 In our previous episode, we talked with David Goggins, the super endurance human being, free of nature, and it was a very frank episode about facing your fears head-on, committing to them, battling them, and then showing up every day to push yourself through that discomfort. We thought it might be fun to actually welcome Chris Tywalkar, our personal trainer, who's been helping us battle some of those fears, got us race ready, and of course this month's theme is rebuilding confidence. There's no better way to rebuild some confidence than getting some physical wins under your belt. So we're super pumped to wrap up the month with Chris. He's a local here in LA. He's been yelling and screaming at me and Johnny to get our shit together, and slowly but surely we have. I hope he agrees. How's it going, guys? Welcome to the show, Chris. Thank you for having me. And how did you get started in the fitness game? For me, fitness, I started when I was like 13 years old. I ran track for Great Britain for 10 years, from like 15 through 25. So I was like the quickest kid in the playground. I quickly got drafted in the sports teams, and I ran track for England starting at 15 years old. I ran the one-turn hurdles and just progressed through the junior ranks, working with the British teams and great trainers until I was 25 and retired from injuries. So I started track very early, stayed with track, and through going to college, running the college sports teams, getting a degree in sports science while I was at college, and then just staying with the British team running track. And I mean, I was on the geeks. I didn't go to, I didn't have any fun in college. I was up at five in the morning training. I would do double workouts every day. College was not a good experience for me back then. I mean, I had a tough time back in London because it was just like, it was work. I worked from 15 onwards. Always running, always training, and it was a tough grind. So when I actually retired at 25, I just transitioned from training for my own Olympic dreams and then into training my clients. We've talked a lot on the show about Barry's boot camp and the impact that exercises had on not only our mental well-being, our physical well-being, but also our relationship, Johnny and I being accountability buddies and taking Barry's boot camp classes together has been a lot of fun. And you, of course, are one of the head trainers at Barry's boot camp yelling at us in class, outside of class. Yep. So I've been at Barry since 2008 now. I've been there for 11 years and one of my master trainers. It's a dream. I actually fucking love turning at Barry's. Like for me, I see 200 people a day. Like this morning, I taught two classes, both sold out, 50 people in each lunchtime class and other 50 people. Like it's so great for like to walk in and have my clients to hand me their health and like, hey, Chris, look after me for an hour, please. I completely trust you. And then I guide them through, as you guys know about Barry's, it's half cardio, half strength work. I mean, it's a great workout and it's for everyone. We'll talk about it later, but it really is such an amazing workout for everybody. There's no excuses. Well, we were laughing about that a little earlier, how intimidating it can be. And I know the first Barry's boot, the first Barry's boot camp class that Amy dragged me to, I was completely intimidated. Dark room, loud music, a lot of people who are in fantastic shape in West Hollywood. I fought through a little bit of anxiety there, started to see, OK, this workout is pretty fun, enjoy the environment, the energy and start taking Johnny there. But of course, that initial time showing up at a gym is going to be intimidating when you don't feel as confident as you like or as in shape as you like. But that's the same for was a boot camp class at Barry's or it's the regular 24 hour fitness or whatever it is. Like the confidence one has going into the gym for the first time is very difficult. Like if you are out of shape, it is like you're going to walk in and see people lifting huge bench presses and squatting tons and running fast and these huge muscles and these girls in tiny outfits. And so somebody's not worked out prior to that and to see that environment. I mean, it'll be very overwhelming. And like a lot of people walk in and walk out straight back out and don't go. And it's it's sad, like a Barry's environment. I mean, I tell everyone like I've had everyone from the biggest losers in there to some of the most I've had Olympic athletes. I've had like a whole of fame, tennis, but Andy Roddick came to class for like three months straight every other day. And so that you get everyone from every spectrum of life. And if you can have the confidence to walk in, you've got to know that no one else in that gym gives a fuck. Like they're there for themselves. They don't care if you're the worst shape or you're the best shape. They better work on themselves. They've paid their money. They've given an hour of their day to go and better themselves. Like they don't care if you're lifting lighter weights and running slower speeds. All they care about is how they're doing and how they're looking. So a lot of people walk in this anxiety, like, oh, I'm not fit enough to Barry's or I should be a certain way or look a certain way. That's all mental. That is on you guys to have the confidence in yourself to walk in that space and just know what you walk in. You're going to be taken care of, but to get yourself there and just know that really no one's going to judge you. And if they judge you, fuck him. Like no one has the right to judge anybody in this world. And if they do, they just, I mean, it's on you to not let that get to you. And so have the confidence to work on yourself. And that's pretty much where it ends. Once you agree that you can do it and you bring yourself into the environments, you'll be fine. I think programs in the gym is difficult because not everyone knows how to lift or how to run or what to do in the gym. So, yes, like having structure is very hard and I get it. Like, you don't know what you're doing. But in a group scenario, there's no reason you can't just walk in. Well, and the other thing is that all the trainers at Barry's are all coming from a great place. There's a lot of positivity there. And they're going to help you work through everything so that you're not intimidating, so that you do enjoy your your time there, that you do want to come back. It should be the best hour of your day. The hour you give yourself. Absolutely. You show up and you work hard for yourself. Like we get up in the morning, we go to work, we hustle all day. You get maybe one hour away. You're not at home. It's like that one hour a day that you give yourself to better your own life should be the best hour. It should build you up. So our goal as teachers there is to make sure you have a great experience. We entertain you like it's fun. The music should be popular. It should be fun. OK, my music taste might not be. It wants me to taste, but they're trainers that have. That's my biggest complaint about me. OK, you're never going to get a rock. I know you're never going to get that rock class. Like I might give you a couple songs you've given to me if I find some remixes, but I'm sorry. Like I go in knowing that I'm going to the music is going to be a dentist drill into my temple. However, so, you know, I try not to. I try to just focus on the bass drum and roll through it. So you don't like my Christine Christine remixes. Really? She's my girl. Like I just told you that seed to be happy. Christina, Brittany, Beyonce, what's wrong with that? You bring up a great point because whether it's the gym or that networking event or that social outing, we all have this anxiety of, oh, I'm going to be judged. In reality, everyone is so self-critical to begin with. I know in my first Barry's bootcamp and hell, my most recent Barry's bootcamp class, I'm concerned about my form. I'm concerned about am I getting something out of this? And I'm so focused internally. I can't possibly be judging all the people in that class. It's the Barry's. I mean, they're tough workouts and you've got to work hard and you've got to focus on, I mean, there's 50 people. It's loud. It's dark. Like you've got to focus on yourself and what the train is teaching you. You haven't got time to judge the person next to you. Like hopefully you can fist pump them. Like where to go on that 5.0 best speed? I had a guy in class that I was doing 30 second sprints. I had one person running 80 miles an hour and another person running 7.5, right next to each other. And it doesn't matter if you're running 18 or running 7.5 for your best speed, as long as it's your best. I don't care. And they don't care. Like if you see someone busting their ass and it's their first class and they're overweight and out of shape, you're only going to get mad props to the people around you. Like they're only going to do it. And I tell my classes, like turn your neighbor high five and tell them, great job, smack him on the ass and get to the four. Like it's a positive, fun environment. Like it's not never going to be like judge that person next to you. Well, mentioning that that hour should be the best part of your day. It's going to be setting up how you go into the world and how do you go into all of your errands and all of your work for that day? And if you said, I know for myself that if I set it up correctly, if I get into the gym and I go through that and I enjoy myself, I'm going to enjoy myself the rest of the day. But the other thing about it is, you know, if you're not enjoying that hour, that's on you. There are things that you can do to to work on your attitude about what you're doing and going in there. This goes for any sort of learning process or any and certainly anything that comes to you getting better physically. So when you've come to our gym sessions and you want to beat me and walk out of the gym, that's on you, not me. Yeah, as long as everyone knows that that is on the record. On the record, it is on you. And I'm actually having fun thinking about kicking your ass. OK, great. Yeah, we've had sessions in the gym where Johnny's literally thrown a little tantrum thrown toys out of his stroller and just stormed off. Well, I have video, actually. I'm going to blame that on my intermittent fasting because I definitely come in hangry just to start. I don't agree for the record. I don't agree with that either. Will we getting into that later? I think we should get into it. OK, I think that's the other thing, right? When we look at exercise, when we look at building your social skillset, anything you want in life, there's going to be ups and downs, which is why the theme this month is rebuilding your confidence. You're going to have moments where you feel really confident physically. You're going to have moments like us on that first run for our half marathon training of how are we going to do this? We're only five miles in. I can't even imagine 13. But it all starts with showing up that first time and then pushing yourself a little bit further each and every time. And some of us have the willpower to do it on our own. Some of us need a trainer. And Johnny and I realized that getting into wanting to get more healthy, wanting to hit these goals and get our best time in the half marathon, that we really need to be pushed more than something that Johnny and I could do for each other. But obviously, a big part of it is what you eat, right? You talk about exercise, we talk about diets. And I know Johnny is smiling because we get asked constantly to our clients, what's our diet? Are you putting butter in your coffee? Are you keto? Are you paleo? Are you eating eggs in the morning? Are you not? Everyone wants to know what everyone else is eating and what's working. And in my experience, it sounds like much like with nutrition and everything else, it comes down to solid fundamentals. It's not about the fat. It's not about the latest and greatest thing. When you have solid fundamentals, things start to fall into place. So firstly, these boys were really hard for the half marathon training. I was so proud of how hard they worked day in, day out. We ran, what, for 12 weeks of training for it? Almost 16 years. They crushed it. They, I mean, we started in a terrible place and they ended up doing very, very, very well. So for everyone at home, they did bust their balls for me. When it comes to diets and nutrition, it's a tricky fucker. There's no right diet or right food plan for everybody. Like we're all different beings. We all, I mean, for example, for me, I'm terrible with dairy. I was at a shake place the other day and I had a chocolate milkshake. I was having a bad day. It was like Joe's juice. It was like natural organic bullshit, whatever. I didn't realize there was straight up dairy. I saw like vegan protein and then I thought, oh, this is gonna be a vegan drink. And then literally I was shooting my brains out all day. Like I had, it was awful. Like so my body, I know I don't do it with dairy. I don't do it with gluten. And so that's me, but like that's not everyone. And there are benefits to have dairy. Like it's great protein, it's great calcium, it's great everything, but it's not for me. I've got to get it elsewhere. So I could tell you what to eat, what I do, but it's not necessarily what's right for where you're at. So you ask, yes, first thing, you've got to work out what you're allergic to, what works for your body. Like I know, I eat very, very, very simply. My main meals are always like some sort of brown rice pasta or quinoa pasta or like a whole grain that's not gluten basically. Clean meats and vegetables. And I can eat that all day every day. And I don't get bored. I personally don't care about food, which isn't great. Cause most people do care about if they want to have their pizzas in their McDonald's and I'm like, I don't get it. I don't walk by in and out and be like, oh my God, I'm craving that. It just doesn't work for me. A cookie shack or something like that. I'm all about it. But like general food like doesn't do it for me. So that's me personally. And like, I encourage my clients to eat a regular diet. Like when you first wake up in the morning, you've had 10 hours of no food. So your body is already fasted. So you'll hear this time and time again, like the most efficient way to fat burn is then first thing in the morning. Because your body's starving. You have two major energy systems. You have carbs and you have fats. Carbs is number one. And so overnight through general metabolic rate, like breathing and just surviving through the sleeping patterns, you burn carbohydrates. And so when you wake up in the morning, they're all gone. So then as you wake up and you've heard the expression of fasted cardio, it's where you go like for the slow walks, the walks, the slow runs, like a rowing class or like a spin class. Like you're burning fat straight away because you haven't put any food in you, any fuel in you. And by the time you have your first meal of the day, if it's like it should be carbs and you get carbs and vegetables, that's them replenishing your carbohydrates which you lost from overnight. So now when you do your fasted cardio, you're just gonna burn fat cells, which is why working out first thing for a slightly low intense workout is good. And I fully encourage it. I don't agree with me personally, and this is my point of view, doing strength work on no fuel because you need the number one energy source in which is carbs to then be strong and lift. So you do your fat burning work when you have no carbs in your body for us in the morning, and then you can go away, you can eat breakfast, you can go about your day and hopefully have time in the day to do your strength work later. If it's a strength session, you should always eat before it, but say your gym workout is at 6 a.m., you've got to eat something before you go to the gym. It just doesn't work. And I fight with AJ and Johnny day in, day out because they do intermittent fast. They go 16 out, you're 16, eight split. So in a 16 hours split of no food in eight hours they eat two or three meals in that block. Me personally, I would say fast and cardio first thing in the morning, it's traditional, it's very simple. Then you have three major meals throughout the day and three snacks. So you eat six times in a day. The two or three hour block, these boys don't like what I'm saying, they're both laughing and shaking their head. So you have- That sounds like a lot of work. But it's not though. How is making your breakfast of some sort of rice or whatever toast or like some eggs and some vegetables in the morning, hard work. It's not. Then an easy shake or a snack midday and then a good protein, a good carb and a good vegetable at lunch time. And some people say no carbs after a certain amount of time a day. I care about macros and you've got to get your macros. So macros are your main energy systems. They're like carbs, fats and proteins. You got to get your macros that are right for you. And this is a little science based here but you have to lose weight, which most of our clients want to do. You've got to have a deficit of 3,600 calories to lose one pound. So if you're eating your food and it takes time to lose weight, you can't just starve yourself for a week, have a calorie deficit and then put it all back on again. Cause again, if you calorie surplus of 3,600 calories then you'll go, you'll put on the weight. So you've got to like, mack out your macros over your goals. Does it make sense? Yeah. So if you want to lose weight, yes, you want to steadily have less intake as you do expenditure. If you want to put on weight, you put on size and muscle, you got to eat more. But like, everyone's goals are different, but for me personally, a good balance of your macro count is the way forwards. So stick to macros instead of the fad diets is what you would say. I personally would. Like, I mean, you boys are like, no. Your point, what works for you, right? So... What works for me? If a habit is built and a habit allows you to stay healthy, whether it's fasting or not fasting or eating your bobo's in the morning or not. That is my go-to. Whatever the case may be. There's these bars. I don't know, are they everywhere? I don't think anyone knows. I've never heard of it. So this is like this gluten-free, dairy-free, GMO-free bullshit. Okay. So it's just an LA basically. The rest of our audience is like, never heard of it. And it's a bobo's bar. And it's like this flapjack that literally, I mean, it's my crack. If I don't have one in the morning time, like I'm a cranky fucker. So do you think that's why Johnny's cranky then? He should have bobo's every morning. He's missing out on his bobo's. There we go. Now we solve your hangover issues. I mean, I'm not saying it's healthy for you. It's totally my... I have a sweet tooth. Like I eat really clean. I don't really drink that much. I just like cookies and cakes. And that's, again, everyone is different. You're one thing that you like, whether it's the cookies, whether it's not eating breakfast for me, works. I don't like eating breakfast. It's a chore. I've never liked it. Partially because growing up, my dad was like, you must eat your breakfast and force me to eat it whether I was hungry or not. So I have an aversion to it and fasting works. Now, I definitely feel exhausted after our sessions. I definitely have to crush a shake. Because you have no fuel. You have nothing in your body. You're totally empty. So you have, your body needs that fuel to work. So I mean, you gotta eat. But it's the same thing. It's about balance. I'm not a crazy person who comes to fitness and training. It's, I'm gonna support people having a Friday night out with their friends, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. Have a glass of wine or three and enjoy your night. But then just pick and choose your battles. If you know you've got a birthday weekend this weekend, AJ, that you should be having a really good week of food and nutrition until the weekend and then you'll enjoy your weekend down. And you'll go wine tasting. You'll have your bottles of wine and then you'll be back on it next week. It's about balance. Yeah, if there's no balance then you're not gonna be able to maintain and stick with it. We're talking about habit building here for your lifetime. Sticking with a fad diet for a few weeks and then crashing and then jumping to another fad diet. It's not sustainable. Well, and you know, one of the things we have to hear about every, well I'm sure just as much as you do, the next fad diet, Chris, I want your thoughts on this. And we get it all the time. Yeah, we're not even in the fitness industry. We get asked. And so much stuff comes out. But I think worst of all, it's always the person that goes, well, what about this diet? What about that diet? But yet has a problem with every diet that they wanna talk about. And it's like, well, pick something, anything. Well, that's why it comes back to fundamentals, right? It all breaks down to the calories and calories out. I mean, most, if not all of the science shows that. There are obviously some caveats but they're pretty small. For the most, for most people listening, calories in, calories out, is how you're gonna gain or lose weight. Now, how you get those calories, if you decide that you wanna go all plant, you wanna go all meat, you wanna go keto, you wanna eat fried eggs, whatever the case may be. If you're eating extra calories, you're gonna gain. If you're eating less calories, you're gonna lose. Yeah, and let's just put it real simple. If you wanna be healthy, you have a healthy lifestyle. You know that cheeseburgers from McDonald's are not healthy for you, not fries are not healthy for you. So just make your choice. When you're going shopping and you have a list of 19 ingredients on a bar of some sorts, you know it's not great, it's gonna hold on to crap in it. Like there's certain bars, like three or four ingredients, they're all natural ingredients, like fruits, they're vegetables, whatever, and you can read it, that's what you should be eating. Like, yeah, there are those times we have those fun meals out and you do indulge, but like, if you eat clean, be simple and have a balanced diet and move your body, just fucking move. If you sweat and eat well, you're gonna be healthy. Well, and certainly your age and your other activities, I mean these things are gonna play a role as well, as whatever you may have found worked really well in your 20s is certainly gonna be changing as you roll into your 40s. And you know, I have a lot of friends who even in their late 30s still think they can plow through their life and how they were living in their 20s. To me, it's just like, when are you going to revisit these ideas because they're obviously grinding you into dust. But without taking that step back, it's hard for those people to see that. For us who are always into fitness, self-development and these things, we're looking at how's my body working at its best and if you're not looking at it in that manner, you're just gonna do what you've always done and expect those same results. Now, when you started working with us, we came to you with a goal, complete this race. And we finished the race, we beat our goals on the race, the goaltimes that Johnny and I had set out with you. And then we kind of felt this lull of like, now what? Now what? And there's always, once you train for something very specific and then you come out of it, it's always like, you train for race, you train for race, you achieve the goal, you hit it and it's like, you're gonna crash. That's why I gave you guys 10 days off. I was like, don't see me for 10 days, go away, enjoy your time, work out, don't work out. And then we'll revisit in two weeks time, we'll start again. And now we're talking about setting up our next set of goals and joining this tough motor race, building out our team to do it. You've actually completed one, so you have an inside look at what that pertains to. But for those of listeners who are like, okay, that's great, I don't really know what a good goal is. What advice do you have for someone who's trying to set goals for themselves who've now come to the realization that, okay, I wanna change, where do I start? What's the best goal for me? So goals have to be, what we call smart goals. Goals must be smart. So if you look at the SMART, so smart, they have to be specific. They have to be measurable, obtainable, realistic and time-based. So the guys did the half marathon, which for them was their goal. It was very specific. It was 13 and a half miles. It was 13.2. It was measurable. We could measure our distance if you improved and so on. So if you haven't got a goal that the boys had, like it'd be super simple, like I wanna do a hundred push-ups without stopping or I know a three-minute wall sit. Like they could be really basic gym-based goals until you work out what is your training for. So just measure yourself at anything. I'm gonna run up a mile on the treadmill and see it be, may it be six minutes, may it be 11 minutes and then just work for four months and then repeat the same test. Like until you actually focus on like the boys have their tough mud or the half marathon, like give yourself small little goals that you can train for something. Like give yourself something because without having that goal there, you're just going to the gym and like lifting for no reason or running for no reason. And like you don't know if you're getting better. Like I had a client this morning on the track and we was the second session with me and we ran at 400, 300, 200, 100. And there was our entire session. There were time trials. Just so he'd get a marker. It wasn't his goal to do these things, but as a markers we had to like, we took him, we know his times so we can repeat the same test in eight weeks time to know that the training we're doing is counting and making us better. So like just give yourself any small mark, it could be anything. Like do a wall sit, see how long you can last in a wall sit. Then go do your training for four, five, six weeks of squats and lunges and plies and whatever else. Go back, build your endurance and you should smash it. So goals right now can be very small until you find some friends to run a half marathon with or do a tough mud or whatever it is. You can set each other challenges but just find yourself something. Yeah, and baselining it, right? It's what we're going through now with our tough mudder training. We know it's gonna be happening in April so let's baseline, okay, what's our grip strength? What can we lift? How many chin-ups can we do? How can we or not climb that peg wall? What are we doing tomorrow, boys? Exactly that, baselining on the track. Early morning birthday gift. We have an hour long endurance session tomorrow morning. These boys have no idea what's coming that way. Great. Yeah, they're super excited. It's gonna be freezing. It's gonna be five, three in the morning we're getting down there. So we've agreed to one hour of suck. Yeah, but we have to have this base level because we're gonna replicate the tough mud and the best way we can with the conditions we have and they're gonna work hard at it. It's gonna suck and we're gonna repeat it closer to the race and you'll see how far you've come. And with obviously the measurable side of things this is where we start to build that confidence much like we talk a lot about journaling when you're actually documenting how far you've come even when we had some down runs where we went in, okay, I wanna hit a pace of seven and a half minutes a mile on this and I wanna smash it because the last time I did seven minutes at 45 seconds a mile. And then, you know what, it's not there and I'm at eight minutes a mile. At least when it's measurable and you've continued to measure through the course you allow yourself, okay, that didn't happen the way I wanted it to but look at all these other times where I actually did improve and it powers you through those lulls, those low moments where maybe you are lacking a little bit of that confidence or feeling like, oh, I don't know that I'm gonna be able to do this. Johnny and I had a number of gut check conversations as we got closer to that distance and we're working up to 10 miles. We're like, oh man, this is a lot longer harder than we had anticipated. Yeah, but there's also, I was very strict with you guys like you have to track it on these apps. You have to tell me exactly what your speeds are so we can talk about it. Like Johnny had a great day. Like he had an amazing run. What was it, seven, eight miles was your best one? He had an amazing run. You felt really great about it. Your splits were awesome. For the next couple of weeks you struggled, your shins hurt and then we had to discuss why what was going on, we broke it down and we rebuilt back up. But like, well, I mean, what I enjoyed about that and obviously that day I was upset because I was pretty beat up and those things are gonna happen. That happens in any sort of training. What I loved about it though was having that down week that I knew I could do better and I was a little bit upset with myself but working through it and then rebounding. I mean, that allowed me to feel as if I could accomplish anything. And those things, those transition into every walk of life. So, and for AJ and I, we know that for doing all the training for the Half Marathon, I would say that our productivity had went up at work and our mood at work was- And confidence. And confidence. I think of it as like a glass in front of you and as you're pouring confidence into this physical glass, right? I'm feeling more and more confident with my physical. All of a sudden the confidence is spilling over into other areas of your life. I walked in front of the room more confident. I hung out on vacation feeling a lot better in my body so I was just more confident socially. All these things compounded from setting clear goals, working towards them and seeing that growth along the way. When we were starting our working out and accountability training that Johnny and I were doing together, we didn't have any goals. We just said, hey, we should probably work out. Everyone tells us we need to be working out. Okay, let's find a plan and let's work out. And then that program was 16 weeks. But to be honest, we weren't really measuring. We were just doing it. We're like, oh, I think I did this last week. Let's add some more weight on. Oh, maybe not. I'm not feeling it. And we went through that thing for a few years. Just recycle it and do it again. And eventually it was like- We need something else. Yeah, it was monotonous. It got boring. And then of course, if it gets boring, if it gets monotonous, well then that is certainly not a thing that I want to roll into in the morning. No, because you won't go to bed on time. You'll go out with your friends the night before. You'll drink or whatever. You won't take it seriously the next day. Exactly. And then it snowballs into, I'm not going to go. Absolutely, I couldn't agree with that more. The most important thing about it, I always tell everyone the first thing when it comes to your set goals. But then two, as these guys have, they hold each other accountable. And they show up together to the gym. Like they show up to meet me and I mean, I shout at them, which is fine. But if they're not there, I'm like, where the fuck were you? Like you have to, like, if you go out the night before, your friend wants to go see a movie, you get in at 11 o'clock, you got to be up for work at seven, which means you got to go to the gym at five. And if you've been out to 11, it's not going to happen. But if you know you told your best friend, I'll meet you at the gym at five a.m., you're going to fucking show up. And if you don't show up, that person's going to be pissed at you because now they're on their own. It affects their workouts. Like having someone to work out with, with the same goal is probably my number one, most important thing. Well, that's another reason why I enjoy berries as well. Because each time I go in the days change of what muscle groups are going to be working out, but also the trainers are all different so you don't know what you're rolling into. But even with the same trainer or such as yourself, you don't run the same routine from one week to the next. So it's like, you can't prepare for it or you can't slag it off the night before because you don't know what you're rolling into, much like, well, certainly our workouts with you. We don't- He likes to leave us in the dark entirely. Yeah, and it's, and we come in hopefully at our best because we know it's going to be brutal. Now, we got a question here from James in Northern California. He asks, you and AJ are accountability buddies, Johnny. My friends don't want to work out. How do I find one? And I feel like a lot of us have some negative people in our lives, some people who don't care about these goals, who don't care about achieving the things that we want to achieve. And it can feel lonely at times. Like, oh, I don't have anyone to work out with. I don't have an accountability buddy. But go to the workout class, go to Barry's Bootcamp. The person that you're high-fiving on the treadmill next to you can easily hold you accountable next week. They're into fitness, they're working on themselves. So first thing, so like, say your friends don't want to work out with you and you pay $25 to go to class, whatever it is, that paying that 25 bucks the night before, which you can't cancel within 12 hours, makes you go. So the first thing, like, yes, it's expensive, but it makes you show up. So first off, if you're going to four classes, it's a great way to do like, pay the money the night before, it makes you go, so you don't want to waste the $25. So I mean, yes, we all kind of for the 25 bucks five days a week. So another great way, and we're so lucky now that social media, you can actually create groups where, and you can create challenges inside a group like this week's workouts and we'll do the squat challenge this week. And so you're gonna do like 50 squats on Monday, 60 squats on Tuesday, and you can like post videos yourself doing it and you can find a friend, I'm sorry, it's bullshit, that at some point somewhere in the world you got a friend who likes to work out, whether they be in England or Australia and you're in LA. Like you can take videos of you doing that workout, post it to your friend and be like, hey, here's my workout today, let's see yours. Like you can hold each other accountable no matter where you're at. Yeah, even the Strava app that you were telling us, hey, I want you guys to track your times in. You know, I signed up for the app thinking, oh, it's just a running app. There's so many other competitions on there. There's communities built around all of these activities. And James, listen, sign up for the challenge or theartofcharm.com slash challenge. You're gonna find people in the challenge working on themselves and I'm sure you'll find an accountability. It doesn't necessarily have to be exactly where you live. As Chris said, checking in with people and making sure that you're going through the motions, not just saying, oh, well, I wish I had someone. I wish I could take this step. I hope I could find someone like Johnny. Take that first step, high five your neighbor in class, go online, look for the workout community near you and you're gonna find people who want to improve themselves. A lot of times we have blinders on because we're surrounded by people who don't wanna improve themselves, who don't care about that. And that's a very important thing. And you're going to need to leave that nest, so to speak, because as long as you're in there, those people are not gonna want to see you work out. No, they're gonna bring you down. They're gonna do everything in their power to hold you back so that that finger doesn't get pushed in their face. Yeah. And we've talked about that. Yeah, I mean, we can even say this now. I know Johnny and I have had numerous conversations about this that once we started hitting the workouts hard and we set a goal for ourselves and we had to tell people in our lives, know this personal goal, this fitness goal for me is more important than going out Saturday night. It's more important than hanging out on a random Tuesday and eating a slice of pizza or two. People were turned off by it. There were people in our lives right now that were not as close to you. And yeah, everyone's like, oh, you guys host the art of charm, everyone loves you. There are gonna be people in your lives who do not like you improving, who do not wanna see you out distance them, lap them on the treadmill, kick it up to 2.5 or 3 miles per hour more on the treadmill. They don't wanna see that. They're comfortable in their comfort zone. And all of a sudden they see you taking ahead of them. Well, yeah, they're gonna be looking to pull you back. Yep, I mean, with every studio and every gym in the country, you can always, there's always group fitness classes. Every like planet fitness or something is $10 a month which hopefully everyone can afford. You can, there's group classes in there. So there's no excuse that you don't know the workout. You don't, like there's people in those classes you can go and meet and it takes time, it takes confidence. But if you're in the gym lifting, there's someone else lifting next to you probably on their own with the headphones on. Meet them like, hey, do you wanna meet workout tomorrow together and start making like friends and start making people meet in the gym. It's difficult, not questioning that. To be the first person to pre-stuff out there and initiate contact and work with someone else isn't easy. But if you want to, there's people that who are like-minded enough in the gym who want to workout. Yeah, and science shows that we are interested and attracted to familiarity. So if you are showing up to the gym every single Tuesday for a month, that fifth Tuesday, that person's already seen you lifting, they've already seen you doing your things. They're gonna be warm to you walking over and saying hello. It's not as scary as we make it out to be. Especially if we're coming in the mission of like, hey, I'm gonna push you, you're gonna push me, let's do this. In those situations, it's a lot easier to connect than just completely cold, some random person on the street. I know that I don't get bothered in the gym. We met a lot of great people in Johnny's gym working out because we'd see them every single week the same time. And slowly but surely you start chatting up, oh, what are you guys working on? Chest and back? Yeah, us too. Oh, great, check out this workout. Check out this exercise I'm doing. I got these abs. Yep, so there's a lot of stuff online. So a lot of people say to me, oh, I haven't got time to go to the gym, which is totally fine. I've got parents that, single parents at home that work, go home to the kids. Kids are up, kids got up. I get it. You know, it's funny you should mention that. And it's one thing if you have children, and that is an excuse that I can understand. I have single friends who just have their regular job, don't even have a girlfriend, and they're like, and I mentioned in the gym and they're like, yeah, well, I'll just put that on my list of other things that I gotta do. I'm like, how do you, how can you even say that? It's like- It's crazy. It is, I don't be crazy. I have a kid and it's, it gives me time. Well, and of course, I mean worst, you're setting up how the rest of your day is going to go. Yep. And it shouldn't be the thing that it goes on your list last. It should be the thing that's setting up everything else. It should be going on your list first. So with that though, I mean, it is so important. And if it should be on first and you haven't got the time to go to the gym, there are so many online platforms to learn fitness from. Like I teach it to online platforms and you can sign up. They're very affordable. One's like $7.99 a month. One's $10.99 a month. And you can sign up live and do live workouts and see me live. And I can, I mean, one of the ones I work for is called Victorious. And I can see you log into the class with me and I can see, oh, AJ signed in. What up AJ? And like, I don't see you personally, but I see your name on the screen. Like the other day I was training like 300 people and it was like cycle through and it was around America and they can just log on from anywhere in their living room and do the workout with me live. So I can hold you accountable. And you can Instagram me like, hey Chris, I'll see you at 3.30 Monday for your class. See you there. And then I can be like, oh AJ, you went in class, what happened? Like you couldn't reach out to people no matter where they're at. There's so many different online platforms and you can't get to the gym. There's no excuse to not work out. Well, I was left. There was, it was one of the weeks when you told me to make sure I got in a day of stretching. And how did that go? And I, well, I just remember being really busy. So I just threw on a yoga class on YouTube and followed it. It was like, yeah, just leaving the house. You don't need, you know, hold yourself accountable and figure out what works best and get it done. And accountability, we've had a whole episode on this but the power of accountability to feeling you to reach your goals and making sure that in those moments where maybe you don't feel like doing it, there's someone else there being like, hey, you promised to me you're gonna do it. Started with Amy, worked with Johnny, working out. Hey, I gotta do this. Now kick it up another level and getting a coach. And this is really, in my mind, the difference between the group setting and the personal accountability is, you know, when it came to Johnny, there's only so much yelling that I can do it. Johnny, hey, you can do more. We can do this. As a friend, you know, there's a limit to that. And he's just like, dude, cool it, I'm done. Like, it's good. When you're paying someone to coach you, there's another level of honesty that goes along with it that friends can't have. And on top of that, there's another layer of competition that comes out of it. Like, yeah, Johnny and I are competitive but when someone's in my ear yelling at me that I could do more, I can push harder, I can run faster. Well, I wanna prove that person wrong. Absolutely. So when we're looking at setting goals, that's fantastic. If you have the willpower, we're gonna talk about habit building next month as a theme, then obviously we're gonna start working towards those goals, but sometimes people need an extra boost. They did a little extra more. And we've talked a lot about top performers and how we're seeing it time and time again in all areas of life, they're getting coaching, whether it's social skills, whether it's physical fitness, whether it's public speaking, whether it's listening, there are coaches for everything. And again, digital coaches as well. Doesn't necessarily have to be your $300 an hour personal trainer in person yelling at you, but there's a coach somewhere online who's gonna push you beyond what you think is possible. Totally agree. So enough with the excuses. I know David Goggins told us all about what he thinks about excuses, but we feel the same way. You're creating your own blocks. If you tell yourself, I haven't got time to go to the gym today, that's an excuse. I bet you at some point in that day you sat on the sofa, watched some crappy TV show for half an hour. You could do a circuit in front of your living room, watching TV, you'd be doing abs and a push-up routine. You can be doing something. You can move your body in some capacity. At some point, everyone has half an hour in that day. Like, it's an excuse that I just didn't have time today. Now, let's talk about another theme that we see a lot and hear a lot is, that's a great Chris, you're an athlete. You were born an athlete, you have the athlete gene, I'm not an athlete. It's not even something that I can compare myself to. And we see, obviously, with social media, everyone's highlight reel. We see all these people who've been Photoshopped to look ridiculously good. And it can be difficult for an outsider who's like, well, that's just not me. That's Chris. Chris is blessed with the confidence and the athletic ability. Okay, so those pictures online that you see, as you said, AJ, they're Photoshopped. They're taking in the best lights. It's pretty discouraging when you see, all you see these perfect bodies and these perfect workouts. Because that photo isn't real life. Like I've done photographs online where they're taken 30 seconds apart and you see me unflexed in unflattering lighting. And I'm still in shape, of course, but I don't look like I'm jacked out. I then rotate my body a certain way, filter a certain way, have the sun bleeding down. And like, now I've got a 12 pack. So what you see online isn't real life. So first off, it's so, I mean those goals that you set yourself shouldn't be compared to what you see online. Because it is unreal. I mean, I've done it sometimes. I've compared myself to those people. I'm like, I'm meant to be in this amazing shape. And part of my industry is to look a certain way. Cause then I get hired by TV shows and magazines to do workouts. And it's tough because like, I look at those. I'm like, I'm not in that shape, but the front government's health, the guy has been photoshopped the crap out of. Like he's been shined up with some oil and he looks perfect. It's like, so don't look at those photos and be so discouraged, right? And again, just accept yourself for where you are. Like comparison is tough. Like we always look at someone else like, I want to be like the person. Like look at yourself and like set your goals from where you're at in day one. And then on day three, you're going to move a little bit faster. You're going to be doing a little bit stronger. You don't need to compare yourself to where someone else is at their journey. It's totally different than your journey. Your journey started the day you decided to start and then just keep on getting better from there rather than looking at someone else who's been training every day for 12 years and it's been their life and it's all they've done. Like you've been a moment of three with whatever and your day one starts the day you started. So don't look at someone else and be like, that's so much further in front of me. They are because they've been training for it for so much longer. And we've all had those moments where we don't feel confident, where you feel out of shape, where you didn't hit your goals, where we didn't hit our goals, where we felt, oh man, I'm 30 seconds behind the pace on this mile that I should be. What the heck's wrong with me? That's normal. That's a normal part of the process. You're not alone in feeling that way. And we talked to Dr. Steven Hayes earlier this month about this. The people who are always beaming with confidence, they're the ones running around in the clown suit. They're not being honest with themselves and it's gonna catch up with them later. So this artificial Photoshop, social media world, but then also just the people who try to portray this level of confidence that's almost superhuman, it's just not real. It's not reality. People are gonna have ups and downs. People are gonna feel confident in their results. People are gonna feel unconfident in their results from time to time. Totally. We all have good and bad days. I have to put on a monkey suit at my work. If I come teach class and I have 50 people rolling in it and I'm grumpy and sad that day, it doesn't work for anybody. So yeah, my class is coming to my classes and I have to be happy. I have to be positive. And for that hour and I'm in class, no matter what's going on personally, I have to show up for them. We all have ups and downs. We all have good and bad days. I mean, I go through blocks where I don't feel like I can work out. I'm tired, I'm run down, so I don't. Like, we all have those days. Like, I took two days off this week. I was like, man, should I work out? Probably do I want to? No, so I didn't. Like, it's okay. Like, yes, consistency is key. But again, listen to your body. Be your own way you're at in that moment and then just work hard or you can work hard. Show up when you can show up. But like, we all have ups and downs. We all have good and bad days. The perfect fitness model on the screen is fucking felt like shit some days. Well, it goes a lot to say for when you're not filling it to go through the motions, to get it done anyway, to build consistency, that's what discipline is. Whether or not you feel it, that you're gonna get up. And for myself, I mean, there is days where I wake up before my alarm and I couldn't go back to sleep if I tried and I am wired beyond belief to get the days forward. Just so excited to come see me. Absolutely. And then there's days where I wake up and I'm like, ah, fuck, Chris, I'm not in the mood for this. Again, that's the thing. It circles back to accountability. Having someone, like on those days where you're bad and you said you just gotta be consistent and get up and do it. If you have someone who's gonna meet you at the gym at 7 a.m. and you've told them you're gonna get there and it's six o'clock and you're like, oh, shit, I don't wanna go. You're gonna go, because if you don't go, it lets down your training partner. Of course. So it's the accountability. It circles back to having someone, as I said, is my number one key point is to find someone you can really work with, whether it's online or it's Skyping them in or it's meeting them at the gym or it's going to a class. Like having someone hold you accountable on those days where you are having a shitty day and you do wanna phone in or you do wanna quit, like they're gonna hold you to it. Well, you know, it's something that we were talking about yesterday and it was a point that was taken from the Johan Hari interview with Sam Harris where if I got this correct, they were paraphrased, but he mentioned about how there was a poll done where people say from a decade to 20 years ago, if you ask them, how many people do they have that they could count on for in a time of crisis or that consider good friends? And yeah, they would say with about a handful, maybe five, that's good. On average, yeah. On average. And they, now polling those people today, it is now zero. No. Yeah. The most common answer is zero. The most common answer. And I feel very lucky. Like three, three or four. Absolutely. And what does that say about our society where, and I think that a lot of that has to be on you yourself of not making those connections and not having those people in your life. That's not because everyone sucks. That's because you haven't put yourself out there to be vulnerable, to wanna and help others to also have that same thing that helped be returned to you. I mean, that is, that's very important. Yeah. I mean, I hear it all the time. Like, oh, LA is such a hard place to date. And I'm like, then you're not trying. Yeah. Like, you're not putting yourself in the situations to meet people, to go at it. You're hiding at home, watching TV at home, you're not petering yourself. Or you're just making blanket negative judgments about people, writing people off before they even have an opportunity. Right? And that's in large part overseeing with this, this highlight reel, this comparison and this total lack of vulnerability. Right? No one's going online and posting there. Oh, I had four Bobo's abs photo. You're posting the, I haven't eaten in two days photo. I promise it was good for you everyone. Bobo's is good for you. So in those moments, right? It's very hard then to wanna be vulnerable, to wanna put yourself out there. We had a question here from Brian Fleet. He says, it just seems whenever I take a step forward, I take two steps back. What can I do to break this cycle? My confidence has been shaken and I'm just not sure how to get started yet again. I mean, that could be this. That's the same in any part of life. Like you're at work, you have a good meeting and then you go away from your, you step out of the meeting and you have shit hit your desk and you feel like you're drowning, you're at work. Like it's in every situation, like you're always gonna have an experience of doing well and then nobody's gonna go perfectly. There is really, I mean, it's a tough one to like tell yourself, I'm not gonna get better. I'm going backwards every time I work out for like a day and then on two days and they eat bad and can't work out the next three days. I've gone backwards two steps. Like again, create good patterns, good balance. Don't let yourself, I mean, again, telling yourself I haven't got time for three days to not work out is an excuse. So we're talking on fitness levels. So you take one step forward, you have a really great week of training and then you eat really well for a week and like I had a really good experience and then you eat crap for the rest of the next week. And then now you're taking two steps back as you've eaten badly. Eating badly was a choice. No one forced that burger and fries in your face. That was a choice. You could have put it down and had a salad. Why live above Shake Shack? So yeah, they put it in front of my face. They pipe it into your building actually, the smells. But like, so the two steps back, I mean, one, there's never really a step back. Failure doesn't exist in my mind. Well, I think you just said there is no step back. It's what you're focused on, right? If you're always focusing on the things that you've messed up or the mistakes that you've made or you haven't achieved. Yeah, and you're just, then you're always gonna see them. So it's always gonna seem like, oh yeah, well I've made these efforts but oh here comes all the garbage. Because that's what you're focused on. And we have to make sure that our perspective is focused on the positives. If you focus on the negatives, that's what you're gonna get. Every day is going to suck. Every day is gonna show you how worthless you are. And that is, once again, that's a choice on you. And I remember getting in the self development. One of the very first ideas that I learned that even kind of blew my mind was that how I saw my day or how happy I was was on me. And the first time I ever heard that, I was like, well, wait a minute. And then I had to face that fact. No, then why am I gonna go into every day looking at it terribly? So by changing it, and it was an instant shift. And that's for everybody. And speaking of that, there was an actual, my neighbor, he was commending me about how much AJ and I had been working out. And he goes, yeah, I wish working out worked for me like that, it has the opposite effect. Like, where he's the one guy in all the world where working out doesn't work, right? It's mind blowing what people will come up with and believe in order to get out of something they just don't wanna do. Well, there's a level, as we said at the beginning of this episode of baselining. You gotta start somewhere, document it. This is my starting point. And then to your point, shifting that focus, it's not any steps backwards. You look at where you placed the marker. Okay, you had a step forward, maybe you did a little better. And then you realize, hey, I gotta celebrate those small victories along the way. Not everything is going to be completing a half marathon. Not everything in life is gonna be running across the finish line. There's gonna be miles on that half marathon that are below your pace, that you're like, I can't believe I'm doing this. This sucks. So this is why you have that one end goal of the half marathon, you guys. But I gave you these short-term goals. I didn't say we're gonna go and run one 45-year-half marathon and go do it. We had a five mile race. We had a six mile, we had a seven mile, we had an eight mile. So along the way, you had these smaller goals. So you can't just give yourself one. So my goal when I was young was to win Olympic gold medal. It didn't happen. But throughout my training, you always run a certain time at this meeting and then run for England in this meeting. And then you set challenge of yourself to get to the Commonwealth Games, then get to the European Championships, then get to the World Championships. And there's always different stages to get your end goal. So if you set small goals along the way that you could achieve and are achievable, because you're not gonna wake up and be the Olympic champion. You're gonna wake up and work hard to get to the next step. So you worked hard to run the best you can for that five mile in under eight minute mile pace. And then it was a 750. Then it was a 750. Then it was a 745. Then it was a 730. Like you worked slowly down. You didn't just wake up and be at 730 pace. Well, I was gonna say, if this is somebody who's gonna be focused on the negative all the time, it's also gonna make them much more difficult to work with, to find an accountability because who wants to be accountability if the guy is always looking for the negative on the day and the workout and what's going on in that moment. And in fact, it's not only an accountability but you have someone to show up for it, somebody to cheer on. Yeah, and I think, listen, part of it is first, instead of setting these crazy goals, right? Find the one thing that actually gets you excited, that gets you ramped up. The idea of completing a half marathon for me after saying I hate running on the treadmill. I hate running in berries. It actually got me excited. It was like, wait a second. I'm actually running at Chris's medium speeds in class. I feel like I'm in great shape now in terms of cardio. What can I do to push myself further? I didn't just start day one in berries and go, okay, now I wanna run a half marathon. So figure out what your jam is, what you're really excited about and then those steps backwards don't feel like steps backwards. They don't feel like you haven't won anything. Exactly. And it's not an all or none situation. We talk a lot about journaling and Strava and tracking our stuff was also journaling in a way. It was showing us these runs. And when I had that bad run and I beat myself up, I went in the app and I was like, oh, but wait a second. I had my PR on this mile and the app does a great job of breaking it into small victories. Even if the total time, let's say I didn't hit the 40 minutes that Chris was asking for, oh, the app gave me a gold medal because on this half mile stretch, that was my best PR in the app. So the idea of small chunking it and celebrating the small victories instead of viewing everything as a finish line that you have to celebrate can allow you to look beyond some of those setbacks that we have, which is natural. We got a question here from Emily Smith. She says, is resilience a trait you're born with or is it something that we can develop? And how do you develop that resilience when strong self doubt or lack of confidence gets in the way of your growth? Well, that's a big question. I mean, yes, it's a learned skill. I don't think anyone's born super confident and super, super happy the entire time. It is very situational. I get days where I'm fucking down on myself. I get up days, I work brutal hours and I don't get my workouts in and I feel like crap, I don't eat right and I get run down and I'm like, oh, it's a tough day. And then it's a choice to sit in that position. And as you said, like to be positive about it. But you've got to learn to get back up and keep moving forwards from any setbacks, any two step backwards that you feel you've had. Like there's the stepping points that are learning. You're learning from those mistakes. You're learning from those so-called failures. And then it's an experience and you get better from the experience and move forwards again. You don't ever, you don't ever fail. Like this, like to be resilient, like you have to just learn from it and move forwards and take the positive from it and just learn. You don't ever, you don't ever fail. It's exactly shifting your focus, number one. And I think even the most resilient people in the world whether it was David Goggins or Jaco Willick will tell you the same thing. They don't look at themselves as oh, I'm resilient and it's a trait that I turn on. They shift their view. So instead of looking at all of the self-doubt, all of the negative thoughts that are swirling, they give themselves some compassion and say, I'm gonna do better tomorrow. I'm gonna show up tomorrow. I'm gonna make sure that I foam roll. I'm gonna make sure that I ice my legs and I'm gonna make sure that I hit that next run. How's Austin going, Johnny? Yeah. I think it's in his cup. I don't know that it's on his leg, but it's... We could try a lot of that. You know, it's... Resiliency is an interesting thing. You know, there's this idea that we're gonna be able to pick the genes and traits that are for our children like the whole super person, right? And this is going into the future and I was just reading some stuff about how actually ridiculously complicated that is because there's like so many set millions of switches that are gonna need to be turned on and off. And so you're not... If you turn on these switches, then these switches are not going to be going on. So this whole idea of picking out all the positives is difficult even for ourselves. So resiliency is something that's going to need to be built, just like confidence, just like creativity, just like your fitness, your physicality. So, you know, what are you willing to do? What are the things you want to change by yourself? And what is the plans that you're putting forward to start to better yourself? If we were born perfect, we wouldn't be talking about this on this show. And even Jesse Itzler, one of our guests this year, he talked about building your life resume. We talk about rebuilding that confidence. We talk about building resiliency. It's tackling new things. It's challenging yourself. I never thought I'd be running a race. If you had surveyed me two years ago, let alone running a half marathon, but if you continue to push that edge to find something else that excites you and go after it and put full effort behind it, then over time, you're going to have all these victories that add up to a mindset now of, well, I can take on that next challenge. I'm not worried about those two steps back. There were no steps back. Yep. I mean, it's one of those, there are no failures in life. The lessons learned. I'm not the biggest critic. I expect the most out of myself, but if I actually take a step back on all things I have achieved, not what I've not yet achieved, am I the world's most known best trainer? No. But do I want to seem to be this go-to for strength and conditioning and for running, of course? I'm not there yet, but if I sit in harp on the fact that I'm not there, I'm going to forget the fact that all these I have achieved are resilience. We all have failures. We all have stuff that doesn't go our way. We don't get certain jobs. We get rejected by a boy or a girl, whoever. And you learn from it, you grow stronger and you feel your arm with it and you move forwards. If you sit and dwell and suffer from it, then it's just going to suck. Well, I think technology is certainly we rail on technology and on the show. In fact, I just deleted Facebook and Facebook Messenger off my phone. I'm just tired of it, but all those things are putting you in a position where you're measuring yourself to people. It's just the facts that they're putting up and that's all you see. Let's think about this. Ten years ago, we were not walking around with these numbers above everyone's head, number of followers and likes, and every way that we're being quantified digitally right now. And very easily, if I go to your Twitter, the quantification going on, we're not wired to handle all of that data. And it's constantly being forced in front of you. As we were saying earlier, be better than yourself yesterday. Focus on where you were and where you want to get to and just make that the goal when we sit there and try to compare ourselves to one another and we go, Oh, well, Johnny's resilient. I want to get that. I want to get what Johnny has. Well, you can't make that comparison because through the journey, there's going to be ups and downs really how resilience is built. So that means, okay, I got to go through more downs. How are you going to go through more downs? Well, challenge yourself. Set yourself up so that you're not going to run at a pace that you think you can. You're not going to be able to swing a golf club as hard as you'd like. You're not going to be able to do something the first time. But when you start stacking up those small victories, those small wins, now we start building that resilience that we're looking for. Well, and all those numbers, it's vanity metrics. Absolutely nothing. Unless you give that meaning. And for myself, as somebody who's worked in the music business and who really enjoys the art and has performed for decades, I love going to shows and there's a lot of music that I'll go to and I might be one of 15 people in the room and I am just loving it. Does that make this band terrible because they've only able to draw 15 people? It's not about those vanity numbers. Some of the most amazing performances I've ever seen was me and my girlfriend sitting in the room at the time and looking at each other going is this really going on? How is anyone missing this? That performance was the perfect time in the perfect place and there was no one else there to see it and it was special to us, but it matters. Not the number of followers that that that band has or the number of units that record has sold and that needs that same thing it needs to be going through of well just because this person has this many followers on Facebook doesn't make them right it doesn't make them more important. That's one of the biggest paits in the world. Like I've seen these girls with like 3 million followers on social media and she's doing a squat with a watermelon and like she has this most perfect perfect body and I'm like you're smoking crack like this is not how she gets this perfect body and she's like because she has 3 million followers and I was like oh my god you're so amazing this is so perfect I'm going to do the same thing what? It's mind blowing. It bugs the fuck out of me. Well this is I mean and we're exposing very impressionable young people to these these messages that need to be they need to be fixed or at least they need to understand it just because of these vanity metrics does not make the things that they're doing right or you're supposed to be doing them or listening to these people and taking it as gospel Those followers give them weight though having someone be validated by so many people makes others feel like oh my god they must be doing it correctly which is so it's tough to make that divide Yeah and I think that's what this month's theme has shown us. We've had famous therapist Dr. Steven Hazon, ultra marathoner David Goggins on, Chris who's been kicking our ass training every single one of us in these conversations has expressed self doubt every single one of us has taken two three steps back and picked ourselves back up reassess the goals and continued to work towards those goals and a lot of what we're talking about here with rebuilding confidence is a recognition that hey I could take a lesson from this I can take a lesson from this setback and I can reorient myself and move in the right direction to wrap this up obviously we've had some fun in the gym some not so much fun yeah I've enjoyed every second I know you've enjoyed it I want to give you an opportunity to share a little bit of insight into me and Johnny because I know a lot of our listeners are wondering what it's like to coach both of us yeah so take it away what what have you noticed it from our insubordination I mean both so different personality wise I mean I'll be very honest about it like I instantly was drawn to AJ's a little bit more we're more of the similar people like we come from like a more methodical background it felt like and I could relate very quickly Johnny was like a wild cracker I was like what am I gonna do with this one like he came in the gym no form all over the place drunk smoking the night before and I was like oh my god I'm gonna like it was such a mess I like to have someone be somewhat with their shit together AJ and Johnny just come in with like nothing and I was like these boys should never train together ever and so I had to try to make their workouts similarly the same workouts we're trained to get is harder in two different sessions have the same goals and work at the same time but not demoralize Johnny because he was so far behind where AJ was at the time both form weight wise aerobic capacity like and then you could also see him getting so frustrated with it you really stunned like get angry with the workout angry with me like there were days where I would push you guys oh yeah of course to the brink and to the point where AJ was like looking at me like oh my god he's gonna flip out literally Johnny's gonna punch me and storm out this year I'm never gonna see him again and those days I'm like oh you did such a good job Johnny you didn't really I'm so proud of you amazing like it's it's certainly where those are the days where the most growth is happening right you're certainly pushed to be on you know I was pushed beyond what I was comfortable with and pushed to emotionally and physically of frustrating but knowing that this is this is what I signed up for this is why I'm here they've been days that I thought you weren't gonna come back for sure I mean I would I would ask him to ice his shins every day because his shins splints during the training I was like you've got to sit in a bucket of ice cold water at least once or twice a week never happened I think he drank an ice water once great he was like I'm still hurting Chris like the ice shins he was like no and I was like well then fuck off what the fuck are you doing so a little insubordination anything in terms of the challenges put in front of us what you're excited for us to face with this tough mudder I mean you both worked so hard with the race like he did take direction very well you were both very committed to it which was super commendable what was nice about the race was we could actually track our miles track our times very easily so now we're in a functional training phase where it's like a lot of body weight stuff I'm not sure you guys done tough mudders but there's like you crawl through mud you pull yourself up over walls you swim through the way through lakes like there's some gnarly stuff going on like you have a barbed wire fence you gotta crawl under an army crawl through stuff and like do laps and burpees and like it's a little bit of everything so what's tough about this one it's less measurable you can't really like analyze exactly we can we don't know what's gonna be on these courses we don't know if the wall's gonna be 7 feet or 12 feet it's gonna be a rope to climb up or it's gonna have to pull ourselves up we gotta use each other so we've gotta challenge ourselves in a very different way so just how these boys attacked the training for the marathon I can't imagine they're gonna attack this one the same honestly this is more fun like there'll be I mean we have we actually trained in a very sort of functional training gym do you post that video of you guys the other day it'll be going up on our social you'll be tracking along I'm sure you guys have seen Ninja Warrior before there's a piece of apparatus where you have these pegs and you just pull yourself up this wall you gotta stick these pegs in pull yourself up using upper body strength and keep going up this wall so I showed him how it was done struggled but it's still doable and then Johnny stepped up and couldn't even get one pug peg out of the wall and into the next one he just fell down like 17 times he was like fuck this and throw it down um so that I will I will climb that goddamn wall there's little things we can measure we can practice this against but it's gonna be it's gonna be fun training it's gonna be a lot of hard work you're gonna bleed at some point your hands for sure cause there's a lot of grip strength there's a lot of weight lifting and it's gonna be a challenge but it'll be fun I'm looking forward to it I mean we've already started it's already been fun and you know of course when we started the training it was certainly nothing that I've ever done before and we were laughing about that of doing workouts that were well beyond anything that we've ever done and the idea of having to become somebody who's able to do those things which makes you have to change as a person to perform those tasks and that is the ultimate in knowing that you're getting better when you physically have to alter yourself to be able to do something in the past that you weren't able to do which is habits you gotta show up you gotta repeat repeat and you'll get better and stronger and that's the power of a good coach I mean there were moments where you had to yell and scream at us to get us across the finish line there were moments where you had to pat us on the back and say hey you guys smashed it today great workout because you knew that we were teetering and that's exactly why you get a coach to be pushed beyond the limits and finding the right coach is very difficult and we had a question earlier about this finding the right coach I think for me going into it I'll break down exactly what I did I was going to Barry's and I was testing out a number of the trainers at Barry's some I just did not jive with at all anything from music to the way that they were handling the workout and yelling in class but I always left your class feeling like I got my money's worth and saw that your body type was similar enough that I'm like okay if I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna put my mind to it and wanna be pushed then I wanna take it beyond what I'm getting in this class I think Chris is the guy to do that then in working out with you exactly that it was the support when I needed it but it was also the stick when I needed it like no you have more like why are you quitting what's wrong with you calling me out on that and of course there's gonna be moments where you want to quit there's gonna be moments where you're like my hands are bleeding my legs are sore my shins are shot this sucks but as you've oriented yourself to that goal you have that just in the foreground of like hey man I'm gonna run these 13.1 miles this is gonna be pretty awesome when it's done and now okay let's reorient on another goal okay this goal is Tough Mudder so those who are listening if you wanna join us in Southern California it's April 6 we're building out a Tough Mudder team we're gonna open it up applications to our audience I know some of you have already done a Tough Mudder if you wanna give us some advice as well you can hit us up a.j.attheartofcharm.com you can find us on social media at The Art of Charm we're gonna be sharing some more of our training sessions with Chris and you'll get a few laughs hopefully you'll see some of our failures as well as some of our successes Chris where can the audience find more about your workouts I know you have a treadmill series that kicks your ass online so part of my stuff online I want to create content because obviously I live in LA people don't know where they live so I want to make sure my workout is accessible to everybody so I created a treadmill series so it's really for all different abilities yes sometimes you go the speeds are too fast for you but it's an online program called TheTreadSeries.com and it's a 30 minute hit workout on the treadmill it's interval training and I guide you through basically like some of the mild challenges some of them are speed workouts but it gives you structure so if you are in the gym and you want to hit cardio that day and you have like the 5.0 in the treadmill is boring as fuck like just running and doing nothing for half an hour it doesn't do anything for you anyway so I created a program where you can really work hard get a great sweat burn 500 calories in 30 minutes which is great and you can really push your body and you can track how well you're doing because so you do one of the episodes and you're at beginner speeds and then 3 weeks later you're half a point above beginner not quite intermediate yet so you can see how fast you're improving so there's that which is great so it's called TheTreadSeries and I know for you guys I've done a discount for this series it's like $25 series but with the code which is going to be what charm I think it is charm you'll get 20% off it's super fun you run with all kinds of celebrities there's some comics on there like it's a fun one to work out with there's an over 50's episode so really there's a pregnancy episode I really want to make sure there's a little bit for everybody and it's not just like super athletes running so there's that I work for two weightlifting companies one's called Victorious and one's called BodyRock they're both online like online training programs where you can sign up for a monthly fee it's pretty nominal it's like as I said it's like $10 and you can sign in for these classes you just sweat with me and you just we lift weights in your comfort zone living room do it at the gym like on demand you can do it as and where you want so I'm on Victorious twice a week BodyRock I'd pop it out of I haven't been there for a couple months now but like all my series are in something called SweatFlix and you can find my series there and there's a ton of great footage it just gives you some of the follow and some guidance like there's nothing worse than going to the gym and not knowing what to do like not strength training base like for cardio lifting you have those two series there I always have stuff on social media my Instagram is ctywalker ctywalker always got workouts on there I'm happy to answer questions and have you guys check in yeah if you want to see the workouts that Johnny and I are doing and take part yourselves you can find Chris there thank you so much for stopping by Chris sharing some of our workout journeys with you and we're excited to post up the next challenge