02), advice for being young and successful (11:38), his exercise group known as The Program (16:11), getting fitter as he gets older (19:44), avoiding injuries (23:45), recovery methods he likes and doesn't like (26:08), how his diet has evolved over time (33:25), things to avoid when trying to improve your sleep (36:22), and what his amazing career has meant to him (42:09).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

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome 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. At WOOP, we measure the body 24-7 and provide analytics to our members to help improve performance. This includes strain, recovery, and sleep. Our clients range for the best professional athletes in the world,

to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve. What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? We're launching a podcast today. deeper. We'll interview experts and industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. When I founded Whoop, I didn't know exactly where it would take me, and hosting a podcast was certainly not one of the first things on my mind. In the process, though, I've gotten to interact with amazing athletes, advisors, investors,

and had some really fascinating conversations. And that was a lot of the inspiration for starting this podcast. I think there's something about this format. this type of conversation that really allows you to delve deeper. My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the Whoop Podcast. I can see objective measures of my athleticism continue to improve at the age of 61.

I was doing an interview two years ago, and I said, I promise I will be fitter in a year. year than I am today. And it was true, and I'm now fitter at 61 than I was at 60, and I'll be fitter still at 62. Hello, folks. Welcome to the fourth episode of the Whoop podcast. A happy new year to all of our listeners. Today's guest is Strauss Zelnick, founder of the private equity firm Zelnik Media Capital, president and CEO of Take to Interactive, the company behind blockbuster video games like Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K, and recently named chairman of CBS. Strauss has had an incredible career, but I think what's also amazing is just how fit he is.

At age 61, he's in the best shape of his life. He's exercising 10 to 14 times a week, and he plans to keep getting fitter as he gets older. For those of you looking for a little New Year inspiration, I think Strauss is your guy. We talk about all the things that he does to balance. being a super successful, high-powered executive and being really fit. We talk about what a typical week of workouts is like for him, improvements he's made to diet and nutrition, his recovery tactics, what he believes in and what he doesn't,

and all the things that he does to combat the aging process. I hope you'll get as much out of this discussion as I did. Strauss has been a close friend and a mentor for a long time. Without further ado, here's Strauss. Strauss, thanks for doing this. Pleasure. So I want to talk about your new book, Becoming Ageless. I want to talk about your amazing career and entertainment and business. But I thought, first, for our audience, it would be helpful to just talk about a week of exercise in the life of Strasselnik. Well, I'll answer the question, but this is not by way of advocating or anything of the sort. You know, look, I try to train six days a week. I also try really hard to take a rest day. Within that six. days if it's a really busy week and it can be I might have one relatively short

workout a day and if it's a great week I have plenty of energy and plenty of time maybe I'll do two a days three or four days in the week so in the course of a week I typically will train somewhere between seven and ten times including one full rest day and I believe in diversity I also get bored of them if I'm not trying different things so within that I'll train with a trainer once or twice that'll be lifting weights rhythmic exercise exercises, full body exercises, cardio exercises, depending on the mood of the trainers. And then I train with the program, which is a, you know well, is a morning group that gets

together three or four mornings a week here in New York and does something different every day. And this week, for example, we weren't working out on Tuesday, but last Tuesday we did hop power yoga. Wednesday we went to swerve and did an indoor cycling class. Today we did a high-intensity interval training session at Trooper Fitness. and tomorrow we'll get together in a private gym and do another timed interval weights workout. In addition to that, I play squash or I'm trying to play squash.

I train at a boxing gym, Mendez boxing. Then I also lift weights on my own or with friends, and I'll try new things happily. I'm very open-minded. Well, as some background, we met six years ago. I had just graduated from Harvard, and I was starting Woop, and I was meeting with people in New York, and I remember a number of people said,

oh, if you're doing anything related to health and fitness, you have to go meet Strauss. And so you were very kind to take me for workouts. And I remember the first workout that we did together. I think it was this hot yoga class. And I was like six months out of being a college athlete. You know, you were in your mid-50s at the time, and I think you kicked my ass in that class.

So you've managed to stay incredibly fit throughout your life. And it's a real test. to your commitment. One thing that we bonded over was the book Younger Next Year. Tell me why that was an important book for you. Younger next year is really intended for people in their 60s. And the idea of the book is it's co-written by a casual athlete and a doctor. And it's a prescription for reversing some of the signs of aging in your 60s. Well, I didn't read it in my 60s. I read it when I was in my late 30s. And I consider myself pretty healthy and pretty fit. And I read the book and it was transformative because basically what the book said is everything you know to be true.

You should move for 45 minutes or an hour, six days a week. You should eat a healthy diet. You should probably not drink too much alcohol. You should for sure not smoke. And if you do those simple things, then you are not only going to likely increase your lifespan, much more importantly, you'll increase your health span. And that was an eye-opener because I was never really focused on how long. I live. Oh, and by the way, research says that you can eat a phenomenally strict diet, you can get lots of exercise and not smoke. On balance, you'll extend your life, but probably

only by a few years. The question is, what does late life look like? And how do you want to live that late life? We're all going to, God willing, we're all going to get there. Younger next year says, for those who think, you know, your quality of life is a bell curve. You know, it peaks in your late 20s and it's a decline in the end really didn't look good. That is true for certain people, but it's optional. And what younger next year says is you can live like a middle-aged person until a year or two before you die. And then the last year or two is probably not nice for anyone. And that's probably a separate topic. But that was really an eye-opener for me. I was probably one of the first 21-year-olds to read that book and I was doing research

for whoop at the time, but I had the same reaction that you did, where it's just if you have the right habits and you do that for a long time, you can indeed just continue to feel better and better over time. Right, and I think I don't, look, it's tempting to be flattered and flatter oneself, but, you know, my approach in my book is not about, you know, how awesome do I look, how youthful do I appear, how hard do I train, how clean do I eat. My book and my approach is, a simple, gentle, long-term approach to trying to be sensible about your health, your diet, your fitness, and some sense of tribe or spirituality or soul, whatever it works best for you, is a recipe for a good life, and that good life is not time-limited.

And that, to me, is what I do, if I stand for anything, I would hope what it stands for is not, wow, that guy looks great, because that'll change, by the way, no matter, I wish it won't, but it probably will. But what I hope it stands for is that person was not limited by something he couldn't control. I can't control my age. So we're talking about your book Ageless, the Four Secrets to Looking and Feeling Younger Than Ever. What inspired you to put this book out in the first place? Dave Zazenko, who is my publisher, encouraged me. I really didn't have the view

that it was a good idea at all. I do spend a lot of my time coaching people usually early in their career and I spent a lot of time training and I train with people who are in their 20s because I aspire to train that way. And I'm, you know, more or less I do actually.

And he thought that there was a story that should be told. We had to find the right tone because I was not comfortable with the tone of many fitness books that basically you have on the cover, you know, your best body in three weeks, you know, lose 14 pounds and 14 days. Right.

You know, they may sell, but they're not real. Well, one thing that I really liked about your book is, you know, you walk through no matter what stage you are in your level of fitness, the steps that you need to take. And you actually make it fairly clear that it's not that easy. You have to, you know, create a lot of. of commitment. And you talk about compounding health in the book. What does compounding health mean to you? Compounding health for me is I didn't pay any attention to what my doctor said

about my cholesterol levels for a long time. And my attitude was, look, you know, I get a good deal of exercise. I'm not heavy. I don't smoke. It'll be fine. And that is a really foolish way to look at the world. I am compounding my health now, or at least trying to, by taking my doctor's advice, and I take some drugs that manage my cholesterol, and I try to manage my diet as well. And there's some evidence that it's possible to do a reverse, at least some of the damage, that a less healthy diet and an unwillingness to take appropriate medication caused. So, now, I may look good on the outside. I hope I do. But my arteries probably aren't. in the shape that they would have been in had I listened to my doctor when I was in my 30s.

You know, you're very honest in the book about how in your 30s, you know, you were more career focused than you were health focused. You're working out a few times a week, but certainly not on the level that you are today. Your diet wasn't in the same place that it is today. But at the same time, at age 32, you're taking over Century Fox and rapidly growing the worldwide motion picture and distribution business there. And, you know, that requires a lot of dedication. It's not, it's not an easy thing by any measure, and you were very young when you did it. So the question is, like, what advice do you have to other young people, you know, late 20s, early 30s, maybe even mid to late 30s, who are really career focused, not necessarily as focused on their health,

but want to start making shifts. Well, I have the first piece of advice is it's uniquely American fantasy that we can have it all. We have to choose. And there are times in your life when you have time and ability and inclination and resources and other times when you don't. And I would say when you're in your early 30s and you have a new job or a very intense job and maybe a couple of kids running around at home and a marriage

and maybe you don't have excess funds, you are more constrained than, you know, the stage I'm at now where my kids are out of the house and, you know, I have, I'm blessed materially and I run my own business. I have a good deal of flexibility. That said, we can make choices at any given time. So if you're in the 30s, ask yourself,

how much time am I spending drinking? How much time am I spending watching television? you know how much time am I spending playing games on my phone all these things can have a place in a in a normal moderate life if you wish but you should think about sort of a time engagement diary people talk about food diaries but do have time engagement diary how are you devoting your time so when people say to me well sure you you have a lot of flexibility you could work out for an hour a day or two hours a day that is true but ask yourself how am I devoting my free time and yes absolutely right if you're working working 14 hours a day and taking care of kids and taking care of a household, you may not have the time to get exercise. But ask yourself, could I get exercise on Saturday and Sunday? That would be two days a week. That is better than zero. Well, you make a good point in the book about people asking the wrong question. You know, often people start with this question of how. You know, how do I lose 10 pounds or how do I

lose 40 pounds. And you think the right question to ask is, what do I want? Talk a little bit about that. Well, I'm pretty sure I must have asked you that question when we started talking about your career. Yeah, you did. Because it is the first question I always ask people. You know, it's tempting when you're giving advice of any sort to project yourself onto the other person. But why on earth would I project myself onto you? Your needs and desires and goals are almost certainly very different than mine. So I think the starting point is what is it that you want? For some people, what they want is to look a certain way. For many people, it's to feel a certain way. And my wife, for example, and my wife looks great. She's genetically, actually genetically blessed.

You know, she looks fantastic. But as it happens, that's not really a value of hers. She's the least vain person I know. So the more makeup, you know, her idea of dressing up is denim over. overalls in a t-shirt. That's how she's happiest. That's how she's wired. You know, I am not, I'm sorry, I'm just not that good a person. I am a little more vain than that. So her goal is when you get into the area of health and wellness would center much more around what do I have to do to be able to ride, you know, ride horses, what do I have to do to be able to ski and not get hurt? What do I have to do to not be bent over when I get older? And what do I have to do to have good health, so I'm not sick and infirm. For someone like me, it's, you know, what do I have to do,

train like a 25-year-old former varsity athlete. And for other people, it may indeed be, you know, I want to look good with my shirt off or some combination. You have to ask yourself what it is that you want. And for some people, you can, there are other starting points like, what do I really want? I really want to quit smoking. And by the way, that is the best thing you can do for yourself. So if anyone's smoking, newsflash, you should not smoke. They're There's a longitudinal study that Harvard now owns called the Termin Study. Harvard actually has this massive database of longitudinal studies that are available to researchers. Far and away, the primary factor in having a short, unpleasant life is smoking.

And second, on the heels of that is alcohol abuse. Good advice. Stras, tell me about the program, which you started. Well, the program, it's tempting to say I started. It was not intentional. By the way, the name the program is sort of supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. The program grew organically. A couple of guys and I were cycling in the park in the mornings.

And I grown to love cycling because it was social. It was a way to exercise and have fun and catch up with friends. Which is a theme of yours, by the way. Yeah, it's a big theme because I'm busy. Right. I do work hard. I'm certainly not retired. I have a family.

My kids are around, thankfully. My wife and I like spending time together. I have a lot of interests. and a lot of charitable commitments and a lot of work commitments. So I found that if I got on a bike, I could sort of let go of all that. You can't be on your device on a bike

or at least you shouldn't be. And I was with my friends. Well, the weather turned cold and one of my buddies said, let's do an indoor cycling class. And my attitude was, oh, God, no, that sounds horrible. And he said, no, no, you should, we'll do it. And we went to flywheel.

And I loved it. It was great because you could, unlike some indoor cycling, you could measure what you're actually doing. There's a leaderboard, so it was a little bit competitive. So a few of us started going, and it was sort of an eye-opener that you could get up early in the morning, which was a pain, but get together, exercise hard for 45 minutes, spend some time with friends, and you'd feel great for the whole day. And that was how the program began. We just kept adding people and adding days, and it turned into kind of an organic thing. It's still relatively disorganized. It's an email list. There's no money involved. And the key thing is the attitude. It is not, you know, Broe and Alpha Male E. First of all, it's co-ed. Secondly, it is highly inclusive. And third, while I would say most of us feel competitive with ourselves and occasionally competitive

with each other, we're just trying to be the best we can be. Now, I was at a program workout this morning, and there was a 40, it was 45 second intervals. And one of the exercises was to pull yourself up to a pull-up bar, chin over the bar, and hang for 45 seconds. Now, it may sound easy to you. I'm here to tell you at least for me. Not so easy. And there were four circuits. And the first one I failed at least twice where I went down and came back up. And one of my buddies in the section was encouraging me. And he said, don't worry, you'll get it next time. And I thought to myself, you know, it was just a flash because you're exercising and you're sweating. I thought, no, no, that's not. That's not true. And then I realized, wait, why am I allowing my mind to tell my

body that, I'm just going to do it. And I did do it the next time. Nice. So he was not focused on dominating, winning, and say, see, I did that and you didn't, even in a subtle way. His entire focus was, ah, well, Strauss is struggling a bit here. Let me encourage him. And that's what, to my way of thinking, like, that's what makes a program really special. And no one has to be told. It self-selects to people who feel that way. And then, I think it affects your entire life during the day, you know, approaching your life and the people around you in a positive, sort of, in a positive demeanor. Yeah, the positive camaraderie that you describe about the

program's awesome. And it also reminds me of some of those classes that we would go to when I was in my early 20s and, you know, I'd be surrounded by other 20-year-olds and we'd all be kind of encouraging each other and trying to take you down. So it seems really... How'd it go for you? I think fine. I think I kept up.

No, I meant trying to take me down. Oh, I think that most of the workouts we did, you beat up on me. But I'm still trying to get younger next year, too. So I'm catching up. Talk to me a little bit about how you think about measuring fitness over time. You know, how do you have this internal concept that you're getting fitter?

You know, there's certainly ways to look at yourself in the mirror. There's things like you describe your weight and your height and, you know, your 8% body fat, right? Like, are those some of the key biomarkers for you? Or what are the things that, you know, if you do over time, reoccurring tests, you name it? Well, the most pedestrian level, we post progress pictures online. The program has an Instagram site. That's great. The program underscore NYC.

And we post pictures and most of us aren't wearing shirts. So you do get to see the progress pictures if you care. My wife finds that incredibly irritating and inappropriate. I go to the doctor and the doctor tells me how my numbers are developing and I get very robust blood tests regularly. And I can tell how I perform, for example, in yoga, it's kind of you to say that six years ago I was decent at it. I mean, no one wants to, you know, take a video of me doing yoga and try to replicate the situation.

I don't recommend that, and I don't know that it would be way to look at. But I'm vastly more competent than I was, and that's subjectively true. So I can hold poses that I couldn't before and get into poses that I couldn't before. And I can do a box jump, not the highest box jump in the class. actually, which really high. But I can do a pretty high box jump. And when I started training

with the program, you know, seven, eight years ago, I couldn't even do a low box jump. I psychologically couldn't even understand how one did a box jump. So I can see objective measures of my athleticism continue to improve at the age of 61. I was doing an interview two years ago and I said, I promise I will be fitter in a year than I am today. And it was true and I'm now fitter at 61 than I was at 60, and I'll be fitter still at 62. My boys, I have two sons and one of them said, Dad, you know, you understand that in 10 years that's not going to be true anymore. I said, just watch. It will be. It will be. I'm absolutely going to do that. Well, it's an amazing mindset. Have you done specific fitness tests? So you talked about

being able to do a box jump. One test I got into recently is called the MRF. Have you ever done the MRF? I have not done the MRF. I know what the MRF is. So for our listeners, you run a mile and then you do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 air squats, and then you run a mile. And the idea is to see how fast you can do it, or even in the first place, can you do it? And for me, like, naturally doing pull-ups was always hard. So over the past six years, I've just gotten really into pull-ups. And so the concept now that I can do 100 pull-ups is pretty awesome. But it goes back to your point.

Like, in college, I was fit, you know, especially cardiovascular. but over time, if you commit to these new things about your body, you can really make enhancements. Yeah, and pull-ups are a great example. I don't remember how many strict pull-ups I could do when I started training in a more robust way, but I know what I can do now, and it's certainly more. And I mean, I can do, and it's not that big a number. I mean, I can do, I think, 21 to 23 strict pull-ups when I'm fresh, you know, without resting. When people say to me, I've had people say, say, I can do 50, and I'm... Which is straight?

Well, exactly. I want to say, please, show me. And it's like, well, they're kipping pull-ups. It's like, and kipping pull-up is also a cheating pull-up. So I do see measures of improvement, but you have to care about this stuff. A lot of people don't care about that. That's true, too. The question is, should you be forced to care about stuff you don't care about?

Absolutely not. But if you want to live an ageless life, you do have to make sensible choice. on the four pillars, in my opinion, on, you know, your health, your diet, your fitness, and some life outside of your small shell of actions and interests. Now, for someone who exercises, you know, 10 to 14 times a week, have you had any issues with injury? Very little, remarkably little. Part of it is that I was not a varsity athlete in high school and college, and I didn't get beaten up. Right.

I think for a lot of people who suffer at my age, they played really tough sports and they may have issues that are, you simply have to work around. But because I was really focused on being a student in those days, non-athlete, and because I was so fearful about trying things outside of my comfort zone, and I don't advocate this, but as it happens, I didn't beat my body up. So now I'll tweak certain things, if I overdo it, if I fail to recover. It's one of the reasons I take a rest day every week is to make sure that I do have an opportunity to recover. but I'm very fortunate. I don't have any limitations. Occasionally I tweak a shoulder. And then I immediately go to a chiropractor

and I get a work done. If you don't, bad things happen. What does recovery mean for you? For me, it's just truly taking a day off. When you talk to intense athletes, not professional athletes. Professional athletes understand recovery or they can't be professional athletes.

But when you talk about intense casual athletes, a lot of them take great pride in, you know, I train every day, I train hard every day, and you say, well, don't you recover? Yes, I recover. Then I only run like 10 miles. Right. Or, you know, I do a really intense yoga class. That's my idea of recovery. I don't buy that. For me, recovery is a day off. No movement. Nothing. Your body needs to recover if you're training hard. Well, one thing we've seen at Whoop is that professional athletes, a lot of what differentiates them is rate of recovery. And that is as big a focus as exercise, and you definitely see a shift going that way. Yeah, I actually have one thing going for me. In fact, I do have the ability to recover very easily. Seems like it. I do. I do. And in fact, I did my fitness gene. And I'm not here to advocate it or tell you it works or doesn't work. But it did say that I had an elite gene for recovery. And I don't have any other elite genes. I certainly didn't have the elite gene for speed. but I have an elite gene for recovery. And so I'm very blessed in that way.

I can train really hard. I can take a few hours. I can train really hard again. And we'll include the name of that product in the show notes. I want to go through a few different recovery modalities just quickly, and you say whether or not you've used them or had good experiences. This is speed-dating portion of the podcast. Yeah, well, especially on recovery.

So foam rollers. Yes, not as much as I probably should because, again, and I don't have any aches and pains, so I'm less motivated to. Foam rolling is good for you, and my trainers, Andy Spear and Eric Krakowski, always encouraged me to foam roll before a session. You ever use a vibrating roller versus a... I haven't yet. I know of a few, but I haven't tried it yet. The Norma Tech. Have you heard of the Norma Tech?

I have not. So these are compression sleeves that go on your legs and release air up and down. There's a lot of evidence that compression can be good for you. I do wear compression clothing. I wear Wallach of compression clothing, which is a... Oh, yeah, I know Terry White's brand. And so I do believe in compression.

I like compression because it makes me feel good. But I'm probably am the wrong person to opine as to whether it's actually therapeutic. How about Hypervolt or Therogon? These are the... I've tried Therogon. Therogon's great, but you still need someone to do it. Right.

It's hard to do it to yourself. Yeah, I think you can do it to yourself in spots on your body, and that would be great, like your quads, for example. But for the bulk of your body, you're going to need someone else to do it. And at that point, you may want to think about having a professional do it, at least occasionally understand that, especially if your insurance covers it, if your insurance doesn't cover, you're going to a chiropractor or a PT, I understand the limitations.

And theroguns are expensive. It's an expensive device. Have you tried cryotherapy? I've not tried cryotherapy. I'm a little skeptical because it's only several minutes. not sure much happens in several minutes. Certainly, ice baths are used for professional athletes all the time. I don't really have an opinion on it, but I think you can tell from my tone that I'm a little skeptical.

Understood. How about massage therapy generally? There's very little evidence that massage is good for you. There's a lot of evidence in my case that makes you feel good. I like it. So you like it? I like it. And if you can find a massage therapist who's really like a PT, it can make it.

make a big difference. Do you ever take cold showers, sauna, contrast therapy, anything like that? Yes, and there's a lot of evidence, recent evidence that saunas are really good for you. In fact, my doctor... I've read some of that research, too. Yeah. Peter Attia, who wrote the forward to the book, who's arguably the leading researcher in nutrition and fitness and longevity, believes strongly that you should take a 20 minutes sauna three days a week. And I don't tend to have the time, or I guess my earlier comment, I suppose I have the time, perhaps not the inclination, to do 20 minutes, three days a week, but I definitely try to take a 20 minutes sauna one day a week. And there's lots of evidence that

a hot sauna, it has to be hot, obviously. I mean, uncomfortably hot. Yeah, will you do anything in there, stretch or breathe or anything? No, and that's irritating to the people around you, assuming there are people around you. I've also tried higher dose of the infrared sauna. And what's nice about that is because it warms your body and less so the air, in a conventional sauna, the temperature in the room may be 170, 180 degrees. In an infrared sauna, the temperature of the room may be 145 or 150 degrees. So the room is more comfortable. You can therefore spend more time in it, but you're getting the benefit, the full benefit of being in a sauna longer. And the session at higher doses, you know, you have to clear out of the room in an hour, but the session is really 45 to 50 minutes in a sauna.

I'm not sure to feel the benefits. I can't say to you, hey, I do that and I feel great. There are people who feel that way, but there is a good deal of evidence that there are benefits. Have you ever done cupping or Graston therapy or E-Stim? I've done cupping. I think that's a waste of time and money and leaves very unpleasant marks on you,

and there's no part of it that resonates with me at all. I've done E-Stim as part of a chiropractic, chiropractic session my chiropractor will actually put eStim devices on your muscles as a as a precedent to the rest of the session uh there's a lot of evidence that it works what what doesn't work and you shouldn't think works is e-stem to build muscle so there are totally not there is a there is a new class here in new york where you get into an east dim suit and um oh i've heard about this and you actually do a training session for only 30 minutes in the argument on the website is 30 minutes of training and I sense haven't done it. I sense that it's not super robust training. With the e-stem

suit on is like a three-hour training session. And then, of course, the website has all these pictures of people who have no body fat and washboard abs. And I just don't buy the experts. I know don't buy it. And any website that shows you, you know, exercise program, washboard abs has left out a key element of washboard abs, which is diet. Have you ever used a kinesheology tape? I do. My

chiropractor actually uses that all the time. I'm a little skeptical. I'm skeptical. But I do. He does use it. He believes in it. That falls in a category of it couldn't hurt. Right. There's nothing wrong except when you have the skin exposed, it looks goofy.

And I'm so used to looking goofy at this point. Okay, I can live with it. Let's talk about nutrition a little bit. One thing that you write, which I like a lot, is drinking lots of water may very well be the simplest thing you can do to improve your health. Yes, I mean, for any number of reasons. The first is if you drink a couple glasses of water before a meal, you're going to eat less. The second thing is your body needs water to survive, and there are lots of people who really don't drink a lot of water, probably are running around somewhat dehydrated all of the time. Now, all fluids will hydrate you.

So coffee will hydrate you, even though it's got a bit of a diuretic effect. Anything that is fluid will hydrate you. It all counts. But water doesn't have calories. So drinking water is really good for you. And I start my day off by drinking about 16 ounces of water, and then I really focus on drinking water throughout the day. I advocate drinking a great deal of water.

Sometimes I'm more or less successful. I drink an enormous amount of water. It always has... It needs you have to run to the bathroom a lot. That's the only downside. But it's really healthy for you. And at the risk of giving you a visual, if your urine is any color at all,

you're probably not drinking enough water. And if your urine is a dark color, even a semi-dark color, you are dehydrated. And you're potentially really damaging your body. Totally. A buddy of mine had a terrible, terrible hospitalization because he trained really hard,

He ate a really rigid diet with no carbs, and he wasn't hydrated enough. If you have an exceedingly low-carb diet, which I have mixed feelings about, and you're not careful about hydration, you can get in terrible trouble. Has your diet evolved a lot over the last five or ten years? Oh, yes. It's evolved hugely, and one of the ways that it evolved is my doctor, Peter, was very gentle with me about encouraging me a more healthy diet. So when I started going to him, I said to him, it's embarrassing to admit it, but I said, listen, I have low body fat, I train with 20-year-olds, I'm in good shape, I'm an athlete, and I'm super healthy. Please don't talk to me about my diet.

Because, like, that's the last thing that I have. I don't drink alcohol. You know, I don't misbehave. Please, just leave my diet alone. He was like, totally fine. And after I had been working with him for a few months, he said, look, could you just talk to my nutrition? Just talked to her. And I spoke to her.

And she said, I don't want you to do anything different. Just keep a food diary for a week. So I kept a food diary, used an app called Fat Secret, which makes it very easy. And at the end of the week, I reflected on the diary. And I realized that my food diary was that of a 10-year-old, let loose in a supermarket with an unlimited budget. And it had to change. It just had to change. And so I said, okay, tell me what to do.

But I don't want recipes because I cook, and I don't want meal plans because I won't observe them. just give me guidelines, and they gave me a very simple set of guidelines, and those guidelines that work basically for anyone. And do you ever do anything to shock the body? We ever do these intermittent fasting or try to do something where you just completely take carbs out of your life? Or you're at a stage now where it's like you know the right categories and you just try to abide by it?

For me, it's the latter, but intermittent fasting is good for you. And if you're wired to be able to do it, you ought to do it. So Peter will fast, truly fast, for five to seven days, once every two months. All he has is water. You know, he's an exceedingly disciplined guy. He goes to the gym while he's doing it. I have no idea how he does it. I have no interest in trying.

And my wife also would divorce me. But I said, honey, for a week, you're going to eat and I'm not going to eat. That would not work in our household. But even if it would work, I'm not wired to do that. So what's he doing it for, by the way? Is he doing it to lose weight? No, he's at a good. weight. Is he doing it to be more cut? Nope. He's actually not aesthetically driven particularly.

It looks great, but it's just not one of the things he cares about. He is doing it because there's evidence that intermittent fasting, whether it's eating within a window or truly fasting the way he does, seems to have an effect on reducing the incidence of cancer. And if you're fortunate enough to live a long time and not have an accident, what's going to kill you? You know, heart disease or cancer. That's what's going to kill you today. Yeah. And those are the things that I'm the most at risk for, heart disease, which I talked about, and cancer. One of four people will get cancer currently.

And while there have been enormous strides made, cancer has not been cured. You're someone who travels a lot. Do you tweak anything to fight jet lag? I don't really. I definitely don't believe you should stay up late and not sleep to get on a cycle. To the contrary, if you're tired, I think you sleep. And I'm not one of those people who stays on their home time zone, although if you're going to California, that's relatively easy to do,

but I don't tend to do it. So I would say I suffer a little bit, but not greatly, because I travel so much, I'm pretty used to it. And I'm a good sleeper. Any moving vehicle, I fall asleep. So as the plane is taxing up off the runway, I'm falling asleep, and I'll stay asleep for a while. That's a good habit.

Do you have any supplements that you like to take? take related to sleep so things like melatonin magnesium anything like that magnesium can be a good supplement especially if you're running the risk of dehydration so so is potassium i don't tend to take either unless i'm on a cycling trip and thankfully i can fall sleep easel i don't need any sleep aids and you should be very very careful about sleep aids like ambian there's a lot of evidence they're very different than just a supplement exactly but even supplements you'd be amazed at what's in a supplement. It's just an article I read and I forget which publication. A lot of supplements actually have pharmaceuticals snuck into them. Oh, interesting. The FDA is struggling with that

right now. So I would be careful, but certainly you would be very careful. You should be very careful about any kind of prescription sleep aid. I'm not a doctor. I don't mean to prescribe anything. You should do what your doctor says, but I'm really nervous about drugs I can be. And they interfere with REM sleep and interfering with REM sleep is a is a prescription for poor health and a poor psyche. We've seen that as well with whoop data where people will go on ambient and they'll have meaningfully different sleep cycles than when they get natural sleep. Now the challenge is they have trouble falling asleep in the first place so that's what they're trying to balance. And for some people though just powering through it works where you're because eventually you're

tired enough that you'll sleep. The problem is you'll have a couple bad days and the interim, again, I'm not a doctor, and I'm sure there are some people who need medication, they should do what their doctor says. But my guess is that's a very small fraction of the number of people who actually avail themselves of prescription drugs. We've seen meditation as an effective tool to help decrease sleep latency, so how long it takes you to fall asleep. Do you ever practice meditation? Rarely, I do have a spiritual practice, so I pray in the mornings, which is a form of meditation. I don't tend to meditate at night. I think it would be good if I did, I'm honest about these things.

I'm a work in progress. Meditation is something that's on my list of to do, but I'm not doing, and I understand what a list like that looks like. A list of to do and I'm not doing is also a list of things I do not intend to do. So I know I should start swimming. I have a bathing suit. I have goggles. I know where the pool is and I have the names of swim coaches.

I'm not swimming. I think it's fair to say that I'm not ready to start swimming yet. Let's do a couple of quick questions and then get you out of here. So, one, who do you think of when you hear optimal performance? Who's the first person that comes to mind? While I don't subscribe to a lot of his views, I'd say Tom Brady, because he's an amazing athlete at an age when you wouldn't expect someone to be such an amazing athlete. Again, I'm not sure I subscribe to his entire system, but he wouldn't subscribe to mine.

But the proof is in the performance, and the performance is breathtaking. stunning yet. Who are some of your influences from a health standpoint? You mentioned your doctor, obviously. Who are some other ones? That's such a great question. My trainer, Eric actually, Eric Krakowski, who, you know, Eric will, we sort of are each other's, you know, we confess to one another our dietary sins, but he's super fit, he looks great, he's an amazing athlete, he's got a great attitude. And I guess even including the dietary lapses, you know, I would say he's somewhat, I admire because he's not a monk. He's not living, you know, he's not eating a perfect clean diet.

He looks fantastic. He's really athletic, and he's got a smile on his face. And he does so with, you know, some imperfection in his life. But the effect of all the choices he makes taken together, the effect is quite positive. Are you reading business books or fitness books or all the above? always read fitness stuff. You know, I'm mostly reading that online, so muscle and fitness.com is a great site. Is that your favorite resource? Muscle and Fitness is a great resource. It's edited by

Zach Ziegler, who co-authored the book with me. And he, it's, the name of the publication implies sort of bodybuilding, but it isn't about that at all. It's about health and wellness. It's very smart. It's research driven. It does not lie to you. It does not subscribe to the washboard abs in three weeks point of view, which, by the way, I don't think consumers are buying either anymore. I think consumers are getting the memo, although you can still, you know, if you're surfing the web and you're reading a bunch of fitness articles as I do, eventually you're going to get an ad serve to you, which serves you up a pill you can take with a picture, a before and after picture of, you know, overweight individual who does not look his or her best

before, take this pill for 30 days, fitness model after. And, you know, we're just, we're humans. We love to hear there's an easy answer. Wow, easy answer. Just take this pill. It's not even that expensive. No pill's going to do that for you. You've had a great run in the entertainment industry. What was the most impactful movie you put out, or the most memorable one from your standpoint? Well, I'm blessed. I've worked with amazing creative teams who've made, in enterprises, I worked at the biggest hits in every form of entertainment there is. I can't and don't take credit for any of those hits because I'm, you know, what they call in the entertainment business, a suit. I'm not the creative guy. So just with that proviso that I didn't make any of these titles, the first picture I greenlit was dirty dancing, which became the highest grossing film of all time. On my watch at Fox, we released Home Alone, Home Alone, too, die hard too.

And on the music side, I had the pleasure of working with amazing artists like Dave Matthews and Whitney Houston and many others. And in video games, within the Take 2 family, we have NBA 2K, Borderlands, Bioshock, and of course Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto.

So these are titles that affect tens, hundreds of millions of consumers. And while I say that, you know, I'm not curing cancer for a living, I work on making available to people light entertainment, I am proud of what I do, and there's something really rewarding about having even some small part in something that delights people, even if for only a brief period of time. Well, congratulations on your career stress,

and thanks for doing this. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the fourth episode of the WOOP podcast. I'd like to thank Strauss for coming on and offering such amazing insight. Hopefully you guys get a lot out of that episode. If you're not already a member, you can join the Woop community now for as low as $18 a month. We'll provide you with 24-7 access to your biometric data as well as analytics.

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