 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Oh, here we are, we are. We are slowly putting our headphones on, getting your mics up to our face. These are getting interesting. We're done texting, and we are here at the Spartan World Championship 2017, excited to do something. I think we would have knocked out 14 interviews or so in four days. Oh, at least. Something crazy. Fire. Something crazy. We did something a little special for you guys today. We've never done this where we actually have combined two short interviews. So they're about, what, 20, 30 minutes a piece? It's a one-two punch. You get to hear two very interesting individuals. We have Yemeni Mesa from Now Foods, or excuse me, No Foods. I always pronounce that wrong. They're a grain-free food company or product, so they make those cookies that we actually got some samples of them. Yeah, they're non-GMO, grain, gluten-free, low glycemic index alternatives to traditional grain-based food. They're basically really delicious treats that are alternatives to the not-as-healthy delicious treats. They're addressed in the junk food market in a different way. We have a great conversation with them. We talked to them about engineering food so that it tastes incredible and what that means and fighting fire with fire when we're talking about the food industry. We talk about his past and bodybuilding. It's a really interesting episode. This was really interesting because we weren't ready for it. They were all over the place with the different interviews. He wasn't ready for us either. We sat down. You guys get a chance to hear an interview. We did not even know who he was. He sits down at the desk. We put our headphones on and you guys actually get to listen to this conversation go from there. It was interesting because... We're like, who are you? Describe yourself. They make cookies. We got to thank us guy and talking about waffles and stuff like that, but I thought he handled himself extremely well. We asked him some tough questions. Yeah. Very smart guy. Very, very smart guy. Yeah. He had some history with Tom Billu. He worked with Quest. He was a part of their run to a billion-dollar company and then he also was part of Nestle. So the guys got some pretty cool history. And I'm not going to lie, the no-foods cookie that they gave us because we all got these bags because we were one of the official podcasts there or whatever. And in the bags are samples and stuff and these cookies were really good. They're almost too good. Might have had something to do with those 40 grams of fat and 30 grams of carbohydrates, but I'm not sure. Yeah. You guys will have to check them out yourself. Oh, it's definitely a meal. The calories there. Yeah. Exactly. Right. But a much better alternative than others. But you get to hear us talk about that. You guys can also look into them at nofoods.com that's spelled K-N-O-W foods dot com. So that's the first one. Then we talk to what I think is my long lost relative. Your brother? Your cousin maybe. What's the relationship then? Joe DiStefano, he's the co-founder of Spartan Coaching. This is the world's first international obstacle course race training certification program. Now I'm not really related to him. I said that because his last name is the same as mine. Spell just like you. Which is rare. From the same area of the world. Yeah. Exactly. Very, very smart guy. I didn't even realize that they had a certification course, but they do. He helped put it together and he talks about how they put it together and how other certifications work in this particular market. Really interesting background. He has very interesting. Here's one of the interesting things about this is I did not know this, but when you put a certification course together, let's say you're a business and you want to certify trainers, one of the things that they tell you to do is to design a test, a testing system that has at least a 90% pass rate. Because if it goes below that, you lose money. People don't want to take your certification. The Spartan coaching certification program totally different. Joe DiStefano and Joe DiCena are like, no, the people who pass this need to be bad asses. So their pass rate is something like 50%. So if you get the certification and you have to be certified. I love that mentality. Yeah. So if you get this certification, you're probably a bad ass. So we talked to him about how they design it, what it looks like and why they made. One of the things too that we talked a little bit about programming is we'll hear that in here and we were talking about a lot of the bad programming out there and we talk about, we encourage people to go through all of our programs, which would be our Maps Superbundle, where it's over nine months worth of programming. And you definitely, you can hear it in the conversation where as far as our philosophies of training and periodization and all that, right on the same page. So I have a lot of respect for this guy. I think that you guys will enjoy these interviews. You will. And in other words, with the Superbundle, when Adam says over nine months of exercise programming, what that literally means is from day one till in reality, it's almost the years worth of exercise programming until the end, you have everything programmed out for you. The workouts, the phases, whether you're using trigger sessions or focus sessions or mobility sessions or AMP sessions, it's all planned out for you. Each month looks different. Each phase is different. The workouts change. Your body progresses the entire time. It's really the only, I don't know of any other program, fitness program online that plans out a workout that long and progresses you through different forms of education. There's that many different adaptations. It's incredible. There's nothing else like it. The Superbundle is available at mindpumpmedia.com. So without any further ado, here we are talking to Yemini Mesa from No Foods and Joe DiStefano from Spartan. We're recording live from the Lake Tahoe at the Spartan Up Podfest, part of the 2017 Spartan Race World Championships. Where was Yemini Mesa from No Foods? How'd you get your name, Yemini, by the way, because you said there's an interesting store, so I got to ask him. Yeah, people typically assume it's something to do with where I'm from or something like that. I am from Columbia, South America, but there's nobody down there named Yemini. I had hippie parents. I was born in Gemini, and they named me Gemini, which is how they actually pronounce it. It's with a Y in Spanish. My sister's a Sagittarius, they call her Saji, and their names are Ruth and George. So just got a funky name, that's all. Excellent. So tell us a little bit about No Foods. What do you guys stand for? What do you do? What's the business all about? No Foods is an amazing company. I'm really stoked to be a part of it, joined the team less than a year ago, and the company's less than a year old. It's a startup that's tackling what a few companies have started to do recently, which is the growing junk food category that comprises most of the calories that people consume nowadays. For years, we've been telling people, eat less, exercise more, and that only works but for an narrow band of people, perhaps like you guys, like in myself, we like to work out or we're disciplined, it's kind of like something that we're into, but most people, it's just not their thing. And so asking them to just eat less, exercise more, it's not been working. And I think that the only real solution to something like this is to give people what they want to eat, but just have it make it tasty, make it something that they actually enjoy eating. And for that to actually work, you've got to rival the true junk food counterparts. So this is a competence on a mission to bring bread back on the table for those who are no longer eating bread, or for those who are and it's doing its damage, but it'll taste like real bread in all its forms. So you're trying to basically fight fire with fire, make something taste good that's healthy. So let's talk about the healthy part. What makes your foods healthy? What are the sources and? Sure. So one of the things that we believe is causing a lot of the health conditions that people are dealing with today is from diabetes to type three diabetes, which is Alzheimer's and a whole other metabolic disorders is the overconsumption of simple carbohydrates, gluten, and grains. And so unfortunately, some of these foods are the tastiest foods of all. They're the ones that we most enjoy eating. So it's very difficult to just give up these foods. We are bringing foods to market that taste like those things. For example, one of our products is a waffle. Basically, if you were to eat a waffle, it's made out of grains and gluten and very simple carbohydrates. So after you eat a waffle, you have a very intense metabolic response. You have a big insulin spike and a big insulin and a big blood sugar drop. And that causes all sorts of problems that you end up having to deal with throughout the day. Our waffle is not made out of simple carbs or grains or sugar. It's made out of protein, fibers and healthy fats. So when you eat a waffle, you have no metabolic response, yet it tastes amazing. So if you love waffles and you don't want to give up waffles in your life, you don't have something you can replace them with. That's one of many products that we have. And so you guys have been around, you've said for just less than a year or right around, how's it been growing? It's been amazing. So there's a huge reception for products like this. If you could imagine, there's a lot of people already who have given up gluten as part of their paleo diet, for example. There's a lot of people who have given up carbs as part of their keto diet. And so when we bring products to market that deliver amazing taste without grains, without gluten and without all the carbs, you can imagine how well received it is. So it's been growing amazing. We started just on our website initially. We then ventured into Amazon and now we're going into retail. And it's been going great. And do you have just a couple staple foods or do you guys have like a whole grocery list? I mean, how many foods are you dealing with right now? We have a broad product assortment. It's over 20 different products right now. So we have everything from like the waffles that I just mentioned to an amazing chocolate chip cookie that we recently launched. And let me tell you, it's like a soft baked chocolate chip cookie, but it only has four grams of net carbs for like a really big cookie. So really, that's the one we got. How do you do that? It sounds like magic. Yeah, it's a big cookie. I think it's a 400 calorie cookie. So it's like a meal right there. Yeah, so it's good you mentioned that because not only is it 400 calories, there's 32 grams of fat in this cookie. So a lot of people when they first see that are scared. There's still a lot of people thinking that low fat is the way to go. And a low fat diet is a healthy diet as it turns out is quite the opposite. It's a combination of a high fat diet and carbs that leads to a lot of these problems. But when you have very low carbs and good healthy fats, you end up having a very healthy meal. But to answer your question, how do we do it and is there magic? It's really fascinating. Right now it's it's a good time because there's a lot of effort being put into food innovation. And there's a lot of cool new ingredients that are hitting the market. And one of those happens to be a sugar called allulose, which we use in our product. There's another company out there called Quest Nutrition. They use it in their bars. Allulose happens to be an actual sugar. It's a naturally occurring sugar that's found in nature. Fruits like dates and raisins. But it's a very unique sugar in that different from normal sugar in two ways. One, it's got a fraction of the calories. So sugar would have four calories per gram. This has 0.4. So one tenth of calories that normal sugar per gram per gram. What is the rest of it fiber? No, it just doesn't have that many calories per gram. Just like, you know, fat has nine calories. Right. This particular type of sugar only has 0.4. And then even more exciting than that, it has no metabolic response. So when you eat allulose, you get no blood sugar spike. In fact, a lot of people get some sort of a blood sugar drop. Now, where do they come up with that? Because that's fascinating to me because, you know. Yeah, what's the test group? Because the carbohydrate by nature is four grams. Well, not only that, but we've also, you know, we're finding out now, too, that even what we used to think about the glycemic index is kind of crazy because we're seeing that some people respond to a cookie or a sugar bomb one way. And then another another person eats that and has a total different response. Very true. Have you seen some of the studies that they've done with these glucose, these continual glucose monitors? Yeah. Fascinating stuff where you'll have somebody will eat like a macadamia nut and have a spike in insulin. And they think it might be some kind of an immune, maybe an immune response. So there's that individual variance. You mentioned several times like gluten free. Like, what is the problem with gluten? Why should people? Why do you think people should avoid it? Now, I do know that lots of autoimmune issues and lots of people have reactions to gluten, but there's other people who seem to not have a reaction. Or at least I think they don't. What's the problem with it? And why do you guys stay away from it? It's a great question. And I'm not the guy to give you the super technical answer on the like the mechanisms by which gluten does damage. I know there's association of licky gut and all that good stuff. But for my own personal experience, I have been experimenting with diet and nutrition my entire life. As long as I can remember, I I tell a story that I my earliest memory of anything to do with fitness and nutrition is drawing muscles on my body when I was six years old in front of the muscle in front of the mirror so I could have muscles and flax. So it's been something that I've been doing for quite some time. And about 10 years ago or so, I stumbled into gluten free. I happened to be trying everything I could to figure out why my all my joints were hurting all the time. I was in my thirties. I thought, OK, maybe I'm starting to get old. I'm in my forties now, by the way. But in my thirties, I'm thinking, am I getting old now? I'd gone to every kind of doctor you could think of, even rheumatologist to do tests and everybody said, you're fine. You're fine. You're good. On a whim, I tried a gluten free diet, felt amazing, felt amazing. All my joints stopped hurting almost immediately. And I don't know why I hadn't made that connection in the past when I used to diet as a bodybuilder in the old competitive days. Technically, going to a gluten free diet by going solo carb. And I remember feeling really good doing those types of nutritional programs. So your background is bodybuilding. You have a background in bodybuilding. I do. And you competed and did that whole thing. I did. Now, did you compete naturally or were you enhanced or did you do a whole world of like the whole thing? I did complete both naturally and enhanced. And I don't think I've ever publicly talked about that. But I'm happy to share that now. Yeah. And in the early nineties, I competed both as a teenager and in my early 20s in the NPC. I ended up winning the Mr. Huntington Beach Light Heavyweight and Overall Titles, which was like, I guess, my biggest grand accomplishment that I competed in the LA NPC Placed Faith and then never competed again. Now, do you think that the because we, you know, Adam's IFBB professional physique competitor, I grew up in that world, not as a competitor, but just as a as an admirer. And we've all been in fitness forever. And all of us at some point over the last 10 years have experienced an autoimmune reaction of some sort. I had horrible gut issues that now I've solved through nutrition. And I think I can link it back to that that lifestyle, that bodybuilding lifestyle, especially the consumption of those protein. They're crazy amounts of supplements that we consumed and all the artificial sweeteners and stuff. Did you notice this as you were progressing like you were cool and then all of a sudden getting more issues as you got older? And now, Stan, would you think that played a role? I would say so through my 20s, I felt indestructible and I didn't really have any kind of health issues in terms of my joints or anything like that. In my 30s, I felt old and decrepit, like my whole body was falling apart on me. In my 40s now, I feel like I did back in my 20s. And I do think that probably the crazy extreme type of dieting that, you know, you need to do to get in and out of shape for bodybuilding contests played a role. But I grew up also in a single family home where we were eating Twinkies for dinner and stuff like that because that's what we had to eat. So I think I ate a very crummy, high-sugar diet through my teen years. That was me. And muffins from Costco. Ice cream for dinner. Yeah, so that kind of stuff. So I can only imagine what I did to my insulin and why today I can bear it. If I barely touch carbs, I get fat. So I do really well on low, low, low carb. And so for me, I, by the way, I used to work at Quest. I ran Sales at Quest for a number of years and we started that company as a high protein, low carb company. And one day, somebody came to visit us and turned our world upside down. Peter Atilla and Dominic DiAgostino. And we started paying attention to fat. And I had doubled with the ketogenic diet in the past but not in the way that we started playing with it at Quest and that was transforming. What did you experience when you went keto? The first thing was, I don't think I'd ran on ketones in many, many, many years. So getting off glucose and suddenly running on ketones, appetite was suddenly completely under control. All the cravings went away. So this obsession over having to get food every two hours just disappeared. Joints again, and I had already, I had kind of given gluten up for the most part but going full keto, there is no gluten in your diet just made me feel all around better. Digestion improved tremendously. So no issues with GI discomfort at any moment. This is you kind of have a flat belly and it feels good all the time. And then oddly, I got crazy, crazy lean. So I did it for about a year straight, almost a year straight with no like refeeds or anything like that, just straight up keto. And it was very easy because the results I was getting were just ridiculous. I've never been that lean, no cardio in my 40s. I was lean as I was in my 20s, it was super crazy. And then it kind of stopped by the way. And then I started to see some muscle loss and then body composition wise, I realized not the best for the longterm. Health wise, damn, yes. So I do go in and out of keto throughout the year to try to do like four full weeks straight. I'm glad you say that, because some people get on, we all went through the ketogenic diet like God, it was a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. It was actually after we hung out with Dom. And he's influenced. He's influenced a lot of people. And you know what, I didn't want to. So I was at that time I was competing and I was eating anywhere between five, 600 grams of carbs a day. Okay. And my thought process was like, why the fuck would I want to stop eating all these carbs? This is awesome. I could fit stuff like cookies and shit in my diet and still look lean. You're one of those if it fits your macros guys, right? Well, I kind of had that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Initially I was like that. And I think that's a lot to do with the issue. I have auto, I have psoriasis that I deal with and stuff too. So when we, I don't know what was I just telling you about that with the competing and Dom, but the ketogenic, oh, we all went ketogenic. And I mean, we all had amazing results from it. But I also think that there's, I really liked the way Dr. Mercola talks about it. Like I'm not sure if you're familiar with his fuel for fat, but the cyclical way of doing it where your keto for a while come out of it for a bit and then go back. From an evolutionary standpoint, it only makes sense. It really does. Humans probably were ketogenic sometimes and sometimes they weren't. Probably most of the time. Well, and it's switching those energy sources maintains what they call metabolic flexibility. I'm probably the most keto ish out of the group, but I also had the worst like autoimmune issues with food. I had lots of gut issues and keto and keto solve that for me. But I think by nature, a keto diet is it's anti-inflammatory. Obviously if you have issues processing glucose, which can happen from again, an immune response. In fact, things like Alzheimer's they'll call like type three diabetes. All of a sudden you feel sharper, you feel better, mood feels better. But over time, a ketogenic diet literally is simulating almost like a slow starvation. So over time you can notice things like muscle loss and stuff like that. And so we interviewed Dr. Mercola and even now he's one of the most, he was one of the most ardent supporters of ketogenic diet. Like half his career was made on that. And he even says, yeah, no, on the weekends or once a week it's a good idea to have some carbohydrates to kick yourself out and then kind of go back in. I completely subscribed to that. So if you guys ever stumble into my Instagram account that's keto underscore head. So that's how into the keto diet I am. Oh wow. That's literally my Instagram name. Oh wow. Keto underscore head. And if you see it, you'll notice that I pretty much live that lifestyle almost year round. So I'm very much ketogenic for days or so a week. And then I'm off on the weekends and it takes me about a day or two to get back into a ketogenic state. What are your carbohydrates of choice when you do have them? So it depends if I'm gonna have a reefy day or a cheat day. And I differentiate between the two in that if I'm gonna have a reefy day, I'll have clean carbs, what I'll call clean carbs, things that I do well with rice does well for me. So I'll have rice, I'll also do a lot of fruit. And I'll mix the fruit with yogurt and a lot of honey. So I take advantage of that reefy to put stuff back into my gut that I know it's good for my gut and things that I normally wouldn't be able to have while I'm trying to stay ketogenic. But when I have a cheat day, that's actually pizza and ice cream. Oh, so you go off off. Yeah, so it depends on what I'm doing. So that's why I have a differentiation between the two. So if I wanna be very disciplined and I'm not necessarily trying to stay keto but I'll be very low carb high fat. And then on the weekends, very disciplined, I'll do like a meal that's a very high carb, clean carb kind of a meal. If I'm not and there's months out of the year where it's not a priority for me because I'm flying around all over the place and work and being a dad and all that kind of stuff. So it kind of takes a backseat. It's very easy for me to do low carb high fat and then have a cheat meal on a Saturday. Now, what would you consider for you now is high carb? Cause I know being a guy who was doing 600 grams of carbohydrates after my experience with ketogenic it forever changed my macro profile. Like now high carb is 200, 250. Right. Yeah, it's crazy. Oh, I get the same anabolic and feel it like the same thing, which I'm sure you get too in the gym, it's amazing when you've been keto for a while and then you feed and then you train. It's like you feel out and you get glycogen back into your muscles. So it's good. Yeah, you're right. So I mean, for me, low carb personally is 25, under 25 grams per day. So that's how I am most of the time. And then when I do refeed some, I'm actually not even counting the carbs to be honest with you if it's a cheat day. It's a lot of ice cream and a lot of pizza. I don't know how many, I don't know what it is up to. And I know I have a big glucose spike as a result of that. And I think I benefit from it just in general, resetting all the hormones. I think so too. I think if you have control of it, you understand what you're doing. I think there's lots of benefit of it. I think the problem with most people and is they hear that and then that's where they spiral out of control, right? One cheat day leads to two. It's that and keto diet in general is just crazy confusing. I was just talking to somebody who in my mind is relatively educated and does nutrition and competes and all that. And she shared with me that this keto thing hasn't worked for me and whenever I add fat to my diet I just get fat. I was like, okay, well, what are your macros? And she kind of broke them down for me. And I'm like, okay. And then when you added fat, what did you do? And she's like, well, just butter my coffee. Yeah, you know, avocado. Just added a bunch of extra calories. Yes, I'm like, have you ever thought about taking out carbs, like equal amount of calories and just maintaining your calories? Like, oh no, I hadn't thought about that. I'm like, keto isn't just adding fat to your diet. You can't have glucose in your diet. Or you have people that do the other one, which I get a lot, which is they just pull the carbs out and then they don't add enough fat. And now they're in a shitty situation. And now their body's going like, fuck, I get no ketones. I get no fat. And it turns the protein into carbs. Just a bunch of gluconeogenesis going on. That's another one that I see a lot of. And I've tried to explain this one to people. So I guess you can go into ketosis by having a lot of protein and then doing a shit little cardio. But you don't have to do hours of cardio. You could just back down your protein a little bit and then I'll save a lot of time. I don't do any cardio anymore. We don't either. You talk about all the time. And let me tell you, me too, I just occasionally walk. I live in Manhattan Beach. I walk on the beach every now and then. It's the only thing that's strenuous, but I used to be one of those people that had to do all kinds of cardio just to mildly see some abs. And I don't do any cardio anymore and I'm pretty lean, so. Crazy. I've definitely identified carbohydrates that seem to really work well with my gut. One of them is buckwheat. I don't know if you ever eat buckwheat. Oh yes, I make pancakes. Oh man, I tell you what, you could buy buckwheat cereal and you can make hot cereal with it. And it's like the easiest thing I've ever digested in my life that's a carbohydrate. I used to carb up when I competed with buckwheat pancakes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I actually never tried that. I can't believe a lot of people don't eat them here. Yeah, I can digest that and have no gut issues with those, so yeah. No, what about your protein intake? I'm sure as a bodybuilder you ate a shit ton of protein. Did you reduce it now? Because we're one of the few fitness podcasts where high protein has got benefits for muscle building, but not these ridiculous amounts that bodybuilders promote. These one to two grams per pound of body weight. Yeah, I was blown away by how low I could take my protein and still maintain muscle and or add muscle. I've blown away when I first went keto. I just kept taking it lower and lower. I think at one point I was under 100 grams of protein per day and still maintaining some good amount of muscle mass, but today I, gosh, what's my protein intake? It's 150 grams to 180 grams per day, max. Yeah, high protein even. Now there's a lot of evidence showing that it promotes accelerated aging and in the right context is even potentially pro cancer. I've read some of that. People eating these ridiculous amounts of protein, not really good. High protein may even be, Mercola told us he thinks that eating overeating protein may be as bad or worse than overeating carbohydrates even, which is pretty crazy. It could be. There's an insulgenic response from drinking whey protein. So you're spiking insulin when you're drinking whey protein as well. Yeah, but I don't even think, I think it's more than that. I think it's the constant high levels of mTOR and all these other muscle building signals that you're sending that also tend to drive aging and cancer. So it's kind of interesting. As we've had the podcast now for about two and a half years and we've had the pleasure of interviewing just brilliant minds and we've all been in fitness for a very long time and little by little it looks like having high plant intake is very important, especially your non-starchy vegetables and fats are good, proteins are good sometimes, carbohydrates are also good sometimes and just kind of working them in and eating these natural kind of foods is unprocessed, unadulterated natural foods and that seems to be the best advice for most everybody. And that's pretty manageable. I mean, you could put together a relatively delicious meal plan around those general principles and do really, really well. I think the big thing to do is to get the mass majority of people to move away from a low fat mentality still that believe it or not, it's still pervasive today and I live in a world where pretty much everyone around me knows that that's not the way to go but when I step outside of that I'm very quickly reminded that people are like, ooh. Oh, yeah. It's, I mean, butter and oil changed my life. Like I was not a vegetable eater. Well, I wasn't a vegetable eater because I grew up on the low fat mentality also for such a long time that, you know, vegetables were steamed and they were boring and it was like shoveling them down an inch but now I'll eat a big old thing full of vegetables. That was the second, that was another interview that was Dr. Terry Walls. Dr. Terry Walls who, I don't know if you're familiar with her but she's a brilliant scientist. She was stricken with MS and through her own process was able to essentially reverse very, I mean, she had very, very bad case of it and she's developed the Walls protocol which is like six to eight servings of vegetables a day but it's a very high fat, lower carbohydrate, even lower protein, but lots and lots of vegetables after we interviewed her, I was already in lots of vegetables. Now you do more, that made a massive difference in how I felt. I'll tell you guys, like you, I was not a vegetable eater. Well, because vegetables don't have proteins, carbs or fat, right? So the bodybuilder, you're like, why? That and I just, I didn't like him. Like I would force myself to eat broccoli, believe it or not, because I remember thinking or knowing that, you know, I need to get some greens. So I was like, I'll eat that, get it out of the way and then enjoy my meal but one of the meals, maybe the meal I most look forward to every day is the salad that I have at the end of the day. And it's like, you know, a lot of kale and there's like macadamia nuts in there and marcona almonds and peppers and there's a bunch of vegetables and it's a big salad. And then I mow that thing down and I love every bite of it. And I don't know if it's because I've changed how I eat but I crave that now and I used to not. I do too. I remember when I first got into competing I went around, I was talking to a buddy, so I did it all myself. I didn't have a coach or anybody like that. But I have lots of friends that were already pros. And I went around and I started, I wanted to hear their diet philosophies, like, okay, well, you know, what do you guys do? And I was telling them that I love eating salads and they all kind of like laughed and mocked me and stuff like that because I do that. And I thought, okay, this is crazy. But I mean, you've been probably removed from it from a really long time. It's crazy how bad it is. It's still really, really bad even at the professional level with the dieting and the bro science that's still going on there. It is, I occasionally look and then I very quickly turn away. I can't jump in and I don't even know where to start on those kinds of things. I'll tell you what though, the kind of wellness movement, when we started the podcast, we called it and we said, look, we got wellness over here. We got fitness over here. They're gonna merge at some point and it's starting to happen now even with that whole muscle building fat loss market because you see now protein powders, organic, no artificial sweeteners or colors. Grass fed. It's already starting to happen, which I think is a good thing. So it's very, very cool, very interesting. One of the things that we also talk about on the podcast is we talk a lot about something called intuitive eating, which is just really a process of understanding how to relearn because we've been taught for since we were children to ignore the natural signals of our body which humans evolve to help direct us in our eating both to eat the right amounts, not to overeat and to seek out the right foods. And one of the things that has taught us to ignore that or one of the things that's made it turn that into a problem are these highly processed and engineered foods that combine tastes and textures and colors in ways that hack our brains systems of satiety. And we see this with, we interviewed Rob Wolf a while ago and he told us about. Why are two eats a great book? Excellent book. And he talked to us about these professional food competitors or eaters when they would eat a food and they would switch back and forth. They would have to switch back and forth in order to continue eating. And so what's interesting about- It's actually what we do when we eat, right? Yes. So we can keep eating, right? We're learning how to ignore that shit. So what's interesting is your company is doing that. You guys are engineering these foods to hijack these systems because you're fighting these other people that are doing it with bad products. So you're trying- It's very perceptive. So I'll take a step back and go back to the quest days. So I spent four years there with some pretty amazing people. Tom being one of them, you guys have interviewed Tom. And we understood that. I come from a food industry background. I've worked with Nestle. I've worked with some of the biggest food companies out there. So I understand there's no malicious plot, by the way. They're just all competing with each other over who's gonna- They're trying to get you to buy their food. And that's the best way to do it. Who's gonna make the best tasting ice cream? Who's gonna make the best- It's the same thing that guys are doing in tech. You get you addicted to their tech. It's no different from other food. Correct, so if you can only imagine the amount of effort that goes into making like a Doritos chip taste the way that it does and the amount of residue that gets left in your finger and all that- Most of the money that goes into those foods goes into that. Yeah, yeah. So there's a guy that wrote a book and I'm not gonna think of it right now but perhaps I'll give it to you guys later. But he talked about this. He spent all these years working in the food industry and he talked about if only somebody in the health food industry would hire me, I'd love to share all these tricks with them. And so we hired that person that quest as one of the many people that was part of the R&D team over there. And so we developed products with that in mind. So there's all these fun tricks to make things taste better. Let's talk about that. This is fascinating shit. I would love for our audience to know like how do you make your stuff? Yeah, how do you engineer it? Yeah, what did you guys do with your stuff to make it? I mean, I don't want you to- To bold your trade secret sauce. But so I mean, it's because it's everything. People don't realize it's not just the taste, it's also the texture, the smell, the way it feels in your mouth, the way it crumbles. It sticks on your fingers, all that shit. All of that, very, very true. So at Quest it was a pretty robust R&D team of people who were pretty much focused on just that. At No Foods, we have an interesting approach to it. So we have a true culinary chef who has a lifelong career in making amazing, delicious food. And then we have an amazing R&D team that works along with this person. And so they're bringing together all of the little science tricks that come with making foods taste amazing with an actual chef who is working on the culinary side and then together they bring something forward like the cookie that we have. And so the cookie that we have, I'll call it version 2.0 because we've already had one version that's already improved from the one that we have right now. But our goal is to get that as close as humanly possible to experiencing a biting into a soft-baked chocolate chip cookie. And are we there yet? We're getting close, but it's pretty darn good. I mean, we're trying to mimic all those same things with our chocolate and our flowers and finding a way to do all of this without actually using grains or gluten. So Ily Lo's would be an example of something that ends up working there because it has all the properties of sugar in many ways, both in flavor and then in texture. And so there's a lot of innovative things you can do with Ily Lo's that allow you to give really amazing texture to the foods. Fascinating. So I want to challenge a little bit of a thought process and I just want to hear what you speak on this is what do you think? Because I think what you guys are doing is amazing and I think you've got to kind of fight fire with fire. But what about, is there any fear that, because obviously your intentions are pure and good and the idea is that we're going to provide a better, healthier product and hopefully we have a healthier world because of this, right? So what I have found with so many people is the behavioral patterns that they've caused from the eating, right? From the liking it so much. Yes. I even catch myself with the newest quest bar out right now. So it's like, I'm on- The hero bar. Dude, I'm on- That's good. The caramel pecan hero bar is to die for. Lou Berry. And I'll go through, I could go through four of those, back to back to back. So I have to, like what I do, I have a refrigerator all the way down to my garage. I like them cool because they're really good. You cool, you let them room temperature for about 30 seconds, I love them, they're really good. But I could nail a whole box if I don't, if I don't pay attention to that. And I know being a health fitness conscious guy, I care about that shit. How many other people probably struggle with that discipline. And I used to, I remember I used to date this girl, I used to find those skinny cows all the time, right? Actually, it was my girlfriend, Ben Greenfield. He used to like- Yeah. He used to eat those skinny cows. That is a hot girl. He used to eat those skinny cows all the time to try and say- Were those skinny cow, the ice cream sandwiches? Yeah, yeah. Oh my God, I helped launch that brand many, many years ago. Oh, did you? Oh, skinny cow? So, you know, and what happens, these people that struggle with weight, normally what they do is they buy that because they feel better because they're making a better choice. But then instead of just eating one, that's 130 cows, they eat fucking five of them, that's 700. So you're touching a lot of really cool stuff. I mean, let me unpack some of that. So yes, if you make the, everything tastes so amazing that people just eat all day long, that's problematic, no question. You also touch something like a skinny cow type product where people are buying things that they think are actually good for them when in reality, it's a metabolic disaster. Laney Layers is a good example. I don't mean to pick on those guys, but it's a cookie that's supposed to be good for you. It's got 34 grams of sugar. It's a full-blown metabolic disaster every time you- It's an actual cookie. Yeah. It's actually, I don't have a real cookie because I think it's lower in sugar than- It is, absolutely. I've seen people do the comparisons before. They put a real cookie next to it, it's like- Right. So, but the first point you made is one really worth thinking about. And we're not, we don't seem to be as wired to crave eating protein and fat nonstop the way that we are carbs. Like there's no stop mechanism there. If you guys may have seen a video, it's on YouTube, it's an old video of this tribe that still lives in the Amazon jungle, very much like wonder gatherers and hunter-gatherers, whatever. It's a real cool video because it shows how they occasionally do get sugar in their diet. They live almost the entire year with no sugar. Every now and then they find honey at the top of these very tall trees and they'll climb to the top of the canopies to get the honey and they'll risk their life in limb and often get hurt. They get stung from head to toe every time by bees. But they do it nonetheless. They risk their life to get sugar. And when they do get their hands on the honeycomb- They eat the fuck out of it. They just devour it, right? And then they eat every last bite of it. They don't just have a few bites. I'll have some later. It's like all of it. And so we're wired that way. And so if you can somehow make healthy quality proteins, fibers and healthy fats, the things that we should be eating taste like that sugar that we love. I'd rather overeat on that end than overeating on the sugary stuff just because of the metabolic consequences that come from one versus the other. So that said, there's still that one, like the overeating component. And I'll fall into that category. I mean, I'll eat all kinds of stuff all the time. I don't have a stop mechanism on a lot of things. So for me, keto really helped me on that one. It really did. Oh, keto changed me for that. If I'm keto, I see more struggle with the processed stuff, the bars, the things like that. If I introduced those into my diet, if I'm eating a pure keto diet, I won't do that. If I'm just eating fats and things like that. But even for me, post-keto, so if I get out of ketosis, somehow since originally doing it, I have a lot more control over my cravings. I think what happens, and it's like I'm just way more, you're way more sensitive, right? I mean, we're way more insulin sensitive. And now what used to take 600 carbs to give me that system that, okay, you're really full on this shit. It happens now at 150 or so. Well, actually the best thing that I've ever done and I've ever recommended for people to kind of reset those systems of satiety and to kind of reconnect to some of the signals of their body is to fast. There's nothing that does it any better than fasting because once you fast, first off, you get to feel hungry for the first time in your life, which people laugh when I say that, and I'm like, we're talking about, I feel hungry every day. It's like, no, you don't. You've never gone longer than probably eight to 10 or 12 hours without food. So you need to know what that really feels like. And you need to work through it. And you need to realize that most of the time when you think you're hungry, it's an emotional connection to food or it's a connection to anxiety or stress. It's no different than checking your phone for your latest IG post or whatever. It's that same kind of weird craving that you're just getting a quick fix from it. But the fasting component is a big one for me and I do a lot of intermittent fasting as part of what I normally do. But I do, I've had this ritual for many years and I'm glad that I've done it and I'm learning a lot more about the benefits that are coming from it. And that's a three day fast, how I start my year a year. And I used to do it simply because the reasons I did it is because it's my way of kind of understanding all the little crutches that I've been using throughout the year. Like they start to add up, like the little things that you do to that are non-productive. And for three days I remove everything and food just happens to be one of those. But as it turns out, like true fasting for three days plus, if you guys have seen all of the Rhonda Patrick's out there, she's been working on Good Lord. I mean, there's nothing but benefits. It's part of health benefits. It is part of what they say when it starts hitting three to five is the sweet spot, right? Stem cell boost production. One of the most anti-cancer things you could possibly do to the point where the FDA right now is researching, fasting is an adjuvant therapy to chemotherapy because in their studies, they're finding that people will use far less chemo if they do a fasting protocol with it and it's more effective, which means less side effects, better effect on the cancers. Fasting has been part of the cancer treatment in Chinese and Eastern medicine for thousands of years. That was how they treated cancers. They didn't know it was cancer, but that's how they started treating it. And so I recommend that to any healthy person to go for a prolonged fast. At least, I like to do it once every six months. I'll do a 48 hour, 72 hour fast and I respond better to protein afterwards, better to carbs afterwards, better to fats. I'll tell you what I did for my gut. So we have a friend of ours who's a gut health specialist, Dr. Mike Ruzio. And he talked about how many times people with gut issues have just this dysbiosis going on where they have these overgrowth of certain bacterias and maybe something called SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And he recommended that I do a prolonged fast and then supplement with natural antimicrobials, go on a very low sugar type diet and do that for like a 14 day period and then see how I felt. So I did that two times, not in a row, I did one and I took like two months off and I did another one. And I'm telling you right now, no joke. I feel like it literally, and I don't use this word lightly, I almost cured some of my issues to the point now where I was so sensitive to gluten and these guys will tell you, I'd have a little bit and I would be ruined. I'd be fucked. Now I could have gluten every once in a while and it doesn't seem to bother me and that flexibility. It was that, it was that what I did right there. It was that fast with the antimicrobials and for about 14 day period. And I think it just kind of reset my body and it's something that people don't do enough. So, but I'll tell you what it's, I'm glad we have someone, because you have a history of working in the industry, developing foods and engineering them to taste so fucking good that we can't resist them. And I'm glad you're on this side. Yeah. And not on the other side. You gotta be super excited about that because there's probably not a lot of health companies and like, cause there's not as much money going into that as there's Nestle. If you can't beat them, join them, man. Well, yeah. Grab that guy, bring him over here. When you think of other companies, like organic companies that are out there, like is there, is there as much research? I feel like Quest is probably one of the companies too that's doing good work like that. I mean, is there a lot of other companies that you would consider a competitor or you guys kind of stand alone? There's not a lot of people doing what you're doing. You know, it's, it's funny. I don't really ever think of competitors. There's a lot of companies out there that are doing similar work. And I think of them more as companies to collaborate with, to be honest with you. So I'll say there'll be two types of food companies. Those that have metabolic truth and maintain metabolic integrity and those that are metabolic disasters. I'm gonna put them into those two camps. And so anybody who's developing products that taste amazing and that maintain metabolic integrity, they're on my team, whether they're no foods or not. And anybody who's making, and to be honest, I like the junk food industry. So keep making hog and does, keep making bed and jerrys, love that stuff. But it's really the stuff that's positioned to be better for you that really isn't better for you. So it's the ones, it's slightly better for you. It's like, you know, smoking cigarettes or the filters, better for you than not. But it's still bad for you. So there's a lot of things that are bad for you that are being promoted as better for you. I wanna expose all that. And there's billions of dollars being made on those types of products. And so on this other side of the equation, you have companies like Quest for sure. They're tackling the whole, anything to do with the bar they're gonna own, right? Cereal bars, candy bars, and bars in all their forms. And I'm sure there's more stuff coming from those guys. There's a really great company out there called Real Good Food to make a product called Real Good Pizza. It's a pizza that's got 25 grams of protein and four net carbs and actually four total carbs because it's made out of chicken breast and cheese that the crust, believe it or not. Chicken breast. Yeah, chicken breast. Yeah, so in fact, Dom Diagnostino, likes to potty, he was talking about on the... We just fell into Cali Flower Foods, which is really good, which it's pizza crust made out of Cali, or cauliflower. So that's a fun one right there, right? So cauliflower pizza has been a thing for a while now. So if you go online, people have realized that how do we, how can we enjoy pizza without all the problems that come with pizza? So someone figured out, you can make it out of cauliflower. Cool. Now you've got all these people launching cauliflower pizza products out there. One retailer in particular, I won't name them on here because I don't want to mad at me, but I see everyone posting this cauliflower pizza out there and I'm like, okay, that's kind of cool. I take the work out of it. I look at the ingredients. It's a metabolic disaster. It's like the whole reason to add cauliflower is so that you don't have the carbs in it. And then they added a whole bunch of other carbs. It's worse than normal pizza. So it's, that kind of stuff drives me crazy. We start with flour and then we add cauliflower to it. Yes, cauliflower pizza drives me crazy. This is actually what motivated these ladies who started this cauliflower foods was exactly that, was even the cauliflower pizzas out there had all these preservatives and all this shit in it. It's like, it's not even good for you, but they promote it that way. The entire gluten-free category is like that, so. It reminds me of the vegan category, like, oh, it's meatless sausage. And you look at the back and the ingredient list is like, you know, 100 lines long, and you're like, this is not healthy. Just because it doesn't have meat in it. Almost every gluten-free bread that's out there that I can think of other than ours may very well be gluten-free, but they're also adding like tapioca starch. So they're like highly glycemic. So if you want to get on a path to diabetes, like eat that stuff. Just because it's gluten-free doesn't mean it's healthy. Are you guys doing anything on the fitness side? Are you, because it's kind of like health food, right? Do you work with anyone to develop fitness programs to promote exercise or anything like that? Or is that in the future? That's not something that we're doing at all. Perhaps sometime in the future, I mean, we do think of ourselves as trying to solve some of these grand problems and we're doing it through nutrition, but certainly something that we'd be open to in the future. We are heavily involved with the influencer community and have a lot of great relationships in that space. And so perhaps, you know, working with some of those folks. Man, I'm glad we got to know you then. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, no, appreciate you coming on the show, brother. It's my pleasure. I look forward to listening to the podcast. To mine, Pop. We'll be your favorite podcast. Yeah, easily. Excellent. Thanks to our host, Spartan Race, Joe DeSina and the Spartan Up podcast for setting up a great weekend here at the 2017 Spartan Race World Championship. We are recording live from Lake Tahoe at the Spartan Up podcast part of the 2017 Spartan Race World Championships. Fucking awesome out here. And we are with, I don't know, man, I think we might be related. You are kind of handsome. So I'm like, OK, there's got to be something there. Joe DeStefano. Yeah. I've never met another DeStefano. Oh, the hell, that happened. I don't know, man. And we're both, are we both DI? DI space? Do you space it in there? Yeah. I swear to God, we've got to be related. We must have been separate at the first. Are you really smart too? Yeah. Depends the context who you ask. I'm good at faking it, but definitely related. So you're the co-founder of Spartan Coaching. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. Well, very early on in Spartan, back in the day, it was this thing where it was just kind of board triathletes. It's like, oh, is it like a triathlon? Like, what is it? And then there was obviously a lot of general population people that were getting into 5Ks and things like that. And when we would try to explain what OCR was, and I don't even think we called it OCR at the time, it was like, well, how do I train for that? What do I eat? What do I wear? And so we started Spartan Coaching, which at first was actually kind of an adjacent vertical, like an adjacent business next to Spartan. And it focused on kind of preparing people for really getting them to understand what Spartan race was. And so yeah, now we call it SGX, which is our Spartan kind of group exercise program. And it's just a- So do you give people like specifics, like this is what the workout should look like? This is what you train for in order to get ready for these races? Yeah, so a lot of the coaching program that we created is actually based in psychology, kind of getting people to understand, to see the race for more than just a bunch of walls, water, and fire, right? Joe created this thing as a metaphorical kind of experience. We don't really care if you can climb a wall. We wanna see if you can kind of conquer something that's in your way. And if you can't, you're willing to pay the price to get around it, which is 30 burpees, right? So the big thing with the coaching program is getting people to see the kind of backstory and the reason why we created this thing. And then beyond that, it's about training, right? And so it's less like, here's our favorite workouts and it's more, how do you create a 12-week program? The average person that signs up for a Spartan race is gonna sign up 12 weeks out and then start taking it seriously and train a little bit. So you walk out of the course with a kind of a 12-week template on how to prepare somebody for the race. And now is it like beginner to race or is this more for intermediate 12 weeks? For all. Yeah, all of them. So it's really interesting where it's kind of an undulated program where the first four weeks, the program focus on body weight training, the next four weeks focus on sort of like, carries, medicine ball stuff. And then the last four weeks is more kind of hardcore conditioning. Let's get race ready, right? And so whether it's a beginner, a couch potato or whether it's an advanced triathlete, four weeks of body weight training can kind of really get anybody a little bit more athletic. Anybody, if you've ever seen like animal flow, like the stuff Mike Fitch does. So we can incorporate that scale and make it as difficult as possible. But I think the general kind of rubric for training for Spartan is, get super comfortable in your own skin. Get fluid and get your movement down. Get connected again to your body. Get connected, exactly. I like that you started out with the body weight training specifically. Cause a lot of people like, yeah, they get that disconnect from their body and they're not really aware of like their joints and like what they're capable of. So that's great. Well, that's the big thing, right? Is that, let's say you're gonna climb a wall. It's like one person can approach a wall and they've learned, they take all the dysfunction from sitting at a desk or what have you or not being comfortable in your own skin, not being able to move versatility. But they learned how to climb a wall and this is what it looks like, right? You take somebody that's, you know, done a lot of animal flow or done a lot of kind of movement stuff. And, you know, maybe the wall is slanted now and it's a little bit different. They're gonna figure it out. But the person that took a dysfunctional body and just learned how to climb a rope or climb a wall is gonna be much more like, whoa, what am I gonna do here? I gotta figure this out. That is a very, very good point because you can definitely train. It's adaptation, I think. You can get very specific with your adaptation, very specific with these movements in this pattern, in this plane of movement. And if you change that just a little bit, I don't think people, we talk about this on the show all the time. People don't realize just there's carryover, but it's not a whole lot. You know, if you're really good at, you know, squatting a particular way and now we front load you or now you put yourself in a split stance, like, you know, 80% of your strength and stability is gone. So your training is geared towards getting people to be able to move better, period, and be able to scale all these different things. So it's not specific to the obstacle or is that also included? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So SGX is mostly about creating a versatile body, right? That can kind of conquer anything. Above and beyond that, we've created a class called Obstacle Specialist, which is specifics. This is how you do an S-Rap. This is how you do a J-Hook. This is how you climb the wall three different ways. This is how you flip over the wall, like some of the pros do. So the actual coaching program is more based in creating a body that's kind of capable of whatever you want it to do. And then the capstones are more specifics. When you have a pro team athlete that wants to be the absolute best rope climber on the planet, you know, what are the steps you take to do that? How do you train for a race like this at altitude? High heat. So as you kind of add, we have a level two program as well. And then we have the obstacle specialist that gets into the more nitty gritty stuff. Is this all online based or how does this work? It's everything. So we teach the workshop occasionally, mostly at our stadium races. It's a two day live workshop. It's also around a 30 day online program. So, you know, as we've kind of expanded globally, just exponentially, right? You know, we've got 200 races, just about 30 countries. The interest in this program was far greater than we could get two day workshops propped up and trained instructors. So we were really, really late to putting it online just because we were really afraid to do that. We didn't want to be lumped into that, you know, log in, get a cert. But it's taught just like a college course. It's actually taught by one of my professors from Exercise Physiology undergrad. Taught just like a university class, takes about a month to get through. So it's no joke. And the pass rate, you know, what's funny too is I took a class on how to create, you know, kind of the business of a certification, right? And one of the things that I took home was if less than 90% of people are not, or less than 90% of people are passing your cert, then it's too hard. We're like 50%, we're like 55%. And we're- Because you want to have, I mean, you got integrity behind it. Right, exactly. It's- You could take a class on how to develop a certification. Yeah, I'm very interested in that. Yeah, yeah. What else did they say in that class? Yeah, yeah. We're like, mm, we're working on that. We're talking about creating a certification for online coaching, because it's such a big, we all have, you know, decades of experience in the fitness industry as trainers and then training trainers. And I see your background, your corrective exercise specialist, you know, through NASM. And you've got- Yeah, you shall see. Check institute training and all that stuff. So you definitely know your shit. But what do they tell you to do? Like how do you develop this certification? So that's one of them, right? Yeah. Everybody has to pass, basically. Right, right. Everyone has to pass. It was really a more robust fitness business course. That was just one element of it. It wasn't a full weekend on how to create a certification. But yeah, that was just one of the takeaways. How did you and Joe get connected? That's a funny story. You gotta tell me. I don't know if I can say it on the air. Oh, this is my book. You see where the fuck you are, bro. Oh, dude, we're at our show now. Don't tease us like that. We're coined as the Howard Stern of fitness. All right, all right. So- He's on Tinder. This is a hilarious story. You guys are spicy. So, all right, I just told you that one of my college professors actually teaches that class, right? Well, when I went to school in the early 2000s, I played baseball growing up and I was an amateur skateboarder. I was never really into endurance sports at all. I maintained like a sub eight minute mile so I could be on a baseball team, but that was about it. And in my brain, when I went to college, I was undeclared. I didn't know what I wanted to do. In my brain, I'd never really, I'd put a lot of thought into it, but I was a marathonist. Like that's like as far as the body goes. Like, you know, the first guy to do it died. Yeah, your nipples bleed. Like no one runs more than a marathon. Your nipples bleed, something's happening. Right, no, that was it. And so I never had any interest in running a marathon, but I also didn't really think that there was anything beyond that. And when I went to school, I bumped into a guy like a dining hall or something. And he was one of the professors in the exercise science department. And he's got this thick Boston accent and he goes, yeah, I got a hundred Mila this weekend. And I'm like- A hundred Mila. I'm like, what does that mean? What is a hundred Mila? I have a buddy who's an ultra marathon runner. Right. And he goes, I'm around a hundred miles. And I'm like, that's not even a thing. Like, what do you mean on your feet? Like, yeah. For like a week. Like how's this happening? Like, yeah, I had no idea. And what was funny, I was like, looking at him and judging him, I'm like, if you can run a hundred miles. Like, I wonder how far I can run. So I did, I signed up for a half marathon and did it like, you know, a week later just to see if I could do it. But him and I are still great, great friends. We ended up doing a few races together. He got me into triathlon eventually. And so maybe it was 2004. He's like, hey, I'm doing this race. It's called the death race. And I'm like, that doesn't sound appealing. Like, I don't know what that is. Like you're gonna die. And then we'll bring you back. Yeah. Like, you know, I had no idea. And I think that was the first year Joe did it. And he couldn't tell me anything about it. He said it was gonna be around a 24 hour race. And I was like, I'm not interested. Like I'm in the zone right now. I'm an exercise science student. I want to know what I'm up against so I can type A it. And just make sure that I'm trained. Get your protocols in place. Right. I don't want to sign up for something you can't tell me anything about. And he made it like five hours. I think he walked in and it was like 3,000 burpees at the start line and then you can start. And Dr. J I called. Reasonable. Right. I called the wounded buffalo because he's a guy that runs a hundred miles. But Dr. J, I love you. But like watch him do a burpee at that point in time. We talked about your adaptations. If you run a hundred miles, you got no hip mobility because you don't need it. You got no strength in the upper body. You don't need it. You got no hamstrings. It's bad efficiency. That's right. Your control falls. I don't know if it's such an ugly burpee watching that happen. Oh man. I, you know, until 2013, I don't think I ever saw a doc do a barbed wire crawl and not need to stand up at some point in it. Right. And I love you doc. But what happens is your mobility is just, you don't need it to run a hundred miles. What you need is just, you just need a bobble head and some strong ankles. And so anyways, I don't think he made it through the 3000 burpees. He came home. He's like, dude, it was sick. It was awesome. 2005, he's like, you should do this with me. No, 2006, 2007, 2008. And I just, I don't want to go hang out with this lunatic Joe. I don't want to do that. And then he's like, whatever it was, Amesbury or there was one of the very early Spartans. He's like, all right, that guy that you, you know, the death race guy, he's putting on a race and it's called Spartan. And you're going to love it. It's a 5k. You'll be done in 45 minutes. I'm like, all right, I can, I can, I can handle it. Yeah. And that's the rest is kind of history. And then doc and I both got involved with Joe. And cause this is the early days. And we interviewed Joe guy like six months ago. Great story. Probably one of our favorite interviews. Great storyteller. Yeah. Oh yeah. Great story, man. So how was this super small? Was it just, was it an intimate a group of guys or how big was the very first one you went to? Oh my gosh. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, it was, it was not small. I mean, now I think we would probably consider it very, very, very small. But at that point I was running a lot of local 5k. I was running a lot of Turkey trots. And I was used to seeing, you know, 300 person races and, you know, so I don't know what the number was, but it seemed cool. There was that like coming from conventional endurance sports, there was that little bit of edginess. Like, you know, there was fire. We had, you know, gladiators at the time, like just these buff dudes with like mallets. Like mean mugging you early. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't know if you guys know this. At the finish line, we used to have actual like American gladiators. Oh, that's awesome. That would actually hit you. Oh, that's great. And you'd have to wrestle you. Why did they take that out? Oh. I didn't, as you grow, you know. Yeah, you can't. Well, you know, and the real reason is, I remember a race I watched and it was Hobie Call and Hunter McIntyre. It might have been 2013. They were both coming in full steam heading into the finish line. I think Hunter got hit and Hobie didn't. Well, there's the race. Wow. Oh, that's, oh, wow. So from a sport perspective, it makes no sense. Yeah. And I can make a few arguments for the open wave why it's not a good idea. Yeah. But yeah, back in the day, it was funny because when you're coming into the finish line, you're all, you're, you know, you're so excited. And then you see this just guy just just staring you down for a hundred yards ready for you. So that's funny. So now, and I know Joe's personality, so I'm wondering you guys meet, was it like instant connection right away? How'd you guys even start talking? How did this develop into a business? Right, right. So another funny story, Joe, you know, Joe's really an interesting guy. And he's, you know, he's the real deal. And I was intimidated by Joe at the beginning, especially since I'd been hearing these stories for almost, you know, seven years about this death race. And, you know, I'd always avoided going up there and meeting him. And so it was, it was kind of a, it was kind of a slow build. And I remember it might have been 2012, he invited this group of us up to Vermont. It was Dr. J, me, Jeff Finicello, who is a, he's an Olympic wrestler. He teaches in Arizona now, I think at Arizona State. Mark Devine, you guys must know. Few other studs and like just put us in a room and we ended up putting a big group of coaches through an event later that weekend. But that was really the kickoff of this thing. And, you know, Mark Devine kind of given his two cents, like what, what it means to be Spartan. And, and Jeff Finicello, it was funny actually. So Joe was like, with this weekend, you know, this group of coaches that's gonna come in, they have to be smarter than you, Dr. J. And Mark, they have to, you know, they have to chop wood with you for six hours. And Jeff, Jeff, they have to wrestle you. Like you're an Olympic wrestler. And so, yeah, it was pretty funny, but we ended up doing like, you know, seven hours of Bikram yoga in two days. We hiked the mountain. You know, I actually did wrestle Jeff Finicello. There was a photo of it. Within about a second, I was upside down. Yeah. But, but that was really the kickoff. And that's when kind of friendships really kind of created and then the rest is history. That's excellent. How many people do you guys have in your coaching program now? There's about a thousand certified coaches right now, which again is a slow build. That's, you know, it's been a lot more than that. I've come through the course, whether online or live. And then there's obviously the attrition every year for people that don't meet the requirements to keep the cert another year. So about a thousand right now. How long does it take to get the cert if somebody were to start and say, hey, I want to get certified? 30 days, I think he said it. It's just three days? 30 days. It's a 30 days. Yeah, so you can come to a live two-day workshop. There are prerequisites. You got to be a coach. You got to be, you got to have your CPR. You got to be a certified trainer. Anybody can take the class. But if you want to exit as a certified coach. Oh, wow. So you actually have to be a nationally certified trainer before you even go to your course. Right, right, right. So we see it as a specialty, right? So we don't want to teach you guys A and P, you know? We don't want to teach you guys. You know, there's a lot of integrity with that because I feel like... There's a lot of other certifications out there that I won't name any names where you show up for a weekend, doesn't matter what your background is. And now you're programming Olympic list. Well, you see like when we look at... Interesting. When we look at it. I know who you're talking about. I'm talking about... Well, you walk into some of your biggest chain gyms. You always, I mean, where you see most of the people are in these group X classes, you know? And these are the people teaching 50, 100 people and they went through some weekend certification course and they have no real understanding of physiology, metabolism, any of that shit. And so that's pretty cool that you guys do that. You got to have a national cert before you can even go through your certification, so. Right, right. And you know what's so funny is again the first certification we did. So Dr. J is, I mean, he's an unbelievable guy and he's a college professor, he's a PhD in this stuff, takes it super seriously. The first training, the first exam to be a Spartan coach was, I took four years of exercise physiology with Dr. J at university and I got a 72 or something. Right, you know, so the first test was just insane. It's brutal, huh? We've backed it off a little bit. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah, let's calm down. Yeah. But that was kind of like with Joe's intent, Joe was like, if someone's a Spartan coach, do the best. They better be the smartest motherfuckers in the world. You know, it's like that was his thing. And again, he had to wrestle Jeff Vinicello and hang with Mark Devine, so. So now are you, do you and Joe work day to day or how often do you guys even communicate? Cause I'm sure you're super busy doing what you're doing. Do you guys even see each other that much? Yeah, well he's in Japan now. So, you know, we don't, I wouldn't say we work day to day together. We're on email. He's over there working on that Hello Kitty deal, right? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. He's sharing that story. It's very important that he's over there. I still think you should sell those shirts. They're gonna give me money. Yeah. That's excellent. So, when you look at like the top top performers who are like the best of the best in these particular races, what backgrounds do they usually come from? What do they look like? Cause I know everybody can do it. I see people from all walks of life competing in these things. I don't mean by everybody as an everybody, but you know, everybody gets something out of it, but then you've got those top performers. What is their backgrounds typically? Are they marathon runners? Are they, you know, like what do they look like? Are they smaller, bigger? Right. Well, that's, I mean, that's a loaded question, man. And I've, I think I've gotten the question about 400 times in the past 24 hours, like who's gonna win? Yeah. And you know what's hilarious is if I were to guess, maybe Hoby, maybe Hunter, they got 40 pounds between them, right? Hoby's a 130-some-odd-pound marathon runner. Hunter's, I don't know if he's 185, he's 195. It's really hard. I think- That's what makes this cool, is that you can't pigeonhole it until like, oh, okay, this is the body type. This is the person who wins these races always. Right, right. And I think we're at a point now, you know, this year with the US Championship Series, we made it all supers and then a beast at the end. I think if you looked across everything, like the best runner is gonna win, you know, over course time, the best runner is gonna win. But I think over time, if the sport goes in the directions that some of us want it to, there's gonna be opportunities for the heavier, stronger dudes and gals. I was gonna ask you that. I'll wait for that. We were talking to, who's the athlete that we're talking to from Kuwait? Kuwait, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joseph? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great guy. Great guy, talking about all the- There he is right there. That's fun. How funny is that? We summoned him. Literally just said his name. How crazy was that? He heard you. Yeah. Talking to him and he was saying that, you know, right now he feels that the race is kind of favored typically more of the runners and that, you know, some other obstacle courses that are way heavy on the obstacle side. Do you see in the future putting more emphasis on the obstacle side? Or maybe just changing and not offering different kinds? Right, right. And if you look at this course today, you know, we've got a new obstacle up at the top of the mountain that's a double. You guys are familiar with our Atlas ball carry, right? It's 115 or so for men. Well, we've got an obstacle at the top of the mountain that's two of those and they've got a handle bolted into the ball of concrete, right? So that's a, you know, that's a 200 plus pound farmer carry. You got to go 40 feet with in the, you know, at mile seven and a half at 9,000 feet. So yes, and we've got two hercois here. We've got, you know, this new rig we've got is just, you know, that's a lot of grip strength. So I think given any race, this is a 16.5 mile race, we'll call it right now. That's gonna favor a runner. But I think if you look at like our stadium races, like if we can start jacking the weights on some of the obstacles in the stadium series, which is a, you know, it's a 27 minute race anyway. And then if it was heavier weight, so we started to get distinct to your point, body types. So the stadium race, you've got 175 pound little bit of a burlier athlete. And then in the beast races, the obstacles are a little heavy, but you've got the 140 pound guy like 108 pound girl or what have you. So we'll see. I hope that that is kind of the future. Exciting man. Well, we're happy to be here. Yeah. Yeah. We're pumped to have you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's just super cool. Yeah, very cool. Thank you very much. We want to thank our host Spartan Race, Joe DeSina and the Spartanup podcast for setting up a great weekend here at the 2017 Spartan Race World Championship. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance and Maths Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise program designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a 430-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. 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