 Hello everyone welcome back to mind pump in this episode we speak to our good friend Jason Phillips about how to lose fat perform better and live forever is That even possible to do all those three things or do they conflict with each other you're gonna find out in this episode Jason welcome back good to be welcome. Is this what is this your four? Is this your fourth time now in a show? I believe this is round four. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on the show I think that's gonna be the award for I was gonna say that's got to be close to the record Who else would have been on long max is up there max look over here. Yeah, we've had quite a few times That's it. We like max though max is all max of the man. We're just talking about it Yeah, really solid really nice guy, but we like you because you really do a good job of talking to You know some of our most important Listeners, which are coaches and trainers and people who are helping other people in fact Yeah, so yesterday. We're kind of you know on this text thread and talking about what do you want to talk about? on today's episode and you said Basically why you can't lose fat Improve your performance and live forever. Correct. So what do you mean by that? Yeah, it's actually it's the foundation that we Do we build our cert on right and it's really the foundation of when I went into the CrossFit space It's what nobody wanted to hear You know, I kind of stumbled on it on accident in the sense that when I did CrossFit I was still eating like a bodybuilder and I'm like well surely I can look like a high-level Crossfitter you know ripped and whatever and Perform really well and naturally I'm gonna be healthy. So why won't I live longer? Except what happened was my performance tanked. I felt like shit. I started looking like shit and If I kept feeling like that for a very long time, there's no chance I would be living to you know, 90 plus or into my hundreds and so I started investigating it and I started just literally thinking about everything I learned in school and everything I understand in the industry at a high level and Really went back to the foundation and I was like all right to to lose weight or to look good Which is typically perceived as fat loss right fat loss and muscle gain To lose fat we have to be in a calorie deficit. We have to eat adequate protein ratio of carbs and fats independent on the individual Okay, so calorie deficit being the big driver there. Well to perform better Very rarely are we going to recommend a calorie deficit, right? I mean We might make the exception that if you have a low training age or if we're really trying to put you in an advantageous hormonal position Temporarily we could talk about it, but that's the exception. That's not the rule The rule would be adequate calorie intake and or you know, perhaps maybe a surplus and then to live forever mild calorie deficit but heavy emphasis on micro nutrients absence of carbohydrates, which we know is gonna fuel performance and It doesn't really matter if you have a six-pack because to get to really low levels of body fat is highly stressful in the body stress being the antithesis of longevity and I was like, man All three of these things are completely different except the average person in this world is trying to achieve All of them at the same time and here's the fucked up part as an industry We're kind of promoting that you can yeah, and I was like so I always say in 2012 I was the most hated nutrition coach in CrossFit and then in 2013 I was the most loved because I took the methods and I proved them to be true And I was like listen if we stop chasing aesthetics in the heart of performance You will perform better and so the next year had several people on the podium of the games Then I said cool in the offseason We can get you to wherever you want aesthetically assuming it will it aligns with what you need to be better the following year My athletes look great in the offseason Well, we didn't really discuss longevity with Crossfitters because I don't think anybody high-level Crossfitting is going to live forever I just think that training three and four times a day in that modality is probably not advantageous to living forever But the studies are pretty clear on what is going to create lots of longevity and you know guys We were talking about max and you know Ben and those guys that really understand the biohacking world But more so the longevity world they will tell you neither of those things matter Yeah, it's funny because this is when people get really shocked when they hear about like you know Olympic athlete so-and-so or World record marathon runner or fitness enthusiast, you know influencer, you know dies of a heart attack or gets sick I was like, oh my god houses possible This person is like the best athlete in the world at their sport and it's like, you know the work that when it comes to longevity Super extreme athletes have terrible longevity. Yeah, you're sacrificing longevity for extreme athletic pursuits Which is crazy considering we tend to take our longevity advice from those very people Where do you guys think the origin of that narrative is well? It's interesting You know when we look at the fitness industry as a whole what what typically promotes fitness is a body low levels of body fat and You know that person then talks about how they achieved it and how it's the quote-unquote picture of health Except all of us in here have dieted to very low levels of body fat We all understand how we felt how we performed at those times. I mean you did a show When you turned pro, how did you feel? Looking back the things that you did to get there. Do you think those are the picture? No I mean, there's a there's a reason why they call bodybuilders walking dead men Right, I mean cuz you you're right on the borderline of that when you get up on that stage So we were just talking about the evolution of it and the limits that are literally going to be pushed I mean we were making a joke that you know Arnold back in the day, mr. Olympia He wouldn't even qualify to be a pro I don't know if he'd qualify to be a pro in men's physique let alone classic He wouldn't win mr. San Jose absolutely not today. No his conditioning has to be better his size would have to get bigger It just it wouldn't work and that's because the extremes of the drug use and Arnold's been open that he used drugs and Clearly we're just willing to push different limits with different drugs now But also I mean at that time think back to it when you were a pro you weren't bragging about your lifts You know if social media was like monstrous at then like you're not posting videos of yourself back squatting 500 pounds Deadlifting 600 pounds or anything like that. No if anything you're trying to make sure you don't get hurt, right? And so we look at you know that then everyone's gonna listen to this They're gonna be like yeah, but like what about the wide receiver in the NFL that's super ripped great He sprints a lot and I promise you when he's going to practice He's not looking in the mirror at how ripped his abs are he has paid for one thing That's to catch a lot of balls to get in the end zone to score touchdowns like that's it Not only gives a fuck how they will not only that but like, you know, like DJ Metcalf represents one percent Amen of the population no less than that's like one percent of the one you're right Yeah, he's one percent of the one percenters, right? So he's just he's not and we love to do that, right? We like to to extrapolate that one example and be like look, you know I think that's where I was getting with that with you guys. I wanted because my theory is that it really was when The supplement industry and nutrition really made its way into like Athletics into sports because then we started to highlight These super athletes and pair them with a protein powder or pair them with a food that they ate And it even is I mean if you go back far enough, I think actually companies that weren't even health companies figured it out first I think the McDonald's and of course fast food places started pairing themselves with the Michael Jordan the Charles chocolate milk Had a heyday there. Yeah. No, I so I you know, so I is that How this got imprinted on on society's mind of like they they see they saw You know Michael Jordan sitting down and having a big Mac and so therefore and he looks really lean and ripped So therefore I can eat that or should eat that too at the end of the day Everything's marketing right like when when milk sales are down What do you see on the TV? You see commercials and it reminds you that milk is vitamin D and it has calcium and it's like it Promotes that it's going to cure cancer, you know, whatever, right? It's Whenever something needs to be promoted to sell something they'll say virtually anything or they will try to create inferences that They don't openly state, but they make it out to be true Well, there's also this and that is that there's the most effective lies are Ones that have a little bit of truth on them Yeah, because they'll take a little bit of truth and then they push it and turn it into a big fat lie So is there truth that if you took the average Deconditioned unhealthy person who eats a standard American diet if you change things to improve their health will they lose fat? Will they perform better and will they live longer? Yes? They will do all of those things But at some point you start to do the trade-off and it's not the extremes. It's definitely not the extremes Extreme any of those that I just said means you're taking away from the others. For example, the people that live the longest Don't have the best extreme performance and they definitely don't walk around at 3% body fat, right? And the extreme, you know fat loss experts didn't perform their best for sure And it's you also need to compare yourself to yourself. So yes, you could find someone at 4% body fat It was gonna outperform me At a higher body fat percent but look at their performance versus their performance them at 4% isn't gonna perform as well as them at 11% for example, I think I think what we're talking about in essence And I love what you just said is Relative versus absolute, yeah, right? And I think that the the illustration I would always use to show this is a triangle and so we understand that if we start in the center We can navigate towards any of the points and that Navigation towards one point is also a subsequent navigation away from other points Does that mean that you aren't still close to those points? No But the further you go towards any specific point you are becoming a maximal distance away from other points So the more we go towards extreme aesthetics, let's just say like mr. Olympia the more we go towards that extreme We are moving further and further away from the other points So we're getting further and further away from our ability to perform We're getting further and further away from our ability to live forever The same would be true for performance the the more we try to win the CrossFit games The less that we are eating to look our best not saying by proxy that we don't look better in some cases You might because of the training volume and the caloric expenditure But we are also moving away from our affinity to live forever And that's what people have to understand is it's a game of absolutes or Relatives and which one are you navigating? And I love the point that you know in the beginning This conversation probably doesn't hold any weight Yeah, because sometimes you're getting results in spite of what you're doing not because of what you're doing, right? Like when I was anorexic if I started to eat to look better that would have been muscle gain Well, if I start to go into a calorie, you know, just like a You know maintenance mode if I got to maintenance that was more calories than I was eating by proxy I'm probably going to perform better and because I'm finally giving myself enough micronutrients I'm probably going to be in a better health status. Does that mean that I went to the extremes? No, but there was some slight improvement relatively and we need to be careful when we also want to go back to You know, you use the example of a professional athlete. I forgot his name But you want to be careful looking at these anomalies and their anomalies because they don't represent not even close to the average person It's it's like looking at Michael Phelps and saying wow if I swim I'm gonna have the leg length of someone that's five nine an arm length of someone that's six foot seven, right? Because that's Michael Phelps his body proportions eight indexes insane, right? But that's not that's that's not what happened what happened was he was born that way and then he took up swimming And then he's also hard worker and all that stuff. So you can't look at these anomalies and say Well, that's that's how I'm gonna look if I train that particular way Well, that person probably look like that they're gonna probably look better than you doing almost anything because they win the genetic lottery Yeah, in that particular Situation so the extremes take away from the others is what you're saying I completely agree and the other thing that we want to throw in here because I know some people listening are like But I love to train this particular way. I love to eat this particular way There's also quality of life that I think we need to factor in yeah, like if I told you You would live ten years longer than your normal expected life expectancy. However in those last ten years You're gonna be hooked up to machines and bedridden, right? Would you like that trade most people say no, that's zero quality of life I'm using extreme to illustrate what I'm about to say But that is that quality of life is also something real important So you could chase some of these things But if you compromise call it like for me like for example, it's probably not smart to train super heavy anymore at this point I'm 43 been working out forever But there's a certain value that I find in it that has nothing to do with my body has nothing to do Definitely not with my joints because it hurts me, but I do it because it increases my quality of life And so there's that as well that I want to make sure we throw in there Yeah, you know, I think that as as we get deeper into the discussion. There's two types of people that are listening, right? there's there's probably people that like health and fitness and are just listening to this for advice for themselves and then of course there's the trainers and coaches and You know, if you're an individual that's just into health and fitness you have to understand, okay Well, I want to lose fat today How many times when you guys were trainers when you know, if you really got somebody to commit 12 weeks 14 weeks 16 weeks 20 weeks, whatever it is The further they get into the diet we understand performance is going to be compromised and we also understand, you know At least biofeedback markers, maybe not overall health status, but biofeedback markers are also going to be compromised And so we hear from them at the eight week mark or the ten week mark man, like just not as strong Man, I don't I don't have as much energy. My my sex drive is going down. My sleep isn't as good And I think that individuals if you're pursuing fat loss at a high level I think you have to be self-aware enough to understand you can't have it all in that moment trade There is and then as the coach, I really think that this understanding should be the foundation that you use when starting with your clients Yes I had a strong belief that and I would actually draw a picture of a triangle for clients and I would say where in this triangle are your goals and They would draw their the draw circle inside the triangle And I would say cool now articulate to me what that means and they'd say well, you know I want to lose some fat and I want to I want to perform better But I really want to feel good and I'm like, okay Can I tell you what I see and they're like sure and I'm like well what I see is You care most about losing fat, which means maybe in the journey You might get a little weaker and at times you're okay with feeling less than optimal are we on the same page and they're like No, I don't I don't want to get weak. What a great way to present that by the way for all the coaches that are listening I think that's such a powerful way to illustrate. Yeah, cuz people don't you're setting proper honest truthful expectations And they don't know how to communicate that yet like does any relationship that ends well start without proper expectations, right? Never and so why should fitness be any different? And so for us, this is the setting of the expectations This is foundational understanding of the journey that we're going on together You teach all the coaches to teach that right? This is literally the foundation that we built our love Oh, I love that and because again when we I need to illustrate this what you're saying right now so important to the coaches listening right now This is a huge factor huge whether or not you're gonna be achieve long-term success with a client or not and If you do this, right? You will also attain greater financial success as a result of it So I just want to emphasize that I hope people understand this one of the biggest determinants of Your client success, which is the biggest determinant of your business success, right? I know we've had conversations around the entrepreneurial side of the business which you certainly have to have understanding of Even that is second in nature to creating client results because you can be the best marketer of the best salesperson If you don't deliver on your promises at some point, you're the biggest fraud, right? and so you have to be able to create client results and Client results come from an understanding of the journey because if I'm starting you on a path to lose a hundred pounds in My head. I'm like, yeah, you're gonna get a little weaker, right? Unless your training age is nothing but you know if you're if you're trained and you're conditioned You're gonna get a little weaker and you're not gonna feel the best all the time That's okay. And so but if I don't articulate that to you and you have different expectations We're playing two completely different games And so when you come to me and you're pissed off that you're weaker and that you feel bad And I'm like, well, no shit Well, now all of a sudden us being on different pages causes massive strain on the relationship And so this this literally becomes the start point, but that brings up a whole another question, right? Which is well, what if my client does want it all and And you know, you're a coach that your job right it is and I actually think that there's I always live by the quote You can have it all you just can't have it all at the same time Yeah, and I think that really good coaches and by the way this goes into building your business Really good coaches help clients understand that you just have to periodize the seasons of your results because I think all of us in Here at some point in our careers have chased aesthetics We've chased performance and we've chased longevity None of us in here because of the understanding that we have have chased them all concurrently And so the real question becomes is how do we start to do that? And I think there's great answers to that as well There's two things I want to add to this one is if you're a coach listening and you know, you kind of breeze through this You said you create seasons that also presents to you as a coach a wonderful planning and Even sales opportunity and so and I by the way as trainers when I say sales don't shut your ears I'm talking about your painting producing producing results for your clients part of producing results for your clients Is you have to because they don't know they're they're hiring you for a reason They really don't know what it's gonna look like and if I can show them specifically Season one aesthetic season two. I'm gonna break it down very basic season one aesthetic season two performance Season three and then we're gonna focus on longevity now They see the plan and oh by the way each season is six weeks long ten weeks long Whatever that also works very well for me as a coach with my business Because now instead of saying hey you're gonna work with me for 30 weeks. Well, what does that mean now? They're like oh, I see exactly what that all looks like. So that's number one number two I understand what happens with trainers especially new trainers and new coaches is They want to promise everything to the person because they think it's gonna get it's gonna make them more likely to hire them Or more excited the truth is and I remember learning this as a new trainer when I was dead honest with a client They say I want to lose 30 pounds when you want to do it by I want to lose it in 60 days And I'd say that's probably not gonna happen in 60 days when I was honest with people I lost zero clients. Yep. In fact what happened is I got more clients because I was being honest and truthful with them It wasn't like they said to me. Oh, I can't do this excuse days. I'm out of here They said well Why can't I and what's going on and then they were very grateful that we had a very honest discussion I always painted realistic expectations and then what I tried to do is set myself up to have them exceed The things that I talked about so I said look you probably only lose Three pounds in the first 60 days because we're doing this this and this and then lose six pounds are like holy cow This is amazing. Yep, but if I told them I was gonna lose 20 pounds. Well, now they're disappointed Yeah, and then you also start using tactics that you're not on board with and right that becomes a whole another ethical dilemma I mean at the end of the day I think we can all agree from the business side the truth is the best salesperson Yes, right and every coach and trainer should understand that by the way that all of a sudden brings down the stigma of sales Because like you said right I'm gonna say sales all of a sudden coaches and trainers They cover their ears to freak the fuck out and it's like listen We're not talking sales. We're talking truth and by the way if you look that sales as Education of the truth you would probably make more sales. Yeah, which is Completely ironic in and of itself All right, here's today's giveaway maps and a ball the program that started at all Here's say you can enter to win free access Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications do all those things if we'd like your comment and pick you as the winner will notify you in the Comment section and you'll get free access to maps and a ball. We also have a sale going on this month Maps OCR is 50% off and maps cardio is 50% off So they're both half off if you're interested click on the link at the top of the description below to get yourself set up All right, here comes the show I like what you said though about the different seasons and you know Like I said this this whole notion is really the foundation of NC. I'm the follow-up to that is well How do we help somebody do all of them because I think that? Let's take aesthetics and let's take getting on a bodybuilding stage as an example We know when you went on stage when you came off stage you could not immediately go into the pursuit of Performance or longevity. Yeah, of course not right. There's a season that is recovery, right? There's a time where you need to if you use drugs You need to recover from the drug abuse, right? There's a time that if you didn't use drugs You need to let you know You need to reverse diet or recover diet and get back to maintenance so that we can recover the hormone, you know decrements that happen We can feel better. We can enjoy life a little bit at that point We need to understand like what is the internal machinery that we have and what is what are we actually able to create either in the performance continuum or in the longevity continuum is was our gut health compromised was You know, are we strong or we are we? Metabolically, you know, have we created enough? What's the word I'm looking for right increasing like your metabolic capacity, right? Have we done that enough to actually be able to put on weight or to gain enough strength to perform at a high level? And so I started looking at Athletes and I was like well, how do they get better every year, right using the DK Metcalfe example? How does DK get stronger? How does he get faster? How does he get better at running routes? How does he become an overall better player? Well, he doesn't play football all year. So he doesn't do his sport all year right, he recovers from the season and He also has an off season where he tries to get stronger He tries to acquire more skills and then there's a period of time that he bridges that to playing the game And I was like well, if he's doing that, why isn't every human doing that in the pursuit of their goals? And so what we said is we're like well cool. There's three distinct sets of goals. There's aesthetics There's performance. There's longevity But if we periodize those goals now of a sudden you can start to stack them and we can chase multiple things So if we chase aesthetics, we understand calorie deficit to the extreme significantly low levels of body fat That's what we would call season or the active pursuit of goals Immediately after that everybody understands there needs to be a postseason or recovery season We you know we quantify that as can we get back to normal homeostasis, right? A homeostatic balance defines a normal person Cool. Well, then there's an off season What are we doing to improve our chances of achieving our next goal whether that's another aesthetic goal Whether that's another performance related goal or longevity related goal and then there's like a preseason Which is am I setting myself up to achieve this goal maximally? So if it's performance, are we doing sport specific work if it's aesthetics am I prepared for the rigors of the diet? Have I set my social life up accordingly? Have I had the conversations with my significant other or if it's like longevity? It's you know, have I truly created the foundation. Do I understand what foods work for me? Have I done the necessary testing to ensure that the journey I'm going on is going to work with me? But every single goal has a periodization, right? And so Sal you laid out like what I would consider the macro periodizations the the performance is the Aesthetics like the longevity and inside of those there's micro periodizations Oh, yeah again as a coach if you're breaking this down to your client Not only are you getting them on board to the long haul you're sharing with them The reasons that nothing else has worked because they've gone from season like in season to in season to in season Which we know yep every in season is a navigation away from set point right calorie deficit is further and further away There's adaptations that are happening internally and the more more we become adapted We know we can't create future adaptation, which is why nobody's seeing results. Yeah now when somebody is Wanting all three of these is there a natural Flow for you that or that you would take them through this journey meaning like when I'm hearing you go and I'm thinking about to My process of like competing and then let's say I also in my triangle I wanted performance, but you and you stated it perfect was like Obviously getting right off stage going into Pliometric work and training like an athlete would be you're gonna get hurt. Yeah, it'd be a stupid idea, right? It'd be totally irresponsible So what what comes to mind for me logically is almost like the pursuit of longevity or homeostasis or health first and then Transitioning over to it. Is there a common? Mm-hmm like flow that you would say that you run. Yeah, I think that everybody Can understand that you're going to operate most efficiently from a high foundational level of health And so I think that if you have you know gut health issues if you have hormonal issues It stands to reason we should tackle or at least create a solid base of longevity for you Does that mean that I think you should navigate towards the extreme of longevity where you're eating low-carb where you're you know Sleeping in a fucking cave and you're taking long walks on the beach like no I don't think that you need to do that But do I think that elements of that right? Do I think you should get quality sleep? Do I think you should work on gut work on hormones work on controlling your stress? Absolutely From there, I would say like let's let's assess you the individual most people and we understand this in America or overweight Or obese and so losing fat will help the body function more efficiently Right, I think that we've seen studies for men most bodies function efficiently in the eight to ten percent body fat range So they're going to be able to perform better or live longer from a slightly lower body fat percentage Not saying again, we're going to the extremes We don't need to diet you down to six percent or four percent like mr. Olympia levels But losing a little bit at that stage then I think we would tackle performance So that would kind of be my hierarchy. Yeah, it's very relative to the individual their metabolic history Right there they're like long-term goals chronologically. How old are they or biologically? Yeah, how much damage I did in the competing would dictate how long I'm pursuing that longevity goal, right? I say let's say I did it I let's say I did take copious amounts of steroids. Let's say I fucked my gut health up Let's say my stress was like crazy. Yeah, obviously the period that we are focused on, you know Quote-unquote longevity after that would probably be longer than somebody who actually did very good weight management Didn't have to reduce their body fat percentage that much did it naturally didn't have any gut issues So that transition would look obviously you took me today. I'm 38 year old primarily an entrepreneur, right? That's how I spend the most of my days. I'd go to the gym three times a week now mostly for maintenance Yeah, and I golf a ton, but super high stress lifestyle. I was telling Katrina I was home 18 hours in the month of July literally in my home state for hours And so there's a significant amount of stress on me, but I also walk around it Seven to eight percent body fat. I'm naturally lean formerly eating disordered. I'm mentally fucked So I will never like allow myself to gain a significant amount of body fat It just is what it is and I've learned to accept that so I will always function less than optimally I'm okay with that. I've made peace with that But if we were to look at me and we were to periodize I would say we should focus on longevity We should probably fix my gut. I currently have a stomach ulcer, right? We should solve that like my hormones are in check. I'm on TRT. I've been on since I was 19 and anorexic And we should can we should get my sleep habits better We should control my stress at that point that foundational level of health will allow me to probably maximize the performance I'm trying to do which is I'm trying to become more explosively strong. I'm trying to become more mobile I'm trying to hit a golf ball further and more consistently so that I can make it at a high level in turn pro Yeah, no, there's definitely there's definitely crossovers in all of these But I think the confusion comes from the examples that we get for like longevity and Health are the extreme. Yeah, I shredded, you know bodies Now make no mistake health does look good, right? So being relatively lean is usually a reflection of being somewhat healthier at least healthier than if you were Obese Having longevity means you probably look healthier as well And you're probably gonna perform better than if you didn't have good longevity But really it's about these extremes and I like what you're saying about puritization because if you're gonna pursue All three of these in some way shape or form or let's just put it generally if you're gonna have a Fitness and health lifestyle for the rest of your life or if that's your goal The body tends to adapt best when you give it a bit of a focus But you don't stay on that focus for too long for example if my goal is maximal strength I know at some point I'm gonna start feeling on my joints. I know at some point my mobility is gonna suffer I'm gonna start losing, you know mobility and maybe different planes of motion Especially if my max strength that I'm focusing on is on specific lifts for example, right? If it's about performance and let's say for me performance is how fast I can run a marathon at some point I'm gonna start getting detrimental effects by pursuing that right when it comes to longevity Which longevity is typically about moderation and balance and almost everything. I'm putting it loosely But if I push that for too long at some point I'm gonna maybe lose quality of life because that can be kind of boring be socially isolated Maybe socially isolated like everybody's watching TV at night downstairs and I'm up here in the dark. Yeah, so so there's Just not a great predictor of long-term health, right? Nor is it good for aesthetics, right? So so period You know going into these seasons is great because a your body adapts better that way And they and if you time it right they actually feed into each other and be and I think this is most important We talk about this on the show all the time. It's the most fun It's the most fun if you plan on doing something for the rest of your life You better find a way to make it enjoyable. Let's look at human behavior The the hardest thing to do as a coach and as a trainer is get to somebody stick to a plane long term 100% and so I also love this notion because you can set very short-term goals Yes, right and if we start looking at the micro periodizations and the macros We're not asking you to really make a commitment for a very long time We're also setting very tangible and like end dates and very end goals So, you know in the season we're trying to get to a goal cool Did we achieve the goal? Yes or no people fucking love that in the offseason. Hey, man We're recreation foundational level of health for men, you know as your sex drive super high again awesome guys like that You know for the ladies like are you not moody all the time like they know that you know in the offseason? Can we get you stronger? Can we get you eating more food? There's again a tangible goal and then when we start adding in sport specific or activity specific work You start to feel really good because you're like, okay I'm really ready to begin this pursuit again And so you're taking the human psychological aspect. You're applying it and you're understanding people don't like Monster long-term goals. I mean, you know, we're having an entrepreneurial conversation before this if we're like Hey, man, all of us are trying to lead to achieve a hundred million dollars in net worth That's a really big number and if we set out every day and we're deploying against a hundred million We're probably gonna get bored at some point because you got to make the first million and so it's like cool Let's make the first million. Let's figure out how to turn one to ten ten to fifty fifty to eighty eighty to a hundred Right, and it's like those checkpoints are what keep it going. I don't know about you, dude When you were doing cardio for for your thing like whenever I did cardio I'd be like just get to ten minutes. Just get to ten minutes and then a ten. I'm like, all right get to 18 Yeah, okay, 19 and like and then I'm playing these like micro games Well, I think I my hack for for cardio in the competitive world. I thought my big hack was I actually broke it into steps Because I thought our bouts of cardio was too crazy for me that I was just like, you know what I'll do is I'll look at my entire plan and go oh up until Season time right for me competing. I averaged six thousand steps a day. Okay, so I'm gonna start with Walking eight thousand, you know consistently for a week. Okay, then ten thousand like and I actually did net I did not really do like our bouts on the cardio until like the final two weeks because I saw How torturous that was for people just small checkpoints though that get you to that yeah goal Jason for you Because you said something interesting about how you'll never really let your body fat get past a certain point Just because your own personal struggles How do you balance aesthetics with the other with the other two performance and because I have my own issue There were certain things and I have found that I have to balance it with the other stuff because at some point the side Effects of me pursuing the same thing all the time really starts to backfire. Yeah, what does that look like for you? How do you balance it out? Yeah, it's really good question. I I understand I don't I don't think longevity is ever something I'm going to be the best at I have a little bit more of a proclivity towards it now that I have a daughter and she's getting older and She's that'll do that to me. Yeah, I mean having a four-year-old daughter is like I want to live longer So I do try to be better that being said it's a mental battle every single day I know that when I'm closer to nine or ten percent body fat, I feel my best I also know when I'm closer to nine percent body fat I look in the mirror and I hate myself and there's you know, that's just the mental shit from when I was 19 and being Super open about it You still struggle that I still do man 30% 30 years old bro You're still critical yourself like that. Wow, like I mean super transparent I looked in the mirror this morning and I'm like man Like I got more more fat on my size than I need to have and like dude I'm fucking ripped right you are ripped right like and it's like wow like if somebody saw a picture They'd be like dude You're dieting for something and I'm not like this is just how I walk around and you know factually We ate at STK last night and I went to the room and had two desserts But I've also learned how can I eat like that and maintain this and so it's a really You know the difference is probably because I have I've had body image issues myself the difference now is probably you're aware of it. Yes Whereas before tons of denial tons of denial tons of denial. Yes. Yes. I'm way more open good I want people to know right now. Let's say. Oh my god. I'll never get over this We'll know you you do through awareness a process. I tell everyone, you know, I mean Anorexia is anorexia nervosa, right? I don't know to be you know, factually is it a nervous system disorder? but I believe it is and The fact that it's hardwired in your brain. I don't think ever changes I think that you learn how to channel it a little bit better and I'm okay with that like so To answer the original question though, I don't think longevity will ever be my thing I also recognize now that if I wanted to be in a high level sport that requires super high athletic output Football basketball crossfit anything I probably wouldn't be the best because I wouldn't be able to bring myself to eat enough Fortunately, I happen to be really good at golf and that doesn't require as much output But I'll say I mean being on trt and eating In a you know, most of the time in a deficit has not been great for overall inflammation The fact that I'm overstressed and probably don't sleep enough because of my lifestyle and the entrepreneurial pursuits doesn't help focus Um, and so my mobility suffers a little bit my ability to concentrate at a high level suffers a little bit And I'm aware of that when I'm on the golf course And so there will come a day where I need to make a decision The best line ever is we sponsor a kid named james piet on the live tour right now And we're out and i'm playing the program with him in chicago a couple weeks ago And he's talking about wanting to put on some size this off season How he likes mcdonalds and burger king and I was like well I'm like we ain't trying to put on shitty size and he looks and he goes I don't fucking care. He goes six packs. Don't win golf tournaments And I was like, you know what man like Great statement, but like I don't know. I mean you said you had body image issues I could never make that statement. Yeah, because I immediately I'm like, yeah, but who the fuck wants to not have a six pack Like that was the first statement I had in my head and I'm like, man, like I I wish I could have that, you know, bryce and dishambo put on all that weight and he didn't put on great weight and You know, I was I literally I was just talking with bryce and like two weeks ago and I'm actually getting ready to start working with him and He is suffering effects from Trying to pursue multiple sets of goals at the same time and our whole conversation actually went back to What we're talking about today is he's like, hey man, I just started whole 30 to fix my gut health. Cool Hey, man, I'm also really fucking tired all the time Hey, man, I don't sleep really well And I'm like, well, you're on a you're on a diet for longevity to fix gut health, right foundational issues He's like, yeah, and like I'm like losing way too much weight. Okay. Well, your aesthetics are suffering Right. Yeah, and I'm really tired all the time. Got it. Your performance is suffering So you're eating for one goal, but you're telling me you're asking me How can I fix all three at the same time and I kept reminding him the simple truth is we can't and to go back to your question Adam, you know stacking those I was like, let's address the foundational shit and accept the fact that you're not going to look the way you want to look Right away. Yeah, and you're not going to jack performance through the roof right away But once we've done that let's attack performance while we're still in the golf season golf season ends another two months for him Then in the off season, let's worry about the body shit So I want to don't want to stay here since you were Vulnerable enough to to admit that you still have a hard time with this because I think there's a lot of people that can relate to this When you and knowing what you know that you you know that you even that I'm probably never going to be the longevity guy But yet you recognize when there's things in your life that are suffering sleep stress, whatever these What does it look like even though you've already accepted that you're you're not going to be the you know meditation guru walk guy You know What what what do you what are things that you start doing in your life or what kind of changes when you when those things start to like Really rear its head on you and you go like, okay, I need to fucking I know I've accepted I'm not going to be that guy completely But I need to adopt some of my own my own philosophy here. What does that look like? Yeah, I think um I mean, I think it's pretty universal truth that the severity of pain dictates the speed of action and so The more the deeper I get into the rabbit hole Right the further I get away from longevity the faster I will take action on fixing those things Um, I just don't think I implement permanent solutions. So like to give you an example I mean, I'm you do it enough to feel better. Exactly. I go back. Yep. I put a band-aid on it It's it's better the bleeding stops the wound heals a little bit, right? But it's still so susceptible to opening again And so, you know, I'm sitting here today and I have a stomach ulcer from all the stress in my life Have I gone out and like supplemented the way I know how nope have I 100 fixed my diet? Nope, you know what I do I find like a diet seven up everywhere I go and like I make my stomach feel better most days, right? I I understand now I've been dealing with it for almost 45 days So I am actively undertaking like an approach where I'm decreasing, you know, bacteria in my gut and then Uh, you know aggressively overfeeding to kill it off, right? Or I'm killing it off And then I'm building new quality bacteria and they test you for age pylori. I'm assuming I haven't gone to the doctor for it Like I it's self-diagnosed, but trust me like all the symptoms. It's yeah And I'm gonna have you which would be easy fix by the way Yeah, and and I very well could but again the pain hasn't been high enough for me to go to a fucking doctor and get tested I also was home 18 hours for a month, right? And that's just like where I'm at in my life And you know, so I I also think that there's seasons of life too, you know Steve and I were talking about this on the way here There's people that don't know Steve's a VP of my company and we were talking about that on the way here this morning And I was like, man like do you do you ever just like look around and and be like man like that person They may not achieve some of the things you've achieved a man like look at what they're doing And he's like you'll get there one day and I was like, I don't know if I will And he's like not like we're just in a season right now And and I think that there are seasons of life. And so right now I'm okay with this season Being more about performance, right in the business side. Yeah, I have a lot going on NCI is growing rapidly We need to hire every time I go. It's like twice as big every time I go speak at the event I mean the the next event you guys are coming to in April literally double what last year was We had a little over 500 people were slated to have a little over a thousand people next April. Wow It's awesome. It's it's amazing. It's a it's cool. It's a it's a rocket ship You know, I do want to say this I've said this before on the show We've all said this in the show that that really good coaches and trainers always way better with their clients Than they are with themselves and and amen and I think it's true And I think part of it is what makes you such Part of what makes you a good coach and a good trainer. There's a lot of things what part of it is Understanding the challenge. Yes understanding the challenges that people have having empathy Being honest being able to work with them and it's much easier to understand those challenges when you yourself Have to go through them and and do them that that being said I wanted to ask you then in terms of like The coaching aspect of it and talking about these three different sort of directions that potentially you're kind of presenting to your client Like how how would you then articulate? Um, you know that psychological shift and like what to expect and like between each one of those different points Yeah, I think you have to really define what the points are really quickly before I touch on that I think that it's also a sell to your point. Um I think that coach the best coach and trainers have probably been through What they're asking their clients to do which also makes me a very bad coach to coach longevity Like that's like dead serious, right? Like rest in peace to my co-founder travis zipper, right? you know, we lost him last year and He was a phenomenal longevity coach and ironically like when him and I met he was pursuing aesthetics and performance I explained to him the triangle and he really bought in he just shifted his whole life to longevity Well, if you were one of his clients and his last two years on earth He was the best in the world at that which is it's crazy, right? He pursued it himself. He led it. It was it was super dope but Justin to answer the question I think that Each season is defined by something, right? And so whenever I teach this I ask people like what is season like in season active pursuit of goals Like what is that defined by and and the reality is it's defined by the end result the performance And so if we're trying to get you ready for a stage it's designed It's defined by what do you look like on stage? Our journey is not over till you hit the stage till we peak correctly until you feel like you hit your best the end, right? And so, you know, that's what we're after The the next thing I'm going to give you when we're in post season is I'm trying to get you back to a homeostatic balance Now I'm not going to make everybody get lab tests if you're on steroids I probably would but for most people we're going to use biofeedback. So it's a little bit subjective But we have objective data if we've worked together for more than a year Or you have previously objective data about things you were able to do ways that you felt etc Right like we can look back at data. So we're trying to get all of those things together The hardest one I would say is the off season because you know, I tell people this is defined by strength and skill acquisition And so how much strength can you acquire? How many skills can you acquire? How do you tangibly define that? We don't know what your upper limit is. We don't know what your ceiling is as a human being um, and so Sometimes people are complacent sometimes they're lazy or you get very driven individuals You know, I look at uh, like a sequin Barkley Um, who I think I just saw like a video of him squatting almost 700 pounds And in my head, I'm like, I know that wasn't the giant strength coach because in the nfl Like most strength most strength coaches are glorified like injury preventers So I'm like this had to be an independent strength coach But I'm like this guy clearly has a high upper limit And he has a very strong proclivity towards performance in the off season amazing He'd be a great person to coach Then in the preseason you're starting to compare yourself objectively to previous Like what metrics do you know make you ready for you know the field or to diet, right? I think a lot of people have a hard time applying this concept to General population because they're like, well, what aren't aren't we either dieting or not dieting? And I'm like kind of except every diet we understand every Calorie deficit is a navigation away from set point And so if you know if we look at a unit away from set point and we go 10 units away from set point Well, it stands to reason that to be best suited for our next diet We need to recoup those 10 units if you will, right? So likely the duration of your diet will you'll need at least that duration of your diet to recover Sometimes it can be done faster, but very rarely, you know, the the research is kind of conflicting We we do understand we need to recover There's some research that indicates speed of recovery So if you increase calories more significantly early in the recovery diet, it will help I don't know if I agree with that. The research again is not clear The off season is going to be based on your, you know, what your life is like I don't think it's not a sport. So, you know, your season is not clearly defined When is the next time you're actively going to want to pursue a goal? And then the preseason here would be are you mentally prepared? I mean, dude, I don't know what it was like, you know If you guys just diet for like random things now, but you got to mentally prepare for that Your significant other has to know Listen, we're not having drinks every single night We're not going to dinner three nights a week We're, you know, I might be a little more moody for the next six weeks And then, you know, when we get to vacation, I'll be better But you have to set those things up It kind of goes back to the whole setting clear foundation So I think that to best answer the question, it's about tangible outcomes Yeah, you know, it's, you know, it's just to throw a wrench in all of this too At some point, and this is just for the personal listening right now Who's so solely focused on one of those three components that we talked about Because I know there's some people listening to like, well, cool I don't care. I just want to be shredded or whatever I don't give a shit. I just want to perform Yeah, at some point, the extreme pursuit of just one You're obviously compromising the other two But at some point, you'll lose the one you're after as well Well, there's an adaptation Right, or just at some point Being extremely lean all the time And you're compromising your health, you're compromising return Yeah, at some point, your health goes so bad That you can't be lean like you could before Well, every adaptation you create hinders your ability to Adapt again in the same manner Right, and so more simply stated Every time we lose fat, it's harder to lose fat We know inherently like the body has the strongest, most sophisticated defense mechanism Against body fat loss Right, so as soon as you start losing fat, your body's like, fuck this, I need to store fat Right, like I need to live I'm put on this earth to survive, thrive, and procreate So we know metabolic adaptations begin And so the deeper we get into the fat loss journey, the harder it is to lose fat Well, the more you improve your performance Like we're not put on this earth to run four second 40 yards We're not put on this earth to squat 600 pounds And so your body starts doing things Why do people get injured at their highest levels of performance? Right, we look at one of the things I used to always be able to tell Whenever I saw Crossfitter that was super lean And they were at a high level competition I'm like, that person's going to get injured And everyone's like, how did you how did you predict that? And I'm like, they are literally at the peak of their output And the minute they go beyond threshold Their body is going to intentionally injure itself To prevent any future output, right Which it perceives as a threat to itself And so the more adaptation you create in a specific manner The more difficult it becomes to continue adapting in that same manner Which again speaks to the need to periodize Now do you have to rotate through the different ones? Absolutely not NFL athletes are staying in performance for years at a time People that compete in physique components They're staying in the same point of the triangle The same every single year, right It's like, hey, I'm going to look a certain way I'm going to recover, I'm going to do an off season I'm going to get ready for my next show And so they're still staying in the same modality So you don't have to rotate through them But you definitely do have to periodize Yeah, I would make the case though too that those examples You see the greatest repercussions from those people The people that stayed in bodybuilding for decades End up with the most problems That there were people that played football for 10 years Yeah, the compromises being made are just games Absolutely In other words Even though you could do it, right And we looked up a stat on NFL before we started this Right The average NFL athlete that's dying Is happening between 56 and 59 years old They're not The average person that's dying that played football is sub 60 I mean, that's fucking scary And I have to assume that very few of them are like Well, I'm going to play football for a year But you know what, next year I'm going to do bodybuilding Right, but then I'll go back to football the following Or maybe I'll go sleep in a cave for a year Like they don't do that They continue hammering home And if I had to guess, they're probably not periodizing Right, and then this creates a whole another issue Especially at high level athletics Is like, well, why don't athletes do this? If this knowledge is out there and it's readily out there Why aren't people doing it? And the reality is now we're talking sponsorship dollars Now we're talking about self-identity There's some issues Celebrate these streams Well, if you guys are UFC fans There's some UFC guys that are getting in the octagon That should not fucking be fighting Like if I don't know how the D.I.'s brothers still do it They've been paying Well, a shout out to Nate for winning his last game I mean, that's what I'm saying I don't understand But he beat Tony Ferguson Who, that's actually who I was going to talk about Tony looks so bad in that fight And I'm a huge UFC guy Like I'm such a UFC fan He looks so fucking bad in that fight He has to understand his time is done And he was, dude, he was great He was one of the reasons the UFC got to where it is I think that if had, if him and Khabib had fought The very first time they were supposed to fight It would have been an amazing fight Like it, I'm a big UFC guy His time is up And he finishes that fight And he's like, guys, I'm just getting started I'm like, getting started, what? Yeah Like moving closer to your fucking coffin Because that's it Yeah, you know what sucks is that attitude Is what got him there Yeah, and now it's his detriment Now you gotta drop it Early on, yeah Now you gotta drop that attitude Yeah, it's funny, Arthur Brooks, a good friend of ours Wrote a book called From Strength to Strength And he talks about how And this is kind of along the lines Where we're talking about how After retirement, there's this Diverging graph where some people Do great, improve quality of life, live longer And some people's health just immediately suffers They have really terrible quality of life And he said the difference between the two Are that people can shift The people that can shift So the people that are doers And then they retire become teachers So it's like this attitude of fighting, for example And never giving up Well, at some point, I have to switch that So now I gotta switch that to teaching others Otherwise, I'm gonna kill myself That's kind of how I try to frame Business development for coaches Is a lot of coaches struggle When they have to become the CEO of their business They feel this imposter syndrome of I'm not the one doing all of the coaching Therefore I'm not as important And I'm like, no, no You're actually coaching just at a different level You're coaching your staff You're coaching your employees Sometimes you're coaching yourself To get through the rigors of all of the shit But you're still a coach Right? So teaching is still a function Of what they were doing at a lower level It's just extending really the value And the reach and the impact of their organization It's just unfortunate because we don't We don't celebrate those guys and girls Right? We don't celebrate the UFC fighter Who did two years at the pro level Then retired and then became a coach And loved life, had a family and kids And like had a great healthy life Because he made his, he made it He got his bag Then he got into a job that fulfilled him longevity wise No, we talked about him You wanna talk about the extremes Like the Ferguson's that have gone in the ring Like a dog And just war after war After war Chuck Liddell's a great example of that And that dude's probably fucked And I mean, shout out to Chuck They mean he's a fucking warrior But he went too far Yeah, he's gotta be fucked But I mean, how hard that is for them too Because they Well, I'll give you guys a name Like, because you guys are casual UFC fans You know who James Krause is? Mm-hmm You do Yeah Okay, so most people, if I said James Krause Really, who's that? One more of a UFC fan than these guys Right, so it's like, so why do we not know James Krause? Well, James is an amazing fighter He won a lot of fights in the UFC He's now a coach to a lot Like he runs a camp that I believe is One of the best camps in UFC But he's also transitioned now He's doing a podcast He's getting his media out there That's what I mean Nobody is celebrating somebody Nobody cares Yeah, nobody cares Which is so sad Because he's not an extreme Because he didn't make it to Chuck Liddell type of status Tony Ferguson type of status Well, he's got his face beaten in in his last fight Yeah, for like a decade Poor James Krause for, you know, overextending Well, it's hard because it requires a tremendous Self-awareness and personal growth Because if you achieve People don't realize this A lot of people understand this That if you achieve a great deal of notoriety And success being and acting in a particular way That's probably one of the hardest places to be When you need to change Because it's who I am People love me I'm crushing at it And how do you abandon that When it's time to abandon it You know, you got all this love for it And you got all this success Now I gotta change gears Well, your identity is completely wrapped up And it's an identity you love, right? It gave you all this great stuff It's like, no wonder people have to literally Get, you know, hurt and refer them to see it I'll give you a great one right now In the journey I'm on For the better part of 18, 19 years My goal in the gym was either performance or muscle gain Right? To some degree, it was always performance I wanted to get bigger I wanted to get stronger I wanted to look better I'm in a position now where there's no professional golfer That is, you know, five, 10, 200 pounds Right? And so I've begun this journey of actively losing muscle And so Boy, how hard is that? It is the hardest fucking thing I've ever done In my entire life Because I wake up in the morning I won't even get on the scale But I'll look in the mirror and I'm like, I'm a skinny bitch Skinny bitch And so I go around all these golfers And they're like, oh, you're jacked And then I see myself on video And I'm like, fuck, I've lost so much muscle And I have to, you know, I have such a self-identity Tied to the 19 years of pursuing gaining muscle And so my identity was that I'm this guy That can walk the walk of my talk And I was like, yeah, I talk about gaining muscle I talk about getting lean And look, I can do it over and over again And so now I'm doing this And I'm not going to lie, man I have this massive fear Of getting on stage at coaching con next year And grabbing the mic And having a thousand people in the stands Looking at me and being like, is to see if cancer Like, I actually fear that people are going to judge me Well, being around all the golfers is probably a good thing Because they Oh, that's a great ego boost Right, I know, I'm just kidding I mean, when you think about it It's probably a good place for you to pursue While you're trying to overcome those, you know Deep-rooted insecurities But I think that so many of our I think logically we could all sit here And build a plan for me to lose muscle And still be healthy and functionally fit, right? Yeah The execution of that is going to be insanely difficult Of course Well, and mainly because of the psychological part Not because of the lack of knowledge or discipline Exactly And I think that You've got tons of knowledge and discipline Right I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't have achieved All the things I've achieved if I didn't But it's it's still really hard And I think that that speaks And this would be a whole other podcast Which is, you know Why when every resource is out there Are people not achieving results? And you know, I say this Going back to our certification I say this the very first thing Nothing you're going to learn from me on day one Is not something you couldn't find on Google And so my question is, as an aspiring coach Why don't you know it? And the reality is there's too much of it out there You're not disciplined enough to synthesize it And figure out what you should know But most importantly, even if you do fucking know it The reason you're struggling is Because you're not using the principles That we've been discussing today You don't understand how do you bridge the knowledge And how do you facilitate application And the best in the world Are the ones that can create the application I believe if somebody was to coach me On my journey right now It would not be about the science of me losing So I understand how to do it They would be able to get my mind in a place where And they would gamify it They would do something to where I was okay With continuing to lose muscle And that mentally I was able to perform At the same level as I could This is the argument that we get into With other coaches and Because this is true for everyone by the way And PhDs that are in our space Because everybody wants to debate the science And it's like in our opinion Like you are missing the most important piece Which is the psychological and behavior piece If because yeah okay So what in a controlled environment This study says this We're not lab rats None of that matters If I can't get my client Which I've trained hundreds of them Thousands between all three of us That I've tried to get to do X Y and Z That the study says If 90% of them fail me That study is fucking moot Doesn't even matter So why am I arguing with you over that To live forever we should go low carb Right like we understand that We should also stop training And we should you know again Sleep in a cave and take long walks on the beach I'm not going to stop training I'm also not going to give up carbs Like period the end And so If you can't help me inside of the application Where maybe I train less frequently Maybe I train less intensely Maybe I enjoy my training at lower intensities Maybe we manipulate my carb intake To where I can still do the things I want Then you're a shitty coach Because spouting off facts to me That I fundamentally just don't want Great like I understand you're smart And there's so many fucking academics in this world That's true for everybody I'll never forget this as an early trainer I think it must have been year two or three I had a client that hired me Was severely obese And I used to run a gym That was across the street from a hospital They worked with the same one later on But they had a gastric bypass program there And at some point we would get some of their patience So this guy came to me Big guy He had to lose weight in order to get the surgery Okay anyway we got in these deep conversations And at this point I really started to figure out That being vulnerable and honest Was a great way to get people to do the same thing back So we're talking and he says You know he goes I'm actually A little I'm really nervous about losing a lot of weight And I said why He says because I don't want people to approach me I don't want to have these kind of relationships Where I get close with people I say what And he goes yeah he goes I'm really realizing that A lot of what I did this was him personally A lot of what I've done to myself Was really to create this kind of barrier Between me and deep relationships And it had to go back to his childhood and stuff like that But when I heard that it's like okay You give him all the X's and O's You give him the ones and zeros It doesn't matter Now that matters And back to Adam's point You could show me a study that says That swimming in a cold lake burns 15% more body fat Than doing cardio in the afternoon If my client's like I ain't gonna go swim in a cold lake In the morning it doesn't matter None of that matters It's all about the behaviors It's all about the behaviors And that's why we need to talk about this And that's why and again What I try to do Is I try to sell people on how to do the right stuff By talking to these behaviors For example I think it's wise For everybody to cycle through seasons of performance Getting leaner and longevity How do I communicate that to someone who just wants to get leaner Or how do I communicate to someone who just wants to perform better Well here's how If you don't cycle in and out of that You're gonna lose whatever you're seeking So like for you for example Who's always wanting to be lean You know at some point you even talked about it You'll do enough of the other stuff Yep To get you out of the hole Right so you've understood that at least right So that's how I try to communicate it And I think that there's a big I think the space is missing that tremendously Because we always argue over the mechanistic aspect Well I mean I think Jason hit it earlier It's we it's the marketing piece right It's it's it's we're It's much easier for us to divide you Cattle you here and there And then market directly to this one specific goal That one pain point Oh you want to be ripped I'm gonna market everything there I'm not gonna tell you it's a triangle And if you go this way a little bit You're gonna pull from that with That's a conversation And that's complicated It's not sexy It means long time It means that you don't get exactly what you want It's much easier for me to be like What you want to get ripped Okay here's what I have for you Here's the supplement Here's the way we train Here's the way we think like And sell you that And you're more likely to convert that person To revenue much quicker and easier It's not I asked the question one time in my social media And I think it was in December And I said um You know if if next year All of your marketing had to speak truth Would your marketing change And like crickets Because people are like Fuck I would actually have to start telling the truth Because everybody's Everyone in our space is promoting They have a fall off solution And not saying you don't But we all know as coaches 90% of people that come to us Right especially today Right 2022 They're metabolically compromised To some degree Just relative to the protocols that have been thrown out In like the last 10 years It's not the fault of the consumer Like the education You know circa 2000s Really 2007 2010 was so poor Right it was it was Paleo in high performance environments It was low carb in high performance environments It was excessive calorie deficits And I think that the prevailing knowledge now Is that you don't need excessively low calories To lose body fat You just need to sustain a smaller calorie deficit For a longer period of time And you'll do so in a healthy manner The problem is we're battling the The you know all the poor protocols From the last generation And nobody wants to market Hey I'll help you lose fat But we'll begin our fat loss journey In six months after we recover From all the shit Because that's not sexy You know even on the business side I've been having this like epiphany In my head which is Every business coach under the sun Is like I you know I'll make you A hundred thousand dollars And I'm massively confident in my abilities To help any business We've we've done it We've built you know Ten plus millionaires at this point Thousand six figure earners it's great But the the truth If I was to take all of the marketing in the world Is I'm going to make your money back As fast as possible So that I feel like we're both On the same foundational level And then I'm going to have you Pump the brakes for a few months On only focusing on revenue Because that's the biggest problem In the marketplace by the way I'm going to help you build a foundation That will always allow you to build revenue So are you cool with like Making back 30 grand really quickly Are you cool with then pausing for six months And then we can resume revenue Most coaches are like Well no the dickhead down the street It's telling me I'm going to make 30 grand a month Right away so fuck you Except I'm looking out for you long term They're looking out for your dollars In their pockets today Please lie to me And that's what people are actively seeking You know I got a speculation And then I want to And then I'll transition to something I think is interesting And I'd love your input But the speculation is Because I think that the internet and media At first flooded the market With a lot more bad information But then what it did is It opened up the bandwidth to where Before you had only so many channels And because there were only so many channels Competing for all these people That you know Doing a two or three hour discussion podcast Was like no Everything's 10 minutes or less It's all sound bites There's no way you can communicate What we try to communicate Because what we're trying to do Is tell you the right way to do it In a five minute sound bite Just doesn't work It's a long form communication And so I think the speculation Is I think it's going to go In the other direction because The internet's limitless with bandwidth So now we can have two or three hour podcast Or I can do a thousand Like we've done over 1,800 episodes Where you could find Probably 100 fat loss episodes Where we talk about the same stuff But we say it differently 100 different ways And as you continue to listen It'll start to make sense It's a conversation So there's repetition Yes, so there's that And then the second thing This is what I love your speculation on We've said for a long time That fitness, the pursuit of fitness Is one of the most unassuming Yet powerful forms or vehicles For personal growth Okay, people don't realize it When they go into it They're like I want to look better I want to get fit But if you pursue it long enough You got to learn acceptance Because at some point you get older So you're not going to be as awesome Or whatever as you were before At some point you have to visit Things that you weren't visiting before Like at some point I had to like Make peace with the fact That mobility is going to be a part of my routine That's something I hated But it's like well now I have to And I want to keep doing this So I'm going to make this a part of my life At some point you have to figure out How to modify it Because your lifestyle changes Stress, family, illness, whatever So through the journey of fitness You have to process a lot And grow quite a bit Have you experienced this through the journey? Yeah, I mean I You know I don't think I would be Anywhere that I am today And this is going to sound like A really crazy statement How did I not become anorexic? And prior to anorexia I had no discipline I was the kid that had I was super intelligent But I had zero work ethic And so like I got You know my SATs were very high Like back when the scale was like 1600 I was like around a 1500 SAT But my homework average was like a zero And I always said in school Like tests tell you how smart you are Homework says how hard you work And had I gone back I would have actually You know can I go back today I would take pride In having 100% homework average Because it's a reflection of how hard you work And I'll take hard workers Over knowledgeable people any day We can teach you skills We can't teach you intangibles And it was the first time in my life That I had to become completely dedicated to something Because the reason I was anorexic Was I wanted to I wanted a shredded six pack And I was willing to do anything to get there I was so fucking miserable In that time in my life That I would sit on the floor of my parents You know in my room In my parents' bedroom And I would contemplate suicide at night Like that's how miserable I was And I would wake up the next morning And I'm like all right let's go And I would do anything I mean dietarily Like I would sit in front of people eating desserts And everything And I'm like nope I'm strong And if you know anything about eating disorders You start to hold it as a trophy You start to look down on other people And like yeah Like that was a part of my life at the time too But yeah man I don't think I would have the traits That I have today But you wouldn't have survived it either Without the fitness pursuit No I wouldn't And I think that some of the I don't think I would be as strong willed today Right because I mean We talked about my situation earlier Just the insane amount of stress Trying to juggle that with You know life and physical pursuits And having a daughter And you know lost my father this year And I don't think I'd be able to power through A lot of the things that I did Had I not gone through that either And so I think that the Results of my fitness Have certainly made me physically strong enough To take on most things But I think that the mental side And the mental issues I've had to go through Have also made me resilient enough To go through a lot of things I mean a lot of people could tell you You know this time last year I mean you guys are familiar You know we had trauma inside of our business Right You know had somebody kind of You know somebody I'd really trusted Kind of just departed And you know I had I lost my dad this year I lost my co-founder in the last year You know we've had We've had unlimited things happen And I've been resilient enough To just kind of put my head down And plow forward And I don't think I would be anywhere here Without fitness As being really the cornerstone of my life Do you looking forward Do you see other things for you That you're going to probably have to tackle I guess you mentioned your gut So Yeah I mean physically for sure I'm getting my I finally went to an ortho Last Thursday and had my hip looked at And so I'm either going to have to have it scoped Or have a full replacement Oh wow Yeah so I go for an MRI next week And we'll confirm which one I'm guessing I'm going to have a full replacement What's it going to take for you To be super longevity focused Or is that impossible I don't know I mean If you ask me today Gun to the head I don't see it happening But you know I You're so great mind you know I don't I don't put it past you I think you I think you would if you had to Yeah I think there will come a time Where I understand that You know ironically I I'm really I'm trying to start loving to read more And so I've been reading the Almanac of Naval And you know Naval states in there That physical health is his number one priority And you know Naval is pretty successful So if Naval prioritizes physical health Above everything Above mental health Above you know business You know if really smart people have done it before me Maybe I should look more into it But you know I think that I jokingly you know I'm self deprecating and say how How poor my longevity is I think that I secretly probably do A lot of really good things like Well in comparison to the average person You're light years ahead of I get seven to nine hours of sleep per night Right like I mean I went to sleep last night Here in San Fran at 8 30 last night I mean time zones etc You have family You have friends You keep yourself at a moderately low body fat percentage You strength train I mean you sleep I mean those are I eat vegetables every day You're checking the box on what most people Are really missing out You probably don't eat tons of processed food I mean there's a lot of things that you are doing In the direction of quote unquote Also a very high standard So I compare myself to probably perfection And so when I'm self deprecating enough To say that I don't do these things It's comparison to like being 100 out of 100 And I'm probably like 85 out of 100 So certainly not bad You know I think long term man It's uh I can't wait to see what unfolds And I think that that's really the coolest part Of where I'm at in life now is I've always been very entrenched in the now And I'm very focused Like don't get me wrong I'm a very focused person But I also understand There's way more to come I think we had a very poignant conversation Before this about Things that are happening in life right now And I you know had this happen The opportunities I have on the table today And they happened three years ago I would have very much been about the now And I would have not seen the future Whereas I think today My decisions and my actions are Far more dictated by the future And I think that's growth and evolution Of me as a person So okay one more question And maybe this will put you on the spot a little bit But um why are the coaches at NCI So loyal to NCI And it's and don't tell me It's because of the money they make And how successful they are I don't think it's any of it Okay good because I've look I've run enough businesses I've been in enough gyms And had enough teams to know That that's not what creates Crazy loyalty So I have to guess It helps It helps It does Well I think that's a side effect right So my I have my It also can be It also can become the biggest detriment You're right It can also facilitate entitlement That's right So so why is it Because I noticed this about the coaches With you guys I mean we're on weekly calls With your coaches and I talked a lot of them I get DMs from them And the loyalty to you guys Is uh is exceptional What is it Yeah you know it's it's interesting Man I think that I've tried to become Very introspective of this Because it's something I'm very proud of But it's not even to the level I want it to be yet And I think that What remains to still be achieved Is a reflection of me And so all the personal Growth that I need to do Will grow the community That being said The personal growth I've experienced And the the personal growth That our team has experienced together Is I think what yields The success of our community And I say that in the sense of Everything we've done from day one Has been in the You know kind of in the presence Of the connection based model And so when you come to NCI You learn that And I you know Kind of going back to the statement I don't care how much you know About health and fitness If you can't get your client To facilitate that You know via implementation Then really you're not a very good coach And the only way you can do that Is through connecting with them Sometimes that storytelling To your clients Sometimes that's vulnerability With your clients Sometimes that's being stern And yelling at your clients Or everybody's different Everybody is wound differently I feel like you got to be A little bit of a chameleon I know we've talked about that What I've been in here previously But I think it's the notion that I'm never going to ask you to do something That I haven't done Or that I wouldn't do myself I'm always going to give you a reason For why I'm telling you to do something I'm never going to make you do anything And I'm going to support you Above everything else Not your results Not you know The way you feel Nothing else I'm going to support you In your journey And because I'm willing to do that My team has adopted that mindset And because they are willing to They are actively touching the community In such a way But you know I This is done across the board This isn't just in personal communication This is also in our marketing When we look at as a company How we've grown One of our biggest weaknesses Is we have no direct response marketing Meaning we don't run an ad And say buy our shit We get to know you And then because people tend to like us Or because we like you Or there's a good connection Holy shit you end up buying from us Imagine that It's like two people that like each other Go on a date And then they you know Turn into like an actual relationship We would rather do business And we would rather have a community Of people that genuinely like each other Than people that are willing to spend dollars That's been the cornerstone of massive growth It's also what the coaches that have been successful with us Uses their cornerstone of massive growth And I think it's what's going to continue To allow us to ascend And help a lot of people Man I think that Somebody said to me the other day I just did a I did Kenny Santucci's event in New York Three days ago And And like I sat on a panel and I did You know we answered all these questions And I came off stage And it was like a line of like 20 people That wanted to just come up and thank me For like the bluntness of my answers And my VP of education looks at me He's like dude like look at that He's like look at that line of people Like you just did that You impacted that And I don't think that we ever As coaches sit back and reflect enough I think we're so worried about the journey We're so worried about the information we put out We're so worried about the growth of our company That we forget that man One person One is greater than zero And if we continue to touch one person every day We're winning Yeah can I tell you what the coaches tell me Please But when I ask them They say uh Because Jason is real And he really cares So basically what you said But they say it pretty succinctly Succinctly That's dope man I mean it's cool to hear that And it's still humbling to hear You know it's Not to like get nostalgic on you man I remember the first time I Came into this room Into this podcast room And I was just a coach Right like NCI was just Almost just beginning man And uh I remember just being So in awe of the industry And to To now And we had an independent research done To now be one of the actual top certifications In the world it's like And think about the number of lives we've changed It's pretty crazy man That's awesome It's been a great journey man It's always great to have you on the show Thank you brother Thanks This one's really important And that is to Phase your training If somebody trains for a full year Doing a bench press And they're always aiming for five reps If you compared that person to a person who did bench press Where they did Three or four weeks of five reps But then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps And then three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps And then they'll throw in some supersets At the end of that year You're going to see More consistent progress From the person who's moving in and out And less injury